THE RĀMĀYAṆA REFLECTS a highly cultured and mature language. The conversations between the noble characters are full of poise and politeness. For instance, in the Araṇya-kāṇḍa, Sītā cautions Rāma against unnecessarily wielding his weapons. She does so by first narrating a purāṇic episode and then telling Rāma that she only tried to remind him of dharma and did not mean to be preachy; she insists that she did so out of love and respect towards Rāma. She is soft, gentle, and truly uses the path of kāntā-saṃhitā to put across a point. She says,
snehācca bahumānācca smāraye na tu śikṣaye | (Araṇya-kāṇḍa, sarga 8, verse 20)
Sītā adds that she said so because it is in women’s nature to be verbose. She leaves the final decision to Rāma, asks him to discuss it with his brother, and does not force her opinion upon him.
vicārya buddhyā tu sahānujena yadrocate tat-kuru mācireṇa || verse 29
Vālmīki beautifully incorporates several proverbial utterances that were in vogue in his times. One of the famous instances is Sītā telling Hanūmān the following,
kalyāṇī bata gātheyaṃ laukikī pratibhāti me|
eti jīvantam-ānando naraṃ varṣa-śatād-api|| Sundara-kāṇḍa, sarga 32, verse 6
The adage, “Joy comes to a living being even if he has to wait for a hundred years” seems to have come true in my case!
This also stands as evidence for the fact that Sanskrit was a spoken language in Vālmīki’s times.
Similarly, many phrases and verses of the Rāmāyaṇa have become memorable adages and subhāṣitas.
In the Indian tradition, all treatises are either passed on orally tradition or in the written form and in most cases, both co-exist. It is unlikely, though not impossible, that a huge epic like the Rāmāyaṇa or the Mahābhārata was transmitted purely in the oral tradition.
There are more than two thousand manuscripts of the whole text of Rāmāyaṇa preserved in public and private libraries of India and outside clearly indicating the unique popularity of this National Epic. For instance, about eighty six manuscripts of the Bāla-kāṇḍa were collated; they were written in ten different scripts including Śāradā, Newārī, Maithilī, Beṅgālī, Devanāgarī, Telugu, Kannaḍa, Nandināgarī, Grantha and Malayālam; these dated from about 1020 CE to about 1848 CE.
In other words, the Critical Edition attempts to provide a collated version of all such manuscripts and tries to extract the common ancestor from the ‘offsprings.’ The common ancestor thus extracted is called the ‘Constituted Text’ and the readings from the different manuscripts are provided in the footnotes and appendices.
The process of arriving at the constituted text follows governing principles for the choice of a particular reading over another.
See Introduction to Textual Criticism by SM Katre with Appendix by PK Gode; see also, The Prolegomena to the Critical Edition of the Mahābhārata by V S Sukthankar
In The Prolegomena to the Critical Edition of the Mahābhārata, V S Sukthankar says, “To prevent misconception in the mind of the casual reader, it is best to state at first what the constituted text is not. The editor is firmly convinced that the text presented in this edition is not anything like the autograph copy of its mythical author, Maharṣi Vyāsa… It is but a modest attempt to present a version of the epic as old as the extant manuscript material will permit us to reach with some semblance of confidence… It only claims to be the most ancient one according to the direct line of transmission, purer than the others in so far as it is free from the obvious errors of copying and spurious additions…” (An autographed copy is the original manuscript written by the author.)
The critical edition of the Rāmāyaṇa was prepared by a team of scholars headed by Prof. G.H. Bhatt, M L Wadekar, and others at the Oriental Institute, Vadodara. They followed the footsteps of Mahāmahopādhyāya Vishnu Sitaram Sukthankar who was at the helm of the mammoth task of preparing the critical edition of the Mahābhārata.
It has been largely accepted by scholars that the original Rāmāyaṇa consisted of five kāṇḍas and that the Bāla-kāṇḍa and the Uttara-kāṇḍa were added later on. While this has been established by many through the process of textual criticism, Śatāvadhānī Dr. R Ganesh has arrived at the same conclusion through an aesthetic analysis of the various kāṇḍas, especially from the lens of the arthālaṅkāras, i.e., figures of sense and idiomatic usages. See: Ārṣakavigaḻa Nuḍibèḍagu, R Ganesh (Tr. B N Shashikiran).
