Importance of Ramayana and Mahabharata
India is a land of spiritualism. The monks and the sages declared long long ago before the people of this country that real happiness of life consists in renunciation, love and fellow feelings.
These two great books – the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have been the sources of inspiration to most of the Indians since their composition. These two great epics – the Ramayana and the Mahabharata speak highly of ideal way of life. They teach us what life ought to be.
The characters of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata breathe the sentiments of Indian people and the teachings of these two great epics are being handed down from generation to generation.
The festivals centering round the principal characters of the two epics – Rama and Krishna – exhibit the ideals upheld by the Hindus.
The Ramayana and The Mahabharata are not simply stories of heroism, but they embody the socio-religious ideals of millions of people of India known as Hindus. Rama and Krishna are thought to be incarnations of God and their ways are to the believing Hindu’s the ways of God. They are worshipped in temples and remember in time of stress and strain in national and personal life. The freedom movement of India received huge inspiration from the Gita. Its ideal of doing work without any expectation of result colors the dram of many Indians.
Importance of Ramayana
Ramayana deal with the various aspects of man’s life – love, duty to superiors, treachery, devotion to parents, selflessness and what not.
These characters of Ramayana stand as symbols of love, charity, patriotism, conjugal love, and obedience to parents, self-sacrifice and the like.
The characters of Sita and Urmila stand for ideal womanhood.
The character of Ravana teaches us how a man can ruin himself for his own follies and unholy ambitions.
Dussehra is a great Hindu festival and is celebrated all over India. The festival relates to Rama’s victory over Ravana.
The Ram Navami is a great festival celebrated over a large part of North India.
Importance of Mahabharata
The story of the Mahabharata is well-known to the thousands and millions of Indians through ages.
Everybody knows how the Pandavas were deprived of their legitimate claim for the throne of Hastinapur. Who does not know how Draupadi was insulted in an open court in presence of Bhima, Dronacharyya and others for no fault of hers and how Bhima subsequently took revenge in the battle of Kurukshetra?
It is also not unknown to the people how Krishna took the side of the Pandavas and helped them in winning the great battle of Kurukshetra.
The character of Karna teaches us how to rise to eminence by dint of self-effort and perseverance caring little for the dictates of fate. This character is the emblem of munificence, sacrifice and valor. It appeals to the innermost love of the hearts of the Indians who get lofty idealism add inexhaustible source of inspiration about how a man should be.
The Holi festival though a jubilant spring festival, commemorates Krishna’s heroic exploits. There are a thousand other festivals which relate to Krishna.
There are thousands of temples where Lord Krishna is worshipped. Lord Krishna was one of the central characters in Mahabharata.
Conclusion
Thus the plots and the politics of the Mahabharata are really very absorbing, interesting and exciting to sum up in fire, we may unhesitatingly say that the influences of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata upon the Indians are tremendous and these two great epics of India have been molding the sentiments of the Indian people from time immemorial.
