Ram Navami: The Birth of Rama and What Is Recited

Ram Navami marks the birth of Rama, the prince of Ayodhya whose life is told in the Rāmāyaṇa and who is worshipped as an avatar — a descent into the world — of Vishnu. What makes it unusual among Hindu observances is that the earliest source describes not just the day but the sky: the position of the Moon, the rising sign and the planets, in the manner of a birth chart.

This page sets out what that description says, how the day is kept, and which texts are recited, with links to each one in full.

When it falls

Hindu festivals are fixed by the lunar calendar. The month is divided into a waxing half (Shukla paksha) and a waning half (Krishna paksha), and each half is counted in tithis, lunar days measured by the angle between the Sun and the Moon.

Ram Navami is the Navami of Shukla paksha — the ninth tithi of the waxing half — in the lunar month of Chaitra, and the observance centres on madhyāhna, the middle of the day, rather than on dawn or dusk. The midday focus follows the tradition that Rama was born at noon; Tulsidas’s Rāmcharitmānas describes the birth as taking place at midday, when it was neither too cold nor too hot.

That is a tithi and a time of day, not a calendar date. See what a tithi is, and what a panchang is for the almanac that records them. AdiVeda does not publish festival dates. We also do not calculate the tithi or the midday window for any location; a panchang prepared for your place, or your local temple, is the right source.

What Valmiki records about the sky

The Bāla Kāṇḍa — the “book of childhood”, the first of the Rāmāyaṇa’s books — gives the moment of Rama’s birth with a precision the epic rarely uses for anything, and the details are these:

• The month of Chaitra, on the ninth tithi of the bright half.
• The Moon in the nakshatra whose presiding deity is Aditi. A nakṣatra is one of the twenty-seven lunar mansions, the segments of sky the Moon passes through in a month. The text names it by its deity rather than by its name — and the nakshatra of Aditi is Punarvasu, whose name means “good again”, and whose deity is boundlessness itself. Aditi, in the Vedas, is the mother of the gods and her name means “the unbound”.
• Karka (Cancer) rising, with Jupiter in the ascendant. The ascendant, lagna, is the sign on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth.
• Five grahas in exaltation at once. A graha is a planet in Indian astronomy, and each graha has one sign in which it is said to be at its strongest — its exaltation.

Two of those are worth pausing on. Five simultaneous exaltations is an extraordinarily rare configuration — the poet is making a claim about the birth by describing the sky rather than by praising the child. The verse gives the number; which five grahas are meant is supplied by later readers rather than listed one by one in the passage.

And the choice of Punarvasu is not incidental: its whole character is return and renewal, which is precisely what the Ramayana is about — a rightful king lost to exile and restored. If you want the dignity scheme those exaltations belong to, it is set out on Karka (Cancer is the sign in which Jupiter is exalted), and more generally on how Jyotisha rates a graha.

A caution in reading this passage. It is a literary description in a sacred epic, and it is often used to argue about when Rama “really” lived. AdiVeda does not make or endorse such calculations. The point of interest here is what the poet chose to say and why.

The story in brief

King Dasharatha of Ayodhya had three queens — Kausalya, Kaikeyi and Sumitra — and no heir. On the advice of his counsellors he held a great fire sacrifice for the sake of sons. From the fire a divine figure rose bearing a vessel of pāyasa, a sweet rice-and-milk preparation, which the king divided among his queens. Kausalya gave birth to Rama, Kaikeyi to Bharata, and Sumitra to the twins Lakshmana and Shatrughna.

In the tradition’s understanding, this is Vishnu entering the world in human form to overcome Ravana, the king of Lanka whom the gods could not defeat. The full telling is on the birth at Ayodhya.

What is observed

The common elements are a fast until midday, recitation, and in many places a jhūlā or cradle ceremony for the infant Rama — a small image of the child is placed in a decorated cradle and gently rocked at the hour of birth, often with songs of celebration. In North India the day frequently closes a nine-day Chaitra Navratri, the spring festival of the Goddess, so it carries a double observance. Ayodhya keeps it as its principal festival.

