The Valmiki Ramayana trans. by Bibek Debroy *****

Reading dates: 30 March 2024 – 24 January 2025

I have always wanted to read the Mahabharata and the Ramayana in their non-abridged version but I must admit I was apprehensive. It is a commitment of money, time and effort. I got the three volumes translated by Debroy for my birthday as I way to start with the shorter story and I was gripped from the first chapters.

Although the abridged version I read from Ramesh Menon is very faithful to the story, Debroy’s Ramayana captures the language flavour. No repetition is erased and the Critical Edition is adhered to faithfully. This flavour, I felt, was very much transmitted through the vocative case in Sanskrit, where someone is addressed ‘O Rama!’ and which happens constantly in the story. Once I got into that rhythm, I loved it. My mins could just glide through the short chapters and feel the poetry even if it was not in verse.

Debroy leaves a few Sanskrit terms untranslated (such as dharma) but explained the copious footnotes. He demanded of me as a reader; it is did feel as if he was simplifying things for me by taking away the verse constructions.

I very much enjoyed the story of Vashishta and Viswamitra, Rama’s discourse of what it means to be a good sovereign and the desolation the Ayidhyans feel when Rama is exiled. I seem to have the same questions as I did the previous time I read this story: why did Kaikeyi insist on her booms even if she knew it was going to kill her husband? Why is Dasharatha so attached to Rama? I suspect the story will make me ask these questions forever, as the story and the motives are so complex.

This is only volume 1 of 3 and I am looking forward to reading about Ravana and Hanuman in the next one, whenever it comes. I might alternate this with the Mahabharata, although that one is 10 longer volumes …

On seeing the hardship the king has suffered on account of the distraction in his senses, it is my view that kama can be superior to artha and dharma. (…) Like King Dasharatha, if a person follows kama and abandons artha and dharma, he is swiftly reduced to such a state.

… one must certainly not exhibit valour without reason.