The Ramraksha Stotra is a Sanskrit hymn of thirty-eight verses to Rama, which tradition attributes to Rishi Budha Kaushika. Its fifteenth verse tells how it came to be: Shiva recited the hymn to Rishi Budha Kaushika in a dream, and the rishi wrote it down when he woke at dawn.
The hymn is a kavacha, an armour of names: verse by verse it asks Rama, under one of his names, to guard each part of the body, from Raghava for the head and the son of Dasharatha for the brow down to the feet. It then salutes Rama with Lakshmana at his right, Sita at his left and Hanuman before him, and honours Sage Valmiki as a koel singing Rama's name. One verse uses the name Rama in all eight grammatical cases of Sanskrit, and the last holds Rama's name equal to the thousand names — a verse also recited at the close of the Vishnu Sahasranama.
The Ramraksha is recited as a prayer for protection, and manuscripts of it survive from Pune and Wai in Maharashtra as well as from Varanasi and Ayodhya, some in the Sharada script of Kashmir. Among the Rama temples in this collection are the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, the Kalaram temple at Nashik, where Rama is worshipped in black stone with Sita and Lakshmana, and Bhadrachalam on the Godavari.