At a rate of fifteen miles a day, without paved roads and passing through jungles with rest times, the journey would take years. The four divine places of pilgrimage form a diamond with the four sides constituting over 4000 miles. Shravana, a dutiful son opts to carry his blind and infirm parents in the two pans of a balance over his shoulders while walking. To begin with is the killing of Shravana by Dasratha. It is rife with too many characters behaving idealistically and contrary to human nature to be plausible or true. There seems to me be little doubt that the Ramayana is an idealized myth to appeal to the better nature of humanity. There are other ways than archeology, for example human nature, the parallels of selective memory and its fading with time and social relevance and geography and common horizons that can be used to analyze ancient stories. The archeological efforts by Schliemann at Troy and Rawlinson at Beheshtun lend credence to parts of the Iliad and the biblical story of the Assyrian destruction of Israel respectively. In fairness, it subjects its own ancient books to independent verification by acceptable standards, but devotes more time, intellectual effort and talent to the biased purpose. The West as usual has a culturally biased view and tends to label non-western scriptures as mythical while its zealots swear fealty to the literal truth of the Bible.
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