What Asian and European travellers wrote about Lord Ram for nearly 1,800 years

New Delhi: The dust has now settled on disputes over the existence and birth of Lord Ram, with his temple being constructed in Uttar Pradesh’s Ayodhya, after 500 years of struggle by Hindus and the 2019 Supreme Court decision after a protracted legal battle in courts.

On the occasion of Ram Navami, here’s a look at the writings by foreign travellers on the Hindu god and his influence over the last two millennia.

Early works on and around Ram

As early as 251 AD, Buddhist monk K’ang-seng-hui rendered the Jataka form of the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic on Ram, into Chinese, according to Ramjanmabhoomi: Truth, Evidence, Faith (Prabhat Prakashan, 2020).

Another Chinese translation was prepared of the Nidana of Dashratha Jataka from a lost Sanskrit text, by Kekaya in 472 AD.

The Sinhala poet-king, Kumaradasa, composed the Janakiharana, the earliest Sanskrit work of Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka), in the 6th century.

In 7th century Cambodia, a Khmer citation attested to the popularity of the Ramayana. An inscription declared that a certain Somasharman presented “the Ramayana, the Purana and the complete Bharata” to a temple.

Towards the close of the 9th century, an east Iranian version of the Ramayana appeared in Khotanese, an Iranian dialect. The story of Ram spread in the northernmost lands of Asia from Tibet, where it was found in two versions in manuscripts from 7th-9th centuries.

“The oldest manuscript of the Ramayana of Valmiki, dated AD 1075, is preserved in Nepal,” writes noted historian Meenakshi Jain in her seminal work Rama and Ayodhya.

“The Rama story occurred in three early Buddhist texts — the Dasharath Kathanam, the Anamakam Jatakam and the Dashrath Jataka. The Dasharath Kathanam, the earliest, belongs to the first-second century A.D,” she added.

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