When Rama goes into the jungle to hunt for this amazing animal to bring back to her, Ravana uses trickery to whisk Sita into the air all the way to his island of Lanka (traditionally known as Ceylon, Sri Lanka today). Sita is coveted by the demon-king Ravana who sends a golden deer to entice her. Rama, banished from the court of Ayodhya by his own father Dasharatha (to redeem a promise made to his junior wife, Kaikeyi), goes into exile in the forest for fourteen years with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana. The Ramayana comprises 24,000 verses allocated into seven books ( kanda) and 500 cantos ( sarga) which narrate the “Chronicle of Rama” or “Rama’s Way” (which is the meaning of the title), in essence: the coming of a god to the world of men, as Prince Rama is an avatar of Vishnu and his exemplary spouse, Sita, is the daughter of the goddess Earth.
In any case, the Ramayana reflects a refined society contrasting with the coarser image given by the Mahabharata. The actual poem seems to have been composed around 100 BCE, placing it after the core of the Mahabharata, but before its finished version. The poem seems to be, for the most part, the work of a single author, Valmiki, from the Tamil Nadu region, who gathered and structured several century-old songs derived from sacrificial incantations and mythic tales. The Ramayana, like its epic-sister the Mahabharata, is one of the foundations of Indian culture. Indian epic from which many episodes are interpreted in India and all of South East Asia, in Sanskrit and other languages, in shadow theatre and puppetry as well as by storytellers, dancers and actors.
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