The Ramayana of Valmiki: An Epic of Ancient India, Volume V: Sundarakanda

by Robert P. Goldman (Translator), Sally J. Sutherland Goldman (Translator)

The fifth and most popular book of the Ramayana of Valmiki, the Sundarakanda , recounts the adventures of the monkey hero Hanuman in leaping across the ocean to the island citadel of Lanka. Once there, he scours the city for the abducted Princess Siti. The poet vividly describes the opulence of the court of the demon king, Ravana, the beauty of his harem, and the hideous deformity of Sita's wardresses. After witnessing Sita's stern rejection of Ravana's blandishments, Hanuman reveals himself to the princess and restores her hope of rescue. The great monkey then wreaks havoc on the royal park and fights a series of hair-raising battles with Ravana's generals. Permitting himself to be captured by the warrior Indrajit, Hanuman is led into the presence of Ravana, whom he admonishes for his lechery. His tail is set ablaze, but he escapes his bonds and leaping from rooftop to rooftop, sets fire to the city. Taking leave of Sita, Hanuman once more leaps the ocean to rejoin his monkey companions.


This is the fifth volume translated from the critical edition of the Valmiki Ramayana. It contains an extensive introduction, exhaustive notes, and a comprehensive bibliography.

Genres: Poetry, Academic, Religion, Classics, India, Philosophy, Hinduism

576 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1985

Reviews

[Biblio Curious · Rating 5 out of 5]

The sheer devotion and years of work it takes to translate this complete work is outstanding. The Robert P. Goldman (with his wife) is the only complete, updated English version available today.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/104...

[Silvio Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bālakāṇḍa

So far the Rāmāyaṇa seems to move a lot faster than the Mahābhārata. For example, Rāma is born only forty pages into it, as compared to two or three hundred pages for the heroes of the Mahābhārata.

The Bālakāṇḍa is mostly about a journey Rāma makes with the wise brahman Viśvāmitra, first to kill some demons and then continuing on to another kingdom and resulting in Rāma’s marriage to Sītā. There are plenty of retrospective stories tied in, the longest being the story of how Viśvāmitra, originally a kshatriya or warrior, became a brahman.


Ayodhyākāṇḍa

At the start of this book, Rāma is about to be consecrated as heir and regent of Ayodhyā, but at the last minute, through the machinations of one of his father’s junior wives, he is banished instead. It has some of the most dramatic scenes I’ve found in what I’ve read so far of the Sanskrit epics.


Araṇyakāṇḍa

In the forest, Rāma continues to make enemies of the rākṣasa demons, and so the rākṣasa king Rāvaṇa retaliates by abducting Sītā, Rāma’s wife. Apparently rākṣasas don’t always live in the forest looking for people to eat and sacrifices to disrupt, but also have a great city on Sri Lanka.


Kiṣkindhākāṇḍa

This is where the monkeys come in. Rāma allies himself with one of them and kills his rival for the kingship of the monkeys in return for help getting Sītā back. The real asset is not the new king but his intelligent minister Hanumān – even though all the monkeys are shape-shifting sons of gods, the others have a way of turning lustful, lazy, or quarrelsome at key moments so that their value as allies seems a little questionable.


Sundarakāṇḍa

Looking for Sītā, the monkey Hanumān reaches the rākṣasa city Laṅkā by leaping over the ocean, and has some adventures there.

Yuddhakāṇḍa

This volume mostly covers the battle of Rāma and the monkeys against the rākṣasas. A lot of it is pretty repetitive, but gets more interesting as some of the more formidable and distinctive rākṣasas come in, especially toward the end.

There is one more section after this, which I am leaving unread for now since it hasn’t come out in this translation yet. I’m not sure what more there is to tell – this kāṇḍa brought the story up to what you’d think was the end.

Uttarakāṇḍa

The last volume finally came out. It gives some of the backstory of Rāvaṇa and the other rākṣasas, a bit about Hanumān, and the bittersweet ends of Sītā and Rāma's stories.

[Shinynickel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved Herodotus and Thucydides when I read them, and I think I'm hoping for something similar with the Ramayana that I may not get. After all, the Greeks were historians, whereas the Ramayana is equally epic, but significantly less historical - more like a very long Odysseus than anything else.

This appears to be the only complete academic translation out there - there are a lot of paraphrased versions, but I don't want some westernized Ramayana - I want as close to the 'real thing' as I can get. Of course, there are many different versions of the Ramayana throughout India, but the one attributed to Valmiki seems to be the closest there is to canon. I'm disappointed in the academics, however - they appear to have done a fine, thorough job translating, but in some of the introductory material they compare the Ramayana to some of the Greek epics, and decide they like the Greeks better. They talk about how spare the Greek description is, and how each word is chosen to bring the actions of the characters alive. Comparatively, they say that the Ramayana seems overblown, the narrative bogged down with florid description.

