Saturday, December 11, 2010

The language of the Ramayana: Sanskrit


MS 2165
ADHYATAMA-RAMAYANA; THE ROMANCE OF RAMA; BOOKS 1 - 9
ms2165
MS in Sanskrit on cream coloured paper, Rajasthan, India, ca. 1800, 256 ff. (complete), 17x32 cm, single column, (11x26 cm), 14-16 lines in Devanagari script, by several scribes, verse numbers highlighted in orange-red or with red strokes.
Binding: Rajasthan, India, ca. 1800, roughly carved varnished wooden boards with accumulation of chundum, poti without cord holes.
Provenance: 1. Sam Fogg cat. 17(1996):46.
Commentary: Ramayana is the shorter of the 2 great epic poems of India; composed in Sanskrit ca. 300 BC by the poet Valmiki in ca. 24.000 couplets in 7 books, about 3 1/2 times as long as the Iliad. The division of the Adhyatma-Ramayana into 18 books of roughly equal length was made for didactic purposes. The epic describes the royal birth of Rama in the kingdom of Ayodhya (Oudh), his success of bending the god Shiva's mighty bow and his family's adventures and fights with kings, demons and gods.


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