Ashutossh Naaraayan
A prince gives up a kingdom with a smile. A king dies of a promise kept. A brother sets a pair of sandals on the empty throne and rules in his name.Rama - The Stoic reads the Valmiki Ramayana scene by scene beside Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Twenty-three scenes from the Bala and Ayodhya Kandas, the formation of a prince and the exile he accepts, each a quartet: Valmiki’s story, a Stoic Parallel naming the principle at work, the author’s verse, and the Stoics in their own words. A Map of Principles lets a reader follow one principle across the volume: fides, the reserve clause, the dichotomy of control.The book claims no influence in either direction. It shows the same stone beneath two foundations: what one tradition taught as doctrine, the other wrote as a life. What Epictetus states in a page, the Ramayana dramatizes across an entire life.The first of three volumes.
