Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Rai Bahadur Lala Baij Nath
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~140,000 words · 665 passages
Cite this work
- APARamayana. (n.d.). The Adhyatma Ramayana [Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa] (Rai Bahadur Lala Baij Nath, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/ramayana/the-adhyatma-ramayana
- MLARamayana. The Adhyatma Ramayana [Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa]. Translated by Rai Bahadur Lala Baij Nath. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/ramayana/the-adhyatma-ramayana.
- ChicagoRamayana. The Adhyatma Ramayana [Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa]. Translated by Rai Bahadur Lala Baij Nath. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/ramayana/the-adhyatma-ramayana.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The 'Adhyatma Ramayana', the Vedantic version of the Ramayana: the same story of Rama, read as an allegory of the soul and the absolute.
Context and history
It should not be confused with Valmiki's Ramayana, which is the original epic poem and far older. This is a later work — around the fourteenth or fifteenth century — embedded in the Brahmanda Purana, and the change goes deep: Rama is no longer chiefly a hero but Brahman himself, Sita is his power, and every episode is read as what happens to the soul seeking liberation. It contains the 'Rama Gita', a doctrinal dialogue in the manner of the Bhagavad Gita. Its historical importance is great: it is the text that inspired Tulsidas's 'Ramcharitmanas', the Hindi version which in northern India is the religious book of everyday life. If what one wants is the epic, one must go to Valmiki.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
differentiated by name and form was created. The whole mobile and immobile creation so evolved consists of the five elements (pancha mahdbhutn), the three gunas or attributes of Satava (goodness^, Rajas (activity), and Tamas (inertia), the five organs of perception, Jfianendriya the ears, the skin, the eyes, the tongue and the nose, the five of action, speech, the hands, the feet and the two organs of generation and excretion. The objects of the senses, hearing, sight, taste and smell. The mind which is the faoulty of doubt and desire, the buddhi the faculty of determination were also evolved from the five elements and the five vital airs which move the body, viz., prdna the air which is exhaled, apdna which is inhaled, samana which equalizes and distributes the food in. the body, the vydna which causes the various nerves to perform their functions and the uddna which carries the embodied self upwards, were also similarly evolved. Seated in the conglomeration of the senses, their objects and the attributes and the vital airs, is the self (dtmd) who, because he has indentified himself with it and all that appertains to it t is called Jiva, or the embodied self, subject to pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, birth and death, increase and decay. Thus he goes from birth to birth up and down in ceaseless motion, till he turns his thought inwards aud through the teachings of a teacher and the declaration of the Vedas, knows himself fcn be other than the body, and having sublated all that is seen and unseen, finds his rest in his own true self and becomes the supreme self he really was. The light of self, says Vydsa, in the Mahdbhdrata is in the heart, not outside it. It is the same in all beings. It is perceived by those who themselves through minds directed towards it, alone see it.…