Ramayan is a highly successful[1][2] Indian television series created, written, and directed by Ramanand Sagar. It is a television adaptation of the ancient Indian religious epic of the same name and is primarily based on Valmiki's Ramayan and Tulsidas' Ramcharitmanas. It is also partly derived from portions of Kamban's Kambaramayanam and other works.
Cast
The 78-episode series originally aired weekly on Doordarshan from January 25, 1987, to July 31, 1988, on Sundays at 9:30 a.m. IST.
In 1986, following the moderate success of his television series Vikram aur Betaal and while he was in the midst of producing Dada-Dadi Ki Kahaniyan, Ramanand Sagar approached executives at Doordarshan about the possibility of producing a serialized version of the Ramayana, of which Sagar was a lifelong devotee. The idea was initially rejected, then revived, but delayed due to concerns that such a television series might lead to a rise in communalism. Finally, the show was indeed approved for 52 episodes (which would later be expanded twice in response to the series' overwhelming popularity, each time by 13 episodes, bringing the total to 78 episodes), and was given the unpopular time slot of Sunday morning at 9:30 a.m. Doordarshan budgeted Sagar Rs. 100,000 per episode.
During its original broadcast, Ramayan was enormously popular, drawing over 100 million viewers. Although rising slowly at first, its popularity reached a point where the entire nation of India "came to a virtual stop as nearly everyone who could gain access to a television stopped what they were doing to watch the televised adventures of Rama.
At the time it aired, Ramayan quickly rose to become the most popular program in the history of Indian television, a title it held until B. R. Chopra's Mahabharat aired, which was after the end of Ramayan's original run. Subsequently, through re-runs and video productions, Ramayan regained popularity and was listed in the Limca Book of Records as the world's "most viewed mythological serial" until June 2003.
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