Found a scholarly article on the Uttar Khand whose thesis is basically, “This is a shitty crackfic sequel and you should feel bad for pretending it’s canon.” Link in the reblogs.
Link
This! Not in the least because, both these episodes, which the Uttar Kand pushes so heavily are….completely out of line with the interests of the rest of the poem. (Plus, I mean, the Valmiki backstory—though there is another that gives him a sage for a dad—that I’m most familiar with is that he used to be a hunter/thief before meeting Narada, and so this seems—somewhat at odds, to me. (Plus, there’s certainly other parts of the Ramayana that seem to be added in later; see, the age debate and the Jabali-rebuttal issue.)
updated link because I was looking this up again
