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During its original broadcast, Ramayan was enormously popular, drawing over 100 million viewers. Its popularity reached a point where the entire nation of India "came to a virtual stop as nearly everyone who could gain access to a television stopped what they were doing to watch the televised adventures of Rama."In a phenomenon that the newsmagazine India Today dubbed "Ramayan fever," religious services (Hindu and non-Hindu) were rescheduled to accommodate the show's broadcast; trains, buses, and inner-city trucks stopped running when the show was on; and, in villages, hundreds of people would gather around a single television set to watch the show.

At the time, Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi stated, "Ramayan has stirred the imaginations of millions of viewers. It has imbibed the great Indian culture, tradition and normal values especially in the young."

While religious-themed films had been produced since the beginning of Indian cinema, Ramayan was the first Indian television series based on religious stories and is widely credited with inspiring the production of many other religious television series, including Mahabharat, Vishwamitra, Buddha, and Sagar's own Luv Kush and Krishna, as well as inspiring the production of historical dramas such as Chanakya and Shyam Benegal's Bharat Ek Khoj.

Ramayan was listed in the Limca Book of Records as the world's "most viewed mythological serial" until June 2003.