The Rāmāyaṇa — The Whole Journey, Step by Step

Daśaratha, emperor of Kosala, is childless. On the counsel of Vasiṣṭha he invites the sage Ṛṣyaśṛṅga to conduct the aśvamedha followed by the putrakāmeṣṭi — the rite performed in desire of sons.

From the sacrificial fire rises a being of blazing splendour bearing a golden vessel of divine pāyasa. Divided among Kausalyā, Kaikeyī and Sumitrā, it brings forth Rāma, Bharata, and the twins Lakṣmaṇa and Śatrughna — Viṣṇu descending in four portions to end the tyranny of Rāvaṇa, who had been made invulnerable to gods and demons but had disdained to ask protection from men.

The sage Viśvāmitra arrives at court and asks for Rāma — a boy of fifteen — to guard his sacrifice from the rākṣasas. Daśaratha resists; Vasiṣṭha persuades him.

In the forest Rāma slays Tāṭakā, receives the divine astras bala and atibalā, destroys Subāhu and hurls Mārīca far across the ocean. Entering Gautama's hermitage, his very presence frees Ahalyā from her unseen state of penance. The exile of a prince begins here as an apprenticeship in dharma.

In Mithilā, King Janaka has vowed his daughter Sītā — found in the furrow of the earth — to whoever can string the colossal bow of Śiva. Kings have failed even to stir it.

Rāma lifts it, bends it, and snaps it with a sound like thunder, and Janaka joyfully offers Sītā in marriage. Four brothers are wedded to four princesses; on the return road Paraśurāma challenges Rāma and yields to him, transferring the Vaiṣṇava bow.

On the eve of Rāma's coronation, Mantharā poisons Kaikeyī's mind. She invokes two boons long ago granted by Daśaratha: the throne for Bharata, and fourteen years of forest exile for Rāma.

The king collapses; Rāma accepts without a tremor, holding his father's word to be higher than a kingdom. Sītā refuses to remain behind, and Lakṣmaṇa refuses to be parted from his brother.

Guha, chief of the Niṣādas, receives the exiles with the love of a brother and ferries them across the Gaṅgā. Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa have already matted their hair into jaṭā and exchanged silk for valkala bark-cloth.

Sītā alone remains as she was — a queen in fine silk and gold ornaments in the middle of the wilderness, for her vow is to her husband, not to asceticism.

Daśaratha dies of grief. Bharata, returning to find himself king by his mother's contrivance, marches to Citrakūṭa with the whole army — not to rule but to beg Rāma home.

Rāma will not break his father's word. Bharata carries back his wooden pādukā, places them on the throne, and governs from Nandigrāma as regent for fourteen years, living himself as an ascetic.

On Agastya's advice they settle at Pañcavaṭī on the Godāvarī. Lakṣmaṇa raises a hut of leaves and bamboo; the years pass in study, hospitality to sages, and the protection of the forest hermitages.

Śūrpaṇakhā, Rāvaṇa's sister, desires Rāma, is refused, attacks Sītā, and is disfigured by Lakṣmaṇa. Khara and Dūṣaṇa come with fourteen thousand rākṣasas; Rāma destroys them alone. The war with Laṅkā has begun.

Mārīca, forced by Rāvaṇa, becomes a deer of gold and gems. Sītā longs for it; Rāma pursues and pierces it, and the dying demon cries out in Rāma's own voice: 'Hā Sītā! Hā Lakṣmaṇa!'

Sītā, in terror, drives Lakṣmaṇa away with words he cannot bear. Reluctantly he walks away to seek his brother, leaving the hut empty of protectors — which was the entire purpose of the illusion.

Rāvaṇa comes disguised as a mendicant, seizes Sītā and rises into the sky. She scatters her ornaments to the vānaras on the hills below — the only trail she can leave.

The aged vulture king Jaṭāyu, friend of Daśaratha, hurls himself at the chariot, shatters it and is cut down. He lives only long enough to tell Rāma the direction of the south, and dies in his arms receiving the funeral rites of a father.

On Ṛṣyamūka, Hanumān approaches in the guise of a brahmacārin and speaks so faultlessly that Rāma remarks no one ignorant of the whole Veda could speak thus. He carries the brothers on his shoulders to Sugrīva.

Fire is witness to the alliance: Rāma will destroy Vālin, Sugrīva will find Sītā. Sītā's dropped ornaments, kept by the vānaras, are the first proof that she lives. Search parties go out to all four quarters.

Jāmbavān reminds Hanumān of the strength he had forgotten under a sage's curse. He swells to mountain size and springs from Mahendra hill; the peak sinks beneath his feet.

He passes Maināka's offered rest, tears through Surasā by wit, and destroys Siṃhikā by force — a hundred yojanas of ocean crossed by a single devotee's will. This glorious sequence gives the Sundara Kāṇḍa its name.

He finds her beneath a śiṃśapā tree, ringed by rākṣasīs. She wears the same fine silk she wore when she was seized — now crumpled, stained with dust and grief, her single braid unbound; she has refused every luxury Rāvaṇa offered and touches nothing of Laṅkā.

Hanumān drops Rāma's signet ring before her, tells her all, and offers to carry her away at once. She refuses: the glory must be Rāma's, and she will not be touched by another. She gives him her cūḍāmaṇi as the token of recognition.

Hanumān wrecks the pleasure grove, kills Jambumālī and Akṣakumāra, and allows Indrajit's brahmāstra to bind him. Though the rākṣasas' physical ropes instantly nullify the astra, he plays along to speak to Rāvaṇa face to face.

