L ANKA OF THE RAMAYANA: THE PROBLEM OF

LOCATION 1

ABSTRACT: Some Ramayana references look like reflections of the flora and topography of Sri Lanka, but
the depiction of the expedition of Angada and Hanuman to locate Rvaas home creates doubts about the
identification. According to it Rvaas kingdom is 100 yojanas from the ocean's shore (sgara-rodhasi ) at
the foot of the Vindhya Mountain. What is this sgara? How can Sri Lanka be only 100 yojanas from the
Vindhya Mountain? To understand this riddle, we look at how the Ramayana developed to be what it is. It has
an ancient kernel and many accretions added by popular reciters. The German scholar Jacobi has shown that
the expeditions to discover the home of Sitas captor were added by later reciters who had their own reasons
for doing so. We cannot expect to find geographical or historical accuracy in these descriptions.

Modern critical scholarship on the Ramayana is more than one hundred and fifty years old2,
and yet the location of the lank of the epic is even now a controversial subject. The main
purpose of this short paper is to re-examine this old question. It must be taken more as a
cursory review than as a comprehensive discussion.

Given the facts that Lanka today is the well known island in the Indian Ocean just south of
India and that Rvaas home in the Ramayana was also a place separated by an expanse of
water from the region of Rama's life in exile, it might seem that there really cannot be a
problem about the location of lank. It is hardly likely that at the time the 'original'
Ramayana was composed 3, this island was not known to Indians of the Kosala region where
the epic had its roots. For one thing peoples of Indian origin had by then been settled here
for a considerable period of time. For another, the people of Kosala could not have been
ignorant of the official and cultural relations that existed between the island and
neighbouring Magadha from as far back as the third century BC

There seems to be no room to doubt that Klidasa and Kumaradsa, Vlmiki's successors in
writing the story of Rama, proceeded on the basis that the abode of Ravana was Lanka, the
Indian Ocean island. Almost all scholars who have written on Kalidasa, from Mallintha in
the 14th century to M.R. Kale and D.D. Ingalls in the 20th have taken this for granted. One
of Kalidasa's references to the seas around lank is very suggestive in this regard. In canto
XIII of the Raghuvamsa, Rama urges Sita to witness the spouting of whales, as they fly
home through the air after winning the war against Ravana:

1
This paper was first published as an article in Lanka and the Ramayana, edited by N. Somaskandhan
and published by the Chinmaya Mission, Colombo, 1996. I have made some changes in the present version.
2
Adolf Holtzmann's observations on the lateness of Book I of the Ramayana appeared in his paper "On the
Greek Origin of the Indian Zodiac" published at Karlsruhe in 1841.
3
Hermann Jacobi, in his well-known work Das Ramayana (1893) thought that "the poet lived in Oudh,
probably at the court of Ikvku kings, or in a hermitage close to it". He further surmised, on the basis of
certain descriptions in the epic, that the poet probably witnessed any one of the total solar eclipses between
794 and 426 BC. Modern scholarship is, however, reluctant to assign so early a date to the poem. The rough
consensus view regards that it must have originated and developed into its present content of 24000 stanzas
during (approximately) the half millennium from the 3rd century BCE to the 2nd c. CE.
 2

Yonder whales, closing their open mouths, take in the water that issues from the
rivers together with the fish that are therein; then through the holes of their heads,
they pump jets of water upward 4.

Evidently, Kalidasa was aware of the detail that whales abounded in the seas around Sri
Lanka .

The simple and apparently common-sense view that lank in the Ramayana too must refer
to the island of Sri Lanka is further supported by some of the references in the epic itself.
To mention one: in Book V, the poet says that as Hanuman leapt across the ocean to reach
the fortress of Rvaa where Sita was suspected to have been held in captivity, he saw "the
island bedecked with all kinds of trees"5. In the description that follows, the coconut
figures among the kinds of trees that Hanuman saw6. And again, after his exploits in the
capital city of Rvaa, when he begins his return journey, he first ascends the mountain
called Aria7, which is actually the Sanskritized form of the name of a mountain in the
North Central Province of Sri Lanka , mentioned several times as Ariha-pabbata in the
Mahvamsa8. If the capital city of Ravana was located atop a mountain in the central hills
of the island, as the folklore of Sri Lanka has it, the return journey to India would naturally
have to be northward through the region where this mountain is situated.

Unfortunately however, this simple and seemingly common-sense view of the location of
Lanka has not been accepted by all students of the Ramayana. The German scholar Jacobi
was one of the earliest to object to the identification.

