From the sixth day of Magha to the full moon, Lord Shri Kashi Vishwanath will listen to the Ramayana for nine days at Kashi Vishwanath Dham.
On Saturday, Swami Jitendranand Saraswati, National General Secretary of the All India Sant Samiti, Mahamandaleshwar Arun Das, Acharya Suryalal Shastri, Mahant Deveshacharya of Hanuman Garhi, and Devendra Pathak formally inaugurated the recitation of the Ramayana by performing the worship of Mother Shringar Gauri with proper rituals and chanting of mantras.
Swami Jitendranand Saraswati said that Aurangzeb had demolished the temple on April 19, 1669. A few days later, Brahmins preserved the remnants of the Mother Shringar Gauri temple and started the tradition of narrating the Ramayana to Lord Shri Kashi Vishwanath. This tradition continued without any written record until 1965.
In 1965, after the formation of the Municipal Corporation, the formal recitation of the Ramayana began after completing the legal formalities as per the orders of the then Sub-Divisional Magistrate.
Since then, Lord Vishwanath has been listening to the Ramayana for nine days, from the sixth day of the bright half of the month of Magha to the full moon. Since then, Vedic scholars and Brahmins of Kashi have been narrating the Ramayana to Lord Shiva.
This is a nine-day recitation, in which the worship of Shringar Gauri is performed on the first day and the concluding day.
He said that a prayer has been offered to Lord Vishwanath for the construction of a magnificent Vishweshwar Mahadev temple at Gyanvapi.