easily with the adoration of
other deities. The great temple of Ramesvaram on Adam's Bridge is
dedicated not to Rama himself but to the linga which he erected there,
and Tulsi Das, the author of the Hindi Ramayana, while invoking Rama
as the Supreme Lord and redeemer of the world, emphatically
states[363] that his worship is not antagonistic to that of Siva.

No inscriptions nor ancient references testify to the worship of Rama
before our era and in the subsequent centuries two phases can be
distinguished. First, Rama is a great hero, an incarnation of Vishnu
for a particular purpose and analogous to the Vamana or any other
avatara: deserving as such of all respect but still not the object of
any special cult. This is the view taken of Rama in the Mahabharata,
the Puranas, the Raghuvamsa, and those parts of the Ramayana which
go beyond it are probably late additions.[364] But secondly Rama
becomes for his worshippers the supreme deity. Ramanuja (on the
Vedanta sutras, II. 42) mentions him and Krishna as two great
incarnations in which the supreme being became manifest, and since
Krishna was certainly worshipped at this period as identical with
the All-God, it would appear that Rama held the same position. Yet it
was not until the fourteenth or fifteenth century that he became for
many sects the central and ultimate divine figure.

In the more liberal sects the worship of Rama passes easily into
theism and it is the direct parent of the Kabirpanth and Sikhism, but
unlike Krishnaism it does not lead to erotic excess. Rama
personifies the ideal of chivalry, Sita of chastity. Less edifying
forms of worship may attract more attention, but it must not be
supposed that Rama is relegated to the penumbra of philosophic
thought. If anything so multiplex as Hinduism can be said to have a
watchword, it is the cry, Ram, Ram. The story of his adventures has
travelled even further than the hero himself, and is known not only
from Kashmir to Cape Comorin but from Bombay to Java and Indo-China
where it is a common subject of art. In India the Ramayana is a
favourite recitation among all classes, and dramatized versions of
various episodes are performed as religious plays. Though two late
Upanishads, the Ramapurvatapaniya and Ramauttaratapaniya extol Rama as
the Supreme Being, there is no Ramapurana. The fact is significant,
as showing that his worship did not possess precisely those features
of priestly sectarianism which mark the Pur