Rama and Sita

King Dasharatha of Ayodhya, in India, had no offspring, and so he performed a special sacrifice to the gods in order that they might grant him descendants.

Meanwhile, the gods asked Brahma their lord to help them against Ravana, the king of all the demons. Brahma asked Vishnu to defeat the demon. Vishnu agreed, and in his seventh incarnation he was born as Rama along with his three brothers: Bharata, Lakshmana, and Shatrughna.

Unaware of their own divinity, the brothers grew up as sons of King Dasharatha and his three wives. They later married. Rama married Sita, the incarnation of Lakshmi, wife of Vishnu, and became his father’s heir. However, due to the intrigues of one of his father’s wives, he left the city with Sita and Lakshmana to live in the forest. There they lived peacefully for ten years, until one day Ravana tricked the brothers into leaving Sita alone and abducted her. Rama and Lakshmana, aided by Hanuman, general of the monkey king Sugriva, searched everywhere until Hanuman at last found her, imprisoned on the island of Lanka. At the head of an army of monkeys and bears, Rama slew Ravana in a tremendous battle, was reunited with Sita, and returned to Ayodhya, where he was proclaimed king and ruled for 11,000 years.