One day when Rama was sitting on his throne, his ring fell off. When it touched the earth, it made a hole in the ground and disappeared into it. It was gone. His trusty henchman, Hanuman, was at his feet. Rama said to Hanuman, ‘Look, my ring is lost. Find it for me.’

Now, Hanuman can enter any hole, no matter how tiny. He had the power to become the smallest of the small and larger than the largest thing. So he took on a tiny form and went down the hole.

He went and went and went and suddenly fell into the netherworld. There were women down there. ‘Look, a tiny monkey! It’s fallen from above!’ Then they caught him and placed him on a platter (thali). The King of Spirits (bhut), who lives in the netherworld, likes to eat animals. So Hanuman was sent to him as part of his dinner along with his vegetables. Hanuman sat on the platter, wondering what to do.

While this was going on in the netherworld, Rama sat on his throne on the earth above. The sage Vasistha and the god Brahma came to see him. They said to Rama, ‘We want to talk privately with you. We don’t want anyone to hear what we say or interrupt it. Do we agree?’

‘All right,’ said Rama, ‘we’ll talk.’

Then they said, ‘Lay down a rule. If anyone comes in as we are talking, his head should be cut off.’

‘It will be done,’ said Rama.

Who would be the most trustworthy person to guard the door? Hanuman had gone down to fetch the ring. Rama trusted no one more than Laksmana so he asked Laksmana to stand by the door. ‘Don’t allow anyone to enter,’ he ordered.

Laksmana was standing at the door when the sage Visvamitra appeared and said, ‘I need to see Rama at once. It’s urgent. Tell me, where is Rama?’

Laksmana said, ‘Don’t go in now. He is talking to some people. It’s important.’

‘What is there that Rama would hide from me?’ said Visvamitra. ‘I must go in, right now.’

Laksmana said, ‘I’ll have to ask his permission before I can let you in.’

‘Go in and ask then.’

‘I can’t go in till Rama comes out. You’ll have to wait.’

‘If you don’t go in and announce my presence, I’ll burn the entire kingdom of Ayodhya with a curse,’ said Visvamitra.

Laksmana thought, ‘If I go in now, I’ll die. But if I don’t go, this hot-headed man will burn down the kingdom. All the subjects, all things living in it, will die. It’s better that I alone should die.’

So he went right in.

Rama asked him, ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Visvamitra is here.’

‘Send him in.’

So Visvamitra went in. The private talk had already come to an end. Brahma and Vasistha had come to see Rama and say to him, ‘Your work in the world of human beings is over. Your incarnation as Rama must now be given up. Leave this body, come up and rejoin the gods.’ That’s all they wanted to say.

Laksmana said to Rama, ‘Brother, you should cut off my head.’

Rama said, ‘Why? We had nothing more to say. Nothing was left. So why should I cut off your head?’

Laksmana said, ‘You can’t do that. You can’t let me off because I’m your brother. There’ll be a blot on Rama’s name. You didn’t spare your wife. You sent her to the jungle. I must be punished. I will leave.’

Laksmana was an avatar of Sesa, the serpent on whom Visnu sleeps. His time was up too. He went directly to the river Sarayu and disappeared in the flowing waters.

When Laksmana relinquished his body, Rama summoned all his followers, Vibhisana, Sugriva and others, and arranged for the coronation of his twin sons, Lava and Kusa. Then Rama too entered the river Sarayu.

All this while, Hanuman was in the netherworld. When he was finally taken to the King of Spirits, he kept repeating the name of Rama. ‘Rama Rama Rama…’

Then the King of Spirits asked, ‘Who are you?’

‘Hanuman.’

‘Hanuman? Why have you come here?’

‘Rama’s ring fell into a hole. I’ve come to fetch it.’

The king looked around and showed him a platter. On it were thousands of rings. They were all Rama’s rings. The king brought the platter to Hanuman, set it down and said, ‘Pick out your Rama’s ring and take it.’

They were all exactly the same. ‘I don’t know which one it is,’ said Hanuman, shaking his head.

The King of Spirits said, ‘There have been as many Ramas as there are rings on this platter. When you return to earth, you will not find Rama. This incarnation of Rama is now over. Whenever an incarnation of Rama is about to be over, his ring falls down. I collect them and keep them. Now you can go.’

So Hanuman left.1

This story is usually told to suggest that for every such Rama there is a Ramayana. The number of Ramayanas and the range of their influence in South and South-east Asia over the past twenty-five hundred years or more are astonishing. Just a list of languages in which the Rama story is found makes one gasp: Annamese, Balinese, Bengali, Cambodian, Chinese, Gujarati, Javanese, Kannada, Kashmiri, Khotanese, Laotian, Malaysian, Marathi, Oriya, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Santali, Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan – to say nothing of western languages. Through the centuries, some of these languages have hosted more than one telling of the Rama story. Sanskrit alone contains some twenty-five or more tellings belonging to various narrative genres (epics, kavyas or ornate poetic compositions, puranas or old mythological stories and so forth). If we add plays, dance dramas and other performances, in both the classical and folk traditions, the number of Ramayanas grows even larger. To these must be added sculpture and bas-reliefs, mask plays, puppet plays and shadow plays, in all the many South and South-east Asian cultures.2 Camille Bulcke (1950), a student of the Ramayana, counted three hundred tellings.3 It’s no wonder that even as long ago as the fourteenth century, Kumaravyasa, a Kannada poet, chose to write a Mahabharata because he heard the cosmic serpent which upholds the earth groaning under the burden of Ramayana poets (tinikidanu phaniraya ramayanada kavigala bharadali). In this paper, indebted for its data to numerous previous translators and scholars, I would like to sort out for myself, and I hope for others, how these hundreds of tellings of a story in different cultures, languages and religious traditions relate to each other: what gets translated, transplanted, transposed.

