- ✦The English word “myth” misfires — in common use it means “false,” which it was never meant to.
- ✦Hinduism has precise terms: Shruti, Smriti, Ithihasa (“it happened thus”), Purana (“ancient”).
- ✦The tradition holds both literalist and philosopher; what it cannot accept is dismissal as “just stories.”
When a university textbook calls the Ramayana a “myth,” it provokes outrage in many Hindu households. When a devotee insists the Mahabharata is literal history, it provokes scepticism in academic circles. Both reactions miss the point. The problem is not the Ramayana — the problem is that the English word “myth” is doing work it was never designed to do.
Categories of Hindu Narrative
Hindu tradition has its own categories, and they are precise. Shruti refers to revealed texts — the Vedas and Upanishads — considered eternal truths heard by the ancient rishis. Smriti refers to remembered tradition, which includes the great epics, the Puranas, and the legal texts. Within smriti, there is a crucial distinction between Ithihasa and Purana.
An Ithihasa (literally, “it happened thus”) is a narrative understood to describe events that took place in the world. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are Ithihasas. They are not allegories or fables to the Hindu tradition — they are accounts of what happened, transmitted through poetry and oral tradition. A Purana (literally, “ancient”) is a sacred narrative that conveys theological truth through story — the creation accounts, the exploits of deities, the cycles of cosmic time. Puranas are not less true than Ithihasas; they operate on a different register of truth.
The English word “myth” comes from the Greek mythos, and in academic usage it does not mean “falsehood.” It means a sacred narrative that a community uses to understand its place in the cosmos. By that definition, calling the Ramayana a myth is technically defensible. But in common English usage, “myth” has become a synonym for “not true” — and applying it to texts that a billion people regard as sacred is, at best, tone-deaf. Hindu Centre encourages the use of the tradition’s own terms — Ithihasa, Purana, Shruti, Smriti — because they carry precision that English categories lack.
What do Hindus mean when they say “it happened”? For many, the events of the Ramayana and Mahabharata are historical in a straightforward sense — they occurred in a previous yuga (cosmic age). For others, the truth of these narratives lies in their moral and spiritual content — whether or not Rama walked the exact geography of modern India. Both positions are valid within Hindu thought. The tradition is spacious enough to hold the literalist and the philosopher, the devotee and the scholar. What it cannot hold is dismissal — the casual attitude that these are “just stories.” They are not. They are the living architecture of a civilisation.