It seems to me doubtful .. whether the Lanka of Valmiki indicated Ceylon.

According to the repeated statements of the poet, the city of Lanka is situated .. on
the other side of the ocean on the mount Trika which is 100 miles 9 away from the
4
This translation of Raghuvamsa XIII.10 by D.D. Ingalls is from his article "Kalidasa and the Attitudes of
the Golden Age", JAOS 96.1 (1976). He speaks of the accuracy of small details in Kalidasa's geographical
descriptions, occurring in, inter alia, "Rama's air journey from Ceylon back to India", adding that "he had
been to sea" and was "the first Sanskrit poet to report on the spouting of whales". M.R. Kale in the
Introduction to his edition of the Raghuvamsa (Gopal Narayen & Co., Bombay, 1925, p. xl) also says that
Kalidasa's description of places "between Ceylon and Ayodhya" read like accounts "given by an eye-
witness". .
5
dadarsa .. vividha-druma-bhita dvpam: Rmy V.1.204. At IV.41.23 too the abode of Ravana is
called an island 100 yojanas in extent, "on the further side (of the mountain Mahendra)". The interpretation
of Lanka's location in this chapter is beset with difficulties.
6
nrikela: Rmy V.1.211 c. The coconut of course grows abundantly in the coastal regions of Sri Lanka.
However, if the poet knew the island's landscape intimately, he would not say that someone entering the
country from the north would immediately see coconut plantations. But this is a detail one would be
prepared to overlook. (It must be added, however, that this verse may be one of the later interpolations).
7
ruroha giri-reham ariam : Rmy V. 56. 26 ab. ("He scaled Arishta's glorious steep." R.T.H.
Griffith's Translation of The Ramayana, Indian reprint, Chowkhamba 1963, p. 425).
8
x. 63 ff, xxi.6 etc. The Sanskrit equivalent is aria-parvata. Its Sinhala name is Riigala.
9
The phrase hundred miles is for ata-yojana in the text, more usually translated as 100 leagues. It is
not exactly clear what a league was. It is often assumed that it is approximately 4 miles.
 3

continent, specially from the foot of the Vindhya .. or from the mountain Mahendra.
It suits Ceylon very little10.

Jacobi's objection to the identification of the lank of the epic with Sri Lanka is also based
on the fact that in Indian works the country is usually known as Sihala-dvpa; he cites
Varhamihira, the Mahvracarita of Bhavabhti, the Anargharghava of Murri and the
Blarmyaa of Rjasekhara in support of this contention 11. In the first of these works
Lank and Sihala-dvipa are mentioned separately in "counting the places of the south". In
other Indian documents the island has been called Tmrapari; the edicts of Asoka refer to
it by the Prakrit equivalent Tambapani.

Jacobi's views were accepted by an influential section of Indologists, not only of the West 12
but also of India. An Indian writer who argued strongly against the identification was M.V.
Kibe. Having identified Citraka from where Rama started his wanderings during his exile
as the place which bears the same name now13, he calculates the distance from there to
Kikindh where Rama met his future ally Sugrva as "about 22 yojanas or 88 miles" or at
the most 100 miles. This he does on the basis of statements in the epic which give the
distance from place to place either in yojanas or by the time taken for the journey. He then
concludes: "The distance between Kishkindh and Lanka cannot be so great as to be beyond
the extreme south of the Indian Peninsula14''. That is to say that Sri Lanka is too far to the
south to be the Lanka of the Ramayana, the place where Sita was confined.

In view of such objections, it behoves us to examine the indications in the epic text that
would go to show whether its composer or composers had a definite knowledge about the
precise location of Sri Lanka. We could expect to find this evidence in the instructions
given to the monkey host that was sent to the southern direction on a mission of gathering
intelligence on the fate of Sita after her abduction and also in the description of the flight of
Hanuman to Rvaas country as a result of that exercise. We find this information in Book
Four, the Kikindh Ka.

