What is this?

IndicSaga is a way of reading the Indian epics from beginning to end — by playing them.

Each epic is divided into stages, and each stage into episodes. The story comes first, then the questions. A wrong answer teaches you something too — under every option it says what actually happened.

And behind every right answer a tale opens: the whole story behind that one detail.

Why

Most people know these stories in pieces — from television, from their grandmothers, from festivals. Everyone knows Rama and Ravana. Far fewer could tell you what happens in the Kishkindha Kanda. This site is for that gap in between.

Sources

Where an epic has one accepted source text, that is the one used — the Valmiki Ramayana for the Ramayana, the Mahabharata ascribed to Vyasa for the Mahabharata.

Not every story works that way. Krishna-Leela, Hanuman-Gatha and Vishnu-Puran are not complete in any single text — they are spread across the Bhagavata Purana, the Harivamsha, the Vishnu Purana and later texts, and those do not agree with one another. In those epics every episode says where it comes from.

These stories exist in many forms — Tulsidas's Ramcharitmanas, Kamban's Tamil Ramayana, Jain and Southeast Asian versions — and they differ from each other in many places.

But "is it in the source text or not" is not enough to say. We separate three different things:

One — what is directly present in the accepted text. Sampati burning his wings to save Jatayu, for instance.

Two — what is in the text but disputed within the textual tradition. Lakshmana recognising only Sita's anklets, for instance — that verse is missing from some old manuscripts and from the Baroda critical edition.

Three — what comes from later tradition. The Lakshmana rekha, Ahalya turning to stone, or the berries Shabari had already tasted.

Wherever that difference matters, it is written beside the story itself. Nothing is hidden.

Who makes this

I built this site. I am not a Sanskrit scholar — I am a reader. These stories reached me in pieces too, and what I wanted to read whole was not in any one place. That is the reason this site exists.

Every line here has been read and checked. Where reading the text did not settle a question, it says that it did not settle it.

If you find a mistake

Tell us — write to katha@indicsaga.com and it will be corrected. Honesty about sources is the only claim this site makes.

— Sanjay