Ramayana is among the most important epics in India. No epic of any country of the world has been able to exert so great an influence on the life of its people as has the Ramayana on the life of Indians through the ages.
Rama, the great hero of the epic, has become the ideal to us of all manly and kingly virtues, and Sita, its heroine, is the supreme ideal of Indian womanhood.
The Ramayana has other important characters, like Laksmana, Bharata, Mahavira (Hanuman), and Jatayu. Every Indian child should read and re-read the Ramayana, if he is to grow into the man his great country expects him to be.