Ramayana is the story of Rama, the eldest son of Dasaratha, a prince of the Ikshvaku family of Ayodhya in the Fyzabad district of Uttar Pradesh. The prince married Sita, the daughter of Janaka, king of Videha in North Bihar. Owing to a palace intrigue, the Ikshvaku prince had to leave his home and go into exile for a period of fourteen years. He repaired to the Dandaka forest in the Deccan with his wife and faithful half-brother Lakshmana. He dwelt for some time on the banks of the Godavari in Panchavati, which is usually identified with Nasik. Here he came into conflict with the Rakshasas or cannibal chieftains who were a source of disturbance to the peaceful hermits of the locality. Among the hostile chieftains were some persons closely related to Ravana, the mighty king of Lanka (Ceylon). That potentate avenged his injured relations by carrying off Sita, wife of Rama, to his island home. In their distress, the Ikshvaku princes allied themselves with Sugriva, Hanuman and other monkey chiefs of Kishkindhya, in the Bellary district of South India and crossed over to Lanka. They killed the Rakshasa king with most of his clan and rescued the princess Sita.
As the period of Rama’s exile was now over, he returned with his wife and brother to Ayodhya where he was warmly received by his half-brother Bharata in whose favour he had been made to relinquish his rights. Meanwhile people came to question the propriety of taking back a princess who had long been kept confined by a Rakshasa king. To silence the unreasonable clamour of the multitude, Rama had to banish his faithful consort, the ideal of Indian womanhood. The duty of a Raja, according to Hindu notions, was always to please his subjects who were his “children”. The virtuous royal lady found a shelter in the hermitage of Valmiki, where she gave birth to the twins, Kusa and Lava, who subsequently returned to their ancestral home and succeeded to their heritage.
It is difficult to say if there is any kernel of historical truth underneath this tale of a prince’s adventures in the land of cannibals and monkeys. Rama and Sita are names met with in the Vedic literature, though not always as appellations of human beings. They are, however, in no way connected in the Vedic texts with the illustrious lines of the Ikshvakus or the Videhas. The name of Ravana is absolutely unknown to Brahmanical or non-Brahmanical literature till we come to the epics themselves or to works like the Kautilya Arthasastra, which show acquainance with the epics. It is, however, possible that Ikshvaku princes played a leading part in the colonisation of the Far South of India, as names of Ikshvaku kings figure prominently in the early inscriptions of Southern India. Whether the name of Ikshvaku was first popularised in the south by princes from Ayodhya, or by followers of the Sakya teacher of Kapilavastu, who also claimed Ikshvaku descent, must remain an open question.
The kernel of the Mahabharata seems to be the victory of the Pandus, helped by Krishna and the Panchalas, over the Kurus proper, the sons of Dhritarashtra Vaichitravirya, a king mentioned already in the Kathaka recension of the Yajur Veda. The epic is often mentioned as the “tale of victory” (Jayanama itihasa). Of the leading figures on the side of the victors the name of one, Krishna, son of Vasudeva and Devaki, is mentioned in the Chhandogya Upanishad and the latest book of the Taittiriya Aranyaka. In the latter text he is identified with the god Vishnu or Narayana. The name of another victor, Arjun, is alluded to in the Vajasaneyi recension of the Yajur Veda and the Satapatha Brahmana. In the Brahmana he is identified with Indra, and in the epic he is the son of Indra. But the Brahmana identification of Arjuna with Indra is on a par with the identification in the Aranyaka of Vasudeva, i.e. Krishna, son of Vasudeva, with Vishnu, and cannot be adduced to support the view that he was from the beginning nothing but a Brahmanic god. The ruin of the Kurus is hinted at in the Chhandogya Upanishad and one of the Srauta Sutras. Among their principal enemies were the Srinjayas, and the Kuru hostility to this people is alluded to in the Satapatha Brahmana.
