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Does anyone know of a good, complete translation of the Valmiki Ramayana, with each word explained?

I have found two such translations online, but both are incomplete.

Valmikiramayan.net stops with Yuddha Kanda, while this has only the first five kandas, ending with Sundara Kanda. I desperately need a translation, preferably a modern one, in prose.

Keshav Srinivasan
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user592
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  • Just to mention, many experts believe that Uttar Kand was not part of the original Ramayan written by Valmiki (it ends with Yudh Kand). This was added to Ramayan much later (even after Mahabharat was written). That is the very probable reason why you won't find it with Valmiki Ramayan often. – Rahul Gupta Apr 12 '20 at 21:08

2 Answers2

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The site valmikiramayan.net you mentioned covers the Bala Kanda through the Yuddha Kanda, so presumably all you really want is a word-for-word translation of the Uttara Kanda. Well, unfortunately it's hard enough to find any translation at all of the Uttara Kanda, let alone a word-for-word one. There are only two complete online translations of the Uttara Kanda that I know of:

  1. This one by Manmatha Nath Dutt from the 1800's, and
  2. This one by Robert Biggs from 2005.

There is also this translation by Ananta Rama Rao from 2003, but it only covers the first half of Uttara Kanda.

None of these translations give the meaning of each word. I'm not sure anyone has written a word-for-word explanation of the Uttara Kanda.

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Keshav Srinivasan
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1

Manmatha Nath Dutt's translation of Uttara Kanda is also available on archive.org here.

Look for:

  1. Ramayana-VOL-4-Uttara-Kanda.pdf (scanned copy)
  2. Ramayana-VOL-4-Uttara-Kanda_text.pdf (OCR-converted to text, so you can search the contents)

EDIT:

If you are looking to buy a book, try the 2-book English tr. from Gorakhpur Gita Press. But right now it's not listed on their website (out of stock maybe) so if you are physically located in India try buying it from one of their stores. Athough it lists the original Sanskrit verses, it is not a word-for-word translation. But it's a complete translation of all 24,000 verses including the Uttara-kāṇḍa.

This is how it looks:

enter image description here enter image description here

Shrimad Valmiki-Ramayana, Sanskrit Text, English Translation, Volume-1 (Book Code: 452)

Shrimad Valmiki-Ramayana, Sanskrit Text, English Translation, Volume-2 (Book Code: 453)

Here's a sample.

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