Ramayana - Fact or Fiction

Following is my opinion I made in one of the discussion forums.

 

I would like to bring to your attention the following details. My native town is in the southernmost part of India. I would like to mention some of the places near my native town.

1) Ramanoothu (the spring of Rama): It is said that when Rama led his army to Lanka, he brought a spring to life here by piercing the earth with his arrow for his tired army.

2) Vanaramutti: When 'Kumbakarna' attacked, the Vanara or monkey army got freightened and made a fleeting escapt. It's been said that only in this place, Jambhavan, Hanuman and others were able to convince the monkey army to regain courage and fight.

We cannot say there are not convincing evidences to prove that these events happened etc.

3) Muthumalaiamman temple:
Once a washerman was doing his duty in the river, when he saw a pearl necklace dropped from the sky from a flying object. To get hold of the necklace without the knowledge of the others, he placed a big metal bucket over the necklace and went home. When he returned to collect the necklace, he could not lift the bucket off. It is said that monkey fetched the necklace. The legend is that the necklace is of Sita devi, who dropped her ornaments along the way to Lanka for Rama to identify.

These kind of incidents/evidences are mixed with People and their lives throughout India. If you cannot count them as evidences then what else can. How could these stories exactly match with what we read from the epics? It would be foolish to say that the people constructed such stories after reading the epics. Such kind of efforts would not be this long lasting. Noreover, it needs a wide collboration of people all over India to 'create' evidences that are so widespread, so common and so accurate.

It is to be noted here that most of the ancient knowledege were passed to us orally because those happened aeons before where writing was not developed. You cannot look for written proof for everything and ruins for every building when we talk about such ancient past. Got it.