“Whoe’er this noble poem reads
That tells the tale of Ráma’s deeds,
Good as the Scriptures, he shall be
From every sin and blemish free.”

From the Royal Palace of Thailand to the temples of Bagan in Malaysia and Ankor Wat in Cambodia, some of the most common scenes you will see traveling in Southeast Asia are those drawn from the Ramayana, a Hindu holy book and the story of the perfect man, Rama. In order to kill a demon (possibly the king of Sri Lanka) who can only be killed by a mortal, Vishnu takes human form, and is born as a prince, Rama. When his wife is abducted by the same demon (somewhat reminiscent of the Iliad), Rama goes on a quest to recover her, gathering allies along the way. In doing so, he models the virtues he represents: care for the people, respect for the caste system, love for family, self-discipline, duty, and filial loyalty.

It’s a good story, and interesting to modern eyes also for the traditional values it represents. The motivating theme, the theft of a wife, is similar to the Iliad, but the cultural values that are embedded in it are very different. Rama uses no cunning or trickery to defeat the demon, for example: unlike Odysseus, he simply confronts them directly at the head of a vast army, and fights until the enemy is defeated, which takes some time – the poem is 24,000 verses long, over seven books. Considerably more emphasis is placed on the importance of hermits and saints, too, instead of just heroes and kings.

Unfortunately, I ended up with a poor translation of the Ramayana, by the Indologist Ralph Griffith. To say he is opinionated is to understate the issue: he cuts sections based on prudishness about subject or language, because he thinks they were added later, or just because he decides they are repetitive. In some ways, the translation is best read as a separate work, rather than a true translation. In part, this is because he chose to maintain the verse structure of the poem, translating it into iambic pentameter with rhyming couplets. Though clearly imposing considerable sacrifices of language, this does retain the original rhythmic feeling of what is after all an epic poem, which I appreciate. One can’t have everything, I suppose, but it does make choosing a translation difficult.