Valmiki's Ramayana Read online

  Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa

  Abridged Edition

  Translated and with an Introduction by Arshia Sattar

  Rowman & Littlefield

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

  Executive Editor: Susan McEachern

  Editorial Assistant: Katelyn Turner

  Senior Marketing Manager: Kim Lyons

  Credits and acknowledgments for material borrowed from other sources, and reproduced with permission, appear on the appropriate page within the text.

  Published by Rowman & Littlefield

  A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB, United Kingdom

  Copyright © 1996 by Arshia Sattar

  First Rowman & Littlefield edition 2018

  Originally published in 1996 by Penguin Books India.

  Reprinted by permission.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

  ISBN 978-1-5381-1367-7 (cloth : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-1-5381-1368-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-1-5381-1369-1 (electronic)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  For my parents,

  Hameed and Nazura Sattar,

  with love

  Contents

  Contents

  Guide to Pronouncing Special Sanskrit Characters

  Translator’s Note to the Updated Edition

  Translator’s Note

  Introduction

  Childhood

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Ayodhyā

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Wilderness

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Kiṣkindha

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Beauty

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  War

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Glossary

  Guide to Pronouncing Special Sanskrit Characters

  a

  like the ‘a’ in ‘above’

  ā

  like the ‘a’ in ‘father’

  i

  like the ‘i’ in ‘bit’

  ī

  like the ‘i’ in ‘liter’

  u

  like the ‘u’ in ‘put’

  ū

  like the ‘oo’ in ‘pool’

  ṛ

  like the ‘ri’ in ‘rip’

  e

  like the ‘e’ in ‘grey’

  ai

  like the ‘ai’ in aisle

  o

  like the ‘o’ in ‘over’

  au

  like the ‘ou’ in ‘loud’

  c

  like the ‘ch’ in ‘chop’

  ch

  like the ‘chh’ in ‘achhoo’ in the sound of a sneeze

  ṇ

  like the ‘n’ in ‘and’

  ñ

  like the ‘n’ in ‘sing’

  t

  like the ‘th’ in ‘thing’

  th

  like the ‘th’ in ‘thump’ (with an expulsion of breath)

  ṭ

  like the ‘t’ in ‘retroflex’

  ṭh

  like the ‘th’ in ‘hothouse’

  ḍ

  like the ‘d’ in ‘dart’

  ḍh

  like the ‘dh’ in roadhouse’

  d

  like the ‘th’ in ‘the’

  dh

  like the ‘th’ in ‘the’ (with an expulsion of breath)

  ś

  like the ‘sh’ in ‘shout’

  ṣ

  like the ‘sh’ in ‘leash’

 
s

  like the ‘s’ in ‘sin’

  kṣa

  like the ‘ctio’ in ‘action’

  tra

  like the ‘thr’ in ‘thrum’

  jña

  like the ‘gn’ in ‘igneous’

  h

  like the ‘h’ in ‘house’

  ḥ

  like the ‘h’ in ‘house’ (with an expulsion of breath)

  Translator’s Note to the Updated Edition

  In the twenty years since this book was first published in India, Vālmīki translations and retellings have flourished. Most significant among these is the completion (in 2016), of The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India, what is commonly called the “Princeton Ramayana,” edited by Robert P. Goldman and published by Princeton University Press. Goldman has brought together leading scholars of the Rāmāyaṇa who are also formidable Sanskritists and, with them, has translated verse of the Critical Edition of Vālmīki’s text, which was compiled between 1961 and 1975 at MS University in Baroda. The Princeton Ramayana consists of seven independent volumes, each loaded with invaluable critical aids to reading the text as well as commentaries and essays. Further, the English translation conforms exactly to the Sanskrit in terms of verses. Late in 2017, Penguin Random House (India) published its own version of the Critical Edition of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa. Translated by Bibek Debroy, it too is divided into seven volumes and packaged as a boxed set. During the same period, a number of retellings of Vālmīki have also made their presence felt. Ramesh Menon uses multiple English translations as well as a Sanskrit text as the basis of his Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa (North Point Press, 2003). Ashok Banker’s Rāmāyaṇa Series (Little Brown, 2003 onward) also uses many English translations (including this one) to tell the story of Rāma’s adventures. In the last few years however, most of the retellings that have appeared in English are not translations. Instead, their authors gather together episodes and characters from various Indian-language versions of the Rāma epic to present their own versions of the story. This book remains the only one-volume abridged translation of the Rāmāyanā to bring Vālmīki’s original narrative to English readers.

  Thank you, Susan McEachern, for keeping the faith and being so calm and steady through this. Alden Perkins, your sharp eyes and infinite patience with difficult changes are very much appreciated. This new edition would not have been possible without the sustained enthusiasm and efforts of my agent, Priya Doraswamy. A thousand thanks, Priya, for your persistence.

  Translator’s Note

  In literal terms, to translate means to ‘carry over’, to cross boundaries and barriers without losing the material that you carry with you. In literary terms, to translate means to make another language read like your own, to preserve meanings and significances across grammars, syntaxes and vocabularies. And it is precisely at this point of grammars, syntaxes and vocabularies, i.e., at the very beginning, that it becomes apparent that there are certain problems unique to the translation of classics in general. Even if we translate a classic from within the same culture, we are never going to translate it from within the same time. The very notion of a classic implies that while it may be removed in time from the reader, it still speaks with relevance and meaning.*

  Nonetheless translators of classics have a propensity to fall into forms of usage that are older, even, than the times in which they write. We have all encountered translations of the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey that are littered with ‘thees’, ‘thous’, ‘wherefores’ and ‘it would behove you, sire’ even though these translations were produced at a time long after such words and phrases fell out of common usage.

