The Ramayana is a rare Indian epic which is an integral part of the life of this vast country, which despite its uncertain historicity, has a variety of versions in various religious traditions. Dashratha may have been a minor chief who lived in the 7th or 8th centuries B.C., whose life was by chance remembered and, perhaps because of the basic qualities of Rama, his brothers and wife Sita, was elaborated by bards until it acquired the present form, which goes ...
‘The Mahabharata’ as it survives today is among the longest singly poems in Sanskrit. The main action revolves around what has become famous as the contest between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, and is set in the fertile and strategic region around Delhi. Originally it may have been the description of a more localized fued, but it caught the imagination of the bards and in its final form virtually all the clans and peoples known to the bards were said to have ...