The Ramayana — An Enduring Epic and Its Coexistence with Science
My first memories of The Ramayana are as a young boy about 6-7 years of age, when it was telecast on Indian national television, ‘Doordarshan’ in the late 1980s. It was clear to me that this was an important show because everybody in the family as well as extended family were glued to it every Sunday, when it was on air. My father to reiterate the events of each episode for us to make sure we understood what was happening and give us the larger context. As I grew up, I learnt more and more about the Ramayana, Rama, Sita, Lakshman, Hanuman, Ravana and other characters. I had definitely learnt the key morals and teachings from it and started revering it as teenager and well into my 20s and 30s.
It’s never gotten too far away from me since then as there have been many different movies, books, articles, YouTube videos and most recently a television series playing Ramayana again to us. A lot of my main religious festivals, ceremonies, activities, holy songs, hymns and verses also derive from it so it’s always a part of my life.
However, when we get busy in living our lives, making a career, having a family, owning a home, etc., we tend to miss taking a step back and seeing the larger picture, much much larger narratives, the context or some fundamental basics of who we are, where we stand, what shapes us, how the world and societies function — i.e the greater civilisational truths. That is the domain the Ramayana exists in, and has been there for over 2500 years.
Few narratives in human history have endured as deeply and widely as the Ramayana. Across millennia, it has transcended geography, language, and ideology to remain one of the most powerful moral and cultural compasses of civilisation. Through different forms of media around us, the story of Rama continues to breathe through the consciousness of millions, even billions. As someone who is trained in science and technology, I care deeply about scientific and rationalist though processes. The question that fascinated my mind and I think resonates with many modern minds — is: how does a story so ancient still command such influence (with Rama arguably being one of the earliest and greatest influencers of the human mind)? And, more importantly, can such a mythic text coexist meaningfully with a scientific worldview without undermining either? I try to answer these questions through this post.
Endurance
The endurance of the Ramayana is not an accident; it is a testament to its adaptive genius. It survives because it never fossilised. Every generation retells and adapts to it in its own form, sensibilities, language, and moral vocabulary. From Valmiki’s Sanskrit original and Tulsidas’ ‘Ramcharitmanas’ to modern multimedia retellings and reinterpretations from authors, directors, producers, philosophers, the ethical essence still remains the same. The core of the Ramayana — the struggle to uphold ‘dharma’ (righteousness) in a world of moral complexity — remains universal and timeless. It is not just a religious narrative; it is a mirror that reflects the ethical dilemmas of every age. In every age, the path is the same, the guidance the same, the outcomes the same. So it always withstands the test of time.
- Rama’s journey is an allegory for every individual’s moral, emotional and some times even physical voyages — the trials of duty, sacrifice, and integrity.
- On the other hand, Ravana’s fall is a reminder of intellect corrupted by ego, again something that we see in every era.
- Sita’s endurance embodies inner strength and purity under adversity.
- Hanuman symbolises devotion (bhakti), not blind submission.
- Lakshman and Bharat symbolise selflessness and sacrifice.
- These archetypes transcend time and creed because they represent the enduring emotions and feelings within the human psyche — between desire and duty, ego and humility, love and justice. It covers the spectrum of human emotional thoughts.
The story’s endurance also lies in its extraordinary transmission through every medium of Indian civilisation. It is both literature and living ritual. Few texts have this multi-sensory continuity — each retelling becomes both preservation and renewal. Generations after generations learn, are influenced by, revere and worship the same events, concepts, characters from the Ramayana. The epic’s message of duty and righteousness, its aesthetics and moral vision, still feel as relevant in today’s social media and post modern world as it did in the forest of Dandaka in the ‘Treta Yuga’. It is woven into the fabric of life, the ways of life (i.e. Hinduism), millions live and breathe, espouse and evangelise, decode and interpret it on a daily basis. It feels woven into the very DNA of its followers, shaping generational evolution itself.
Coexistence with Science
Yet, the endurance of the Ramayana also invites a more complex question: how should a rational mind interpret such a text today? How does one reconcile the devotion and emotions it inspires with the scientific worldview that demands empirical evidence? The tension arises because we tend to confuse literal truth with symbolic truth. Science investigates phenomena that can be measured, repeated, and falsified. The Ramayana, on the other hand, belongs to a different cognitive domain — it reveals meaning through metaphor and symbolism. To read it as one reads a laboratory report is to misunderstand its purpose. The bridge between faith and reason begins with accepting that there are multiple ways of knowing — empirical, rational, experiential, as well as symbolic — each valid within its context.
This doesn’t mean abandoning reason to embrace blind faith. On the contrary, when approached with discernment, the Ramayana reveals a deeply rational structure. Rama’s actions are guided not by superstition but by ethical reasoning — choosing principle over comfort, justice over emotion. The dilemmas he faces mirror those explored in modern ethics and psychology: conflicting duties, leadership in crisis, sacrifice, loyalty, and justice. Rama leads by example and does not prescribe without first doing it himself. That is why he is so well understood and revered.
- From a scientific perspective, many of the events described in the Ramayana — the flying chariots, the ‘vanara’ armies, or the bridge to Lanka — seem improbable or unverifiable. But treating those details as literal things misses the point.
- The language of myth is metaphorical; it encodes meaning in poetic form.
- A rational reader can appreciate the Ramayana without demanding that every event conform to physical laws, without expecting everything to be literal truth.
- Just as quantum theory uses abstract models to describe invisible realities, mythology uses metaphor to express intangible truths.
- In that sense, the Ramayana operates not against science but alongside it — as a parallel mode of understanding human and cosmic order. Much like existing in a higher dimension that a human brain cannot reconcile physically but can still understand in theory.
