Ebook Free The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics)
Ebook Free The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics)
By this condition, you might not have to be fretted. This publication will help you in getting the most effective resource of your condition and desire. Even this book is a brand-new coming book, it will not men that the rate of interest is much less. You could compare with the other publication with very same topics. It's truly affordable. So, what's going on? Allow obtain as well as read The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version Of The Indian Epic (Penguin Classics) asap.
The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics)
Ebook Free The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics)
Understanding is a procedure that will be gone through by all individuals in every age. In this situation, we have constantly the books that should be accumulated as well as review. The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version Of The Indian Epic (Penguin Classics) is just one of guides that we constantly recommend for you in finding out. This is the method exactly how you find out pertaining to the topic. When you have the visibility of guides, you have to see exactly how this book is actually advised.
Guide that is presented to review in this time will certainly be the The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version Of The Indian Epic (Penguin Classics) As we have provided as well as offered, you can concern with the cover of this publication initially. Checking out the cove will make you feel interested or not in this publication. Yet, many people have actually shown that this book has been really interesting to check out, even looking from just guide cover. The principle of making the cover and how the writer offers the title are very remarkable.
Well, even this publication is offered in different with the printed publication; it will not allow matter. You know why this internet site has numerous followers? Well, all noted publications feature the soft data. It is delivered based upon the title. When you take a look at the site in this page, finding the connect to get this The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version Of The Indian Epic (Penguin Classics) is simple. Just follow it and also discover the book.
As well as the reasons that you should choose this advised book is that it's composed by a preferred writer in the world. You might not be able to get this publication quickly; this is why we offer you right here to relieve. Being simple to get guide to review actually comes to be the first step to finish. In some cases, you will certainly encounter problems in locating the The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version Of The Indian Epic (Penguin Classics) outside. Yet below, you will not face that trouble.
About the Author
R. K. Narayan (1906–2001), born and educated in India, was the author of fourteen novels, numerous short stories and essays, a memoir, and three retold myths. His work, championed by Graham Greene, who became a close friend, was often compared to that of Dickens, Chekhov, Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor, among others.
Read more
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents About the AuthorTitle PageCopyright PageIntroductionDedication Chapter 1 - RAMA’S INITIATIONChapter 2 - THE WEDDINGChapter 3 - TWO PROMISES REVIVEDChapter 4 - ENCOUNTERS IN EXILEChapter 5 - THE GRAND TORMENTORChapter 6 - VALIChapter 7 - WHEN THE RAINS CEASEChapter 8 - MEMENTO FROM RAMAChapter 9 - RAVANA IN COUNCILChapter 10 - ACROSS THE OCEANChapter 11 - THE SIEGE OF LANKAChapter 12 - RAMA AND RAVANA IN BATTLEChapter 13 - INTERLUDEChapter 14 - THE CORONATION EpilogueGlossaryTHE RAMAYANAR. K. NARAYAN was born on October 10, 1906, in Madras, South India, and educated there and at Maharaja’s College in Mysore. His first novel, Swami and Friends (1935), and its successor, The Bachelor of Arts (1937), are both set in the fictional territory of Malgudi, of which John Updike wrote, “Few writers since Dickens can match the effect of colorful teeming that Narayan’s fictional city of Malgudi conveys; its population is as sharply chiseled as a temple frieze, and as endless, with always, one feels, more characters round the corner.” Narayan wrote many more novels set in Malgudi, including The English Teacher (1945), The Financial Expert (1952), and The Guide (1958), which won him the Sahitya Akademi (India’s National Academy of Letters) Award, his country’s highest honor. His collections of short fiction include A Horse and Two Goats, Malgudi Days, and Under the Banyan Tree. Graham Greene, Narayan’s friend and literary champion, said, “He has offered me a second home. Without him I could never have known what it is like to be Indian.” Narayan’s fiction earned him comparisons to the work of writers including Anton Chekhov, William Faulkner, O. Henry, and Flannery O’Connor.Narayan also published travel books, volumes of essays, the memoir My Days, and the retold legends Gods, Demons, and Others, The Ramayana, and The Mahabharata. In 1980 he was awarded the A. C. Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1981 he was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1989 he was made a member of the Rajya Sabha, the nonelective House of Parliament in India.R. K. Narayan died in Madras on May 13, 2001. PANKAJ MISHRA is the author of The Romantics, winner of the Los Angeles Times’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, and Tempations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond . He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, and the Guardian.PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in the United States of America by The Viking Press 1972 First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus 1973 Published in Penguin Books (U.S.A.) 1977 Published in Penguin Books (U.K) 1977 This edition with an introduction by Pankaj Mishra published in Penguin Books (U.S.A.) 2006 Copyright © R. K. Narayan, 1972Introduction copyright © Pankaj Mishra, 2006 All rights reserved The decorations, drawn from Indian temple sculptures, are by R. K. Laxman. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Narayan, R. K., 1906-2001. The Ramayana : a shortened modern prose version of the Indian epic (suggested by the Tamil version of Kamban) / R.K. Narayan ; introduction by Pankaj Mishra. p. cm.—(Penguin classics)eISBN : 978-0-143-03967-91. Rama (Hindu deity)—Fiction. 