Lord Ram

Who Lord Ram is

Rama is the seventh avatar of Vishnu and the central hero of the Ramayana, the older of the two great Sanskrit epics. He is held up across Hindu tradition as maryada purushottama — the ideal man — embodying the disciplines of dharma: filial obedience, fraternal loyalty, marital fidelity, royal duty, and steadiness under suffering. Where Krishna’s appeal lies in his playful transcendence of convention, Rama’s lies in his unwavering adherence to it.

The Ramayana of Valmiki, composed in Sanskrit in the first millennium BCE, narrates Rama’s birth in Ayodhya, his marriage to Sita, his fourteen-year exile in the forest, the abduction of Sita by the demon-king Ravana of Lanka, the war to recover her with the help of Hanuman and the vanara army, and his eventual return to Ayodhya to be crowned king. Tulsidas’s sixteenth-century Awadhi retelling, the Ramcharitmanas, brought the story into the daily devotional life of north India and remains the most-read religious text in the Hindi belt.

Festivals and worship days

Rama Navami — Rama’s birthday — is celebrated on the ninth day of the bright fortnight of Chaitra (March–April), with recitations of the Ramayana, fasting, and processions in Ayodhya, Rameswaram, and across the country. Vijayadashami or Dussehra marks Rama’s victory over Ravana on the tenth day of the bright fortnight of Ashvin (September–October); in many cities, effigies of Ravana, Kumbhakarna, and Meghnad are burned at sunset. Diwali itself, in north Indian tradition, marks Rama’s return to Ayodhya after the fourteen-year exile.

Wednesday is the conventional weekly day for Rama worship.

What devotees seek

Rama is invoked for steadiness in adversity, for the strength to do the right thing when the easy thing is available, for the protection of family and home, and for victory over the demons of the inner life — anger, lust, greed, ego — that the outer Ravana represents. The recitation of Rama-nama — simply the name “Rama” — is itself one of the great practices of the bhakti traditions, said to require no ritual apparatus and to be available to anyone in any condition.

The texts collected here include the Ram Chalisa, the Ram Raksha Stotra attributed to Budhakaushika, and the Tulsidas hymn Shri Ramachandra Kripalu Bhajamana, alongside other compositions for daily and Rama Navami practice.