Rama
ராமர் राम
Also Ramachandra, Raghava, Kodandarama, Maryada Purushottama.
Vaishnava
Who this is
Rama is the seventh avataram of Vishnu and the one the tradition calls Maryada Purushottama, the best of men within the bounds: a god defined by the rules he keeps rather than the powers he has. He goes to the forest for fourteen years because his father gave a word, and the Ramayana spends more time on that decision than on the war. He is the one deity whose name alone is held sufficient, which is why it is said at a cremation and why Gandhi’s prayer meetings ended with it. Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas made him the household god of the Hindi belt, and the Tamil Kamba Ramayanam made him a Tamil one.
How to recognise them
A standing man, dark, with the great bow Kodanda in his left hand and an arrow in his right, Sita at his left, Lakshmana at his right with a smaller bow, and Hanuman kneeling at his feet. Crowned and two armed rather than four, because the avataram is a man and the iconography keeps him one.
Family and companions
Eldest son of Dasaratha of Ayodhya and Kausalya; brothers Lakshmana, Bharata and Shatrughna. Husband of Sita, daughter of Janaka of Mithila. Father of Lava and Kusa. Hanuman is his servant and the Ramayana’s other centre.
How they are worshipped
Rama Navami in Chaitra; the ninth tithi; Thursday in some houses.
Rama Navami in Chaitra is his birth and is kept with the reading of the Ramayana over nine days before it. The name itself is the practice: written a hundred and eight times a day in a Rama koti notebook, or said as the taraka mantra. Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas is read in households of the north and the Kamba Ramayanam sung in the Tamil country.
The stories
As they are told, with the disagreements left in
The word that sent him away
Dasaratha had long before given Kaikeyi two boons, and she asked for them on the eve of the coronation: that Bharata be crowned and Rama exiled for fourteen years. Dasaratha could not bring himself to say it. Rama, hearing it from her, left the same day without argument, and the whole weight of the epic rests on his not arguing. Bharata, who had wanted none of it, refused the throne and ruled with Rama’s sandals on it for the fourteen years, which the tradition holds up beside the exile as the equal act.
Sita and the fire
After Ravana was killed and Sita brought out of Lanka, Rama would not take her back at once, and she walked into fire to prove herself and was not burnt. Later, as king, he exiled her again on the word of a washerman, and she bore the twins in Valmiki’s hermitage. When at last she was asked to prove herself a second time before the court, she called on the earth to take her instead, and the ground opened. The tradition has argued about this for two thousand years and has not settled it: the Ramayana is read both as the story of a perfect king and as an indictment of what being one cost his wife.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- North India
- The Ramcharitmanas is the household scripture, the Ramlila is played through the nine nights, and Dussehra ends with the burning of Ravana.
- Tamil Nadu
- The Kamba Ramayanam is the Tamil telling, and Rameswaram is where he is held to have set up the linga before crossing.
- Andhra and Telangana
- Bhadrachalam keeps the kalyanam of Rama and Sita on Rama Navami as its great day, and the Telugu household reads Ramadasu’s songs.
- Mithila
- Mithila is Sita’s country and tells the story from her side, with Vivaha Panchami kept as the wedding day.
- Nepal
- Janakpur in the Terai is held to be Janaka’s capital and keeps the wedding with a procession from Ayodhya.
Their days
Every one of these has a page of its own
Where to see them
From the temple directory
- Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Temple, Ayodhya Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh
- Sri Sita Ramachandraswamy Temple, Bhadrachalam Bhadrachalam, Bhadradri Kothagudem, Telangana
- Ramanathaswamy Temple, Rameswaram Rameswaram, Ramanathapuram, Tamil Nadu
- Adi Jagannatha Perumal Temple, Thiruppullani Thiruppullani, Ramanathapuram, Tamil Nadu
What is said
From the mantra library