The most widespread practice is not ritual but reading: households and temples recite the Ramcharitmanas, often the whole of it, and often continuously over the preceding days. A continuous recitation of the entire Manas is known as an akhaṇḍa pāṭh, “unbroken reading”, with readers taking turns so the text never stops. A nine-day reading, the navāhna pāṭh, fits naturally into the Navratri that precedes the day.

There is a further reason the Manas belongs to this day in particular. Tulsidas himself says, in the opening book of the poem, that he began it in Ayodhya on the Navami of Chaitra — the day of Rama’s birth.

In South India the day is often kept with a kalyāṇam, a ceremonial re-enactment of the wedding of Rama and Sita, and with drinks and simple offerings shared among devotees. As everywhere in this page, the specifics vary by region and community.

What is recited

All of these are published in full on AdiVeda, with Devanagari, transliteration and translation.

The core set

• Nāma Rāmāyaṇam — the whole Ramayana told in a garland of names, each line an epithet of Rama that recalls an episode of the story. The natural text for the day, since reciting it retells the whole life in a short time. See also the Nama Ramayanam section.
• Sundarkand — published here in parts, with Devanagari, transliteration and translation. The Sundarkand is the fifth book of the Ramcharitmanas, telling Hanuman’s journey to Lanka in search of Sita, and it is the section most often read on its own.
• Hanuman Chalisa — inseparable from Rama observance. Hanuman is Rama’s devotee above all others, and in practice almost no Rama worship happens without him.
• Śrī Sītā Kavacham — for those who keep the day as Sita’s as much as Rama’s. A kavacham, “armour”, is a hymn that invokes the deity’s protection limb by limb.

Also often used

• Ram Raksha Stotram — the Sanskrit hymn of protection in Rama’s name, widely recited in Maharashtra and elsewhere.
• Ram Chalisa — forty verses in Hindi, simple enough for a household to recite together.
• Rama Ashtottara Shatanamavali — the 108 names, often recited with offerings of flowers or tulsi leaves.
• Rama mantra — for those who want a short repetition, such as the name of Rama chanted through the day.
• Jai Raghunandan Jai Siya Ram — an aarti for closing the midday worship.

The story itself

The birth, and the payasa divided between the three queens, is told on the birth at Ayodhya. The rest of the arc runs through the breaking of the bow, the exile, the meeting with Hanuman and the return. Reading those in order on the day is a reasonable substitute for anyone who cannot recite a long text.

Questions people often ask

Is this the same as Navratri?

No. Chaitra Navratri is a nine-night festival of the Goddess; Ram Navami is Rama’s birth. In much of North India they coincide in their last day, which is why the two are often spoken of together.

Which Ramayana is being read — Valmiki’s or Tulsidas’s?

Usually Tulsidas’s. The sky described above is from Valmiki’s Sanskrit epic, but the text most households actually read aloud is the Ramcharitmanas, composed in Awadhi, an eastern form of Hindi. They tell the same story in different languages, centuries apart, with different emphases.

Must the fast be kept?

Many keep a fast until midday, some for the whole day; the tradition does not impose one standard. Anyone for whom fasting is unwise is free to keep the day through reading and worship alone.

Where this comes from

The birth details are in Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa, Bāla Kāṇḍa. The observance practices — the midday focus, the cradle ceremony, the continuous recitation of the Ramcharitmanas — are living tradition of varying antiquity, and regional. Tulsidas’s Rāmcharitmānas, which most households actually recite, is a sixteenth-century Awadhi work and a different text from Valmiki’s Sanskrit epic.

Read on AdiVeda

• All Rama texts on AdiVeda
• The Sundarkand, in all its parts
• Rama ashtakams
• Punarvasu, the nakshatra of return