According to the story related in the Mahabharata, King Vichitravirya of Hastinapura, in the Kuru country, identified with a place in the Meerut district, had sons named Dhritarashtra and Pandu. Dhritarashtra was born blind and hence Pandu succeeded to the throne. He died in the lifetime of his elder brother, leaving five sons, Yudhishthira, Bhimasena, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva. Dhritarashtra had more than a hundred children, of whom the eldest was Duryodhana. The sons of Pandu married Draupadi, daughter of the king of Panchala. The third prince, Arjuna, married also Subhadra, sister to Krishna who belonged to the powerful Yadava confederacy of Mathura and Dvaraka (in Kathiawar). The Pandus claimed a share of their paternal kingdom. They were given the Khandava forest to they south of the Kuru kingdom, where they built the stately city of Indraprastha, near modern Delhi. At the instance of Krishna they overthrew Jarasandha, the powerful king of Magadha, who was seeking to establish his own supremacy. The Magadhan ruler had carried off hundreds of princes as prisoners to the fastness of Girivraja with a view to offering them as victims in a horrid rite. The Pandus now effected conquests in all directions and laid claim to the rank of paramount rulers, performing the Rajasuya, which was now a sacrifice of imperial inauguration. The prosperity of their rivals roused the jealousy of the sons of Dhritarashtra. They invited Yudhishthira, the eldest among the Pandu princes, to a game of dice, secured his defeat, and sought to enslave Draupadi. The Pandu queen was dragged to the open court and there subjected to the the grossest insults. The Pandus were next sent into exile for a period of thirteen years. At the end of the period the five brothers demanded the return of their kingdom but met with a refusal. Thereupon the rival cousins engaged in a deadly conflict on the field of Kurukshetra. The Kuru host, led by Bhishma, Drona, Karna and other mighty warriors, was destroyed. The Pandus with their allies, the Panchalas and Srinjayas, also suffered terrible losses, but they succeeded in going back to their kingdom.
Although there is no clear reference in the extant Vedic texts to the battle of Kurukshetra, we have distinct hints in some of the Brahmanas, Upanishads and Srauta Sutras of the hostility between the Kurus and the Srinjayas, the disasters threatening the Kurus and their final expulsion from Kurukshetra. The name Pandu is not mentioned in Vedic literature, but we have references to Arjuna, Parikshit and Janamejaya, and the first two have already been deified in some of the later Vedic texts. That the Pandus were a historic tribe or clan is proved by the testimony of Ptolemy in whose time they occupied a portion of the Punjab.
Both the Kurus and the Pandus are frequently represented by epic bards as violating the knightly code of honour. The unchivalrous deeds of the Pandus are often attributed by the Kuru chronicler to the instigation of Krishna, just as the misdeeds of Ajatasatru are ascribed by Buddhist writers to Devadatta, the schismatic cousin of the Buddha. The Buddha himself is accused by Puranic chroniclers of having beguiled the demons. The Bhagavatas, the followers of Krishna, were not regarded as quite orthodox even in the time of Sankaracharya, and that may account for the attitude that a section of the Kuru bards adopted towards the Yadava chief, whom they regarded as a vratya (outside the pale). It is difficult to believe that the great poets, philosophers and devoted worshippers who produced the Bhagavad Gita and laid the utmost stress on the virtues of dama (self-restraint), tyaga (renunciation) and apramada (vigilance) in an inscription of the second century B.C., could have been aware of the dark deeds that are attributed to their lord and his closest associates in battle-songs that find a place in the extant epic. That some of the battle-books were revised at a later period is proved by references to the Yavanas and the Sakas.
The Mahabharata is not merely a ” song of victory,” it is a Purana-Samhita, a collection of old legends, and an Itivritta or tradition account of high-souled kings and pious sages, of dutiful wives and beautiful maids. We have charming and edifying stories like those of Sakuntala, and Savitri, of Nala and Sibi. Side by side with these we have the thrilling lays of Amba and Vidula. In the first book the epic claims to be a Sastra or authoritative manual laying down rules of conduct for the attainment of trivarga or the three great aims animating all human conduct. Dharma (moral and religious duties), Artha (material wealth) and Kama (pleasures of the flesh). Finally it claims to be a Moksha-sastra pointing the way of salvation to mankind. Manuals of a didactic character are chiefly found in the later books. Among the religious poems that form part of the epic, the most famous is the Bhagavad Gita or the “Song of the Lord,” which constitutes the bed-rock of Hindu theism.