The Birth of the Blue Prince: Rama Comes to Ayodhya

Rama is the hero of the Rāmāyaṇa, one of India’s two great epics, and one of the most widely worshipped figures in Hinduism. He is honoured as an avatar — a descent or incarnation — of the god Vishnu, born as a human prince in the city of Ayodhya. This article tells the story of his birth: why the gods needed him, how a childless king came to have four sons, and what the birth has meant to the tradition ever since. The main source is Vālmīki’s Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa, particularly its first book, the Bāla Kāṇḍa (“the book of childhood”). Later retellings, such as Tulsidas’s Hindi Rāmcaritmānas, tell the same events with some differences, which are noted below.

The trouble with Ravana

The trouble had been going on for a very long time.

Ravana, the ten-headed king of Lanka, was not a simple villain. He was learned in the Vedas, a master of weapons, and — in a tradition that runs through many retellings — a devoted worshipper of Shiva. Through long austerities he had also won a boon from Brahma, the creator god, that made him almost impossible to defeat. That combination made him the most dangerous being in the three worlds, because power and learning without humility and compassion become the opposite of what they seem to promise.

He had conquered the three worlds and driven the gods from their places. Even Indra, king of the gods, was once taken captive in the wars with Lanka — in the Uttara Kāṇḍa this is the work of Ravana’s son Meghanada, who earned the name Indrajit, “conqueror of Indra”, and Indra was released only when Brahma intervened. Ravana had replaced the natural order with his own will, and however much learning adorned that will, he had never seriously asked whether what he wanted was what the world needed.

Why an avatar was needed

The gods gathered and prayed. They came to Vishnu, the preserver, whose role is to restore balance when it has tipped too far. In Vālmīki’s telling, this happens while King Dasharatha’s great sacrifice is under way on earth.

‘We cannot defeat him ourselves,’ Brahma said. ‘His boons protect him from gods and demons and all supernatural beings. But he did not ask for protection against human beings. He thought them too weak to matter.’

That gap in the boon is the heart of the story. Vishnu agreed to help, and to be born as a human being. Traditional commentators and devotees have long drawn meaning from this choice: Rama is presented as living within human limits — feeling grief, needing allies, depending on the love and loyalty of those around him — rather than simply overwhelming his enemies with divine power. He is often called maryādā puruṣottama, “the supreme person who keeps to the bounds of right conduct”, because his life is read as a model of what a human being can be when fully aligned with dharma, the order of right action.

In Vālmīki’s account the gods also prepare to help, taking birth as the monkey and bear heroes (the vānaras) who will later become Rama’s allies — Hanuman among them.

A king without an heir

The kingdom of Kosala, with its capital at Ayodhya, was ruled by King Dasharatha of the solar dynasty — the royal line said to descend from the sun. He was a good and generous king who had spent his life in the right conduct of a ruler, but his heart held one lasting grief: he had no heir. His three queens — Kaushalya, Kaikeyi and Sumitra — had not given him children, and without a son the dynasty he was responsible for would end with him.

The fire ceremony

On the advice of his counsellors, Dasharatha resolved to perform great Vedic sacrifices. A yajña is a ritual offering made into a sacred fire, and the rite chosen was the Putrakameshti — a sacrifice performed out of the desire for sons. It was conducted by the great sage Rishyashringa, a forest-dwelling ascetic famous for the power of his rituals, who had been brought to Ayodhya for this purpose. In Vālmīki’s telling this rite follows a horse sacrifice (aśvamedha) that Dasharatha had also undertaken.

The fire was so powerful that a radiant divine being rose from its flames, carrying a golden vessel filled with pāyasa, a sacred sweet rice pudding.

‘Give this to your queens,’ the being said. ‘Those who eat of it will bear sons who are the answer to a king’s prayer — and much more than that.’

Dasharatha divided the pudding with tender care. In the version found in many popular retellings, Kaushalya received half, Kaikeyi a quarter, and Sumitra the remaining quarter.

Vālmīki’s own account is a little more intricate, and it explains a detail that puzzles many readers. There, Kaushalya receives half; Sumitra receives half of what remains; Kaikeyi receives half of what is left after that; and the last small portion goes again to Sumitra. Because Sumitra ate from the vessel twice, she bore twins. Other retellings divide the pudding in yet other ways, so the details vary, but every version agrees that Kaushalya’s share was the largest.