What makes this coexistence possible is the acknowledgment that science and spirituality address different dimensions of truth. Science explains the how — the mechanisms of existence — while the Ramayana explores the why — the purpose and ethics of existence. The first gives us control over the material world; the second gives us orientation within the moral and emotional world. The two can and must coexist, because a civilisation that has only technology without meaning, or faith without reason, becomes lopsided. The modern challenge is not choosing between them but learning to let them converse — one grounding us in fact, the other guiding us in value.
In fact, the Indian philosophical tradition never treated reason and faith as enemies. The distinction between “scientific” and “spiritual” is a Western construct; the Indian mind has always sought synthesis. The Ramayana continues that synthesis in narrative form. It speaks to the rationalist as a psychological allegory and to the devotee as divine revelation — both readings enriching, neither invalidating the other.
The Question of Historical and Empirical Truth
While the philosophical coexistence of science and faith offers one way to understand the Ramayana, an equally important question is its historical and empirical validity — how do we interpret its literal descriptions through a scientific lens? When we ask whether the Ramayana is “true” in the scientific or historical sense, we must first clarify what kind of truth we’re referring to. Science deals with empirical truth — that which can be observed, measured, and verified. History seeks documented truth, relying on archaeological, linguistic, and textual evidence. Mythology, however, operates in the realm of symbolic and psychological truth — the kind that encodes meaning rather than measurement.
The problem begins when we expect one form of truth to behave like another. When rationalists demand radiocarbon dates for Ravana’s Lanka or aerodynamic proof for the ‘Pushpaka Vimana’, they are applying empirical expectations to a text that was never meant as a chronicle in the modern sense. Conversely, when believers insist that every verse is literal fact, they trap the epic in a defensive rigidity that invites scientific rejection. The real insight lies in recognising that myth and science are not competing systems of knowledge — they are complementary modes of understanding reality.
Bridging the Gap Between Myth and Science
Instead of viewing the Ramayana as either factual history or pure imagination, it helps to see it as a mythic encoding of cultural memory. Myths often preserve the memory of real events, places, and figures — but expressed in the idiom of poetry and moral symbolism. For example:
- The mention of geographical features like rivers, mountains, flora, and fauna in the Ramayana corresponds broadly with real regions of the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka, suggesting that its setting was rooted in actual landscapes.
- The concept of vanaras (often translated as “monkeys”) may have referred not to literal monkeys but to indigenous forest tribes, a symbolic way of distinguishing settled civilisation from tribal societies.
- The “bridge to Lanka” (Rama Setu) exists as a natural formation visible even today, though its construction is likely geological rather than engineered — yet the very existence of such a formation could have inspired the mythic retelling.
- These examples show how mythic language can preserve kernels of history — symbolic truth layered over empirical fragments. The ancients may not have recorded events as we do today, but they encoded wisdom through story, preserving memory through meaning rather than measurement.
In that sense, the Ramayana does not fail scientific scrutiny; it simply speaks another language — that of civilisational memory, not carbon-dated history. To bridge the gap, we don’t need to prove the text line-by-line; we need to understand that both science and mythology are trying to make sense of reality — one through external evidence, the other through internal resonance.
Science, by its nature, must question, test, and doubt. Faith, by its nature, must trust, intuit, and believe. Yet both arise from the same human impulse — to seek truth and coherence in a complex universe. The great misunderstanding is that only one can be true at a time. In reality, each operates on different wavelengths of knowing.
When science cannot yet explain something, it doesn’t negate its existence — it only reminds us of the current limits of our understanding. Ancient civilisations used symbolic language to describe realities they experienced but couldn’t express in scientific terms — energy, consciousness, moral law. The Ramayana’s “miracles” may not defy science; they may simply describe dimensions of reality in a vocabulary predating the scientific method.
Thus, to the scientific mind, the right stance isn’t to believe everything literally, but to interpret it intelligently. To the faithful mind, the right stance isn’t to reject science, but to recognise that scientific language doesn’t invalidate spiritual meaning. Both can coexist — as long as we allow multiple truths to illuminate the same reality from different sides.
Conclusion
The endurance of the Ramayana, then, is not simply a triumph of religious devotion but a triumph of civilisational adaptability. It endures because it evolves — because it invites reinterpretation while remaining rooted in moral clarity. Every retelling revalidates its core message: that dharma — truth, justice, and self-discipline — is the axis of life, irrespective of time or belief. In this way, the epic bridges — faith and reason, poetry and logic, myth and history.
- To those who view the Ramayana as myth, its persistence across three thousand years of cultural evolution is itself empirical evidence of its psychological truth.
- To those who see it as divine history, they must understand its spiritual impact and how it shapes our psychology rather than take it as literal truth about the past.
- But perhaps the real significance lies in the middle path — in recognising that what survives this long, and continues to shape minds and morals, must be speaking to something fundamentally real within the human brain. The scientific temperament need not deny that; it only needs to understand how such truths operate.
- If we take this integrative view, the Ramayana becomes not a challenge to science but a companion to it — a text that enriches our understanding of the human and moral dimensions of existence. Its historical layers may be blurred, its metaphors hyperbolic, but its psychological and civilisational truth remains self-evident through the endurance of its impact.
Ultimately, the Ramayana endures not because every event in it can be proven, but because every emotion in it can be felt. Its geography may be debated, but its psychology is universal and undeniable. It survives not in the ruins of Ayodhya or Lanka, but in the conscience of people who still believe that truth and virtue must prevail, no matter the odds. And that belief — though unquantifiable — has sustained civilisations. The rational mind can see this not as superstition, but as the enduring architecture of human society.
Further listening and viewing recommendations
Listen to Anup Jalota’s Ramayan 108 Manka on Spotify
Watch this Dhruv Rathee explainer on how to interpret Ramayana (7:14 to 11:30)
