☀️ 𝓓epicting 𝓣he 𝓓ivine ☀️

Sri Ram

''His business was to destroy Ravana and to establish the Rama-rajya—in other words, to fix for the future the possibility of an order proper to the sattwic civilised human being who governs his life by the reason, the finer emotions, morality, or at least moral ideals, such as truth, obedience, co-operation and harmony, the sense of domestic and public order,—to establish this in a world still occupied by anarchic forces, the Animal mind and the powers of the vital Ego making its own satisfaction the rule of life, in other words, the Vanara and Rakshasa.''

Sri Aurobindo - the purpose of avatarhood

'The work of Valmiki has been an agent of almost incalculable power in the moulding of the cultural mind of India: it has presented to it to be loved and imitated in figures like Rama and Sita, made so divinely and with such a revelation of reality as to become objects of enduring cult and worship, or like Hanuman, Lakshmana, Bharata the living human image of its ethical ideals; it has fashioned much of what is best and sweetest in the national character, and it has evoked and fixed in it those finer and exquisite yet firm soul tones and that more delicate humanity of temperament which are a more valuable thing than the formal outsides of virtue and conduct.'

Sri Aurobindo - Indian Literature III

Rama darbar: The coronation of Rama at Ayodhya [1825 – 50, Tamil Nadu, Cloth pasted on wood].  Maratha period Tanjore style.[National Museum New Delhi

 Rama and Sita seated on the throne after his coronation ceremony, accompanied by Lakshmana, Bharata, Shatrughana, Hanuman, and others. 

The painting's jewel-like effect is from real gold and silver foil, precious and semi-precious stones, beads, mirrors, and powdered metals mixed  with primary colours.

--

Lines from Sri Aurobindo's poem 'An Aryan City' based on His translations from Ramayana:

Coshala by the Soroyou, a land
Smiling at heaven, of riches measureless
And corn abounding glad; in that great country
Ayodhya was, the city world-renowned,
Ayodhya by King Manou built, immense.
Twelve yojans long the mighty city lay
Grandiose and wide three yojans. Grandly-spaced
Ayodhya's streets were and the long high-road
Ran through it spaciously with sweet cool flowers
Hourly new-paved and hourly watered wide.

Without a gap
On either side as far as eye could reach
Mass upon serried mass the houses rose,
Seven-storied architectures metrical
Upon a level base and made sublime
Splendid Ayodhya octagonally built,
The mother of beautiful women and of gems
A world. Large granaries of rice unhusked
She had and husked rice for the fire, and sweet
Her water, like the cane's delightful juice,
Cool down the throat. And a great voice throbbed of drums,
The tabour and the tambourine, while ever
The lyre with softer rumours intervened.

🙏🏿