  There seems to be something about ancient literature, particularly epics, that inspires translators to dig deep into their vocabulary of archaisms in an attempt to reflect the ‘authentic’ voice of the text. Perhaps they are led to the use of such language by the perception that epics are ‘grand narratives’ full of noble emotions, immense dilemmas, huge wars, larger-than-life characters. Our common usage is considered inadequate to express this grandeur that has all but vanished from our mundane lives.

  We must try and remember as we translate epics and traditional story literatures that even at their times of composition, these were not obscure texts meant for scholarly elites. They were living and vibrant and were composed in a language accessible to all kinds of people. Unlike highly refined poetry and drama, stories and epics had a common, ordinary audience. In the story literature and in the epics, it was the events and the characters that were more important than linguistic arabesques and curlicues. For us to cover these texts in a veil of language that obscures them is inaccurate as well as unfair.

  There is a school of thought that believes that a classic should be re-translated every twenty-odd years so that it is always in a current idiom, always accessible and meaningful to the contemporary reader. The theory that classics always need to find a contemporary voice, that they should be re-presented every generation, is simple enough, but the practice does not follow quite as easily. The search for a current idiom that can simultaneously contain within it forms and patterns of speech as well as concepts, principles and values that are no longer real or viable presents the translator with a problem of many dimensions. These problems would, perhaps, not apply equally to translators of contemporary work primarily because they are responsible only for bridging space. The translator of a classic must also bridge time.

  In translating Indian classics for Indian readers, I am not compelled to explain concepts like dharma, karma, puruṣārtha, etc in detail. However, I am still compelled to negotiate such terms as Rāma being described as a ‘bull among men’ and Sītā having ‘the gait of a female elephant.’ The ideas of bravery and beauty implied by such formulaic Sanskrit phrases are as foreign to the contemporary Indian as dharma may be to a Western reader.

  The linguistic negotiation would normally involve flattening out formulae into more familiar constructions like ‘Rāma was the best of men’ and ‘Sītā walked with a swaying grace’. While the literal images of the Sanskrit animal similes are being brushed over, their implied colours are being highlighted. The flattened phrases reflect the language we use today in our common speech as well as in literature even if they do not capture the original flavours and the subtle nuances of the language. They are, however, truer to our idioms and to the connotations of our current usage than images of bulls and elephants may be. At the same time, the task of the translator lies in making such phrases as ‘Sītā walked with the gait of a female elephant’ seem natural in their context. The translator must be able to carry the reader across both linguistic and cultural boundaries into a literary space where uncommon idioms, uncommon actions and uncommon events seem commonplace. In this translation, I have retained the ‘exotic phrase’ wherever it was unobtrusive. In other instances, I have flattened the Sanskrit usage into a more common English idiom.

  What, then, of the grand and extended hyperbole that give epics their distinctive flavour? Warriors are as large as mountains, kings give away hundreds of thousands of millions of cows, gold and silver are as common as salt and pepper, people live for thousands of years. Everything is larger than life. Heroes are described by a string of superlatives that range from “righteous,” “honourable,” “steadfast,” “splendid” and “effulgent” to “renowned.” How does the translator maintain the grandeur of the emotions, the characters and the events without succumbing to a dull and formulaic litany of virtues? How do you carry the structures and restraints of a primarily oral tradition into a written one?

  Once again, the theory is simple but the practice is not. A translation depends on evocations, echoes and resonances. T
hese are generated by the translator and nurtured, in a sense, by the reader. Since the grandeur described and invoked by the epics and classical literatures no longer corresponds to reality (if it ever did, that is), it is the translator’s task to suggest this meaningfully, to provoke the reader’s imagination and to sustain her/his credulousness through an absolute engagement with the story and the characters. This can only be done through language that is transparent, that does not draw attention to itself (except very occasionally and very purposefully). The only language that will not draw attention to itself is one that seems natural, real and familiar.

  Any contemporary idiom has the flexibility to evoke a response, to conjure up a universe, to create a sensibility. A translator can use this flexibility to create a delicate network of echoes and resonances that captures the moving spirit rather than the static letter of the original. Instead of allowing the source language to determine the flavour of the translation, we might be better off using our language to probe the nuances of the original, to seek out the significance of ideas, values and cultures that are available to us only as a view through a window. We cannot jump through the window and appropriate or participate in the world beyond ourselves, but we can appreciate it in our own terms and from our position in time and space.

  Translating Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa is both an exhilarating and daunting task. Exhilarating because the story of Rāma is perhaps the best known and most enduring of all Indian tales and Vālmīki’s telling of it is certainly the oldest version we have. And it is daunting for exactly the same reasons. Everyone I spoke to during the time I was translating this text stated categorically that they knew Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa. But when we talked further, it would become apparent that what most people knew was a regional, non-Sanskrit version of Rāma’s adventures. Everyone knows that Vālmīki’s is the oldest Rāma story and they assumed that what they knew of Rāma’s adventures came from Vālmīki’s poem. It was then that the magnitude of the task I had undertaken began to dawn on me: the presentation of Vālmīki’s tale to an audience that already claimed to know it with a great deal of certainty and self-assurance.