10 Facts About Ramlila

The epic text is dated to the 1st millennium BCE and Ramlila is an adaptation of those stories.

Ramlila festivities were declared by UNESCO as one of the "Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity" in 2008.

Ramlila is particularly notable in historically important Hindu cities of Ayodhya, Varanasi, Vrindavan, Almora, Satna and Madhubani – cities in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.

Ramlila is a compound Sanskrit words "Rama" and "Lila" (play, game, sport).

Ramlila is one of many performance arts-related festivities within Hinduism.

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In many rural areas, traditional venues for Ramlila have developed over the centuries, and hundreds of people will often make the trip nightly to attend the play, by walking over miles like a religious pilgrimage in earlier times.

Ramlila is not a simple play acted out in a drama theatre, but it is structured to encourage and allow the audience to participate.

Today, several regions have developed their distinctive form of Ramlila, Uttar Pradesh itself has numerous variants of presentation styles, most prominent among them is that of Ramnagar, Varanasi which is a 31-day event, while most Ramlila elsewhere are typically abridged 10-day events climaxing in Dussehra.

The Ramnagar Ramlila is held over 31 days where the entire Ramacharitmanas is recited, instead of the usual 10 for abridged production.

Today, Ramlila is staged in most countries with immigrant Hindu populations from the Indian subcontinent, including that from India, Nepal and Pakistan.