Jesus, guys. You spent how many years translating this stuff into English? It's a beloved national epic, one of the main cornerstones of Indian literature, and you're dissing it in its own introduction? Sing its praises! Help me see why these descriptions are so cool! Don't diss your epic, for god's sake - enough people are willing to slaughter entire English departments to shovel more Greeks in there, quit helping them!

That aside, it's an interesting story. I've only finished the first of five parts thus far, so I'm just getting started. One of the things that fascinates me most is how cultural differences lead to different interpretations of the same events. One of the things that stands out most clearly for me is a story in this book about a king who visits a sage. The sage has an amazing cow, given to him by the gods, and the king takes a liking to it. He offers to buy it, but the sage denies him. He offers to give his army to the sage, but is denied again. He offers the wealth of his kingdom, but the sage denies him. Enraged, the king sends his army against the sage to take the cow. The sage destroys the army with his powers. The king, now destitute retreats to become a sage himself. He goes through excrutiating meditations and ascetic practices, and the gods gift him with powers. He returns to attack the sage and is defeated. He spends centuries completing ascetic practices, and then attacks the sage again, and is defeated. This goes on a bit more until the two finally declare peace.

Now, this whole time I thought the king was an asshole.

I thought he was a greedy bastard and a bully who wouldn't take no for an answer, who was essentially levelling up, then attacking the sage, then levelling up and trying again.

But I thought that because I was discounting his religious practices - I saw him as using them as a means to an end, as a way to get power to get his way. It turns out that I am wrong - as it is written, it is intended to be interpreted as a great struggle, between devotion and good beliefs and greed. The king is a sympathetic figure because his meditations and ascetic practices truly are paths to goodness in the eyes of the intended reader, and he is interpreted as someone truly trying to better himself - he simply fails because of this negative relationship he has with the sage.

I need to get the versions of these books with all the footnotes, because this is stuff I wanna know.

Anyway, first book. Rama proves how amazing he is by stringing a bow that no man should be able to string, and is wedded to Sita as a reward.

[Ramya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dense as brick and as truthful a translation as one can get currently.

[Ralph Britton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first encountered the story of Rama in a children's version that my father read to me as a bedtime story. I can still remember the look of the book and the illustrations. I really enjoyed it then but have not followed it up until this year, after listening to an 'In our Time' of Melvin Bragg. I bought the whole version of which the heading is a part. This is the most scholarly edition, assembled from the many texts by Sanskrit scholars and translated by the Goldmans. An edited version would tell the story in a more modern way - R K Narayan has written a simpler version.
The Goldman translation shows all the signs of the original, sung form of the story - repeated epithets, set forms of words, constant digressions and interpolations of new stories, long descriptions of nature that hold up the narrative, and even lengthy repetitions of the same events. The listeners would have known the story and enjoyed the poetry and would not have expected to hear the whole work. The poem actually appears in the text with its supposed author, the sage Valmiki, who authenticates it. A god has told him that he can tell of events he cannot have witnessed, as by divine inspiration he will know what was said and done. Twenty 'suras' (sections) are sung in one session by two of his disciples. This trumps the Western idea of a Muse inspiring the poet.
One aspect of the sung epic is that the story is not told entirely in sequence, though the main narrative does follow the birth of Rama, his exile, the abduction of Sita and the attack of Rama and the monkeys on Lanka. The story of the lecherous Ravana who steals Sita is only told after his defeat - and a key explanation - why such a lecherous demon does not rape Sita - is only given then. He has been cursed after a particularly abominable rape that his head will explode if he repeats it - so he has to rely on blandishments and threats.

I found the Ramayana fascinating, but for those who want to enjoy the fascinating story might do well to choose Narayan's version.

[Jason Friedlander · Rating 5 out of 5]

The epic starts out a bit slow and but I’ve read that it really picks up starting Book 2, the Ayodhyākāṇḍa, so I don’t hold this against it. Historically, scholars have said that this was actually written after Books 2-6, but Goldman argues in his introduction that it’s more complicated than that and there are sections here that may actually precede everything else. I read the introduction after finishing all the sargas and it was a useful way to consolidate the tales and better make sense of the overall narrative. I breezed through this book, the translation is great, and am very excited to get to the meat of the legendary Rāmāyana.

[Madhurima Pramod · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is by far one of the best translations. It is very easy to read and understand. I found myself very engaged with the story because of the style/language of the translation. I thoroughly enjoyed this.

[Divakar · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nityananda Misra, a highly knowledgeable Sanskrit scholar, provides a thorough point-by-point analysis of the book in the following YouTube link. If you're interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the book, this video is a must-watch.

https://youtu.be/5c9NiN1i_N8

[Jim]

Too long and boring. I gave up.

[Daineen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay. I didnt really like this book couldnt get into it like other people. There was a lot of gender sterotype such as at the end of the book where Rama makes Sita up into the fire to prove that she was loyal to him. I think Rama should have known that sita would never do that to him because she loves him. That to me right there is not trust.

[Mary]

I read a condensed telling of the whole story. Should probably read it in its entirety one day--compelling.