Nevertheless, the Bāla-kāṇḍa and the Uttara-kāṇḍa have been accepted as parts of the original at least from the times of the poets like Bhāsa (early centuries of the Common Era) and Kālidāsa (about 4th Century CE).
In the Introduction to the Critical Edition of the Bāla-kāṇḍa, G.H Bhatt writes,
“The first four sargas of the Bāla-kāṇḍa, by their very nature, could not have formed part of the original text of Vālmīki. They represent an after-thought for giving a finishing touch to the old poem. Such introductory chapters are common in the MBh. and the Purāṇas.”
The first sarga of the Bāla-kāṇḍa consists of seventy-nine verses in the critically constituted text. Irrespective of its antiquity, most manuscripts of the complete Rāmāyaṇa available today consist of this segment. It serves a special aesthetic purpose in the holistic enjoyment of the epic – it introduces the reader to the story of the Rāmāyaṇa by capturing it in a nutshell. This saṅgraha-rāmāyaṇa is akin to the outlines that a painter first draws before filling it with colours; the remaining kāṇḍas are like the colours added to the painting. It thus removes the anxiety of knowing the entire story; an epic of the grandeur of the Rāmāyaṇa is meant to be relished in all its detail. Unlike a suspense story where at each moment, the reader is pushed by curiosity and amazement, an epic is meant to be enjoyed with no rush of adrenaline; it shouldn’t be a roller-coaster ride, but rather, should give us the experience of a serene sunrise amidst green mountains and a turquoise lake. The saṅgraha-rāmāyaṇa helps us sail smoothly over the epic.
Another popular edition of the epic was prepared by an editorial committee consisting of Mahāmahopādhyāya Professor S. Kuppuswami Sastri, Vedāntaśiromaṇi Paṇḍit T.V. Ramachandra Dikshitar, and others in 1933 from Madras. It was prepared based on a careful collation of different manuscripts and printed editions along with commentaries. This edition was used throughout India until the critical edition was brought out by the Oriental Institute, Vadodara. Mahāmahopādhyāya Vid. N Ranganatha Sharma of Karnataka rendered his Kannada translation of the epic based on the edition prepared by Kuppuswami Sastri and others. In this popular edition, the first sarga of the Bāla-kāṇḍa consists of exactly one hundred verses. This is also sometimes referred to as Mūla-rāmayāṇa or Saṅkṣepa-rāmāyaṇa for it was narrated by Sage Nārada to Maharṣi Vālmīki.
The critical edition of the Uttara-kāṇḍa is prepared based on forty-one different manuscripts found across India, the oldest one dating to about 1020 CE. The editors have also used the commentaries by Udāri Varadarāja, Maheśvaratīrtha, Govindarāja, Katakayogīndra, and Nāgeśa-bhaṭṭa as well as segments of the Rāmopākhyāna of the Mahābhārata, the Viṣṇu-purāṇa, Agni-purāṇa, Padma-purāṇa, and Rāmāyaṇa-mañjarī of Kṣemendra.
A reader well-versed in Sanskrit, having gone through the Ayodhyā-, Araṇya-, Kiṣkindhā-, Sundara-, and Yuddha-kāṇḍas will immediately realise the change in style in the Uttara-kāṇḍa. The language and structure are different from the rest of the epic.
The Uttara-kāṇḍa also appears like an attempt by an average poet to justify the events of the earlier kāṇḍas. It draws our attention to the might of the enemies defeated by Rāma. It also tells us the events of the past which have resulted in the current consequences. The language is like that of the later-day Purāṇas; it is far less poetic compared to the main kāṇḍas of the epic and is largely a compilation of information with little emphasis on emotion and universal values. Nevertheless, a few segments of the Uttara-kāṇḍa match up to the epic dimension. The readers may go through the segment on the Gordian knots of the Rāmāyaṇa.
The Rāmāyaṇa is popularly called the caturviṃśati-sahasrikā suggesting that it consists of twenty-four thousand verses. However, neither the edition prepared by Kuppuswami Sastri nor the critically constituted text consists exactly of these many verses. The constituted text consists of 18,766 verses spread across 606 sargas. The Yuddha-kāṇḍa is the longest with 116 sargas and 4,435 verses and the Bāla-kāṇḍa is the shortest with 1,943 verses. The Uttara-kāṇḍa runs to 100 sargas with 2,689 verses.
To be continued
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