Lectures On The Ramayana

The thirty lectures on the Ramayana which are published here was delivered by the late Rt. Hon. V.S. Srinivasa Sastri under the auspices of the Madras Samskrit Academy, in the Madras Sanskrit College grounds. The series began on the 5th April, 1944 and concluded on 8th November, 1944. The Academy had made special arrangements for taking shorthand reports of these lectures with a view to publish them eventually in book-form. Srinivasa Sastri has dealt with all the leading characters in the Ramayana with the deepest love and reverence. Passage of great beauty expressing the most sublime thoughts and sentiments are gathered and explained by the author in his own inimitable style. Nothing can be so beautiful as the way in which he closes his lectures. Speaking of Sri Rama's coronation at the end. "But the real coronation is in our hearts," he says with fervour" "Rama and Sita should be crowned in our hearts, enthroned in our hearts. Let them govern your thoughts and regulate your lives. At all important occasions, remember them and then you cannot go wrong." No one can deny these lectures are a most valuable contribution to our literature, and the author will be justly remembered more for his lectures on the Ramayana than for anything else.