The Rāmāyana, Volume 1. Bālakāndam and Ayodhyākāndam
Overview
The Ramayana stands as one of the two foundational Sanskrit epics of ancient India, traditionally attributed to the sage-poet Valmiki and composed between approximately 500 BCE and 100 BCE, though its exact dating remains scholarly contested. This monumental work of 24,000 verses tells the story of Prince Rama of Ayodhya, whose life exemplifies dharma (righteous duty) through trials of exile, the abduction of his wife Sita by the demon king Ravana, and an epic war culminating in dharma’s triumph over adharma. The Ramayana has profoundly influenced Hindu religious thought, with Rama venerated as an avatar of Vishnu, and has inspired countless artistic, dramatic, and literary adaptations across Asian cultures from Indonesia to Cambodia to Thailand.
Ralph Thomas Hinchcliff Griffith (1826-1906) produced the first complete English translation of the Ramayana to be published, working during his tenure as Principal of Benares Sanskrit College from 1861 to 1884. His translation appeared serially between 1870 and 1874, published by E.J. Lazarus and Co. in Benares and Trubner & Co. in London, with this first volume containing the crucial opening books that establish Rama’s divine lineage, heroic character, and the circumstances of his exile. Griffith, who joined the Indian Education Service in 1853 as a young Sanskrit scholar, brought both linguistic expertise and poetic sensibility to the formidable task of rendering Sanskrit verse into English meter.
Griffith’s approach represents the Victorian tradition of verse translation, prioritizing poetic flow and English literary conventions over word-for-word accuracy. He employed heroic couplets and other English verse forms to capture what he understood as the epic grandeur of Valmiki’s Sanskrit, making conscious choices to domesticate the text for British readers. Modern scholars note that while Griffith’s translation served its era admirably as an introduction to Sanskrit epic literature, it lacks the philological rigor of contemporary scholarly translations such as the Princeton Ramayana series edited by Robert P. Goldman and colleagues. Griffith occasionally smoothed over cultural complexities, modified passages he deemed unsuitable for Victorian sensibilities, and imposed English poetic structures that inevitably altered the original’s rhythmic and metaphorical qualities.
Despite these limitations, Griffith’s Ramayana retains historical and literary value. For late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Western readers, it opened access to a text of immense religious and cultural significance, influencing Western perceptions of Hindu tradition and Indian civilization during the colonial period. The Balakanda and Ayodhyakanda contained in this volume introduce King Dasharatha’s desperate longing for sons, the miraculous births of Rama and his brothers, young Rama’s training under the fierce sage Vishvamitra, his breaking of Shiva’s bow to win Sita’s hand, and the palace intrigues that force his fourteen-year exile just as he is about to be crowned king. These opening books establish the epic’s central themes of duty versus desire, the complexities of family relationships, and the testing of virtue through suffering.
The translation’s accessibility and poetic ambition made the Ramayana part of the English literary canon in the colonial era, even as its interpretive choices reflected and reinforced orientalist assumptions about Indian culture. Contemporary readers should approach Griffith’s work as both a valuable historical artifact of cross-cultural literary transmission and a text whose translation choices merit critical examination. For those seeking to understand how Sanskrit literature entered Western consciousness, or who wish to experience a Victorian-era engagement with one of humanity’s great epic narratives, Griffith’s Ramayana offers an illuminating, if necessarily imperfect, window into Valmiki’s timeless story of Rama’s trials, Sita’s unwavering devotion, and the eternal struggle between righteousness and evil.