Some general comments about South Asia. The subcontinent is roughly the size of Europe (2,000 miles north to south), so imagine trying to govern its enormous complexity. Currently in India, there are 15 "official" languages, about 24 commonly spoken languages and hundreds of dialects. On the huge Deccan plateau to the south (Deccan means "south"), most rivers flow east; the Ganges and Indus river valleys are to the north and west. The subcontinent is walled off by mountains (the Himalayas) to the north, but they never formed a complete barrier to invaders. The subcontinent has experienced the same continuous civilization for over four thousand years with no interruptions/discontinuities, as has been the case with European history (Greece, Rome, etc). The early history of South Asia is often studied in terms of the development of religion, Hinduism, which evolved over centuries from the early vedic period and which is still evolving. The study of this evolution is, of course, complicated by the lack of surviving sources. Although Hinduism became the dominant religious experience, it was far from always being the most popular, and it has never become completely standardized or uniform in its practices. The subcontinent was also the place of origin of Buddhism and Jainism, and later Islam took firm roots there. One of the thorny issues of early South Asian history has been the dispute over the Aryans and the nature of their invasion/migration and their destruction/displacement of Harappan civilization, moving the center of society from the Indus River valley northeastward to the Ganges River. The Aryans were Central Asian nomads (tall, fair and long-haired) who used horses and light chariots. They migrated south, west and east, conquering villages as they went. Their role in the destruction of Harappan civilization remains quite debatable, as there is evidence both of a slow demise of Harappa (short term floods, a shift in the monsoon that led to desertification) and of violence. Your assignment for this week focuses on your reading of the Ramayana epic. By tradition, authorship of this epic poem has been attributed to Valmiki with the central scene set in Ayodhya, capital of Kosala. The epic was originally fundamentally secular in nature, as was the Mahabharata also, but both later acquired a religious significance. Please remember that you are reading the epic as a historian and not as a literary critic. You are searching the story for evidence that reveals early South Asian political practices and attitudes in regard to kingship and the powers and role of the king in society. You are not going to be writing about all the great adventures of Rama. Please focus your paper on the assigned question, include an introduction, use paragraphs (each of which deals with a specific point of your introductory thesis), review the style rules for history papers in the course and include short pieces of quoted evidence from the document to support your analysis.