Sri Rama Chandra (The Ideal King)

This book is constituted of the lectures Dr. Annie Besant gave to students, highlighting the noble ideals and virtues embodied in the story of Rama, the ideal king, as related by the Sage Valmiki. It is a companion volume to another series of lectures published under the title Mahabharata : the Story of the Great War. Dr. Besant's deep understanding of ancient Indian culture and thought and her magnificent language will assist young Indians, and some older people also, to go back to their roots and enrich the present with the great values of the past.

Annie Besant (1847-1933) was a British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer, orator, educationist, and philanthropist. Regarded as a champion of human freedom, she was an ardent supporter of both Irish and Indian self-rule. She was a prolific author with over three hundred books and pamphlets to her credit. As an educationist, her contributions included being one of the founders of the Banaras Hindu University. For fifteen years Besant was a public proponent in England of atheism, scientific materialism. Besant's goal was to provide better employment, living conditions, and education for the poor. He became a prominent speaker for the National Secular Society (NSS), as well as a writer, and a close friend of Charles Bradlaugh. In 1877 they were prosecuted for publishing a book by birth control campaigner Charles Knowlton. The scandal made them famous, and Bradlaugh was subsequently elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Northampton in 1880.

Two years ago we were studying together "one of the greatest books in the world," the Mahabharata. Now we are going to study the second great epic poem of India, the Ramayana. These two books stand out from the rest of Indian literature in a very marked way. The Vedas, the Institutes of Manu, are the great authorities for the learned, and only through the learned for the mass of the people. But the Mahabharata and the Ramayana are wrought into the very life of every Indian- man, woman and child. Mothers tell their stories to their children, teachers to their pupils, the old to the young. Every child grows up knowing the heroes of these poems as familiar friends, having been moved to tears and laughter from earliest days by these loved names.

**Contents and Sample Pages**