How many kandas are there in the Ramayana?

Seven: Bala Kanda, Ayodhya Kanda, Aranya Kanda, Kishkindha Kanda, Sundara Kanda, Yuddha Kanda and Uttara Kanda.

What are the seven kandas of the Ramayana?

Bala Kanda covers Rama's youth and marriage. Ayodhya Kanda covers the exile. Aranya Kanda covers the forest years and Sita's abduction. Kishkindha Kanda covers the alliance with Sugriva. Sundara Kanda covers Hanuman's journey to Lanka. Yuddha Kanda covers the war. Uttara Kanda covers everything after the return to Ayodhya.

Which kanda is the Sundara Kanda?

The fifth book, named the beautiful book. It follows Hanuman crossing the ocean, finding Sita in the Ashoka grove, and burning Lanka. It is the kanda most often read on its own.

Which kandas are disputed?

The Bala Kanda and the Uttara Kanda are widely treated by scholars as later additions to an original core of books two to six, on the grounds of language, internal contradictions and their explicitly divine treatment of Rama.

Ramayana Film World

The seven kandas of the Ramayana

The Valmiki text is divided into seven books. Two of them most scholars think were added later, and the 2026 film stops somewhere in the middle of the fourth.

Kanda means a section or a stem, the way a length of bamboo is divided by joints. The Sanskrit Ramayana runs to seven of them and roughly twenty four thousand verses, and the division is not arbitrary. Each kanda has its own setting, its own cast and its own emotional register, which is why the Sundara Kanda can be read on its own and still work as a complete piece.

Here is what each book actually contains.

BOOK ONE

Bala Kanda

The book of youth

Covered in Part 1

Dasharatha performs a sacrifice for sons and gets four. Vishwamitra arrives at the palace and takes Rama and Lakshmana out into the forest, where Rama kills Tadaka and learns the weapons he will need much later. They travel to Mithila, where Rama breaks Shiva's bow at Sita's swayamvara and the two are married. Parashurama appears on the road home, furious about the bow, in a scene the 2026 film has cast with some care.

This is also the book that contains the epic's account of its own composition, the story of Valmiki and the krauncha birds. That self-referential quality is one reason many scholars treat the Bala Kanda as a later addition rather than part of the original core.

BOOK TWO

Ayodhya Kanda

The book of Ayodhya

Covered in Part 1

The political heart of the epic, and the one with no demons in it at all. Dasharatha decides to crown Rama. Manthara talks Kaikeyi into calling in two old boons, and Kaikeyi asks for Bharata's coronation and Rama's exile for fourteen years. Rama leaves without argument. Sita and Lakshmana go with him. Dasharatha dies of grief within days.

Bharata, who knew nothing of any of it, refuses the throne outright, goes to the forest to beg Rama to return, and when Rama refuses, comes back with Rama's sandals and places them on the seat instead of sitting on it himself. He rules as regent from outside the city for the whole fourteen years.

BOOK THREE

Aranya Kanda

The book of the forest

Covered in Part 1

Thirteen of the fourteen exile years pass quietly. Then Surpanakha finds the three of them in Panchavati, is humiliated, and goes to her brother. Ravana sends Mareech, who takes the form of a golden deer and draws Rama away. Lakshmana follows. Sita is left alone and Ravana takes her.

Jatayu, an old vulture, fights Ravana in the air to stop him and is mortally wounded. He survives just long enough to tell Rama which way they went. This is where Part 1 of the film is expected to end.

BOOK FOUR

Kishkindha Kanda

The book of Kishkindha

Split between the parts

Rama and Lakshmana meet Hanuman, and through him Sugriva, who has been driven out of his own kingdom by his brother Vali. Rama kills Vali and Sugriva is restored. In return Sugriva sends search parties out in all four directions to find Sita.

The southern party reaches the ocean and stops, defeated by it, until Sampati tells them Lanka lies across the water and Jambavan reminds Hanuman what he is actually capable of.

BOOK FIVE

Sundara Kanda

The beautiful book

Part 2

Hanuman's book, and the only one named for a quality rather than a place or an event. He crosses the ocean in a single leap, moves through Lanka unseen, finds Sita in the Ashoka grove and gives her Rama's ring. He lets himself be captured so he can see Ravana's court, and when they set his tail alight he burns the city on his way out.

This is the kanda recited on its own more than any other, and the reason is simple: it is the one book in the epic where things go right.

BOOK SIX

Yuddha Kanda

The book of war

Part 2

The longest book by a distance. Vibhishana defects from Lanka and joins Rama. The vanara army builds a causeway across the ocean. The war runs for days, and the epic gives real weight to the deaths on Ravana's side, Kumbhakarna woken from his long sleep to fight a war he says is wrong, and Indrajit, who defeats both brothers before Lakshmana finally kills him.

Ravana falls last. Vibhishana is crowned. Rama and Sita return to Ayodhya and the fourteen years end.

BOOK SEVEN

Uttara Kanda

The final book

Unconfirmed

Everything after. Ravana's backstory is filled in, Sita is exiled a second time over public doubt about her, and she raises Lava and Kusha in Valmiki's hermitage, where they eventually recite the Ramayana back to Rama without knowing who he is. It also contains the Shambuka episode, which is the most contested passage in the epic.

The Uttara Kanda is the book most often argued about. Many scholars treat it as a separate later composition attached to the original, and some traditions leave it out entirely. Whether the film touches it at all has not been said.

Why two of the seven are disputed

Books two to six form a tight, consistent narrative. Characterisation holds, the language sits at one stage of Sanskrit, and Rama is written for most of it as an exceptionally good man rather than a god.

The Bala Kanda and the Uttara Kanda sit differently. They contradict the middle books in places, they show later linguistic features, and they treat Rama as explicitly divine in a way the core does not. The scholarly consensus, and it is fairly firm, is that the epic grew at both ends around an older centre.

Where the film stops

Nitesh Tiwari's adaptation is in two parts. Part 1 opens internationally on 6 November 2026, with India following on 8 November, and Part 2 is scheduled for Diwali 2027. Going by the trailer and the material released so far, Part 1 covers roughly the first three kandas and ends around Sita's abduction, which puts the entire war in the second film.

The makers have said they are working from the Valmiki text rather than the Ramcharitmanas, and that difference is worth knowing before you watch. Tulsidas softened a great deal. Anyone who grew up on the devotional retellings may find some scenes unfamiliar, and that is not the film getting it wrong.

The story in full The whole narrative laid out, from Ayodhya to the return.
Every character in the epic Thirty four named figures and where each one belongs in the seven books.
Ayodhya, Mithila, Kishkindha, Lanka The geography the story moves through, kanda by kanda.
Who wrote the Ramayana? Valmiki, the oral tradition before him, and the two books added after.
Twenty question Ramayana quiz Ten on the epic, ten on the 2026 film, with the answers written out.
Ramayana characters and how they connect The house of Ayodhya, the court of Lanka, and the small parts that decide everything.
The 1992 animated Ramayana Yugo Sako's film, why India barely saw it, and the 4K remaster that finally released it.

Compiled by Ramayana Film World. The split between the two films has not been officially confirmed and follows where the announced Part 1 material appears to end.