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Debendra K. DashDipti R. Pattanaik 33of Valmiki’s epic, but of Lord Jagannath, the presiding deity ofOrissan kingdom and the then Vaishnav cult. For him Rama isimportant because he is the seventh incarnation of Lord Jaganath.His proposal to write about Valmiki’s Rama is a surrogate activity tothe real act of paying obeisance to his original inspiration, LordJagannath. Translation here is a religious activity, which leads tosalvation.There are also other ideological reasons behind the drasticdifference between the beginning in Valmiki’s text and that ofBalaram Das’s text. Balaram has dropped the first four chapters ofValmiki’s epic, because Rama, according to him, is not merely the‘ideal man’ (Purushottama) as conceived by Valmiki, but is the veryembodiment of the Divine on earth. Moreover, while the story ofRamayana is, for Valmiki, a lived history, for Balaram, it is part ofsacred mythology.However, after reformulating the symbolic significance ofRama, Balaram proceeds to follow Valmiki’s narrative closely withminor variations in detail. Of the three readings available on theoriginal text his reading of Valmiki is based on the ‘northern Indianreading’(Sahoo 2000:93-94). Valmiki’s story of Rama and hisancestors begins from the fifth canto of the first book Adi Kanda andBalaram starts the same story from couplet no. 190. Balaramthereafter describes Ayodhya with minor changes in Valmiki’sdepiction of the locale (for a detailed comparison between Valmiki’stext and Jagamohan Ramayana, See Sahoo 2000).Overall, while retaining the main storyline, the broaddivision of books etc we see that Balaram has adopted variousmethods in his translation of Ramayana at different points includingliteral translation, the expansion of theme, excision of a few details,amalgamation of ideas and stories from other canonical texts like