Ramayana Book Two: Ayodhya (Clay Sanskrit Library) (Bk. 2)

The books line up on my shelf like bright Bodhisattvas ready to take tough questions or keep quiet company. They stake out a vast territory, with works from two millennia in multiple genres: aphorism, lyric, epic, theater, and romance. --Willis G. Regier, The Chronicle ReviewNo effort has been spared to make these little volumes as attractive as possible to readers: the paper is of high quality, the typesetting immaculate. The founders of the series are John and Jennifer Clay, and Sanskritists can only thank them for an initiative intended to make the classics of an ancient Indian language accessible to a modern international audience. --The Times Higher Education SupplementThe Clay Sanskrit Library represents one of the most admirable publishing projects now afoot.... Anyone who loves the look and feel and heft of books will delight in these elegant little volumes. --New CriterionPublished in the geek-chic format. --BookForumVery few collections of Sanskrit deep enough for research are housed anywhere in North America. Now, twenty-five hundred years after the death of Shakyamuni Buddha, the ambitious Clay Sanskrit Library may remedy this state of affairs. --TricycleThe king decides to abdicate in favor of Rama; but just as the celebrations reach their climax, a court intrigue forces Rama and Sita into fourteen years banishment; they dutifully accept their fate, and go off to the jungle. The other brothers refuse to benefit from his misfortune, which leaves nobody to run the city; eventually one of them is persuaded to act as regent, but only consents to do so on condition that he lives outside the city and acts in RamaÆs name.Ay'dhya is Book Two of Valm'ki's national Indian epic, The Ramßyana. The young hero Rama sets out willingly from the capital with wife and brother for a fourteen-year banishment, which will entail great suffering and further difficult choices in the books ahead. Of the seven books of this great Sanskrit epic, Ay'dhya is the most human, and it remains one of the best introductions to the social and political values of traditional India.Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC FoundationFor more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.orgValmiki is the author of 'Ramayana Book Two: Ayodhya (Clay Sanskrit Library) (Bk. 2)', published 2005 under ISBN 9780814767160 and ISBN 0814767168.