Vālmīki

Indian sage poet

• Born: fl. c. 500 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Ayodhya(?), India
• Died: Unknown
• Place of death: India

Vālmīki composed the first epic poem of India, a work describing the life of Prince Rāma.

In the first book of the Rāmāyaṇa (Bāla-kānḍa), which was a later interpolation, Vālmīki is introduced as a gifted saint who lived with his gifted pupils, such as the sage Bharadwaja, in a hermitage in the valley of the river Tamasa. The Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa (esoteric Rāmāyaṇa), an anonymous work in Sanskrit, composed probably in the fifteenth century, describes him as a Brahman youth who associated with brigands and burglars and took to a violent life of an outlaw even as a married man with a family of his own. According to popular tradition, this wayward youth, named Ratnakara, was the tenth son of Varuṇa, one of the eight guardian deities of the quarters. When, in the course of one of his escapades, he overpowered seven sages, his victims reminded him that his sins incurred on account of his violent and lawless habits would not be shared by his family. He found this admonition to be right on the mark when in fact his wife and children refused to share his sins. Panicking, the hapless highwayman rushed to the hermits for spiritual help. They taught him the Vedas and counseled him to utter the name of Rāma even if it be in reverse order, Mara. Thereupon the penitent reprobate began chanting Rāma’s name oblivious of time; gradually his body was covered under an anthill (vālmīka).

Life’s Work

Years later, the sages rescued him from the anthill and the reformed bandit came to be known as the sage Vālmīki. He built a hermitage on the bank of the River Tamasa (some miles south of Ayodhyā in north central India) and acquired disciples. The seventh book of the Rāmāyaṇa relates that one day, finishing his ritual bath in the Tamasa, Vālmīki saw a hunter shoot down a bird in the midst of its mating. Upset by the violent killing, the sage burst forth into a curse for the cruel archer expressed in a musical verse composed in the anuṣṭubh meter (a thirty-two-syllable stanza constructed in four quarters of eight syllables each).

Early Life

The historicity of Vālmīki (val-MEE-kee) is somewhat uncertain because the traditions referring to him are late and unsupported by anything other than still later texts repeating, modifying, or elaborating on the stories. Though the Rāmāyaṇa

No fame be thine for endless time,Because, base outcast, of thy crime,When cruel hand was fain to slayOne of this gentle pair at play.

Returning to his cottage, the saint brooded until he had a vision of the god Brahma appearing before him and advising him to write the lore of Rāma, the king of Ayodhyā.

The Rāmāyaṇa, consisting of some fifty thousand lines, is divided into seven books or parts (kāṇḍas): Bāla-kānḍa (“the book of childhood,” describing the childhood and adolescence of Rāma), Ayodhyākāṇḍa (“the book of Ayodhyā,” depicting the court of King Daśaratha and the scenes of Daśaratha’s exchanges with his second queen Kaikeyī leading to the exile of Rāma in the forest of Daṇḍka), Araṇyakāṇḍa (“the book of the forest,” describing life in the forest and the abduction of Sītā by Rāvaṇa), Kiśkindhākāṇḍa (“the book of Kiśkindhā,” describing Rāma’s residence in Kiśkindhyā, his quest for Sītā, and his murder of Vālin, the monkey warrior), Sundarakāṇḍa (“the book of beauty,” describing the beautiful terrains over which Rāma roamed in search of his abducted wife, the arrival of Rāma and his simian allies in Laṅkā, and Rāvaṇa’s kingdom), Yuddhakāṇḍa (also known as Laṅkākāṇḍa, “the book of battle,” describing Rāvaṇa’s defeat, Sītā’s release, and Rāma’s return to Ayodhyā and his coronation), and the Uttarakāṇḍa (“the last book,” detailing Rāma’s life in Ayodhyā, Sītā’s banishment, the birth of Lava and Kuśa, the reconciliation between Rāma and Sītā, Sītā’s death or entry into the earth, and Rāma’s suicide or ascent into heaven).

Rāma is the eldest son of King Daśaratha of Ayodhyā through his first wife, Kauśalyā. Though he is the legal heir to the throne, his father’s other queen, Kaikeyī, contrives to have the heir apparent sent into exile for fourteen years and have her own son, Bharata, installed as king. Though Bharata is not a party to the plot—he in fact is a very loyal and respectful elder brother—Rama decides to defer to his stepmother’s wishes and proceeds to the forest, accompanied by his wife Sītā and his brother Lakṣmaṇa, who is one of the two sons of Daśaratha’s third queen, Sumitrā. In the forest, the royal youths encounter numerous adventures, but it is the abduction of Sītā by Rāvaṇa, the powerful demon-king of Laṅkā, which sets the stage for the titanic battle between Rāma and Rāvaṇa. In his enterprise to find Sītā’s whereabouts, Rāma enlists the services of Hanumān, the powerful and resourceful monkey hero, who becomes the prince’s factotum. Eventually Rāvaṇa is killed in battle, his traitorous brother Vibhīsana is installed on the throne of Laṅkā, and Rāma has Sītā undergo a fire ordeal to prove her chastity because she lived in another man’s house; he returns to Ayodhyā triumphantly with his wife and brother.

