Dandakaranya
Forest featured in Hindu literature
Dandakaranya (Sanskrit: दण्डकारण्य, romanized: Daṇḍakāraṇya), also rendered Dandaka (Sanskrit: दंडक, IAST: Daṃḍaka), is a historical region and the name of a forest mentioned in the ancient Indian epic Ramayana. It covers about 92,200 square kilometres (35,600 sq mi) of land, which includes the Abujhmar Hills in the west and borders the Eastern Ghats in the east, including regions of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Telangana states. It spans about 300 kilometres (200 mi) from north to south and about 500 kilometres (300 mi) from east to west.
01Etymology
Dandakaranya means "the Dandaka forest" in Sanskrit, the abode of the rakshasa Dandaka. It was the site of the Danda kingdom in Hindu puranic history, a stronghold of the rakshasa tribes. It was a state of the Lanka kingdom under the reign of Ravana. Ravana's governor Khara ruled this province.
02Hinduism
Dandakaranya is considered sacred in Hinduism, as many accounts of the region describe ancient Hindu peoples and Hindu deities living together in refuge there. The Dandakaranya zone was the location of the turning point in the Ramayana, a famous Sanskrit epic. The plot for the divine objectives to uproot the rakshasas from the land was formulated here. According to the epic, it was home to many deadly creatures and demons. It is described to have stretched from Narmada to the Godavari and Krishna Rivers according to the epic. Rama, his wife Sita, and his brother Lakshmana, are described to have spent their initial years of fourteen years as exiles traveling around the region.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Dandakaranya”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Shukracharya advises his daughter Aruja to remain beside the lake near his hermitage while a dust storm devastates the accursed kingdom of Danda.jpg by Painters of Akbar Era, Public domain
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