Why did an exercise of gathering intelligence become necessary at all? It was because Rama
knew only one thing about Sita's abductor - namely that he was Rvaa 15 the Rkasa. He
did not know what he looked like or where he dwelled or how powerful he was 16. To know
10
This quote is from The Ramayana (an English translation of Jacobi's work : hereafter Jacobi, Trsl. ) by
S.N.Ghosal, Oriental Institute of Baroda, 1960, p. 68. Admittedly it is not a very good translation.
11
Harisena in his praasti of Samudragupta (c 330-375) appearing in the famous Allahabad inscription also
refers to Sri Lanka as sihala. So does Harsa (606-647) in the drama Ratnavali.
12
Cp. e.g., M. Winternitz, History of Indian Literature, English translation, Calcutta, 1927, Vol I, p 487: "it
was not till a much later time that Lanka was identified with Ceylon".
13
No doubt Chitrakot, marked on maps at roughly 19N/ 82E.
14
M.V. Kibe, Lanka as Described in Valmiki's Ramayana, Prof. P.K.Gode Commemoration Volume, Poona
1960, p 105. Kibes paper is an attempt to reply to criticisms of views published by him in 1919 and the
years that followed.
15
rvaena ht bhry : Rmy III.71.21; nma-mtra tu jnmi: III.71.22
16
Rmy III.68.7 etc.
 4

all this and to fight the Rkasas, Rama sought the help of Sugrva, the monkey king. The
latter assembled a massive concourse of his followers and divided them into four groups
and instructed them to go East, South, West and North to find where Sita was kept
imprisoned. Of these four expeditions we are interested in the one to the South only, which
was led by Angada and included the resourceful and much beloved Hanuman. Sugrva
instructed them to visit all of the following places in the South (viz. South of his stronghold
of Kikindh): The Vindhya Mountain with its 1000 peaks; Narmad, Godvar,
Kave, Mekhal, Utkala, Mahiaka, Abravanti, Avanti, Vidarbha, Rik, Dara,
Vaga, Kliga. Kauika, the Daaka Forest, Aandhra, Pura, Cola, Pdya, Kerala,
the Mountain Ayomukha, Kveri, Malaya, Tmrapar (the river), Pdya Kavaa, Mount
Mahendra, and the island that lies beyond that: the Land of Rvaa, one hundred yojanas in
extent 17.

No great ingenuity is needed to see that this is not a helpful set of road instructions. It is like
saying: Go and search the whole of India and further, south of this place18. And to
accomplish this mission Angada and his party were given a period of one month only.
Unsurprisingly, at the end of the month they had not ventured anywhere beyond the
Vindhya mountain range19. So they sit at the foot of the Vindhya20 and grieve at their failure
to fulfil the behest of their king. When they are debating as to what is best to do, they come
across Sampti the vulture king21, whose gift of sight is so keen that he can see places that
are one hundred yojanas away22. Since he has seen Rvaa carrying Sita off in his aerial
car, he knows that she is in his kingdom which is exactly 100 yojanas away from where
they were23. The place where they were was on the ocean's shore at the foot of the Vindhya
Mountain, as IV.53.19 as well as 56.3 and 58.7 say24.

What becomes clear from this depiction of the situation is one of the following: (1) this
lank cannot be Sri Lanka because it is definitely much further south of the Vindhya
mountain range than 100 yojanas (roughly 400 miles); (2) what the composer of this section
of the epic meant by Vindhya is not the mountain range we know by that name today; (3)
the description found here cannot be taken as an accurate statement of geographical facts;
(4) the whole episode of the four expeditions is a later addition, Sugriva's behest originally
being confined to Hanuman and his friends only25.

17
Rmy IV.41, 8- 25. The list does not end here but goes on to name several other mountains, forests etc.
until finally the very world of Yama, the guardian of the Dead, is reached.
18
Actually, not all of the places mentioned belong to the South of Kikindh; but we shall discuss this later.
19
Rmy IV.48,2; IV.50,1. When they come out of the magical cave, they are told that they are still in the
Vindhya mountain: ea vindhyo giri .. IV.52,31
20
Rmy IV.53,3: vindhyasya tu gire pde .. upaviya .. cintm apedire.
21
IV.56,3 shows that he came out of a cave in the Vindhya hills and saw the horde of monkeys.
22
IV.58,32.
23
IV.58,20.
24
At IV.53,19 Angada says: ihaiva pryam iye, puye sgara-rodhasi: here itself I will sit and fast to
death, on the holy ocean's shore. 56,3: Sampati comes out of his cave in Vindhya: kandard abhinikramya
vindhyasya mahgire; 58,7 reaffirms his living in the Vindhya: vindhye .. vasan.
25
We will discuss the implications of this later.
 5

A different sort of difficulty arises when we consider that the point of crossing is in popular
tradition regarded as where now the Palk Strait is 26. The narrow ridge of twenty two miles
.. between Ramesvaram and Talaimannar is considered to be the causeway built by Rama".
Neither the northern coast of Sri Lanka , nor any hilltop in the island's central region, can be
as far away as 400 miles from Ramesvaram, the beachfront in South India facing the Palk
Straits. This however is not a problem arising directly from the text, but from taking the
word sgara in it as a reference to the Palk Strait.

