The Ramayana of Valmiki is the oldest work which gives the story of Rama.  According to the German Indologist H. Jacobi, Valmiki composed the Ramayana somewhere between the 8th and 6th century B.C. but these dates bear no resemblence to other evidence of the actual occurance of the epic.  All the later Rama literature consisting of numerous dramas and poems is indebted to Valmiki.  These works, therefore, have no independent value of their own, so far as the historicity of Rama is concerned.

The question that naturally arises is this.  Are there any works in Sanskrit literature which alludes to Rama in some way and which are older than the Ramayana or whose material has not been borrowed from the Ramayana?  Fortunately there are a number of such works, and we shall now examine them to find if they can help in solving our problem.  According to the Ramayana, Rama belonged to the Iksvaku Dynasty.  The genealogy of Iksvaku kings is given in the 12 Puranas and all of them agree in assigning a definite place to Rama in this genealogy.  Although these Puranas are quite late in their present form, scholars are agreed that their genealogical accounts are based on the records of the Sutas (‘Bards’) who were attached to the courts of kings in the Vedic Age.

The skeptical reader may not feel satisfied with the evidence of works which are themselves late even if they are believed to contain very ancient material.  Luckily we have at our disposal the testimony of works that are definitely older than the Ramayana.  The Vedic literature which belongs to a period much anterior to the Ramayana mentions many kings of the Iksvaku Dynasty to which Rama belonged.  Among the ancestors of Rama the names of Iksvaku, Mandhatr, Purukutsa, Trasadasyu and Tryaruna are found in the most ancient work of Indian literature, viz. the RgVeda.  The names of Hariscandra and his son Rohita are found in the Aitareya Brahmana and the name of Bhagiratha occurs in the Jaiminiya-Upanishad-Brahmana.  Among the descendants of Rama, the name of Hiranyanabha occurs in the Prasna-Upanishad, where he is expressly called Kausalya, i.e. King of Kosala.

The mention of the names of a number of Rama’s ancestors and descendants without the mention of his own name may still cause a lurking doubt in the minds of readers about his historicity.  Luckily we are in a position to remove even this lurking doubt.  The name of Rama himself occurs in a hymn of the RgVeda along with those of three other kings, Duhsima, Vena and Prthu.  The fact that he is called ‘mighty’ shows that he had earned fame for his valorous deeds even at the time of the composition of this hymn.  Since the Indian literature knows of no famous king of ancient India bearing the name of Rama other than the hero of the Ramayana, this RgVedic king can be none other than him.  Thus the mention of Rama and of so many of his ancestors and descendants in the Vedic literature proves his historicity beyond a shadow of doubt.

Two questions, however, still remain to be answered.  If Rama was a historical king, when and where did he rule?  As far as the period when he ruled is concerned, both the RgVeda and the Puranas agree in assigning him to the later Vedic Age.  His name occurs in the 10th and last book of the RgVeda, which is regarded by all Vedic scholars to contain the latest hymns of the collection.  These hymns were actually composed in the later Vedic Age.  Thus according to the testimony of the RgVeda, Rama ruled somewhere in the later Vedic Age circa 2500bc to 2100bc.

Let us now examine the Puranic evidence.  The Puranas have divided the history of ancient India into 4 Yugas (‘Periods’).  What we call the RgVedic Age was divided by the Puranas into 2 periods called Krta and Treta as is clear from the occurrence in the RgVeda of the names of kings assigned to these ages by the Puranas.  The later Vedic Age was called the Dvapara Age and the Post-Vedic Age which began soon after the Mahabharata War was called the Kali Age.  Since Rama is believed to have lived at the end of the Treta Age with which began the Later Vedic Period, the Puranas are in complete agreement with the testimony of the RgVeda. 

Here we must pause to remove a widespread misconception.  The concept of the 4 Yugas had originally nothing to do with the cosmological scheme of Kalpas and Manvantaras.  The British historian F.E. Pargiter was the first to point out the difference which the older Puranas make between the cosmological periods of Kalpas and Manvantaras on the one hand and the 4 Yugas on the other.  This is what he said in his book, Ancient Indian Historical Tradition (p. 175): “It is declared repeatedly that these ages prevailed in India (BharataVarsha)”.  When therefore A. R. Khan says (vide his article “In the Name of History” published in the Indian Express dated February 25, 1990) that “there was no habitation in the Treta Yuga in the area where Ayodhya is located”, he is only betraying his total unawareness of the original concept of the four Yugas.

The last question that needs our attention is concerning the region where Rama ruled.  Vedic evidence makes it clear that the early Iksvakus ruled a region far from Kosala or the modern Awadh.  A hymn occurring in the 8th book of the RgVeda and attributed to a Rsi named Sobhari praises the gifts which the Iksvaku king Trasadasyu conferred on the Rsi on the bank of the River Suvastu, the modern Swat.  Further the fact that the seat of the government of King Hariscandra is called, a village in the Aitareya-Brahmana shows that Ayodhya had still not come into existence.  The first king of the Iksvaku Dynasty who according to Vedic evidence ruled in the Gangetic region was Bhagiratha, for he is clearly mentioned in the Jaiminiya-Upanishad-Brahmana as a neighbor of the Kuru-Pancalas.  The Puranas confirm the Vedic evidence by regarding Bhagiratha as the discoverer of the River Ganga which clearly mentions that he was the first Iksvaku King to found a kingdom in the Gangetic region.  From his time onwards, the Iksvaku kings seem to have ruled in the region of Kosala and one of his descendants, Hiranyanabha, is expressly called Kausalya, that is, King of Kosala, in the Prasna-Upanishad.  It is difficult to say when exactly the city of Ayodhya was founded but it had definitely come into existence in the later Vedic Age since it is mentioned in a hymn of the AtharvaVeda.  We therefore need not doubt that the city Ayodhya existed in the time of King Dasharatha and that Rama was born here.

Before closing the article, it is necessary to examine the views of the  archeologist, Dr. B.B. Lal.  He makes the excavations at Ayodhya the excuse for creating a new tradition according to which contrary to the firm, well-established and unanimous literary evidence of millenniums, Rama was born later than the heroes of the Mahabharata War.  Now it is clear that the painted grayware (PGW) culture, if it is Indo-Aryan, represents not an early but a late phase of Vedic Aryan civilization.  The fact that excavations in the lowest levels of the sites connected with the Mahabharata Epic such as Hastinapura, Barnawa, Bairat, Indarpat, Panipat, Sonepat and Beghpat have revealed the remnants of this culture, supports this contention.  Hastinapura, Indraprastha and Viratanagara were the latest in the series of towns that arose during the Vedic Period and were actually founded in the period when the PGW culture flourished.  When they were deserted or destroyed, no new town arose on their ruins, with the result that the culture associated with the time when they were founded remained preserved.  On the other hand, according to the unanimous testimony of the Puranas, which is confirmed by Vedic evidence, Kusasthala (modern Kannauj), Varanasi and Ayodhya were the most ancient of the towns founded by Aryan kings.  These cities were several times destroyed and everytime new cities arose with the same names on the sites of the old ones.  There can be no doubt that the earliest cities of these names have completely perished and what the excavations have yielded is the culture of very late cities of these names.  If it is asked why no remnants of the civilization of the time when these cities were founded have been discovered, we would answer by a counter question.  Why is it that no remnants of the RgVedic civilization have been found in the Punjab which was the first home of the Indo-Aryans according to the clear testimony of the RgVeda?  Obviously the RgVedic Aryans were materially much less advanced than the Indus Valley people and their houses and other things were made of perishable material which could not survive the onslaught of weather and other contingencies in the course of millenniums.

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