The Ramayana, unlike its mighty compere, the Mahabharata, has received compara¬tively less attention from critics and scholars alike. One reason might be the very nature of the epic: its being the first kavya, the conscious¬ly: literary composition, as opposed to the more oral character of the other. Yet, where the Indian family is concerned, the Ramayana is by far the more ‘comfort¬able’ of the two. As Dr Annie Besant had pointed out long back when she wrote her adaptations of the two epics, here black and white are quite clear, and Rama is so trans¬parently the ‘proper man’ that no awkward ethical questions arise for the petit-bourgeois householder to tackle. The Mahabharata, on the other hand, is far too true to real life, with its heroes tainted with lust, greed and struck with inexplicable unmanliness at the most critical moments: be it the disrobing of their wife Or the first day of the war. The Divine-incarnate himself is much too open to reproach in the way Krishna manipulates, schemes and ruthlessly has his way.
March-April 1985, volume 9, No 3/4