The Greatest Story Never Told (in the West)

This event is part of the UC Retiree Learning Series in partnership with Covia (covia.org/).
Join Covia communities (covia.org/) for an engaging look at The Life and Legacy of the
Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, moderated by R. P. Goldman, William and Catherine Magistretti Distinguished Professor of Sanskrit at The University of California at Berkeley
Although it remains little known in the West, ancient, monumental Sanskrit epic poem, the Rāmāyaṇa, ascribed to the legendary poet seer Vālmīki is one of the most enduring, influential, and often retold tales in human history. It is a work of some 50,000 couplets (ślokas) composed and expanded during the second half of the first millennium BCE and throughout the two and a half millennia since then has, in its own right and through its countless re-iterations in all of the linguistic, ethnic, and religious communities of South and Southeast Asia and in virtually every possible literary, artistic and performance medium helped shape the aesthetic, religious, social and political outlines of the peoples of India and indeed all of southern Asia down to the present day.