RAMAYANA TIME CAPSULE GUIDE

The Ramayana is a very complex and detailed story and to understand it without any background in Indian culture can be very difficult.  This work is central to Indian culture and explains a lot of the reasons why Indian people might think or see things the way that they do in the contexts of the rest of the world. The Ramayana is very important to not only the history of India, but also its moral and ethical standards and how the area has developed.

This time capsule will help to provide context into what the Ramayana means in some detail and help set up a reader for success in understanding the complexities of Indian society on a deeper level than might be present up front initially with this story.  The Ramayana is not as clear cut and single dimensional as it might initially seem and this project aims to demonstrate why.

Narayan’s retelling of The Ramayana –> Ramayana

Paula Richman’s “A Diaspora Ramayana in Southall, Greater London” –> Article Link

THREE DOCUMENTS RELEVANT TO CENTRAL THEMES IN THE EPIC

“Hindu Ethics in the Rāmāyana.” http://www.jstor.org/stable/40014906

“SĪTĀ IN THE LAST EPISODE OF THE ‘RĀMĀYAṆA’: CONTRASTING PARADIGMS FROM BHAVABHŪTI AND VĀLMĪKI.” http://www.jstor.org/stable/24764137

“QUESTIONING THE QUESTIONING OF RĀMĀYAṆAS.” http://www.jstor.org/stable/41691943

This selection of articles is highly relevant to the central themes of the Ramayana that are discussed in the embedded document.  They each go over various ideas of central ethical ideas within the work or how ethics and morals might be interpreted within the work itself.  The articles also go into how revered the epic is in Indian culture and what this means for the people who use it as a guide.

These articles will provide a base of understanding into what the epic actually means to people and what kinds of things should be paid attention to within the work as well as problems that people might have with the work. As you might read through the epic, it is helpful to understand it with this material in mind.

SITE FOR RAMAYANA

http://asiasociety.org/education/ramayana

This site gives a good overview of what that Ramayana is about in the form of a synopsis and then explains in short the various versions of the work that have come about over time.  This will provide a good backbone for understanding the the epic better while reading it.