It was pointed out above that references in some parts of the Ramayana could be understood
as reflections of the composer or composers having some knowledge about the actual
geographical conditions of Sri Lanka - in which case it is arguable that the island might
have been regarded as the home of Rama's adversary. On the other hand in the crucial
depiction of the expedition to the South undertaken by Angada and Hanuman, we found
that there are grave objections to the identification of Sri Lanka with the fabled abode of
Rvaa and the Rkasas. To understand how this baffling situation could have come
about, it will be helpful to look at the nature of our epic and the way it developed to be what
it is. For obvious reasons, we can attempt to do this only in very broad strokes.

The Emergence of Epic Poetry and the Development of the Ramayana

Secular poetry in India has its origin in the period around 550 - 500 BCE which marks the
end of the Vedic period. This was the time when poetic forms began to emerge that are
"quite different both functionally and structurally from previous models".

An intellectual and social upheaval took place some time towards the end of the
Vedic period as far as we can judge. As a result poetry divided itself into two fields:
on one hand there was the old, predominantly religious writing which .. consisted
mainly of invocations, sacrificial texts, conjuration formulae etc., and on the other,
the new secular poetry .. dominated by consciously included aesthetic features
which .. are addressed to the reader or listener and demand to be treated as literature.
.. Unlike the majority of Vedic hymns, kvya thrived in urban surroundings and to
some extent in court circles. It was cultivated not only by the closed classes of
society such as Brahmins and higher castes, but could literally be practised by any
body27.

In this new non-Vedic poetry, two tendencies clearly predominate: a tradition of epic poetry
in Sanskrit and one of lyrical poetry in the Middle Indian or Prakrit languages. The epic
26
Ananda Guruge, The Society of the Rmayana, Saman Press, Maharagama 1960, p. 68. Guruge discusses
(p. 69) the problematic nature of the references to Vindhya and Mahendra in the description of the "Route
to the South" and surmises that they may be instances of "toponymic duplication". He however does not
rule out the possibility that there could be some mistakes in these references. If names of well known places
have been duplicated, why has the usage not stuck, as it has happened elsewhere (e.g. New York, New
South Wales etc.)?
27
S. Lienhard, A History of Classical Poetry, being Vol. III, Fasc. i of A History of Indian Literature, ed.
by J. Gonda, Wiesbaden 1984. The quotation is from three paras of Ch. II, The Beginnings of Kavya, pp.
54-57, with the order of sentences re-arranged.
 6

material, orally maintained, was the special property of rhapsodists whom Indian tradition
calls kvyopajvina28. They were either bards (stas) in the service of kings and princes or
wandering singers and reciters (kulavas 29) who obviously catered to a much wider public
audience. The fact that they used Sanskrit should not blind us to the broad appeal that they
commanded. Not only is the epic Sanskrit a much less sophisticated form of the language
than the classical, but also it belonged to a time when Sanskrit was still a living language, as
Jacobi emphasised 30.

Heroic achievements of princes and princesses of great dynasties, the power of saints and
ascetics, the deeds of gods and demons, tales of extraordinary love and loyalty, descriptions
of cosmology and geography, discourses on social and customary law - all this and more
formed the repertoire of bards and rhapsodists. It was by stringing together and organising
such epic material that the great epic poems came into existence, wherever the genre made
its appearance. And that was what happened in India too, when the time was right for it.

Jacobi surmises that the epic Ramayana came into being in the following way31: "The story
or legend of Rama, the Ikvku prince, formed the subject matter of many epic songs of the
stas at the courts of the family in the land of Kosala. Vlmki, an eminent poet, took
possession of this material, connected the scattered episodes and composed a consistent
epos out of it. It was not the first, but the first that could be rightly regarded as the
dikvya 32. It was thereupon learned and propagated by professional rhapsodists, the
kulavas, as distinct from the minstrels of the court". It must be added that there was as yet
no manuscript, but only a poem to be memorised and recited.