2. Epic literature, Tamil—Adaptations. I. Kampar, 9th cent. Ramayanam. II. Title. III. Series. PR9499.3.N3R36 2006 297.5’922—dc22 2006045201 The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.IntroductionIn the summer of 1988 sanitation workers across North India went on strike. Their demand was simple: they wanted the federal government to sponsor more episodes of a television serial based on the Indian epic Ramayana (Romance of Rama). The serial, which had been running on India’s state-owned television channel for more than a year, had proved to be an extraordinarly popular phenomenon, with more than eighty million Indians tuning in to every weekly episode. Streets in all towns and cities emptied on Sunday mornings as the serial went on the air. In villages with no electricity people usually gathered around a rented television set powered by a car battery. Many bathed ritually and garlanded their television sets before settling down to watch Rama, the embodiment of righteousness, triumph over adversity.When the government, faced with rising garbage mounds and a growing risk of epidemics, finally relented and commissioned more episodes of The Ramayana, not just the sanitation workers but millions of Indians celebrated. More than a decade and many reruns later, the serial continues to inspire reverence among Indians everywhere, and remains for many the primary mode of experiencing India’s most popular epic.The reasons for this may not be immediately clear to an uninitiated outsider: the serial, cheaply made by a Bollywood filmmaker, abounds in ham acting and tinselly sets, and the long, white beards of its many wise, elderly men look perilously close to dropping off.But it wasn’t so much its kitschy, Bollywood aspect that endeared the serialization to Indians as its invoking of what is easily the most influential narrative tradition in human history: the story of Rama, the unjustly exiled prince. It may be impossible to prove R. K. Narayan’s claim that every Indian “is aware of the story of The Ramayana in some measure or other.” But it will sound true to most Indians. Indeed, the popular appeal of the story of Rama among ordinary people distinguishes it from much of Indian literary tradition, which, supervised by upper-caste Hindus, has been forbiddingly elitist.There is really no Western counterpart in either the Hellenic or Hebraic tradition to the influence that this originally secular story, transmitted orally through many centuries, has exerted over millions of people. The Iliad and The Odyssey are, primarily, literary texts, but not even Aesop’s fables or the often intensely moral Greek myths shape the daily lives of present-day inhabitants of Greece. In contrast, The Ramayana continues to have a profound emotional and psychological resonance for Indians.
Read more
Product details
Series: Penguin Classics
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Penguin Classics; 1 edition (August 29, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0143039679
ISBN-13: 978-0143039679
Product Dimensions:
5.1 x 0.5 x 7.7 inches
Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.4 out of 5 stars
75 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#42,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
I was pleasantly surprised by this book, which was an assigned reading for my history class. The Ramayana is very interesting and easy to read and follow. I didn't feel like it was an assigned reading at all. It was very action packed and captivating. Whether choosing to read this book for leisure or if it is for educational purposes, I am certain that anyone who reads it will find it enjoyable.
You may think from the words I have chosen to describe the book that I don't like it nothing could be further from the truth. For all intents and purposes this book is a fairy tale and not in a demeaning or condescending way. In a book like this you want the hero to be to good to be true. You want the villain to be beyond evil and impossible to defeat except by superhuman means. The plot may be predictable but that doesn't mean that you don't want to see how the hero overcomes the obstacles in his way. That is why I called it nostalgic because it takes you to the mind set of being a small chilld hearing or reading other tales of this kind. The plot is basically this: stepmother gets elder more loved prince banished so her son can rule; prince goes slays demon and returns to rule the kingdom. You have heard,read,and seen this plot a thousand times. It doesn't mean that it is uninteresting or boring. The reason you read a story like this is to be nostalgic for your childish wonder at a story like this.
Great book to read and understand the Bhagavad Gita principles of man's nature with the universe and his karmatic manifestations of our reincarnations.
At the risk of offending a Sita Ram devotee, I would like only to say that this version of the Ramayan may not be the best available. It is inexpensive, short, written by a notable Indian writer and used widely in academia. It is uncontroversial. But it is lifeless by comparison to other versions. In order to participate in a classroom discussion Narayan's version is no more useful than reading wikipedia. At the risk of provoking some anger I would recommend instead reading "Arrow of the Blue Skinned God" by Jonah Blank. It tells the story extremely well and gives insight into the narrative's ongoing cultural significance. It is also first rate travel writing looking at India in the late 1980's during a time when travel was still cheap and hard. Accessible to high school students.
I had to read this book for school, and it was honestly hard to put down sometimes. I really enjoyed it and am excited to discuss it with my classmates.
This again, as is true of the Mahabharata, is an ancient epic of Hindu India. It is not quite as long and complex as the Mahabharata. My comments on the Mahabharata apply equally to this story.
The Ramayana is a one of the most fabled classics of Indian literature, and though it is not technically a sacred scripture, it is so revered in India and by Indians it almost has the default status of being one. The original texts of the Ramayana are quite immense, and writer R.K. Narayan has condensed the epic down into a quite readable 150 page work. Those who are curious about this Hindu classic, who are first time readers, will probably find it very engaging. While there are alternate versions of this very popular epic, Narayan has selected one he considers most traditional and mainstream, and will be a very worthwhile introduction for a very important book.
I bought this for an intro to South Asian history class and absolutely loved it. Very fun to read and is a much more interesting way to learn about the religion and values of people during the time the story takes place than reading it out of a dry textbook. It may not be as good as the original story, but I feel like this was a very approachable translation for a beginner.
The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics) PDF
The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics) EPub
The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics) Doc
The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics) iBooks
The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics) rtf
The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics) Mobipocket
The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classics) Kindle
0 comments