Author Description

To rid the world of the evil, ten-headed Ravana, the Hindu god Vishnu appears on earth as a heroic prince, Rama. The devotion of his brother Lakshman, his marriage to the beautiful Sita, and encounters with demons, giants, sages, and holy men form favorite episodes familiar to any Hindu child. Soon after Sita is secretly kidnapped, Rama and Lakshman meet Hanuman, leader of an army of monkeys. Hanuman joins them, together with troops of bears. They eventually attack the golden citadel at Lanka and confront the weapons and magic powers of Ravana's demon hordes. The Ramayana, from which The Adventures of Rama is adapted, was originally written down in Sanskrit about 500 B.C. It is one of the oldest and greatest of Indian epics. The illustrations in thie book come from a sixteenth-century manuscript, a copy of the Ramayana made in India during the rule of Akbar the Great. Akbar, a Muslim and a foreigner to India, was only thirteen when he became emperor at Delhi in 1556. Eager to learn about the Hindu religion of his subjects, he commissioned translations into Persian of such works as the Ramayana. The paintings reproduced here are from a copy of the text made and illustrated for one of Akbar's leading nobles. it is now in the collections of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. --jacket.