The professional reciters, once they obtained the kvya, were not rigidly bound to adhere to
the letter of the 'text'. That was not their way of doing things. Reciting or singing a poem
was the stuff of their daily bread. As Jacobi points out 33, they were alert to the mood, fancy
and interests of their audiences. In response to these they modified themes, elaborating
evocative and comic scenes, not infrequently 'enriching', according to their lights, the
repertoire with additions of their own composition. Additions that proved to be popular
tended to be retained, becoming integrated with the poem. These and other similar forces at
work enlarged the poem by the addition, at times of scattered verses, at times of entire
chapters or episodes and finally of two whole books, the first which begins the epic and the
seventh which concludes it. In Jacobi's words:

28
"Those who live by (reciting) poetry".
29
The word which traditional Indian etymology derives from Kua and Lava, the two sons of Rama, to
whom Valmiki is said to have taught the Ramayana which he composed. His instruction to them, as the epic
records ( VII.93, 5-7) illumines to us the actual way the wandering minstrels of ancient India performed:
"Go and sing the Ramayana faithfully and with great joy. In holy precincts of the is, in the hostels of the
Brahmans, on the roads, in the royal streets and in the houses of princes, at the door of Rama's palace,
where work is done, and before the priests". (Translation taken from Lienhard's work quoted above).
30
Jacobi, Trsl. p. 88.
31
Recast from Jacobi, Trsl. p. 52 f.
32
Indian tradition calls the Ramayana the dikvya, the first (work crafted as a) poem.
33
Jacobi, Trsl. p. 49. f.
 7

As succeeding generations have added something new to our old sacred churches
and improved them without injuring the original structure by furnishing small
chapels and towers, so generations of singers have laid their hands upon the
Ramayana, but the old nucleus round which so much has grown, is still clear to the
critical eyes of the investigator, though not in all particulars but at least in broad
outlines 34.

As a matter of fact, careful investigation by Jacobi has revealed some of the most glaring
instances of augmentation that the poem of Vlmki has undergone. It is not necessary for
us to go into these instances, save one - which has relevance to the issue of the location of
the lank of the Ramayana. This is the episode of the four expeditions that Sugrva is said
to have dispatched to the four quarters in order to discover where Rvaa was holding Sita
in captivity.

Jacobi thinks that this entire episode contained in Chapters 40 - 43 of Book IV as well as
their logical sequel, chapters 45 - 47 are later additions 35. This he does on the internal
evidence of the epic. He notes that in Chapter 44, which lies sandwiched between the two
sections mentioned, Rama hands over to Hanuman a ring with his name inscribed on it, so
that he may use it as a token which Sita will recognise and thus know that he is a messenger
from her husband. None of the other monkey-leaders were equipped in this manner. This is
the main indicator of the spuriousness of the four missions. The other is the fact that
Sugrva's directions make sense only if they were given from a location in the Gangetic
region. For example the directions given to the group going South mentions places like
Vindhya, Narmad and Vanga, all of which lie to the North of Kikindh, which is where
Sugrva was. From the Gangetic region, however, Saray is to the East, Maru to the West,
Vindhya to the South and Himlaya to the North - exactly as mentioned in Sugrva's
commands to the four expeditions.

The mention of Vindhya (at IV.44.15 and 48.2) is very striking. It can be understood
from it that Hanumat scoured mainly the Vindhya in search of Sita. That it was in
the mind of the poet too follows from 53.3. There the monkeys find the ocean at the
foot of the Vindhya. .. If the above-referred piece be expunged, Hanumat gets the
command to find out Sita and no necessity arises to search any fixed quarter36.

In view of this strange discrepancy Jacobi thinks that this whole section has been added by a
reciter who wanted to have in his version of the text an enumeration of places: "a popular
theme" that has been "very often and with thorough skilfulness treated in the digvijaya and
similar excursions in the Mahabharata37".
34
Jacobi, Trsl. p. 47.
35
Jacobi, Trsl. pp. 31 ff.
36
Jacobi, Trsl. p. 32. Here he adds the remark that if this piece is removed what remains agrees fully with
"the oldest indices of contents" of the epic found at I.1,71 and VI.126,40 which without mentioning four
separate expeditions merely say that "Sugriva dispatched the monkeys in (all) directions" and that
"millions of monkeys were dispatched in all directions".
37
Jacobi, Trsl. p. 33.
 8

Over and above these objections that Jacobi has raised, one can see a further reason why
only one expedition would have been required: Rama should have known that Rvaa fled
to the South with Sita and not in any other direction, for already at III.68,10 the vulture
Jayus had told him exactly that 38. This however might conflict with parts of the views of
Jacobi pointed out above. Would he perhaps have justified his stand by taking this reference
itself as another interpolation?

