Chapter Seven: Literature of the Rasika Tradition

—16,108 women, Rama promises bodily union in his Krishna avatāra. In the twenty-first canto, one of Rama’s maidservants drinks the flavour of his chewed betel and, as her reward, receives the boon of becoming Radha in her next birth. Many passages in this kāṇḍa establish that the Rama avatāra is superior to the Krishna avatāra.

The eighth, the Manohara-kāṇḍa, contains eighteen cantos. It treats the method of Rama worship, the greatness of Rama’s name, the sanctity of the month of Chaitra, the Rāma-kavaca, and related subjects.

The ninth, the Pūrṇa-kāṇḍa, contains nine cantos. It relates Kusha’s consecration and the ascent of Rama and his companions to Vaikuntha.

3. Mahārāmāyaṇa

The Mahārāmāyaṇa, with a vernacular commentary by Sri Jānakījīvan Das, was printed at Ayodhya in Vikrama year 1985. The surviving copy is a fragment of five cantos. A complete manuscript is said to be preserved in the Kashmir State Library. Whatever the truth of that report, the available copy contains the following five cantos.

The first has eighty-nine verses and gives a detailed description of the auspicious marks upon Bhagavan Rama’s feet. The second has twenty-seven verses and treats the means of attaining Rama-bhakti, the characteristics of Rama’s devotees, and the rite of dhanur-bāṇa-dhāraṇa, bearing the bow-and-arrow emblem. The third has twenty-six verses and declares Bhagavan Rama to be the supremely transcendent Brahman, beyond the perishable, the imperishable, and even the unconditioned. He can be worshipped only in the companion disposition.

The fourth canto contains twenty verses and describes the thirty-three powers of Sri Jānaki, including Ājñākāriṇī and Āhlādinī, as well as the thousands of subsidiary powers belonging to each. The fifth contains 110 verses and describes the greatness of Sri Rama’s name. Deriving the word Rāma from the verbal root ram, “to delight or sport,” it also mentions Rama’s rāsa dance.

In his vast work Hindutva, Sri Ramdas Gaur names many Rāmāyaṇas about which it is now difficult to discover anything definite. He reports that the Mahārāmāyaṇa contains 350,000 verses and describes ninety-nine rāsa-līlās of Bhagavan Rama, the indweller of Kanak Bhavan, with Sita and her other companions.

4. Ādi Rāmāyaṇa

A manuscript of this work is kept by Sri Ramkumar Das at Mani Parvat in Ayodhya. It discusses such heroine-types as mañjarī, mugdhā, madhyā, and prauḍhā. In his Rāma-kathā, Camille Bulcke discusses a manuscript entitled Citrakūṭa-māhātmya that he obtained from the India Office and identifies as part of the Ādi Rāmāyaṇa. He says that it describes a lake in Chitrakuta’s Santanaka forest. At its centre stands a lovely pavilion, and upon a raised platform within it Bhagavan Sri Rama eternally performs the rāsa dance with Sita and her companions.¹