Includes index.

"In the great city of Ayodhya, the king decides to abdicate in favor of his beloved son Rama; but just as the celebrations reach their climax, a court intrigue involving one of the king's junior wives and a maidservant results in Rama being forced into fourteen years' banishment. He dutifully accepts his fate, and goes off into jungle-exile, with his wife, Sita, and his loyal brother Lakshmana." "When the old king dies of a broken heart, another of Rama's brothers, Bharata, refuses to profit from his own mother's scheming, which leaves nobody to run the city. With difficulty, Rama persuades his brother to act as regent. He consents to do so only on the condition that he live in a village outside the capital and that he acts in Rama's name, having installed that rightful ruler's sandals symbolically on the throne."--BOOK JACKET.

In English and Sanskrit; translated from Sanskrit.