Sentenced to have his tail set alight, he leaps from roof to roof and turns the golden city into a furnace — sparing the grove where Sītā sits. Then he quenches the fire in the sea and returns to the vānaras with the joyful news that Sītā has been seen.

Vibhīṣaṇa, refusing his brother's adharma, takes refuge with Rāma and is accepted and crowned king of Laṅkā in advance. Rāma fasts three days on the shore; when the ocean does not answer he raises his bow, and Samudra appears.

Nala, son of Viśvakarmā, builds the setu — a hundred yojanas long, ten wide — in five days. The army of vānaras crosses to Laṅkā.

Kumbhakarṇa is woken from his half-year sleep with drums, elephants and cold water. Told of the war, he rebukes Rāvaṇa plainly: the abduction of Sītā was adharma, and no counsel of ministers can undo it.

Yet he will not abandon his brother. He goes out, devours and scatters the vānara host, strikes Sugrīva down and is finally felled by Rāma — arms and head severed by the aindrāstra, his colossal body falling into the sea.

Meghanāda — called Indrajit since he defeated Indra himself — never fights in the open. Rising into the sky and vanishing behind his māyā, he wounds an enemy who cannot see where the arrows come from. This is his whole art: victory by concealment.

In his first sortie he binds Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa in the nāgapāśa, the noose of serpents, and both brothers fall to the earth pierced through and motionless. The vānara host despairs; Vibhīṣaṇa and Hanumān hold the line. Garuḍa, the eternal enemy of serpents, arrives out of friendship for Rāma, and at his mere presence the snakes flee and the wounds close.

Later Indrajit tries deceit of another kind: he conjures an illusory Sītā and slays her before Hanumān's eyes to break the army's will. Vibhīṣaṇa exposes the trick at once — the real Sītā is guarded in the Aśoka grove, and Rāvaṇa would never permit her death.

Unable to overcome Lakṣmaṇa in open combat, Indrajit hurls the śakti — the blazing javelin given to him by Brahmā's grace — straight into his chest. Lakṣmaṇa falls senseless upon the field, breath failing, and the vānara army goes silent around him.

Rāma, who has faced every loss without flinching, breaks here. Vālmīki lets him say that kingdoms and wives may be found again anywhere, but never a brother such as this; he speaks of following Lakṣmaṇa in death and abandoning the war altogether.

It is Jāmbavān, the ancient bear-king, who steadies the host. He does not ask whether Rāma still stands — he asks only whether Hanumān lives, for while Hanumān lives the army is not dead. Told that he lives, Jāmbavān sends him north at once to the mountain of healing herbs beyond the Himavat, and Hanumān rises into the night sky.

When Indrajit's brahmāstra lays Lakṣmaṇa and Rāma among the dead, Jāmbavān's first question is not whether Rāma lives but whether Hanumān lives — for while Hanumān lives, the army lives.

He sends him north beyond the Himavat to the mountain of herbs for the four great oṣadhis: mṛtasañjīvanī, viśalyakaraṇī, sāvarṇyakaraṇī and sandhānī — that restore life, draw out embedded weapons, restore complexion and knit broken limbs.

The herbs hide themselves from him. Rather than search, Hanumān tears up the whole peak and carries it through the sky to Laṅkā. Their scent alone raises the fallen; the vānaras slain in battle rise healed, and the peak is carried back and set in its place.

Vibhīṣaṇa reveals the secret: at the grove of Nikumbhilā, Indrajit performs a sacrifice that makes him invincible for the day. If he completes it he cannot be killed by anyone; interrupted before the offering, he can be killed. Whoever strikes must strike before the rite ends.

Lakṣmaṇa goes with Vibhīṣaṇa, Hanumān and Jāmbavān, and breaks up the sacrifice. Indrajit rushes out in fury: 'You are the one who killed my uncles' sons.' A duel follows that Vālmīki says neither gods nor sages had ever seen the like of — three days of arrows, illusions and chariot warfare.

Fighting from Hanumān's shoulders, Lakṣmaṇa at last fits the aindrāstra, the arrow of Indra, and swears upon the dharma and truth of Rāma. The arrow severs Indrajit's head, ornamented and crowned, from his body. With his son dead, Rāvaṇa's last shield is gone.

Agastya teaches Rāma the Āditya-hṛdayam; Indra sends his own chariot and charioteer Mātali. Heads struck from Rāvaṇa grow back until Rāma fits the brahmāstra given by Agastya and pierces the rākṣasa lord's heart.

Rāvaṇa falls, and Rāma orders him honoured in death: 'enmity ends with death — he is now as much my brother as yours,' he tells Vibhīṣaṇa. Sītā passes through the fire, Agni himself restoring her, and the puṣpaka carries them home.

Fourteen years to the day, Bharata meets them at Nandigrāma with the sandals. Vasiṣṭha and the sages anoint Rāma and Sītā, and the city rejoices in an era of unprecedented righteousness.

Sītā gifts Hanumān a divine pearl necklace she receives from Rāma, and Hanumān asks only to remain wherever the Rāmāyaṇa is told. The reign that follows becomes the byword for just governance in every later Indian text.

A citizen's doubt reaches the king, and Rāma — bound as a ruler by the standard he set for himself — sends Sītā to Vālmīki's āśrama, where she bears the twins Lava and Kuśa.

Vālmīki teaches them the poem he has composed, and they sing it at Rāma's aśvamedha before their unknowing father. Sītā, called to declare her purity a second time, calls instead upon Mādhavī, her mother the Earth, who opens and receives her. Rāma reigns his appointed span and returns to Vaikuṇṭha through the Sarayū.