01Born on Chaitra Navami
The yajna ended and the seasons turned six times. Then, Bala Kanda says, in the twelfth month, on the ninth day of Chaitra, under the nakshatra Punarvasu, Kausalya bore a son marked with every sign of greatness. Vasishtha named him Rama, the one in whom all delight. He grew up learned in the Vedas and the bow, and gentle with everyone. When Vishvamitra came to take him away to guard a yajna, Dasharatha pleaded that his lotus-eyed boy was not yet sixteen. Vasishtha told the king to let him go, and Rama walked out of Ayodhya for the first time behind a rishi, with Lakshmana at his side.
02A kingdom given up by morning
The coronation was fixed for the day the moon entered Pushya. Rama was called instead to Kaikeyi’s chamber, where his father lay on the floor unable to speak, and Kaikeyi told him the two boons. Valmiki notes that his face did not change, as it had not changed when the kingdom was offered. He said he would have gone to the forest at her word alone, without the king’s command. Then he went to his mother, to Sita, to the people who followed his chariot to the Tamasa. He slipped away from them before dawn so they would not suffer the forest with him.
03A man who was Narayana
Valmiki never hides Rama’s grief. At Pampa, in spring, he weeps for Sita until Lakshmana has to steady him. When the ocean will not answer after three days of his fasting on the shore, he takes up his bow in anger and the sea god rises to show him how to build the setu. After Sita comes through the fire, Brahma and the devas tell him plainly that he is Narayana himself. Rama answers that he knows himself as a man, Rama, the son of Dasharatha, and asks Brahma to tell him who he is. Brahma does, in a hymn that devotees still recite.
04Ram Rajya and the Sarayu
Rama ruled from Ayodhya for eleven thousand years, Yuddha Kanda says, and in that time no widow mourned, no child died before its father, and the rains came on time. When his work on earth was done, Kala came in the guise of an ascetic to remind him. Rama walked to the Sarayu at Gopratara with the people of Ayodhya following, and entered his own Vishnu form in the sight of the devas.
The name Ram is the last word many Hindus hear, chanted on the way to the cremation ground. On 22 January 2024 the murti of Ram Lalla was consecrated in the new temple at his janmabhoomi in Ayodhya.
Famous verses
रामो विग्रहवान् धर्मः साधुः सत्यपराक्रमः। राजा सर्वस्य लोकस्य देवानामिव वासवः॥
Maricha’s warning to Ravana: Rama is dharma in bodily form, good, his valour true; he is king of the whole world as Indra is of the devas.Valmiki Ramayana, Aranya Kanda 37.13