Majosta Mula-ramayana: The Original Ramayana

This is a Sanskrit reader meant for those who have acquired basic grammatical skills and wish to start reading original Sanskrit texts. The Mula-ramayana, which is actually the first chapter of Valmiki’s Ramayana and summarizes the whole epic, has been used as a text book in innumerable colleges and schools all over India. Therefore, this bilingual translation was prepared intending to fulfill the needs of a broad range of students. The grammatical analysis here presents the basic morphological classification of the vocabulary and some elements of the syntax. The word-for-word meaning was done with the help of three traditional Sanskrit commentaries: Govinda-raja’s Ramayana-bhusana, Nagoji Bhatta’s Ramayana-tilaka and Siva-sahaya’s Ramayana-siromani. The prose order (anvaya) of the Sanskrit texts was done according to the way the verses were interpreted and translated. For didactic purposes, the English and Hindi translations are mostly literal.