Valmiki and Kampan: Two Ahalyas

Obviously, these hundreds of tellings differ from one another. I have come to prefer the word tellings to the usual terms versions or variants because the latter terms can and typically do imply that there is an invariant, an original or ur-text – usually Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana, the earliest and most prestigious of them all. But as we shall see, it is not always Valmiki’s narrative that is carried from one language to another.

It would be useful to make some distinctions before we begin. The tradition itself distinguishes between the Rama story (ramakatha) and texts composed by a specific person – Valmiki, Kampan or Krttivasa, for example. Though many of the latter are popularly called Ramayanas (like Kamparamayanam), few texts actually bear the title Ramayana; they are given titles like Iramavataram (The Incarnation of Rama), Ramcaritmanas (The Lake of the Acts of Rama), Ramakien (The Story of Rama) and so on. Their relations to the Rama story as told by Valmiki also vary. This traditional distinction between katha (story) and kavya (poem) parallels the French one between sujet and récit or the English one between story and discourse (Chatman 1978). It is also analogous to the distinction between a sentence and a speech act. The story may be the same in two tellings but the discourse may be vastly different. Even the structure and sequence of events may be the same but the style, details, tone and texture – and therefore the import – may be vastly different.

Here are two tellings of the ‘same’ episode which occur at the same point in the sequence of the narrative. The first is from the first book (Balakanda) of Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana; the second from the first canto (Palakantam) of Kampan’s Iramavataram in Tamil. Both narrate the story of Ahalya.

The Ahalya episode: Valmiki

Seeing Mithila, Janaka’s white

and dazzling city, all the sages

cried out in praise, ‘Wonderful!

How wonderful!’

Raghava, sighting on the outskirts

of Mithila an ashram, ancient,

unpeopled and lovely, asked the sage,

‘What is this holy place,

so like an ashram but without a hermit?

Master, I’d like to hear: whose was it?’

Hearing Raghava’s words, the great sage

Visvamitra, man of fire,

expert in words answered, ‘Listen,

Raghava, I’ll tell you whose ashram

this was and how it was cursed

by a great man in anger.

It was great Gautama’s, this ashram

that reminds you of heaven, worshipped

even by the gods. Long ago, with Ahalya

he practised tapas4 here

for countless years. Once, knowing that Gautama

was away, Indra (called Thousand Eyes),

Saci’s husband, took on the likeness

of the sage and said to Ahalya:

“Men pursuing their desire do not wait

for the proper season, O you who

have a perfect body. Making love

with you: that’s what I want.

That waist of yours is lovely.”

She knew it was Indra of the Thousand Eyes

in the guise of the sage. Yet she,

wrong-headed woman, made up her mind,

excited, curious about the king

of the gods.

And then, her inner being satisfied,

she said to the god, “I’m satisfied, king

of the gods. Go quickly from here.

O giver of honour, lover, protect

yourself and me.”

And Indra smiled and said to Ahalya,

“Woman of lovely hips, I am

very content. I’ll go the way I came.”

Thus after making love, he came out

of the hut made of leaves.

And, O Rama, as he hurried away,

nervous about Gautama and flustered,

he caught sight of Gautama coming in,

the great sage, unassailable

by gods and anti-gods,

empowered by his tapas, still wet

with the water of the river

he’d bathed in, blazing like fire,

with kusa grass and kindling

in his hands.

Seeing him, the king of the gods was

terror-struck, his face drained of colour.

The sage, facing Thousand Eyes now dressed

as the sage, the one rich in virtue

and the other with none,

spoke to him in anger: “You took my form,

you fool, and did this that should never

be done. Therefore you will lose your testicles.”

At once, they fell to the ground, they fell

even as the great sage spoke

his words in anger to Thousand Eyes.

Having cursed Indra, he then cursed

Ahalya: “You, you will dwell here

many thousands of years, eating the air,

without food, rolling in ash

and burning invisible to all creatures.

When Rama, unassailable son

of Dasaratha, comes to this terrible

wilderness, you will become pure,

you woman of no virtue,

you will be cleansed of lust and confusion.

Filled then with joy, you’ll wear again

your form in my presence.” And saying

this to that woman of bad conduct,

blazing Gautama abandoned

the ashram and did his tapas

on a beautiful Himalayan peak,

haunt of celestial singers and

perfected beings.

Emasculated Indra then

spoke to the gods led by Agni

attended by the sages

and the celestial singers.

“I’ve only done this work on behalf

of the gods, putting great Gautama

in a rage, blocking his tapas.

He has emasculated me

and rejected her in anger.

Through this great outburst

of curses, I’ve robbed him

of his tapas. Therefore

great gods, sages and celestial singers,

help me, helper of the gods,

to regain my testicles.” And the gods,

led by Agni, listened to Indra

of the Hundred Sacrifices and went

with the Marut hosts

to the divine ancestors and said,

“Some time ago, Indra, infatuated,

ravished the sage’s wife

and was then emasculated

by the sage’s curse. Indra,

king of gods, destroyer of cities,

is now angry with the gods.

