Teen author narrates aspects of Ayodhya, Lord Ram's ancestors

New Delhi, Nov 7 (IANS) After his retelling of "The Ramayana", this 16-year-old author has focused on Lord Rama's ancestors who ruled at Ayodhya in his second historical fiction work, highlighting the stories of various kings of the Suryavanshi lineage in a dramatic form.

"More than my first work, my second has a greater degree of relation with Ayodhya cause I tried highlighting the stories of the various kings of the Suryavanshi lineage through the dramatic form in the same. It was one of the first English works to have been written on Lord Rama's ancestors who ruled at Ayodhya before him, in the form of drama," Souhardya, who is also a Prime Minister Bal Puraskar Awardee-2021 besides being a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, told IANS.

"Also, I've used a lot of reference materials for research in the process of writing my books which were directly or indirectly sourced from the place, research into the history of Ram Janmbhoomi being an important dimension in the same," he said.

At 13, when most children of his age group remain occupied in school works and textbook learning, Souhardya chose to retell the Ramayana, and started going through books published in the 19th and the 20th centuries.

Some of his readings included the translations of the Rig Vedic hymns by Ralph T. Griffith and some of the earliest translations of the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and other Indian epics in poetical metre by scholars like Edwin Arnold and Richard Francis Burton.

Until now, Souhardya has authored two books of historical mythology -- "The Chronicles of Suryavansh" and "The Scion of Suryavansh" -- and is currently working on a historical fiction story set in the Mughal era during the initial days of Emperor Akbar.

About his debut, he says: "It is entitled 'Scion of Suryavansh' and is a rendering of the Ramayana in the English poetical metrics. It is not more than 54 odd pages but yet, every time I look at it, it seems like I'm just beginning to grow as a writer."

Souhardya's second work, "The Chronicles of Suryavansh", which is a bigger at around 140 pages, deals with Lord Rama's ancestry and highlights different stories from the tale of King Sagara's 60,000 sons to the significance of Parashurama.

He contends that the kings of Ayodhyas were the forefathers of both Jainism and Buddhism. For Buddhism, Siddhartha belonged to a distant Suryavanshi Sakya lineage of Kapilavastu as documented in most of the Buddhist holy texts, he said.

For Jainism, the first Tirthankar, Rishabadatta, is taken to be a Suryavanshi ruler. His son, Bahubali, famous for the monolithic Bahubali sculpture, near Shravanabelagola, in Karnataka, is another Jain Prince, widely celebrated for his upright views and divine revelations, says Souhardya, in an article dealing with the Ramayana and how the Suryavanshi lineage has contributed to religious development in the subcontinent.