The Ramayana, unlike its mighty compere, the Mahabharata, has received compartaively less attention from critics and scholors alike. One reason might be the very nature of the epic: its being the first kavya, the conscious-ly literary composition as opposed to the more oral character of the other. Yet, where the family is concerned, the Ramayana is by far the more comfortable of the two. As Doctor annie besant had pointed out long back when she wrote her adaptations of the two epics, here black and white quite clear, and rama is so transparently the proper man that no awkward ethical questions arise for the petit-bourgeois householder to tackle.