The Ramayana introduceyourself

The Ramayana is an ancient Hindu text about Rama, an incarnation of the God Vishnu. It tells the story of the righteous prince Rama and his rescue of his wife Sita after her abduction by the demon king Ravana. I am sorry, we do not have this in Hindi or Kannada. They might be available at archive.org.
This version of Ramayana is retold in English by C. Rajagopalachari and edited by Jay Mazo, American Gita Society.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
The Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has added to the debt of gratitude owed it by undertaking the publication of the English
version of my Tamil Ramayana. They achieved great success in the distribution
of my Mahabharata book and I trust this book of the story of Rama and Sita will receive similar welcome. Once again, I repeat my confession that in the evening of my busy life during agreat and eventful period of Indian
history, the writing of these two books wherein I have retold the Mahabharata and Ramayana, is, in my opinion, the best
service I have rendered to my people. At any rate, they embody the best joy I have experienced; for in these two books I
helped our great sages to speak to our dear men and women again in their own language, elevating their minds through
the sorrows borne by Kunti, Kausalya, Draupadi and Sita. The real need of the hour is a recommunion between us and
the sages of our land, so that the future may be built on rock and not on sand. In presenting this English version to a
wider circle of readers spread all over the world, I think I am presenting to them the people of Bharat just as they are, with all their virtues and their faults. Our classics really embody our national character in all its aspects and it is well the world sees us as we really are, apart from what we wish to become. The Ramayana is not history or
biography. It is a part of Hindu mythology. One cannot understand Hindu dharma unless one knows Rama and Sita,
Bharata, Lakshmana, Ravana, Kumbhakarna and Hanuman. Mythology cannot be dispensed with. Philosophy alone or rituals alone or mythology alone cannot be sufficient. These are the three stands of all ancient religions. The attitude towards things spiritual which belongs to a particular people cannot be grasped or preserved or conveyed unless we have all

these three. The Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has achieved great work by the very wide distribution organised by it of my
Ramayana and Mahabharata books, which seek to bring Valmiki and Vyasa near to those who have no access to the unrivalled
original classics. The characters and incidents of these two itihasas have come to be the raw material for the works of
numerous poets and saints that came later to write dramas and sing poems and hymns to keep this nation in the straight
path. Oral discourses have further played with them in order to entertain and instruct pious audiences and not a few
variations and additions have been made to the original. All the languages of India have the Ramayana and
Mahabharata retold by their poets, with additions and variations of their own. They are the records of the mind and
spirit of our forefathers who cared for the good, ever so much more than for the pleasant and who saw more of the
mystery of life than we can do in our interminable pursuit for petty and illusory achievements ill the material
plane. We should be thankful to those who preserved for us these many centuries-old epics in spite of all the vicissitudes through which our nation passed since Vyasa and Valmiki's time. Even the poets
who wrote these epics in the original did not create but built out of the inherited bricks of national memory prior to their own time. Reading the Ramayana and Mahabharata even in the form I have given them, we go back to live with our ancient forbears and listen to their grand voice.