मूल The Text — Vālmīki's Rāmāyaṇa, entire

मूल The Text Vālmīki's poem in the critical text — and, verse by verse, what has been written beside it.

The whole poem, unabridged

The text, and everything set beside it

Seven books in Devanagari and IAST, carried from the Tokunaga–Smith electronic transcription of the Baroda critical edition. Every word is parted and glossed, the prose order given and the verse translated throughout the poem; the lines that carry weight are commented — plus a plain summary of each sarga, so you always know where you are.

{{ nBooks }} books · काण्ड {{ nSargas }} sargas · सर्ग {{ nVerses }} verses · श्लोक {{ nHemi }} hemistichs

{{ beginLabel }} Choose a book ↓

कोश

What a verse carries

Nine layers, each written separately and each named the way the tradition names it. All nine are written: the mūla and its transliteration over the whole poem, and the words, prose order, meaning and सारांश on every sarga; व्याख्या and the inner reading stand on selected verses, which is a policy and not a gap; पाठ notes where a printed reading is doubtful. Every coverage figure on this page is read from the data at load, never typed.

मूल The verse itselfDevanagari, set as a manuscript sets it — two hemistichs to a śloka, no editorial punctuation added. {{ covMula }}

IAST TransliterationThe same line in roman with full diacritics, for anyone who reads the sounds but not the script. A toggle in the reader shows or hides it. every verse

पद Word by wordEvery word parted at its sandhi and compound seams, each with its own transliteration and English sense — a tile you can read across. {{ covGloss }}

अन्वय Prose orderThe verse rearranged into the order Sanskrit prose would use — the traditional first step in construing a śloka. The word tiles reorder to match it. {{ covGloss }}

अर्थ MeaningA close English rendering of the verse — plain, not versified, and answerable word for word to the tiles above it. {{ covGloss }}

व्याख्या CommentaryWhy the verse is built the way it is: a chosen word, a metrical turn, a legal or ethical point. Written only where the verse asks for it — the tick rail beside the text shows which verses those are. selected verses

रहस्य The inner readingWhat the tradition hears under the plain sense. Kept in its own fold, shut until you ask for it, so it never crowds the literal meaning. In the Sundarakāṇḍa a second reading stands beside the first — Ānandaghana's kriyā-yoga account, named on the About page — and where the two differ both are left standing. selected verses

पाठ Notes on the textWhere a printed reading is in doubt — a lost syllable, a hemistich that counts wrong, a variant worth knowing. Footnoted at the foot of the sarga, never mixed into the commentary. where needed

सारांश The sarga in proseA summary of the whole chapter at its head, so you can read one sarga knowing what it is for — and skim a book without losing the thread. {{ covSum }}

उदाहरण

One verse, entire

1.1.1

The first verse of the poem, with every layer above it turned on at once. This is the whole apparatus — in the reader it opens a verse at a time, on a tap.

मूल

तपःस्वाध्यायनिरतं तपस्वी वाग्विदां वरम्

नारदं परिपप्रच्छ वाल्मीकिर्मुनिपुंगवम्

tapaḥsvādhyāyanirataṃ tapasvī vāgvidāṃ varam · nāradaṃ paripapraccha vālmīkir munipuṃgavam

पद

अन्वय

अर्थ

व्याख्या

पाठ

Open this sarga in the reader →

काण्ड

The seven books

A book opens on its own front page — what it is about, what it asks, its episodes, and a grid of every sarga in it. The bar is the book's length against the longest, Yuddhakāṇḍa.

पठन

How to read it here

Tap a verse The line opens into its words, its prose order and its meaning. Tap again to close it and read on.

The spine, on the left Seven marks drawn to the length of the seven books, with a dot for where you are. On a narrow screen the picker in the header does the same work.

The ticks, on the right One tick per verse of the sarga — longer and gold where a verse carries a व्याख्या, so you can see the commented lines before you reach them.

Keep a verse स्मृति — anything you keep is listed at the head of its sarga and stays across books and visits. Your place is remembered without asking.

Search anything ⌘K opens the palette: a name, a phrase, or an address like 2.18.36. Diacritics are optional — “sita” finds Sītā.

Two materials The circle in the header turns the page from vermilion to sandalwood paper — the same text, lit for evening or for daylight.

प्रमाण

Where the text comes from

The mūla is the Tokunaga–Smith electronic transcription of the Baroda critical edition, carried here unaltered, with its transliteration generated from the same source. Nothing in the poem is paraphrased, shortened or reordered. What is preserved is that digital witness: Smith's own statement cautions that the transcription has not had rigorous scrutiny and still contains errors, and no page here has been collated against a printed volume. The printed critical apparatus and the appendices are not included.

The study layer — words, prose order, meaning, commentary, summaries — is written for this lab, sarga by sarga, and checked by machine for the things a machine can check: that every glossed word occurs in its verse, that the prose order is a permutation of it, that no verse is silently skipped. Where a printed reading is doubtful it is reported in a पाठ note rather than corrected in silence.

On the sarga titles

The critical text carries no sarga titles. The ones you see are harvested from a printed translation and aligned to the critical text by reading, never by number — the numbering of the two differs, and matching them arithmetically would mislabel whole stretches of a book.

The study layer is written for all 606 sargas; it has not been through outside expert review. This is a study edition, not a published critical apparatus. Read the disclaimer for what that means, and treat the commentary as one reader's construing — argued, citable, and open to correction.

{{ ctaLabel }} शाला The Lab beside the text →