This ram has testicles

but great Indra has lost his.

So take the ram’s testicles

and quickly graft them onto Indra.

A castrated ram will give you

supreme satisfaction and will be

a source of pleasure.

People who offer it

will have endless fruit.

You will give them your plenty.”

Having heard Agni’s words,

the ancestors got together

and ripped off the ram’s testicles

and applied them then to Indra

of the Thousand Eyes.

Since then, the divine ancestors

eat these castrated rams

and Indra has the testicles

of the beast through the power

of great Gautama’s tapas.

Come then, Rama, to the ashram

of the holy sage and save Ahalya

who has the beauty of a goddess.’

Raghava heard Visvamitra’s words

and followed him into the ashram

with Laksmana: there he saw

Ahalya, shining with an inner light

earned through her penances,

blazing yet hidden from the eyes

of passers-by, even gods and anti-gods.

(Sastrigal and Sastri 1958, kanda 1, sargas 47-8;

translated by David Shulman and AK Ramanujan)

The Ahalya episode: Kampan

They came to many-towered Mithila

and stood outside the fortress.

On the towers were many flags.

There, high on an open field,

stood a black rock

that was once Ahalya,

the great sage’s wife who fell

because she lost her chastity,

the mark of marriage in a house. (Verse 547)

Rama’s eyes fell on the rock,

the dust of his feet

wafted on it.

Like one unconscious

coming to,

cutting through ignorance,

changing his dark carcass

for true form

as he reaches the Lord’s feet,

so did she stand alive

formed and coloured

again as she once was. (548)

Rama then asks Visvamitra why this lovely woman had been turned to stone. Visvamitra replies:

‘Listen. Once Indra,

Lord of the Diamond Axe,

waited on the absence

of Gautama, a sage all spirit,

meaning to reach out

for the lovely breast

of doe-eyed Ahalya, his wife. (551)

Hurt by love’s arrows,

hurt by the look in her eyes

that pierced him like a spear, Indra

writhed and cast about

for stratagems;

one day, overwhelmed

and mindless, he isolated

the sage; and sneaked

into the hermitage

wearing the exact body of Gautama

whose heart knew no falsehoods. (552)

Sneaking in, he joined Ahalya;

coupled, they drank deep

of the clear new wine

of first night weddings;

and she knew.

Yet unable

to put aside what was not hers,

she dallied in her joy,

but the sage did not tarry,

he came back, a very Siva

with three eyes in his head. (553)

Gautama, who used no arrows

from bows, could use more inescapable

powers of curse and blessing.

When he arrived, Ahalya stood there,

stunned, bearing the shame of a deed

that will not end in this endless world.

Indra shook in terror,

started to move away

in the likeness of a cat. (554)

Eyes dropping fire, Gautama

saw what was done,

and his words flew

like the burning arrows

at your hand:

“May you be covered

by the vaginas

of a thousand women!”

In the twinkle of an eye

they came and covered him. (555)

Covered with shame,

laughing stock of the world,

Indra left.

The sage turned

to his tender wife

and cursed:

“O bought woman!

May you turn to stone!”

and she fell at once

a rough thing

of black rock. (556)

Yet as she fell she begged:

“To bear and forgive wrongs

is also the way of elders.

O Siva-like lord of mine,

set some limit to your curse!”

So he said: “Rama

will come, wearing garlands that bring

the hum of bees with them.

When the dust of his feet falls on you,

you will be released from the body of stone.” (557)

The immortals looked at their king

and came down at once to Gautama

in a delegation led by Brahma

and begged of Gautama to relent.

Gautama’s mind had changed

and cooled. He changed

the marks on Indra to a thousand eyes

and the gods went back to their worlds

while she lay there, a thing of stone. (558)

That was the way it was.

From now on, more misery,

only release, for all things

in this world.

O cloud-dark lord

who battled with that ogress,

black as soot, I saw there

the virtue of your hands

and here the virtue of your feet.’ (559)5

Let me rapidly suggest a few differences between the two tellings. In Valmiki, Indra seduces a willing Ahalya. In Kampan, Ahalya realises she is doing wrong but cannot let go of the forbidden joy; the poem has also suggested earlier that her sage-husband is all spirit, details which together add a certain psychological subtlety to the seduction. Indra tries to steal away in the shape of a cat, clearly a folklore motif (also found, for example, in the Kathasaritsagara, an eleventh century Sanskrit compendium of folk tales; see Tawney 1927). He is cursed with a thousand vaginas which are later changed into eyes and Ahalya is changed into frigid stone. The poetic justice wreaked on both offenders is fitted to their wrongdoing. Indra bears the mark of what he lusted for while Ahalya is rendered incapable of responding to anything. These motifs, not found in Valmiki, are attested in South Indian folklore and other southern Rama stories, inscriptions and earlier Tamil poems as well as in non-Tamil sources. Kampan, here and elsewhere, not only makes full use of his predecessor Valmiki’s materials but folds in many regional folk traditions. It is often through him that they then become part of other Ramayanas.

In technique, Kampan is also more dramatic than Valmiki. Rama’s feet transmute the black stone into Ahalya first; only afterwards is her story told. The black stone standing on a high place, waiting for Rama, is itself a very effective, vivid symbol. Ahalya’s revival, her waking from cold stone to fleshly human warmth, becomes an occasion for a moving bhakti (devotional) meditation on the soul waking to its form in god.

