Kamba Ramayanam - Yuddha Kandam Set of 2 Volumes (An Old and Rare Book)

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An epic task has been undertaken and completed with the translation of the Yuddha Kandam by Prof. P.S.Sundaram. The Government of Tamil Nadu and its Department of Tamil Develop ment and Culture may justly be proud at this signal achievement - that is, their success in presenting the great classic in Tamil, Kamba Ramayanam to the English speaking world at large. Through this translation, Kamban and his great classic have now acquired the widest acclaim among millions of English speakers scattered all over the world.

Dr. Awai Natarajan, now Vice-Chancellor of the Tamil University has successfully discharged the office of the great Tamil by pressing into service the right bilingual scholars to bring out the glory and greatness of the ancient Tamil Classics in good English version, for the delectation of not only Tamils but also non-Tamil readers in English, thus making possible their royal passage to a larger world. In a way, this admirable endeavour can be said to be a massive literary export for the benefit of others in the world outside exhibiting the abiding involvement of our poet-prophets in the social, cultural, ethical, religious and spiritual consciousness of our people.

The Yuddhakandam, the sixth of the seven cantos of Valmiki's Ramayanam, is the climax to which the incarna tion of God Vishnu as a mortal Rama leads. Rama came into our world in order to destroy Ravana and, with the end of Ravana, in the battle which took place between him and Rama, the story comes to its logical conclusion. The life of man, says Chesterton, can be looked upon as a jour ney or as a battle. In the Ilied it is portrayed as a battle, in the Odyssey as a journey. In the two older epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, as in the later Virgil's Aeneid, it is both a journey and a battle. What impresses Valmiki is the scale on which that great battle betweeen Rama and Ravana was fought. As the sky can be compared only to the sky, he says, the or an ocean to an ocean, so the fight between Rama and Ravana can be compared only to itself, nothing else even to be conceived of on those terms.

There are those who doubt whether the seventh canto of Valmiki's Ramayana the Uttarakandam, which is in the nature of an appendix, was really part of the original work written by Valmiki, or was only a sequel added on by some other author. In any case, Kamban has not rendered that into Tamil, and a Tamil Uttarakandam which exists is attributed to a different poet, namely Otta Kuttar

**Contents and Sample Pages**