Opinion | Why Understanding Wealth And Prosperity In Valmiki’s Ramayana Is Essential For India
More than just material riches, Valmiki's Ramayana highlights the enduring relevance of dharma, social harmony and righteous leadership as pillars of true national wealth
This year’s Deepawali is the first since the Pran Pratishtha ceremony of the Ram Mandir took place in Ayodhya. For the first time in 500 years, devotees of Ram are rediscovering celebration, faith, and rejuvenation at the temple in Ram Janmabhoomi. This historic rediscovery itself encapsulates civilisational, material, spiritual, and cultural prosperity—concepts central to the worship of Goddess Lakshmi on Deepawali. This brings us to a question: How are wealth and prosperity represented in Maharishi Valmiki’s Ramayana?
Ayodhya was a haven for the celebration of the Vedas and for scholars who delved into them. Scholars and learned individuals held a special place in Maharaja Dashrath’s Ayodhya. Dashrath’s nurturing of Ayodhya simultaneously conserved the blissful integration of dynamic virtues of life. The prodigious confluence of the ‘profound’ and the ‘pragmatic’ in Ayodhya is highlighted in the Balkaand of the epic.
related stories
Maharishi Valmiki describes Ayodhya as Mahapuri, a city defined by multi-faceted prosperity that encompasses wealth, the joy of happiness, and enduring preservation, which define the Ikshvaku heritage. Highways, ornate gateways and doors, and markets abundant in weapons and instruments reflect the material strength and prosperity of the time.
The Balkaand mentions Dashrath’s efforts to rejuvenate Ayodhya through dharmic, structural, aesthetic, and organisational interventions and embellishments. The city’s wealth is evident in the abundance of gems, the pristine and sweet quality of water, the bountiful paddy rice, and the constant echo of musical instruments that envelop Ayodhya. These details suggest a vision of wealth encompassing all aspects of prosperity—from the fertility of the land to security and spiritual fulfillment.
The portrayal of women as facets of prosperity conveys a tone of exclusivity, as their presence enhances the beauty of Ayodhya. They also participate in the performing arts, with drama celebrated as a distinguished art form in Ayodhya. Women-led drama groups, as mentioned in Maharishi Valmiki’s Ramayana, skilfully blend abhinaya and dance. This gendered wealth in the arts has contributed to an enduring, intangible cultural heritage.
Ayodhya embodies the meaningful individualisation of its praja as a whole. The ‘mahapuri’ integrates human creativity, culture, material wealth, agricultural abundance, animal wealth (elephants, horses, and cattle), and natural heritage into a cohesive realm.
The most valuable and intriguing form of wealth in Dashrath and Ram’s Ayodhya—often overlooked in retellings of Maharishi Valmiki’s epic—is the wealth of rejuvenation.
What exists must be maintained, preserved, and rejuvenated. This is the unspoken yet visible theme in the efforts of Dashrath, Bharat, and Ram towards Ayodhya—its treasures, reserves, structural countenance, natural heritage, and its esteemed guests, including the vanars; the ‘praja’.
In Valmiki’s Ramayana, the substance of values – generosity and kindness – outweighs the dynamics of accession and victory. Trust-founded friendship, bhakti-bound maitri, warmth-wrapped brotherly bonds: these are wealth. Their preservation is a relentless process, creating intangible wealth that is capable of eventually bridging an ocean and finding a way to Sita.
The consonance between nature, humanity, and animals is wealth. The immersive descriptions of rivers and seasons by Ram and Lakshman during their vanvas – this is wealth. The wealth of nature in different manifestations helps building the setu towards Sita.
In the retelling of events from Ram’s quest leading to the victory over Ravan, the recurring references to Nal and Vishwakarma for their engineered creations—the samudrasetu and the Pushpak viman—are prominent. Upon reaching Bharat’s ashram, Ram instructs the viman (formerly in Ravan’s possession) to return to Kuber. This act of retrieving and returning wealth, with gratitude to its creator, symbolised true wealth.
The convergence of these aspects in Ayodhya—in both Dashrath’s and Ram’s realms—forms the foundation for experimenting with traditional Indic concepts of wealth to foster a stronger and more prosperous India. Here’s why:
First, Ayodhya is where well-being in every aspect of life is seen as integral to the mahapuri itself. What is created, preserved, and maintained by the raja becomes the heritage of the common man—a quality unique to Ayodhya. Today, understanding wealth as heritage and heritage as wealth is essential.
Second, the concept of ‘nationalism’ from a traditional Hindu perspective has faced strong critics, disruptive forces, and significant obstacles. For the nation to overcome these challenges, it’s crucial for those shaping public sensibilities to narrate, reveal, and retell the idea of wealth and prosperity, as reflected in the Ramayana, to the nation’s vast and diverse populace.
Third, the cycle of seva, duty, dharma, preservation, ‘maitri’, and continuity, understood as wealth, can calm chaos and dismantle stagnation across social and caste hierarchies, and geographical boundaries. An internally strong India is an externally strong India in the new world order.
Fourth, Goddess Lakshmi does not abide in stagnation and chaos. India’s pursuit of wisdom, wealth, prosperity, and strength will require receding from the grounds of stagnation and chaos. Maharishi Valmiki’s Ramayana holds clues, concealed within its concept of wealth, that can help to cut through the culture-clutter directed by the West, and the cling and clang of woke cultural-brokeness.
Fifth, Bharat ensures that all existing wealth and prosperity is returned to Ram in an amplified ‘tenfold’ state of glory—a feat achieved through his own adherence to duty, diligence, and dharma towards Ram. This includes military power, representing hard power.
The lamentations of widows (grieving the loss of their husbands) were absent in Ayodhya, as was the fear of disease. Health, the well-being of men and women, and hygiene are distinctly mentioned as hallmarks of life in Ayodhya. In a post-Covid world, the continuation of public health and hygiene, as championed by Modi, is and will continue to be true wealth.
Dashrath’s Ayodhya is home to those people who have lost the support of their clans and those who have faced defeat. It is also home to the mightiest on the battlefield, the sharpest in rhetoric, those who are unassailable, skilled archers, masters of weaponry, and formidable hunters who can subdue even the fiercest of wild animals with either arrows or their own arms (bhujas). This inclusiveness, honouring both the weak and the strong, is itself wealth.
Vishnu, the sustainer of the universe, is embodied by Ram, who, as his manifestation, outwardly reveals divine qualities. As Ram journeys to Lanka and back, he illuminates the divinities he encounters with the strengths of observation, intuition, and memory. He embodies the fullness of discipline and balance – emotional, spiritual, blissful, eternal, and intellectual. This fullness, too, is wealth.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
- Location :
- First Published: