Uttara Kanda Summary: The Last Book of the Ramayana and the Debate Over Its Authorship

Quick answer: The Uttara Kanda ("the later book") is the seventh and last book of the Valmiki Ramayana. It begins after Rama's coronation. The sage Agastya tells the story of Ravana's family and of Hanuman's childhood. Then Rama hears that people in Ayodhya are talking about Sita's stay in Lanka, and he sends her, pregnant, to live near Valmiki's hermitage, where she gives birth to twin sons, Lava and Kusha. The book also tells of Shatrughna's victory over Lavana, Rama's killing of the ascetic Shambuka, the horse sacrifice, the twins' recital of the Ramayana at Rama's court, Sita's oath and her return into the earth, Lakshmana's departure, and finally Rama's own departure into the Sarayu river.

The Uttara Kanda is part of the Ramayana as it is printed and recited today, and the epic's own opening chapters name it as Valmiki's work. Many modern scholars, however, regard it as later than the core of the poem. Both positions are set out below, each with its source. This page does not decide between them.

Chapter numbers on this page follow Hari Prasad Shastri's English translation (111 chapters, with some passages marked as interpolations). Manmatha Nath Dutt's 1894 translation counts extra sections, so its section numbers run higher; where we checked a detail in Dutt we say so.

The story in order

1. Agastya's tales: Ravana's family (chapters 1 to 34)

After the coronation, sages led by Agastya come to Ayodhya to honour Rama (chapter 1). At Rama's request Agastya tells the history of the rakshasas: the birth of Vishravas and his son Vaishravana (Kubera), the lord of wealth (chapters 2 and 3); the rakshasa brothers Malyavan, Sumali and Mali and their war with Vishnu (chapters 4 to 8); and the birth of Dashagriva (Ravana) and his brothers, their austerities and the boons they won (chapters 9 and 10). Ravana takes Lanka from Kubera (chapter 11) and sets out to conquer the worlds. Along the way he is cursed by Vedavati, whom he assaults and who vows to be reborn for his destruction (chapter 17), and he is defeated more than once: King Arjuna Kartavirya captures him on the Narmada (chapters 32 and 33) and the vanara king Vali carries him off hanging from his girdle (chapter 34).

2. Hanuman's childhood (chapters 35 and 36)

Rama asks why Hanuman, so strong, did not help Sugriva against Vali. Agastya explains. As an infant, Hanuman, son of the Wind god and Anjana, leapt into the sky to seize the rising sun, which he took for a fruit. Indra struck him with his thunderbolt and broke his jaw; the Wind god in anger withdrew from the world until Brahma and the gods restored the child and gave him boons (chapter 35). Agastya says that in his boyhood Hanuman was cursed by ascetics so that he would not be conscious of his full strength (chapter 36; in Dutt's translation Agastya gives this as the reason Hanuman did not use his power for Sugriva against Vali).

3. Rama's reign and the allies' farewell (chapters 37 to 42)

The allies are honoured and sent home with gifts (chapters 38 to 40), the Pushpaka chariot is dismissed (chapter 41), and Rama and Sita live happily in Ayodhya. Sita is expecting a child and tells Rama she would like to visit the hermitages on the Ganga (chapter 42).

4. Sita's banishment (chapters 43 to 50)

Rama asks his companions what the people are saying. One of them, Bhadra (Vadra in Dutt's translation), tells him that the citizens praise his victory but also ask how he can take back a wife who lived in Ravana's house, and say that they too will now have to bear such conduct in their own wives (chapter 43). Rama calls his brothers (chapter 44). In Dutt's translation he tells them that he knows Sita is pure, that she passed through the fire in Lanka before the gods, but that he cannot bear the public censure; he orders Lakshmana to take her the next morning to Valmiki's hermitage on the Tamasa, across the Ganga, as if fulfilling her wish, and forbids his brothers to plead against it (chapter 45).

Lakshmana drives Sita to the Ganga. On the far bank he tells her, weeping, that Rama has given her up (chapters 46 and 47). Sita answers with grief and dignity. She says she will not end her life, because she carries Rama's child; she sends respectful messages to the queens and asks Rama to treat the citizens as his brothers; and she asks Lakshmana to look at her and see that she is with child (chapter 48). Valmiki finds her and offers her his protection at his hermitage (chapter 49).

5. Stories told to Rama, and Shatrughna's campaign (chapters 51 to 72)

Lakshmana returns, and Rama tells him the stories of Nriga, Nimi and Yayati (chapters 53 to 59). Sages from the Yamuna region ask for protection from the rakshasa Lavana, son of Madhu (chapters 60 and 61). Shatrughna asks for the task, is consecrated king, and sets out (chapters 62 to 64). On the way he spends a night at Valmiki's hermitage, and that same night Sita gives birth to twin sons (chapter 66). Valmiki protects the babies with kusha grass; in Dutt's translation he names the elder Kusha, after the upper part of the grass, and the younger Lava, after the lower part. Shatrughna kills Lavana and settles in the city of Madhu, which Dutt's translation calls Mathura (chapters 68 to 70); later he visits Valmiki again and returns to see Rama (chapters 71 and 72).

6. Shambuka (chapters 73 to 76)

An old brahmin brings the body of his young son to the palace gate and blames the king, because a child does not die before his parents in a well-governed kingdom (chapter 73). Narada explains to Rama that in the earlier ages austerities (tapas) were practised by one varna after another, and that a shudra is now practising austerities in his kingdom, against the order of that age; this, he says, is the cause of the boy's death (chapter 74). Rama travels across the land in the Pushpaka (chapter 75) and finds an ascetic hanging head downwards beside a lake. He asks the ascetic his varna. The ascetic answers that he is a shudra named Shambuka and is performing austerities to reach the world of the gods in his body. Rama kills him with his sword; the gods praise Rama, and the brahmin's son returns to life (chapter 76). In Dutt's translation the gods also tell Rama that Shambuka, slain by him, has reached the abode of the gods.

7. Agastya's gift and Rama's sacrifices (chapters 77 to 92)

Rama visits Agastya, who gives him a divine ornament (chapters 76 to 82). Bharata persuades Rama not to perform the Rajasuya (chapter 83), and Lakshmana proposes the horse sacrifice (Ashvamedha) instead; the stories of Vritra and of Ila are told to show its power (chapters 84 to 90). The horse sacrifice is held in the Naimisha forest (chapters 91 and 92). Rama has no other wife: in Dutt's translation he has a golden image of Sita made to sit beside him at the sacrifice.

8. Lava and Kusha sing the Ramayana (chapters 93 to 94)

Valmiki comes to the sacrifice with his pupils and tells Lava and Kusha to sing the Ramayana in the streets and before the king (chapter 93). Rama listens day after day, and from the story he understands that the two singers are Sita's sons (chapter 94).

9. Sita's oath and return to the earth (chapters 95 to 98)

Rama sends word that if Sita is pure she should come and prove it before the assembly (chapter 95). Valmiki brings her and declares on the strength of his own austerities that she is pure and that the twins are Rama's sons (chapter 96). Rama answers that he knows she is innocent and accepts the boys as his, but that for the sake of the people he asks her to give proof. Sita, in a red garment (in Dutt's translation), makes an oath: if she has never thought of anyone but Rama, may the Earth goddess give her a place. A throne rises from the earth, the goddess takes Sita in her arms, and Sita enters the earth as the gods praise her (chapter 97; the same sequence is in Dutt). Rama's grief and anger are calmed by Brahma (chapter 98).

10. Lakshmana's departure (chapters 103 to 106)

After the death of the queens and the settling of kingdoms for the princes (chapters 99 to 102), Time (Kala) comes to Rama as an ascetic and asks for a private meeting; whoever interrupts it, Rama promises, will be put to death (chapters 103 and 104). The sage Durvasa arrives and threatens to curse the whole family if he is not admitted at once, so Lakshmana goes in (chapter 105). On Vasishtha's advice that renouncing is equal to death, Rama renounces Lakshmana; Lakshmana goes to the bank of the Sarayu, restrains his breath, and is taken to the world of the gods (chapter 106; Dutt gives the same account).

11. Rama's departure (chapters 107 to 111)

Rama gives the southern Koshala lands to Kusha and the northern lands to Lava (chapter 107); in Dutt's translation their capitals are Kushavati, at the foot of the Vindhyas, for Kusha, and Sravanti for Lava. With his brothers, the citizens and the vanaras who wish to follow him, Rama walks to the Sarayu (chapters 108 and 109). Brahma welcomes him, and Rama enters the waters and resumes his own form as Vishnu; his followers, entering the river at the place called Gopratara, go to heavenly worlds (chapter 110). The book ends with the merit of hearing the Ramayana (chapter 111).

Is the Uttara Kanda by Valmiki? The authorship debate

What the text says about itself

The opening book of the Ramayana claims the Uttara Kanda for Valmiki. In Bala Kanda 1.3.38 Valmiki is said to have composed "in the Uttara" the events still to come in Rama's life, and 1.4.2 says that he composed the poem in 24,000 verses and 500 sargas, "six kandas and also the Uttara". Traditional readers take these verses at their word: the Uttara Kanda is printed with the other six books in the standard editions and is part of the received Valmiki Ramayana.

At the same time, Narada's summary of Rama's life in the very first sarga ends with Rama's return, his coronation and his long, peaceful reign (Bala Kanda 1.1.89 to 1.1.97). It does not mention the banishment of Sita.

The view of many modern scholars

• Hermann Jacobi and the scholarly consensus. The introduction to the Clay Sanskrit Library's Ramayana Book I (Boyhood) states that "it has been generally accepted by scholars, since at least the time of Jacobi" that much of the Bala Kanda and most, if not all, of the Uttara Kanda are later additions to the poem's original core, represented by Books Two to Six. It notes that Jacobi developed a suggestion first made by Adolf Holtzmann in 1841.
• Later even than the Bala Kanda. The same introduction gives several reasons for regarding the Uttara Kanda as later even than the Bala Kanda, among them the book's knowledge of Mathura as an important site.
• Indian scholars who see an early layer. The same introduction also records that a number of scholars, particularly in India, have seen some portions of the Uttara Kanda as belonging to an early stratum of the text on literary-critical grounds.
• The critical edition. The Oriental Institute, Baroda, published the Uttara Kanda as volume VII of its critical edition of the Valmiki Ramayana, edited by Umakant P. Shah (three fascicles, 1972 to 1975), under the general editorship of U. P. Shah and G. H. Bhatt. The critical edition reconstructs the oldest recoverable form of the text from the manuscripts; it did not drop the Uttara Kanda from the epic.
• The Princeton translation. Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman's translation of the Uttarakanda (Princeton University Press, 2017) has an introduction that discusses the problem of the book and the "complex reception history" of its accounts of Sita's banishment and of Rama's killing of a low-caste ascetic.

The two positions answer different questions. Tradition asks what belongs to the Ramayana as it has been received and recited; textual scholarship asks which layers of that text are oldest. Readers who hold either view can still read the Uttara Kanda closely, and both are represented in serious study of the epic.

How later writers and readers have responded

Bhavabhuti's play

The Sanskrit dramatist Bhavabhuti wrote the Uttararamacharita ("Rama's last act"), one of the earliest stage adaptations of Valmiki's epic. The Clay Sanskrit Library, which publishes Sheldon Pollock's translation, describes the play as one that "revises" the epic's "most intractable episode, the hero's rejection of his beloved wife".

The Adhyatma Ramayana

In the Adhyatma Ramayana (Uttara Kanda, chapter 4, in Lala Baij Nath's 1913 English translation), the banishment becomes part of a divine plan. Sita tells Rama that the gods want her to return to Vaikuntha first; Rama answers that he will send her to the forest on the pretext of public scandal, that she will bear two sons at Valmiki's hermitage, and that after an oath she will go through the earth to heaven, where he will follow her.

Readers' views on Sita's banishment

The writer Madhu Kishwar, in her essay "Yes to Sita, No to Ram!" (Manushi, issue 98), describes how Sita is seen in popular imagination rather than in any one text. She reports that Rama's rejection of Sita "is almost universally condemned" in the folk songs and conversations she collected, while Sita's final refusal to return is "held up as an example of supreme dignity". She also cites Kalidasa's Raghuvamsha, where Sita's message to Rama after the banishment addresses him as "king".

Readings of the Shambuka episode

The Shambuka episode is one of the most discussed passages in the Ramayana, because Rama kills an ascetic on account of his varna.

• B. R. Ambedkar, in Annihilation of Caste (1936), section 16, used the story to argue that the four-varna order (chaturvarnya) depends on punishment to enforce it: "As a king, Rama was bound to maintain Chaturvarnya", he wrote, and the death penalty in the story showed, in his reading, what such a system requires.
• Scholars who treat the Uttara Kanda as a later layer (above) place the episode in that later layer rather than in the core of the epic.
• Princeton University Press, describing the Goldmans' translation, names Sita's banishment and Rama's killing of a "low-caste ascetic" as the accounts that have made the Uttara Kanda "a point of social and religious controversy".

HinduTone reports these readings with their sources and does not rank them.

Frequently asked questions

What does "Uttara Kanda" mean?

"Uttara" means "later" or "subsequent", and "kanda" means "book". It is the book that follows the war and the coronation.

How many chapters are in the Uttara Kanda?

Shastri's translation has 111 chapters, plus some passages it marks as interpolations. Dutt's 1894 translation counts more sections because it numbers some of those passages separately.

Why did Rama send Sita away?

In the text, because of what the citizens were saying about her stay in Ravana's house. Rama says he knows she is innocent but cannot bear the public censure (chapters 43 to 45).

Where were Lava and Kusha born?

In Valmiki's hermitage, on the same night that Shatrughna stayed there on his way to fight Lavana (chapter 66).

How does the Ramayana end?

Sita returns into the earth after her oath (chapter 97). Later, Lakshmana leaves the world at the Sarayu (chapter 106), and Rama enters the Sarayu and resumes his form as Vishnu (chapter 110).

Did Valmiki write the Uttara Kanda?

The Bala Kanda says he did (1.3.38 and 1.4.2), and tradition accepts this. Many modern scholars, following Jacobi, consider most of it later than Books Two to Six. Some scholars, particularly in India, see parts of it as early.

Related reading

• Ramayana: The Complete Guide
• Yuddha Kanda summary
• Sita in the Ramayana
• Lava and Kusha in the Ramayana
• Sita's Agni Pariksha: what each version says
• Shatrughna and Urmila
• Adhyatma Ramayana and Ramayana Masam

Sources

1. Valmiki Ramayana, Book 7 (Uttara Kanda), tr. Hari Prasad Shastri (1952), chapter list and text: wisdomlib.org, Book 7. Chapter numbers on this page follow this translation.
2. The Ramayana, Uttara Kandam, tr. Manmatha Nath Dutt (Calcutta, 1894), Project Gutenberg eBook 62496: gutenberg.org/ebooks/62496.
3. Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda 1.1, 1.3.38 and 1.4.2, Sanskrit text with English translation (Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, Tirupati), IIT Kanpur: heritage.iitk.ac.in/VRAM.
4. Introduction ("History and Historicity") to Ramayana Book I, Boyhood, Clay Sanskrit Library: Clay Sanskrit Library website, claysanskritlibrary.org.
5. The Valmiki-Ramayana, critical edition, vol. VII, Uttarakanda, ed. U. P. Shah (Oriental Institute, Baroda, 1972 to 1975); review record, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society: cambridge.org.
6. Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, The Ramayana of Valmiki, Volume VII: Uttarakanda (Princeton University Press, 2017): publisher's page at press.princeton.edu (ISBN 9780691168845).
7. Bhavabhuti, Rama's Last Act (Uttararamacharita), tr. Sheldon Pollock, Clay Sanskrit Library: Clay Sanskrit Library website, claysanskritlibrary.org.
8. The Adhyatma Ramayana, tr. Lala Baij Nath (1913), Uttara Kanda chapter 4: archive.org.
9. Madhu Kishwar, "Yes to Sita, No to Ram!", Manushi issue 98: infinityfoundation.com.
10. B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste (1936), section 16, annotated edition by Frances W. Pritchett, Columbia University: columbia.edu.

Last reviewed: 12 November 2026.