Finally, the Ahalya episode is related to previous episodes in the poem such as that in which Rama destroys the demoness Tataka. There he was the destroyer of evil, the bringer of sterility and the ashes of death to his enemies. Here, as the reviver of Ahalya, he is a cloud-dark god of fertility. Throughout Kampan’s poem, Rama is a Tamil hero, a generous giver and a ruthless destroyer of foes. And the bhakti vision makes the release of Ahalya from her rock-bound sin a paradigm of Rama’s incarnatory mission to release all souls from world-bound misery.

In Valmiki, Rama’s character is not that of a god but of a god-man who has to live within the limits of a human form with all its vicissitudes. Some argue that the references to Rama’s divinity and his incarnation for the purpose of destroying Ravana, and the first and last books of the epic, in which Rama is clearly described as a god with such a mission, are later additions.6 Be that as it may, in Kampan he is clearly a god. Hence a passage like the above is dense with religious feeling and theological images. Kampan, writing in the twelfth century, composed his poem under the influence of Tamil bhakti. He had for his master Nammalvar (ninth century?), the most eminent of the Sri Vaisnava saints. So, for Kampan, Rama is a god who is on a mission to root out evil, sustain the good and bring release to all living beings. The encounter with Ahalya is only the first in a series, ending with Rama’s encounter with Ravana the demon himself. For Nammalvar, Rama is a saviour of all beings, from the lowly grass to the great gods:

By Rama’s Grace

Why would anyone want

to learn anything but Rama?

Beginning with the low grass

and the creeping ant

with nothing

whatever,

he took everything in his city,

everything moving,

everything still,

he took everything,

everything born

of the lord

of four faces,

he took them all

to the very best of states.

Nammalvar 7.5.1 (Ramanujan 1981, 47)

Kampan’s epic poem enacts in detail and with passion Nammalvar’s vision of Rama.

Thus the Ahalya episode is essentially the same but the weave, the texture, the colours, are very different. Part of the aesthetic pleasure in the later poet’s telling derives from its artistic use of its predecessor’s work, from ringing changes on it. To some extent all later Ramayanas play on the knowledge of previous tellings: they are meta-Ramayanas. I cannot resist repeating my favourite example. In several of the later Ramayanas (such as the Adhyatma Ramayana, sixteenth century), when Rama is exiled, he does not want Sita to go with him into the forest. Sita argues with him. At first she uses the usual arguments: she is his wife, she should share his sufferings, exile herself in his exile and so on. When he still resists the idea, she is furious. She bursts out, ‘Countless Ramayanas have been composed before this. Do you know of one where Sita doesn’t go with Rama to the forest?’ That clinches the argument and she goes with him (Adhyatma Ramayana 2.4.77-8; see Nath 1913, 39). And as nothing in India occurs uniquely, even this motif appears in more than one Ramayana.

Now, the Tamil Ramayana of Kampan generates its own offspring, its own special sphere of influence. Read in Telugu characters in Telugu country, played as drama in the Malayalam area as part of temple ritual, it is also an important link in the transmission of the Rama story to South-east Asia. It has been convincingly shown that the eighteenth century Thai Ramakien owes much to the Tamil epic. For instance, the names of many characters in the Thai work are not Sanskrit names but clearly Tamil names (for example, Rsyasrnga in Sanskrit but Kalaikkotu in Tamil, the latter borrowed into Thai). Tulsi’s Hindi Ramcaritmanas and the Malaysian Hikayat Seri Ram too owe many details to the Kampan poem (Singaravelu 1968).

Thus obviously transplantations take place through several routes. In some languages the word for tea is derived from a northern Chinese dialect and in others from a southern dialect; thus some languages, like English and French, have some form of the word tea while others, like Hindi and Russian, have some form of the word cha(y). Similarly, the Rama story seems to have travelled along three routes, according to Santosh Desai: ‘By land, the northern route took the story from the Punjab and Kashmir into China, Tibet and East Turkestan; by sea, the southern route carried the story from Gujarat and South India into Java, Sumatra and Malaya; and again by land, the eastern route delivered the story from Bengal into Burma, Thailand and Laos. Vietnam and Cambodia obtained their stories partly from Java and partly from India via the eastern route’ (Desai 1970, 5).

Jain tellings

When we enter the world of Jain tellings, the Rama story no longer carries Hindu values. Indeed the Jain texts express the feeling that the Hindus, especially the brahmins, have maligned Ravana, made him into a villain. Here is a set of questions that a Jain text begins by asking: ‘How can monkeys vanquish the powerful raksasa warriors like Ravana? How can noble men and Jain worthies like Ravana eat flesh and drink blood? How can Kumbhakarna sleep through six months of the year and never wake up even though boiling oil was poured into his ears, elephants were made to trample over him and war trumpets and conches blown around him? They also say that Ravana captured Indra and dragged him handcuffed into Lanka. Who can do that to Indra? All this looks a bit fantastic and extreme. They are lies and contrary to reason.’ With these questions in mind, King Srenika goes to sage Gautama to have him tell the true story and clear his doubts. Gautama says to him, ‘I’ll tell you what Jain wise men say. Ravana is not a demon, he is not a cannibal and a flesh eater. Wrong-thinking poetasters and fools tell these lies.’ He then begins to tell his own version of the story (Chandra 1970, 234). Obviously, the Jain Ramayana of Vimalasuri, called Paumacariya (Prakrit for the Sanskrit Padmacarita), knows its Valmiki and proceeds to correct its errors and Hindu extravagances. Like other Jain puranas, this too is a pratipurana, an anti- or counter-purana. The prefix prati-, meaning ‘anti-’ or ‘counter-’, is a favourite Jain affix.

