Engineering Succession: A Recursive Problem–Solution Reading of the Rāmāyaṇa Uttarakāṇḍa

Abstract The Uttarakāṇḍa of the Rāmāyaṇa is frequently read as a heterogeneous appendage or a post- facto moral problem. This paper offers a formalist structural reading that takes the transfer of the dynasty from one generation to the next as the governing problem resolved by the text’s ending. Reconstructing the narrative through a recursive problem–solution analysis, the inquiry works backward from the final state of dynastic transition and forward through a chain of logical requirements. The analysis rests on three structural distinctions: the difference between producing heirs and establishing their public legitimacy; the gap between private royal knowledge and public civicstanding; and the final decoupling of succession from marital reunion. It shows that the initial abandonment is caused by a voiced public suspicion that the ending must permanently foreclose, and that the departure of the older generation through mahāprasthāna completes the transfer once the heirs’ standing is secured. A brief secondary discussion of the justice episodes demonstrates that the same royal responsiveness to complaint underpins both the abandonment and the public acceptance of the heirs. Operating independently of compositional history or authorial intent, the paper treats the Uttarakāṇḍa as a closed-circuit formal system in which each major episode functions as a necessary solution to an unresolved structural constraint.