Digital Rare Book :
Shri Rama Chandra - The Ideal King
Some lessons from Ramayana
By Annie Besant
Published by Theosophical Publishing Society, Benares - 1901

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Introduction

Two years ago we were studying together "one of the greatest books in the world," the Mahbharata. Now we are going to study the second great epic poem of India, the Ramdyana. These two books stand out from the rest of Indian literature in a very marked way. The Vedas, the Institutes of Manu, are the great authorities for the learned, and only through the learned for the mass of the people. But the Mahabharata and the Ramayana are wrought into the very life of every Indian - man, woman and child. Mothers tell their stories
to their children, teachers to their pupils, the old to the young. Every child grows up knowing the heroes of these poems as familiar friends, having been moved to tears and laughter from earliest days
by these loved names.

Despite the influence wielded by these two books, however, their moulding power on life is not as great as once it was. If we could bring back their influence on character, we should indeed lift our India upwards. They hold up to us ideals of conduct, virtues acted out on life's stage as practical examples for old and young alike, for husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, friends and enemies. This is even more true of the Ramayana than of the Mahabharata. For in the vast story told in the Mahabharata, we have the picture of an age when life was very complex and relations very tangled ”it is a modern drama. Good and evil are everywhere intermingled in the characters drawn for us, and scarcely one - save the blameless Bhishma - shows us an ideally perfect man. The great Avatara, of course, stands apart as superhuman. It is a book for men who have developed intellect and judgment, and who can trace the connection between sin and
sorrow.

In the Ramayana we move in a different atmosphere, and breathe an air of heroic simplicity. The characters are sharply cut - one is to be followed, another is to be shunned. Good is good, evil is evil.
Black is black, white is white, and there are no greys. Great types stand forth as ideals of right and wrong. The young can feel their inspiring beauty or their repellent ugliness.

Nor should we forget that we owe to these great poems most of what is known publicly of ancient India. Therein we see how the national, social and family life was carried on, the ways of living, the joys and sorrows, the education of the young, the ideas of the populace. To think of ancient India, with all that we have learned from these books blotted out, would be to gaze at a blurred canvas instead of a living picture.

Image:
Rama's Court
Folio from a Ramayana
India, Himachal Pradesh, Chamba, 1775-1800
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper

Credit: Los Angeles County Museum of Art