The seventh book of the Rāmāyaṇa concerns the final years of Rāma and his family. After great adversity and adventure, Rāma begins his peaceful regime that has been celebrated in folklore as the righteous rule of Rāma, Rāmarājya. Yet Rāma’s (actually Sītā’s) tribulations are far from over. King Rāma is upset at ugly rumors of his wife’s infidelity, her successful ordeal by fire notwithstanding. To maintain the honor of his kingship, Rāma banishes the pregnant queen even though he is personally convinced that the rumor is unfounded. After some years full of minor adventures, Rāma performs the horse sacrifice (aśvamedha), during which two young bards led by an old sage appear and recite the Rāmāyaṇa. The two boys are in fact Rāma’s twin sons Lava and Kuśa, born during their mother’s exile, and the sage turns out to be none other than the poet Vālmīki himself. Now Rāma realizes his hasty and unfair decision to succumb to canards and hastens to get Sītā back. However, Sītā finds her situation increasingly unbearable and invokes Earth, her mother, to receive her back into her folds. The ground opens and Sītā enters into the cavity, never to come out. Stung by remorse, Rāma abdicates his throne, divides the kingdom between his sons, and commits suicide by drowning in the waters of the Sarayu River (modern-day Ghāghara River) near the city of Kosala.

The original, or the Vālmīki, Rāmāyaṇa comprised only five books, from the Ayodhyākāṇḍa through the Yuddhakāṇḍa, according to Hermann Jacobi, one of the pioneers in critical Rāmāyaṇa scholarship. The first and last books were later interpolations or additions. This epic poem inspired generations of Sanskrit poets, some of the most prominent of whom are Bhāsa, Bhavabhūti, and Kālidāsa. Even the Buddhist Daśaratha Jātaka and and the Jain poet Vimalasūri’s Paumacariyam repeated the story of Rāma in their own ways, but following the basic structure of Vālmīki’s narrative.

From the eleventh century c.e., the story of Rāmāyaṇa came to be written in various vernacular languages of India: in Kannada by Nāgacandra in the eleventh century c.e., in Tamil by Kampaṇ in the twelfth century, in Telegu by Ranganātha in the fourteenth century, in Bengali by Krīttibasa Ojhā in the fifteenth century, in Hindi by Tulsīdās in the sixteenth century, and in Sikh or Gurmukhi by Guru Govind Singh in the seventeenth century. Additionally there are five proto-Rāmāyaṇas: the Ānanda Rāmāyaṇa, the Vashinstha Rāmāyaṇa, the Mula Rāmāyaṇa (highlighting the glory of Hanumān), the Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa mentioned earlier, and the Adbhuta Rāmāyaṇa, often dubbed the Adbhutottarakāṇḍa, an eighth kāṇḍa of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa—a mixture of Vaishnava and Śakta religious perspectives, based in part on the great Śakta treatise the Devi-Mahatmya. The Adbhuta Rāmāyaṇa privileges Sītā as the incarnation of the ferocious Shakti, who annihilates Rāvaṇa. It has 1,353 verses in the form of a dialogue between Vālmīki and Bhāradwāja and is believed to have been composed sometime after the fifteenth century.

Historians and Sanskritists differ on the historicity of the Rāmāyaṇa story. Though a few experts believe that Rāma ruled about 1600 b.c.e., most scholars tend to push the date of the composition of the original epic (books 2 thru 6) somewhere between the eighth and the third century b.c.e. Some even maintain that the first part of the Rāmāyaṇa—extending up to Rāma’s exile and his refusal to return and accept the crown of Ayodhyā at his brother Bharata’s entreaties—has a historical basis, whereas the second part, consisting of Sītā’s abduction by Rāvaṇa, Rāma’s battle with the abductor, and his recovery of Sītā, may be an allegorical reading of a Vedic myth. Still others believe that Rāma’s story as narrated by Vālmīki was intended to represent allegorically the first attempt of the Aryans of north India to conquer the south. Several scholars assume that Vālmīki drew his inspiration from some now-lost body of ballads or legends about heroism and self-sacrifice.

Significance

The Rāmāyaṇa is arguably one of the finest works of Sanskrit poetry in respect of both contents and form. The beautiful and elegant descriptions of nature, flora, and fauna exhibit the artistry of the poet. His theme of the struggles among annyaya (injustice), darpa (arrogance), moha (infatuation), dharma (righteousness), and nyaya (justice) has formed the cornerstone of the Hindu worldview. In spite of references to numerous magical and anagogical episodes, Vālmīki remains one of the earliest authors of the Hindu morality tale. His significance was dramatically and eloquently expressed by the German poet Friedrich Ruckert (1788-1866), who, comparing the Rāmāyaṇa with Homer’s Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611), wrote:

Such fantastic grimaces and such formless fermenting verbiageAs Rāmāyaṇa offers thee, that has HomerCertainly taught thee to despise; but yet such lofty thoughtsAnd such deep feeling the Iliad does not show thee.

Bibliography

Blank, Jonah. Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Tracing the Ramayana Through India. New York: Grove, 2000. A journalist travels India, visiting places mentioned in the Rāmāyaṇa as a meditation on the state of modern India.

Brockington, J. L. Epic Threads: John Brockington on the Sanskrit Epics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. A collection of essays on specialized aspects of the Rāmāyaṇa, such as linguistic features and style, formulaic expression and proverbs, manuscript studies, and religion, by a renowned scholar.

Griffith, Ralph T. H., trans. The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki. 1915. Reprint. Yucaipa, Calif.: Light Mission Publishing, 2003. An elegant translation in rhymed verse.

Richman, Paula, ed. Questioning Rāmāyaṇas: A South Asian Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Scholarly discourse on the various proto-Rāmāyaṇas.

Sankalia, H. D. The Rāmāyaṇa in Historical Perpective. Delhi: Macmillan India Limited, 1982. A solid scholarly study by a noted expert.

Smith, H. Daniel, comp. Select Bibliography of Rāmāyaṇa-Related Studies. Bombay: Ananthacharya Indological Research Institute, 1989. Extremely helpful research tool for Rāmāyaṇa scholars.

Vālmīki. The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki. Edited and translated by Robert P. Goldman et al. 5 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984-1996. A magisterial translation with superb scholarly glosses.