Let us now link up with the question that launched us into this short digression. Was
Vlmki thinking of the island of Sri Lanka , elsewhere called Sihala-dvpa, when he
referred to Rvaas abode as lank ? Or did he mean by it some other place surrounded by
water, about four hundred miles south of a point at the foot of the Vindhya mountains?

In truth, it is difficult to be sure. The question whether in the earliest version of the
Ramayana, the place was described as an island is crucial here. Jacobi doubts it. He says
that "the indication of Lank as an island seems to be foreign to the ancient Ramayana". He
says that it occurs only at IV.58, 20 and VI.111, 54 39. The genuineness of the latter he
obviously questions. (However lank is called a dvpa also at IV.41, 23 and V.1, 204 40 of
which the authenticity of the first has been called in question by Jacobi). So there remain
one reference, or at best two references, to Lank as an island. But Jacobi says: "Here dvpa
could be imagined as a continent 41" as in the usage jambudvpa 42.

All that we can say in the face of the evidence that can be gathered is that Vlmki knew
about a distant land which he called Lank . It was beyond the sea. It lay to the south of the
Vindhyas, and the Mount Mahendra. He also probably regarded that the mountains called
Sahya and Malaya43 were lying between Lank and Kikindh. The sea (or reservoir?) that
separated Lank from the area which contained these mountains was 100 yojanas 44 in
extent. At one place Lank itself is said to be 100 yojanas in extent. Two mountains of
Lanka are mentioned, Aria and Trika. On top of the latter was situated Lankpura, the
capital city of Rvaa, the chief of the Rkasas who ruled over the country. Beyond this,
what we get in the epic is almost wholly descriptions marked by poetic fancy and
exaggeration or mythological material.
38
stm dya vaideh / prayto dakimukha //
39
The two references are mixed up in Jacobi, Trsl. p. 69 and given as VI.58 and IV.111.
40
According to the Gita Press edition published at Gorakhpur, which basically follows the recension that
Jacobi names C, which is also the so-called Northern Recension, printed by the Nirnaya Sagara Press in
1888.
41
Jacobi, Trsl. p. 69.
42
On the face of it this looks like a strange explanation, but it is worth noting that in enumerating the dvpas
the uttara kurava is sometimes included as a distinct dvpa. This was the distant region of the north which
was not at all separated from the landmass of India by water.
43
These two mountains are mentioned in VI.4 when describing Rama's march towards Lanka. See VI.4,37
and 94.
44
This is definitely proved by the statement that the setu which was built for Rama's army to reach Lanka
was ata-yojanam yatam: VI.22, 76, in addition to many other references to the distance that had to be
traversed to reach Lanka.
 9

I have referred above to the views of M.V. Kibe. In the paper cited by me, he expresses the
opinion that,

The knowledge of geography possessed by the authors of the original story of the
Ramayana did not extend much more than 200 miles in the direction of the South,
and a little more in the West from Ayodhy and about 100 miles in the remaining
two directions 45.

Any careful reader of the various expeditions and movements of persons mentioned in the
epic would agree that it is difficult to extract exact information from it about locations and
distances. The information is so meagre at places and so confused at others that it is not
possible to make any definitive pronouncement even on the limitations of the geographical
knowledge of the authors of the Ramayana. We must not look for geographical or historical
accuracy in these descriptions.

In the past various attempts have been made to locate the lank of the Ramayana in the
mainland of India itself46. The problem with such attempts to identify lank with a place in
India itself is the overwhelming use of the word sgara (ocean) to indicate the waters that
separated the mainland from lank . Unless it can be proved that this word itself has been
substituted for another like samudra (literally, a reservoir of water), it seems to me, any
such hypothesis will be untenable.

Before concluding, a word must be said about the status of the Ramayana as a religious and
cultural document. The Indians love the Ramayana not for the geographical information that
may be gleaned from it, nor for any other reason of that sort. They love it because it has
provided a vision of dharma which they cherish and which has nurtured the Hindu
civilisation for more than two millennia. Viewed from that perspective, where Lanka of the
Ramayana was situated is quite immaterial.

45
Kibe, op.cit. p. 105.
46
In the nineteen eighties an article written by three well known Indian scholars had
suggested that the place was not Sri Lanka at all, but one situated near Sonepur in Orissa,
which lies southeast of Mahendragiri in the same state. Archaeological finds in this area are
said to provide evidence of an advanced culture in the third and fourth centuries BCE, with
roots going as far back as the seventh century BCE. (Silumina Literary Supplement June 21,
1981)