Vimalasuri the Jain opens the story not with Rama’s genealogy and greatness but with Ravana’s. Ravana is one of the sixty-three leaders or salakapurusas of the Jain tradition. He is noble, learned, earns all his magical powers and weapons through austerities (tapas) and is a devotee of Jain masters. To please one of them, he even takes a vow that he will not touch any unwilling woman. In one memorable incident, he lays siege to an impregnable fort. The queen of that kingdom is in love with him and sends him her messenger; he uses her knowledge of the fort to breach it and defeat the king. But as soon as he conquers it, he returns the kingdom to the king and advises the queen to return to her husband. Later, he is shaken to his roots when he hears from soothsayers that he will meet his end through a woman, Sita. It is such a Ravana who falls in love with Sita’s beauty, abducts her, tries to win her favours in vain, watches himself fall and finally dies on the battlefield. In these tellings, he is a great man undone by a passion that he has vowed against but that he cannot resist. In another tradition of the Jain Ramayanas, Sita is his daughter although he does not know it: the dice of tragedy are loaded against him further by this Oedipal situation. I shall say more about Sita’s birth in the next section.

In fact, to our modern eyes, this Ravana is a tragic figure; we are moved to admiration and pity for Ravana when the Jains tell the story. I should mention one more motif: according to the Jain way of thinking, a pair of antagonists, Vasudeva and Prativasudeva – a hero and an anti-hero, almost like self and Other – are destined to fight in life after life. Laksmana and Ravana are the eighth incarnations of this pair. They are born in age after age, meet each other in battle after many vicissitudes and in every encounter Vasudeva inevitably kills his counterpart, his prati. Ravana learns at the end that Laksmana is such a Vasudeva come to take his life. Still, overcoming his despair after a last unsuccessful attempt at peace, he faces his destined enemy in battle with his most powerful magic weapons. When finally he hurls his discus (cakra), it doesn’t work for him. Recognising Laksmana as a Vasudeva, it does not behead him but gives itself over to his hand. Thus Laksmana slays Ravana with his own cherished weapon.

Here Rama does not even kill Ravana, as he does in the Hindu Ramayanas. For Rama is an evolved Jain soul who has conquered his passions; this is his last birth so he is loath to kill anything. It is left to Laksmana who goes to hell while Rama finds release (kaivalya).

One hardly need add that the Paumacariya is filled with references to Jain places of pilgrimage, stories about Jain monks and Jain homilies and legends. Furthermore, since the Jains consider themselves rationalists – unlike the Hindus who, according to them, are given to exorbitant and often bloodthirsty fancies and rituals – they systematically avoid episodes involving miraculous births (Rama and his brothers are born in the normal way), blood sacrifices and the like. They even rationalise the conception of Ravana as the Ten-headed Demon. When he was born, his mother was given a necklace of nine gems which she put around his neck. She saw his face reflected in them ninefold and so called him Dasamukha or the Ten-faced One. The monkeys too are not monkeys but a clan of celestials (vidyadharas) actually related to Ravana and his family through their great-grandfathers. They have monkeys as emblems on their flags: hence the name Vanaras or ‘monkeys’.

From written to oral

Let’s look at one of the South Indian folk Ramayanas. In these, the story usually occurs in bits and pieces. For instance, in Kannada, we are given separate narrative poems on Sita’s birth, her wedding, her chastity test, her exile, the birth of Lava and Kusa, their war with their father Rama and so on. But we do have one complete telling of the Rama story by traditional bards (tamburi dasayyas), sung with a refrain repeated every two lines by a chorus. For the following discussion, I am indebted to the transcription by Rame Gowda, PK Rajasekara and S. Basavaiah (1973).

This folk narrative, sung by an Untouchable bard, opens with Ravana (here called Ravula) and his queen Mandodari. They are unhappy and childless. So Ravana or Ravula goes to the forest, performs all sorts of self-mortifications like rolling on the ground till blood runs from his back and meets a jogi or holy mendicant who is none other than Siva. Siva gives him a magic mango and asks him how he would share it with his wife. Ravula says, ‘Of course, I’ll give her the sweet flesh of the fruit and I’ll lick the mango seed.’ The jogi is sceptical. He says to Ravula, ‘You say one thing to me. You have poison in your belly. You’re giving me butter to eat but you mean something else. If you lie to me, you’ll eat the fruit of your actions yourself.’ Ravula has one thing in his dreams and another in his waking world, says the poet. When he brings the mango home, with all sorts of flowers and incense for the ceremonial puja, Mandodari is very happy. After a ritual puja and prayers to Siva, Ravula is ready to share the mango. But he thinks, ‘If I give her the fruit, I’ll be hungry, she’ll be full,’ and quickly gobbles up the flesh of the fruit, giving her only the seed to lick. When she throws it in the yard, it sprouts and grows into a tall mango tree. Meanwhile, Ravula himself becomes pregnant, his pregnancy advancing a month each day.

