ଅଯୋଧ୍ଯା ନାମ ନଗରୀ

The two verses with which the Ramayana introduces its city, before any character has appeared. There is a great and prosperous country called Kosala, they say, glad, lying along the bank of the Sarayu, abundant in wealth and in grain; and in it there was a city renowned through the world, called Ayodhya, which Manu the lord of men laid out himself. The order matters and is easy to miss: the country is given first and the city second, and the city is credited not to a god but to the first man, which sets the whole poem in a human rather than a divine geography. The name itself is a claim — Ayodhya means the place that cannot be fought against — and the description that follows in the epic spends many verses making it good.