Ahead of the Ram Mandir Pran Pratishtha, Gita Press Gorakhpur has uploaded the digital version of Shri Ramcharitmanas for free on its website gitapress.org. The Holy book is available for free reading in 10 languages including English, Hindi, Gujarati, Oriya, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Bangla, Nepali and Assamese.
The renowned publisher has witnessed a surge in demand for Ramayana-related scriptures ahead of the Pran Pratishtha which has led to a shortage of Shri Ramcharitmanas. The online edition cannot be downloaded and is for online reading only.
Lalmani Tripathi, Manager of Gita Press, said that after the Ram Mandir inauguration was announced, demands for Ramcharitmanas, along with Sundar Kand and Hanuman Chalisa have gone up substantially.
He said that press has no stock left for Ramcharitmanas. Tripathi said that as soon as copies are printed, they are shipped immediately due to the demands, and have no inventory of the copies of the Ramayana version by Tulsidas.
He said that generally Gita Press prints 75,000 copies of the scripture, this year they published 1 lakh copies, and still all stock were exhausted. He said that apart from Ramcharitmanas, demands for Sundar Kand and Hanuman Chalisa have also increased.
Reports suggest this is the first time that the primary publisher of Hindu scriptures has run out of Shri Ramcharitmanas. Gita Press is also getting orders from its branches to distribute the scriptures, which the press is unable to fulfil.
By uploading the scripture on its website, Gita Press is making up for the shortage of the physical copies of Shri Ramcharitmanas.
The publisher is expecting that the demand for the scripture will increase manifold after 22nd January.
Ramcharitmanas is an epic poem in Awadhi language composed by bhakti poet Tulsidas based on Valmiki’s Ramayana. It made the story of Ramayana available to the common men as most people didn’t know Sanskrit. Sundar Kand is the fifth book in Ramayana, which tells the story of Hanuman. Hanuman Chalisa is a devotional hymn dedicated to Lord Hanuman.