The birth

Vālmīki gives this moment with a precision the epic rarely uses — not just the tithi (the lunar day) but the sky: the nakṣatra (lunar mansion), the ascendant, and five grahas (planets) in exaltation at once. What the text actually records, and what is recited on the day, is set out in Ram Navami: The Birth of Rama and What Is Recited.

In due course — on the ninth day of the bright fortnight of the month of Chaitra, when the sun stood in Aries and the auspicious nakshatras aligned — Kaushalya gave birth to a son.

He was dark as a rain cloud, which is why devotional art so often paints him blue, with eyes like lotus petals. His face had a radiance that made those who looked at him feel they had seen the sun and the moon at once — something beyond ordinary beauty.

In the heavens, the gods scattered flowers. In the streets of Ayodhya, people who had not yet heard any news found themselves joyful without knowing why, as though the whole atmosphere had changed. Musicians began to play. Women began to sing. Children laughed. Great flocks of birds rose, calling, over the city.

They named him Rama, a name usually explained as “the one who delights” or “the one in whom all rejoice”. In Vālmīki’s account the naming of the four princes is performed by Vasishtha, the royal family’s priest and teacher.

How other retellings tell the birth

In Tulsidas’s Rāmcaritmānas, and in the Sanskrit Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa, the birth is described as a divine appearance. Vishnu first shows himself to Kaushalya in his four-armed form. Overwhelmed, she asks him to set aside that majesty and become an ordinary child she can hold, and he does so, beginning to cry like a newborn. Tulsidas’s hymn describing this scene is sung widely at Ram Navami. Vālmīki’s account is more restrained and presents Rama’s birth in more human terms, although it too makes clear that Vishnu has taken birth.

The four brothers

Soon after, Kaikeyi’s son Bharata was born, and then Sumitra’s twins, Lakshmana and Shatrughna. The tradition understands all four brothers as sharing in Vishnu’s nature, with Rama holding the fullest portion. Among the four princes, everyone who looked at Rama had the impression of seeing someone who slightly exceeded what a prince could be.

Dasharatha watched his sons grow with the particular joy of a father who had waited a long time and received more than he had asked for. Rama was the eldest and the heir, but he was also the kind of child around whom things seemed to fall into place. He was obedient not because he was told to be, but because following what was right came naturally to him. He was brave not because he sought glory, but because turning away from what needed doing was simply not in him.

The brothers paired off in friendship. Lakshmana was Rama’s shadow from birth, unwilling to be separated from his elder brother, his devotion complete and uncomplicated. Where Rama went, Lakshmana went; what Rama needed, Lakshmana provided. In the same way Shatrughna was devoted to Bharata. Together, each pair was more than either brother alone.

What came next

When the princes were still young, the sage Vishvamitra came to court and asked the king to lend him Rama, with Lakshmana, to protect his sacrifices from the demons who kept disrupting them. Dasharatha was reluctant; Vishvamitra was persuasive. The princes went. In the forest, Vishvamitra taught them the use of divine weapons. Rama killed the demoness Tataka and defeated others who attacked the sacrifice.

And they came to Mithila, where King Janaka had a daughter, Sita, and a great bow that no suitor had been able to lift — a riddle that had been waiting for the right answer.

The story that began in a fire ceremony and was announced by flowers from the sky was only just starting. The prince of Ayodhya had arrived in the world, and the world was about to discover what that gift would mean.

Why the birth matters

Rama’s birth is celebrated each year as Ram Navami, on the ninth lunar day of the bright half of Chaitra. Devotees fast, read or listen to the Rāmāyaṇa, sing hymns, and in many temples a small image of the infant Rama is placed in a cradle and rocked at the moment traditionally held to be the hour of his birth. Ayodhya itself draws large numbers of pilgrims on the day. (AdiVeda does not calculate or publish festival dates; please check a local calendar or temple.)

The story is also often read for what it says about the divine and the human. A god chooses to enter the world through an ordinary family’s longing for a child, through a mother’s care and a father’s love, rather than arriving as a conqueror. For many devotees, that is the point: dharma is shown not from a distance but lived out within a human life, beginning in a cradle in Ayodhya.

Read on AdiVeda

• Rama texts and hymns — stotras, mantras and prayers to Rama.
• The Bow That Chose a King: Rama and Sita’s Swayamvar — what happened at Mithila.
• Fourteen Years in the Forest: The Exile of Rama — the turning point of the prince’s life.
• Nama Ramayanam — the whole Rāmāyaṇa retold as a chain of Rama’s names.