☀️ 𝓓epicting 𝓣he 𝓓ivine ☀️

Ramayana

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'The Ramayana is in its ethical intention the parable of an enormous conflict between the Deva in human form and the incarnate Rakshasa, between the representative of a high culture and Dharma and a huge unbridled force and gigantic civilisation of the exaggerated Ego.''

Sri Aurobindo - Deva and Asura [Essays on the Gita]

Ravana lifting Kailash Parvat [8th century/Virupaksha Temple/wikipedia]

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''It has been said, truly, that the Ramayana represents an ideal society and assumed, illogically, that it must therefore represent an altogether imaginary one. The argument ignores the alternative of a real society idealised. No poet could evolve entirely out of his own imagination a picture at once so colossal, so minute and so consistent in every detail. ...  after excluding the Uttarakanda, which is a later work, and some amount of interpolation, for the most part easy enough to detect, and reforming the text which is not unfrequently in a state of truly shocking confusion, the Ramayana remains on the face of it the work of a single mighty and embracing mind.''

Sri Aurobindo - On Literature

Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana at the Hermitage of Bharadvaja

Folio from a Ramayana Series

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''...later poets arrived at a vividly living recreation of the ancient story and succeeded in producing a supreme masterpiece... Tulsidas whose famed Hindi Ramayana combines with a singular mastery lyric intensity, romantic richness and the sublimity of the epic imagination and is at once a story of the divine Avatar and a long chant of religious devotion.''

Sri Aurobindo - The Renaissance in India

Rama, Sita, Lakshmana in exile in forest having a meal, pahari painting. 1780-1815