Ram is the seventh avatar of Vishnu and hero of the epic Ramayana. He has become a god in his own right, even though his creators may never have envisaged such a role for him.
Before we go into the story of Ram, let us spend some time with the epic in his name. There are two schools of thought with respect to the structure and composition of the Valmiki Ramayana. The first and also more vocal, believes that the entire book was composed by Valmiki and Valmiki alone.
However, many modern scholars believe that the Bala and Uttara Kandas – the first and last cantos – are interpolations, composed and inserted into the main text at a later period. This conclusion is based on the differences in the narrative styles between the middle books and the first and the last ones.
Through the Ayodha, Aranya, Kishkindha, Sundara and Yuddha kandas, the treatment of the story is linear and Ram is treated more like a human hero than an avatara of Vishnu, it is only in the two ‘parenthetical’ kands that we findnhim donning a divine form.
So how do we see Ram? As noted scholar, Arshia Sattar, mentions, that we should all be free to see Rama as we choose – to some of us, he is god, to others, he is a human prince who shows us how difficult it is to do the right thing, to others, he is a literary character. For many people in southern India, Rama represents the aggressive expansion of northern ideas and culture. The point is that no one should tell anyone else how to regard Rama, he can mean different things to different people; he has meant different things to different people over the centuries. That is why the Ramayana is such a rich text, it welcomes everyone.
Sattar argues that what the Harivamsa is to the Mahabharata, the Uttara Kanda is to the Valmiki Ramayana. Both act as addendums, offering back stories for context. But the Harivamsa is acknowledged to be an appendix text,whereas the Uttara Kanda is considered an essential part of the Ramayana story. Also, the Harivamsa focuses on the hero, i.e., Krishna, while the Uttara Kanda dwells upon the villain, Ravana.
Another interesting aspect of Ram as a character is that he is up against an evil character, Ravana, who is the devotee of Lord Shiva. This we find as a recurrent motif, where the adversary of Lord Vishnu is the devotee of another god, like Hiranyakashipu who was given a boon by Lord Brahma, or Parashuram, who was a devotee of Lord Shiva. Often, this conflict is subtle.
Story collected by: Utkarsh Patel
Source: Hindu Mythology, Wilkins, W. J.
Image details: WikiQuote