In one day, it was a month, O Siva.

In the second, it was the second month,

and cravings began for him, O Siva.

How shall I show my face to the world of men, O Siva.

On the third day, it was the third month,

How shall I show my face to the world, O Siva.

On the fourth day, it was the fourth month.

How can I bear this, O Siva.

Five days, and it was five months,

O lord, you’ve given me trouble, O Siva

I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it, O Siva

How will I live, cries Ravula in misery.

Six days, and he is six months gone, O mother,

in seven days it was seven months.

O what shame, Ravula in his seventh month,

and soon came the eighth, O Siva

Ravula was in his ninth full month.

When he was round and ready, she’s born, the dear,

Sita is born through his nose.

When he sneezes, Sitamma is born,

And Ravula names her Sitamma.

(Gowda et al 1973, 150-1; my translation)

In Kannada, the word sita means ‘he sneezed’: he calls her Sita because she is born from a sneeze. Her name is thus given a Kannada folk etymology, as in the Sanskrit texts it has a Sanskrit one: there she is named Sita because King Janaka finds her in a furrow (sita). Then Ravula goes to astrologers who tell him he is being punished for not keeping his word to Siva and for eating the flesh of the fruit instead of giving it to his wife. They advise him to feed and dress the child and leave her some place where she will be found and brought up by some couple. He puts her in a box and leaves her in Janaka’s field.

It is only after this story of Sita’s birth that the poet sings of the birth and adventures of Rama and Laksmana. Then comes a long section on Sita’s marriage contest where Ravula appears and is humiliated when he falls under the heavy bow he has to lift. Rama lifts it and marries Sita. After that she is abducted by Ravula. Rama lays siege to Lanka with his monkey allies and (in a brief section) recovers Sita and is crowned king. The poet then returns to the theme of Sita’s trials. She is slandered and exiled but gives birth to twins who grow up to be warriors. They tie up Rama’s sacrificial horse, defeat the armies sent to guard the horse and finally unite their parents, this time for good.

One sees here not only a different texture and emphasis: the teller is everywhere eager to return to Sita – her life, her birth, her adoption, her wedding, her abduction and recovery. Whole sections, equal in length to those on Rama and Laksmana’s birth, exile and war against Ravana, are devoted to her banishment, pregnancy and reunion with her husband. Furthermore, her abnormal birth as the daughter born directly to the male Ravana brings to the story a new range of suggestions: the male envy of womb and childbirth, which is a frequent theme in Indian literature, and an Indian Oedipal theme of fathers pursuing daughters and, in this case, a daughter causing the death of her incestuous father. The motif of Sita as Ravana’s daughter is not unknown elsewhere. It occurs in one tradition of the Jain stories (for example, in the Vasudevahimdi) and in folk traditions of Kannada and Telugu as well as in several South-east Asian Ramayanas. In some, Ravana in his lusty youth molests a young woman who vows vengeance and is reborn as his daughter to destroy him. Thus the oral traditions seem to partake of yet another set of themes unknown in Valmiki.

A South-east Asian example

When we go outside India to South-east Asia, we meet with a variety of tellings of the Rama story in Tibet, Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Java and Indonesia. Here we shall look at only one example, the Thai Ramakirti. According to Santosh Desai, nothing else of Hindu origin has affected the tone of Thai life more than the Rama story (Desai 1980, 63).7 The bas-reliefs and paintings on the walls of their Buddhist temples, the plays enacted in town and village, their ballets – all of them rework the Rama story. In succession several kings with the name ‘King Rama’ wrote Ramayana episodes in Thai: King Rama I composed a telling of the Ramayana in fifty thousand verses, Rama II composed new episodes for dance and Rama VI added another set of episodes, most taken from Valmiki. Places in Thailand, such as Lopburi (Sanskrit Lavapuri), Khidkin (Sanskrit Kiskindha) and Ayuthia (Sanskrit Ayodhya) with its ruins of Khmer and Thai art, are associated with Rama legends.

The Thai Ramakirti (Rama’s glory) or Ramakien (Rama’s story) opens with an account of the origins of the three kinds of characters in the story, the human, the demonic and the simian. The second part describes the brothers’ first encounters with the demons, Rama’s marriage and banishment, the abduction of Sita and Rama’s meeting with the monkey clan. It also describes the preparations for the war, Hanuman’s visit to Lanka and his burning of it, the building of the bridge, the siege of Lanka, the fall of Ravana and Rama’s reunion with Sita. The third part describes an insurrection in Lanka which Rama deputes his two youngest brothers to quell. This part also describes the banishment of Sita, the birth of her sons, their war with Rama, Sita’s descent into the earth and the appearance of the gods to reunite Rama and Sita. Though many incidents look the same as they do in Valmiki, many things look different as well. For instance, as in the South Indian folk Ramayanas (as also in some Jain, Bengali and Kashmiri ones), the banishment of Sita is given a dramatic new rationale. The daughter of Surpanakha (the demoness whom Rama and Laksmana had mutilated years earlier in the forest) is waiting in the wings to take revenge on Sita whom she views as finally responsible for her mother’s disfigurement. She comes to Ayodhya, enters Sita’s service as a maid and induces her to draw a picture of Ravana. The drawing is rendered indelible (in some tellings, it comes to life in her bedroom) and forces itself on Rama’s attention. In a jealous rage, he orders Sita killed. The compassionate Laksmana leaves her alive in the forest, though, and brings back the heart of a deer as witness to the execution.

