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AHMEDABAD: Who abducted Sita ? Even a kid could rattle off the correct answer. But the Class XII Sanskrit textbook of the Gujarat board has got this basic fact from the “Ramayana” wrong: it says Lord Rama, and not Ravana , was the abductor.

“Here the poet has brought out a beautiful picture of the character of Rama with his original thought and thinking. There is a very heart-touching description of the message conveyed by Laxman to Ram when Sita was abducted by Rama (sic),” reads a para on page 106 of “Introduction to Sanskrit Literature”, which is replete with spelling errors right from the word go. Only English-medium students are subjected to the glaring blooper as the Gujarati textbook has got this paragraph on “Raghuvansham”, an epic by Sanskrit poet Kalidas, correct.

Retired Sanskrit professor Vasant Bhatt says it is known to all that Ravana abducted Sita and that “Raghuvansham”, too, depicts the same.

When contacted, Dr Nitin Pethani , executive president of the Gujarat State Board of School Textbooks, Gandhinagar, first said he was not aware of the blooper but later admitted the mistake.

“It is a translation error where Ravana is replaced with Rama. In the Gujarati textbook there is no mistake,” Pethani said.

