The Rajan and the Raksasas: Revisiting Exile and the Kingdom

Professor Romila Thapar’s Rao Bahadur R. Narasimhachar Endowment Lecture, 1977–78, was published by the Mythic Society under the title Exile and the Kingdom: Some Thoughts on the Rāmayaṇa. It was one of a series of essays pointing out the implicit correlation between the jobs of a historian and the epic poet in understanding how the past was perceived in early India. The incorporation of several mythical, legendary, historical and contemporary materials and numerous redactions often create a difference between the epic’s original intention and eventual form.