The reunion between Rama and Sita is also different. When Rama finds out she is still alive, he recalls Sita to his palace by sending her word that he is dead. She rushes to see him but flies into a rage when she finds she has been tricked. So, in a fit of helpless anger, she calls upon Mother Earth to take her. Hanuman is sent to subterranean regions to bring her back but she refuses to return. It takes the power of Siva to reunite them.

Again, as in the Jain instances and the South Indian folk poems, the account of Sita’s birth is different from that given in Valmiki. When Dasaratha performs his sacrifice, he receives a rice ball, not the rice porridge (payasa) mentioned in Valmiki. A crow steals some of the rice and takes it to Ravana’s wife who eats it and gives birth to Sita. A prophecy that his daughter will cause his death makes Ravana throw Sita into the sea where the sea goddess protects her and takes her to Janaka.

Furthermore, though Rama is an incarnation of Visnu, in Thailand he is subordinate to Siva. By and large, he is seen as a human hero and the Ramakirti is not regarded as a religious work or even as an exemplary work on which men and women may pattern themselves. The Thais enjoy most the sections about the abduction of Sita and the war. Partings and reunions, which are the heart of the Hindu Ramayanas, are not as important as the excitement and the details of war, the techniques, the fabulous weapons. The Yuddhakanda or the War Book is more elaborate than in any other telling whereas it is of minor importance in the Kannada folk telling. Desai says this Thai emphasis on war is significant: early Thai history is full of wars; their concern was survival. The focus in the Ramakien is not on family values and spirituality. Thai audiences are more fond of Hanuman than of Rama. Neither celibate nor devout, as in the Hindu Ramayana, here Hanuman is quite a ladies’ man who doesn’t at all mind looking into the bedrooms of Lanka and doesn’t consider seeing another man’s sleeping wife anything immoral, as Valmiki’s or Kampan’s Hanuman does.

Ravana too is different here. The Ramakirti admires Ravana’s resourcefulness and learning; his abduction of Sita is seen as an act of love and is viewed with sympathy. The Thais are moved by Ravana’s sacrifice of family, kingdom and life itself for the sake of a woman. His dying words later provide the theme of a famous love poem of the nineteenth century, an inscription of a Wat of Bangkok (Desai 1980, 85). Unlike Valmiki’s characters, the Thai ones are a fallible human mixture of good and evil. The fall of Ravana here makes one sad. It is not an occasion for unambiguous rejoicing, as it is in Valmiki.

Patterns of difference

Thus not only do we have one story told by Valmiki in Sanskrit, we have a variety of Rama tales told by others, with radical differences among them. Let me outline a few of the differences we have not yet encountered. For instance, in Sanskrit and in the other Indian languages, there are two endings to the story. One ends with the return of Rama and Sita to Ayodhya, their capital, to be crowned king and queen of the ideal kingdom. In another ending, often considered a later addition in Valmiki and in Kampan, Rama hears Sita slandered as a woman who lived in Ravana’s grove and in the name of his reputation as a king (we would call it credibility, I suppose) he banishes her to the forest where she gives birth to twins. They grow up in Valmiki’s hermitage, learn the Ramayana as well as the arts of war from him, win a war over Rama’s army and in a poignant scene sing the Ramayana to their own father when he doesn’t quite know who they are.

Each of these two endings gives the whole work a different cast. The first one celebrates the return of the royal exiles and rounds out the tale with reunion, coronation and peace. In the second one, their happiness is brief and they are separated again, making separation of loved ones (vipralambha) the central mood of the whole work. It can even be called tragic, for Sita finally cannot bear it any more and enters a fissure in the earth, the mother from whom she had originally come – as we saw earlier, her name means ‘furrow’, which is where she was originally found by Janaka. It also enacts, in the rise of Sita from the furrow and her return to the earth, a shadow of a Proserpine-like myth, a vegetation cycle: Sita is like the seed and Rama with his cloud-dark body the rain; Ravana in the south is the Pluto-like abductor into dark regions (the south is the abode of death); Sita reappears in purity and glory for a brief period before she returns again to the earth. Such a myth, while it should not be blatantly pressed into some rigid allegory, resonates in the shadows of the tale in many details. Note the many references to fertility and rain, Rama’s opposition to Siva-like ascetic figures (made explicit by Kampan in the Ahalya story), his ancestor bringing the river Ganges into the plains of the kingdom to water and revive the ashes of the dead. Relevant also is the story of Rsyasrnga, the sexually naive ascetic who is seduced by the beauty of a woman and thereby brings rain to Lomapada’s kingdom and who later officiates at the ritual which fills Dasaratha’s queens’ wombs with children. Such a mythic groundswell also makes us hear other tones in the continual references to nature, the potent presence of birds and animals as the devoted friends of Rama in his search for his Sita. Birds and monkeys are a real presence and a poetic necessity in the Valmiki Ramayana, as much as they are excrescences in the Jain view. With each ending, different effects of the story are highlighted and the whole telling alters its poetic stance.

