Rāmopākhyāna is a section of the Indian epic Mahabharata, telling the story of Rama and Sita, a tale best known from the other great Sanskrit epic, the Ramayana.
The story comprises 704 verses spread across book 3 (the Vana Parva, also known as the Aranyaka-parva or Aranya-parva). In the standard numbering of the chapters of book 3, it comprises chapters 257–75.[1]
At the beginning of the Ramopakhyana section of the Mahabharata, the character Yudhishthira has just suffered the abduction of his wife and been exiled to the forest. Asking whether there has ever been someone more unfortunate than himself, he is told the comparable story of Rama and Sita as a moralising tale, counseling him against despair.[2] The account of Rama and Sita in the Rāmopākhyāna is noted for treating Rāma as a human rather than a divine hero; in not mentioning Sita's banishment following her return to Ayodhya; and in not mentioning how she disappears into the earth thereafter.[3]
According to W. J. Johnson, 'most current scholarship believes it to have been derived from a memorized version of the story drawn from the northern recension of the Rāmāyaṇa prior to the completion of that text as we now have it'.[3]