Rama Avatar
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| RAMA RAJYA - THE EPITOME
OF PEACE AND PROSPERITY |
The festivals associated with Rama's
incarnation and celebrated In India are Rama Navami, Diwali
and Dussehra. The first one is associated with the
birth of Lord, Rama, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu. This
birthday of Rama falling on the ninth day of the Hindi month
called Chaitra is celebrated in almost all Vaishnava temples.
Congregations are organized, sermons delivered and songs sung
by devotees.
Dussehra is the culmination of the ten-day celebrations, organized
to exhibit the episodes from the life of Lord Rama. For the
first nine days the whole story of Rama is enacted on stage
with great pomp and show. On the tenth day the last episode
of Rama ' s victory over Ravana is shown and the effigies
of Ravana, his brother Kumbhkarna and his son Indrajit are
burnt amidst loud rejoicings. In all the big cities of UP,
Bihar, MP, Delhi and Mysore this festival is a day of mass
celebrations. Lakhs of people gather in vast fields and open
spaces to witness the burnings of the effigies and the fire
works following the same.
Diwali is celebrated, according to one legend, on the day
Rama was crowned after his return to Ayodhya with Sita. As
Rama had ascended the throne on this day, King Vikramaditya
who probably started the custom of lighting lamps as a part
of Diwali festival selected the same auspicious day for the
coronation too. Diwali is the most important festival of the
trading community in Western India, where money is spent lavishly
on this day. Sweets are distributed amongst friends and relatives;
public buildings in cities are beautifully illuminated and
children are supplied with a good stock of crackers, which
they use till late hours in the night. Houses are cleans and
neatly whitewashed while in business houses new account books
are started.
According to one of the Upanishads, named
RAMA-PURVTAPNI Upanishad, "Just as the whole nature of the
large banyan tree is contained in its tiny seed, so also the
whole universe moving and unmoving, is contained in the word-seed
Rama".
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