The epic poem of Goswami Tulsidas, the 'Ramcharitmanas' made of gold was gifted to Ram Lalla in Ayodhya by former IAS officer Subramanian Lakshminarayanan and his wife Saraswathy ahead of the Ram Navami celebration.
Ayodhya: Ahead of the Ram Navami, former IAS officer of Madhya Pradesh, Subramanian Lakshminarayanan and his wife Saraswathy gifted Ram Lalla in Ayodhya the revered poem Ramacharitmanas made out of gold. It has been placed close to Ram Lalla in the sanctum sanctorum of the Ram temple. The Ramcharitmanas gifted to Lord Ram are made of gold, silver and copper. Estimated at a value of Rs 4.5-5 crore, it was handed over to the Ram temple trust by Lakshminarayanan on the first day of Chaitra Navratri.
His wife, Saraswathy, has played a crucial role in shaping the exquisite epic crafted from pure 24-carat gold. Composed by Goswami Tulsidas, the 147-kg book was divided into multiple bundles for ease of transportation and assembly at the temple.
The 522 gold-plated pages were transported in bundles containing 20-25 pages each, arriving separately in Ayodhya. Once all pages were collected, they were bound together. The text was meticulously crafted onto gold metal sheets using ultraviolet printing technology.
Even though copper served as the foundation metal, gold and silver were seamlessly combined to produce the best metallic sheets, or pages, with a thickness of one millimetre each.
Private jewellers from Chennai were commissioned to create a special stand for the book to be placed upon when it was to be read before the lord. The entire process, including research and compilation of the text, took eight months to achieve perfection. The epic poem, compiled in Awadhi, consists of 10,902 verses, mirroring the version gifted by the couple.