Rama

The Rama story is told first, and at most length, in the Ramayana of Valmiki, a Sanskrit epic in seven books. Scholars read it in layers. The five central books, from Ayodhya to the war, are thought to be the oldest, and their Rama is above all a hero and a model king. The first book, with his birth as Vishnu's portion, and the last, with Sita's exile and return to the earth, are generally taken as later, and they are the books that make him a god.

The Mahabharata tells the story too, in short, as the Ramopakhyana, told to the Pandavas in the forest to console them. The Buddhists have their own version in the Dasharatha Jataka, where Rama is a wise prince of Varanasi and Sita is his sister; the Jains have the Paumachariya of Vimalasuri, where Rama never kills anyone and Lakshmana kills Ravana.

From there the story went into every language. Kamban retold it in Tamil in the twelfth century, Krittivas in Bengali, Ezhuthachan in Malayalam, and Tulsidas in Awadhi in the sixteenth, as the Ramcharitmanas, the lake of Rama's deeds. The Manas made him the god of the north Indian household, and its recitation in Ram Lila still fills the autumn. It went east as well, to Thailand, Cambodia and Java, where the Ramakien, the Reamker and the Kakawin are still danced.

Rama worship in its own right, with Rama as the supreme god and his name as the whole of the path, grew in the second millennium with Ramananda and the poets who followed him, Kabir among them, whose Rama has no form at all.