One could say similar things about the different beginnings. Valmiki opens with a frame story about Valmiki himself. He sees a hunter aim an arrow and kill one of a happy pair of lovebirds. The female circles its dead mate and cries over it. The scene so moves the poet and sage Valmiki that he curses the hunter. A moment later, he realises that his curse has taken the form of a line of verse – in a famous play on words, the rhythm of his grief (soka) has given rise to a metrical form (sloka). He decides to write the whole epic of Rama’s adventures in that metre. This incident becomes, in later poetics, the parable of all poetic utterance: out of the stress of natural feeling (bhava), an artistic form has to be found or fashioned, a form which will generalise and capture the essence (rasa) of that feeling. This incident at the beginning of Valmiki gives the work an aesthetic self-awareness. One may go further: the incident of the death of a bird and the separation of loved ones becomes a leitmotif for this telling of the Rama story. One notes a certain rhythmic recurrence of an animal killed at many of the critical moments: when Dasaratha shoots an arrow to kill what he thinks is an elephant but instead kills a young ascetic filling his pitcher with water (making noises like an elephant drinking at a waterhole), he earns a curse that later leads to the exile of Rama and the separation of father and son. When Rama pursues a magical golden deer (really a demon in disguise) and kills it, with its last breath it calls out to Laksmana in Rama’s voice, which in turn leads to his leaving Sita unprotected; this allows Ravana to abduct Sita. Even as Ravana carries her off, he is opposed by an ancient bird which he slays with his sword. Furthermore, the death of the bird, in the opening section, and the cry of the surviving mate set the tone for the many separations throughout the work, of brother and brother, mothers and fathers and sons, wives and husbands.

Thus the opening sections of each major work set into motion the harmonics of the whole poem, presaging themes and a pattern of images. Kampan’s Tamil text begins very differently. One can convey it best by citing a few stanzas.

The River

The cloud, wearing white

on white like Siva

making beautiful the sky

on his way from the sea

grew dark

as the face of the Lord

who wears with pride

on his right the Goddess

of the scented breasts. (2)

Mistaking the Himalayan dawn

for a range of gold,

the clouds let down chains

and chains of gleaming rain.

They pour like a generous giver

giving all he has,

remembering and reckoning

all he has. (15)

It floods, it runs over

its continents like the fame

of a great king, upright,

infallible, reigning by the Laws

under cool royal umbrellas. (16)

Concubines caressing

their lovers’ hair, their lovers’

bodies, their lovers’ limbs,

take away whole hills

of wealth yet keep little

in their spendthrift hands

as they move on: so too

the waters flow from the peaks

to the valleys,

beginning high and reaching low. (17)

The flood carrying all before it

like merchants, caravans

loaded with gold, pearls,

peacock feathers and rows

of white tusk and fragrant woods. (18)

Bending to a curve, the river,

surface coloured by petals,

gold yellow pollen, honey,

the ochre flow of elephant lust,

looked much like a rainbow. (19)

Ravaging hillsides, uprooting trees,

covered with fallen leaves all over,

the waters came,

like a monkey clan

facing restless seas

looking for a bridge. (20)

Thick-faced proud elephants

ranged with foaming cavalier horses

filling the air with the noise of war,

raising banners,

the flood rushes

as for a battle with the sea. (22)

Stream of numberless kings

in the line of the Sun,

continuous in virtue:

the river branches into deltas,

mother’s milk to all lives

on the salt sea-surrounded land. (23)

Scattering a robber camp on the hills

with a rain of arrows,

the scared women beating their bellies

and gathering bow and arrow as they run,

the waters assault villages

like the armies of a king. (25)

Stealing milk and buttermilk,

guzzling on warm ghee and butter

straight from the pots on the ropes,

leaning the marutam tree on the kuruntam,

carrying away the clothes and bracelets

of goatherd girls at water games,

like Krsna dancing

on the spotted snake,

the waters are naughty. (26)

Turning forest into slope,

field into wilderness,

seashore into fertile land,

changing boundaries,

exchanging landscapes,

the reckless waters

roared on like the pasts

that hurry close on the heels

of lives. (28)

Born of Himalayan stone

and mingling with the seas,

it spreads, ceaselessly various,

one and many at once,

like that Original

even the measureless Vedas

cannot measure with words. (30)

Through pollen-dripping groves,

clumps of champak,

lotus pools,

water places with new sands,

flowering fields cross-fenced

with creepers,

like a life filling

and emptying

a variety of bodies,

the river flows on. (31)8

This passage is unique to Kampan; it is not found in Valmiki. It describes the waters as they are gathered by clouds from the seas and come down in rain and flow as floods of the Sarayu river down to Ayodhya, the capital of Rama’s kingdom. Through it, Kampan introduces all his themes and emphases, even his characters, his concern with fertility themes (implicit in Valmiki), the whole dynasty of Rama’s ancestors and his vision of bhakti through the Ramayana.

Note the variety of themes introduced through the similes and allusions, each aspect of the water symbolising an aspect of the Ramayana story itself and representing a portion of the Ramayana universe (for example, monkeys), picking up as it goes along characteristic Tamil traditions not to be found anywhere else, like the five landscapes of classical Tamil poetry. The emphasis on water itself, the source of life and fertility, is also an explicit part of the Tamil literary tradition. The Kural – the so-called Bible of the Tamils, a didactic work on the ends and means of the good life – opens with a passage on god and follows it up immediately with a great ode in celebration of the rains (Tirukkural 2).

Another point of difference among Ramayanas is the intensity of focus on a major character. Valmiki focuses on Rama and his history in his opening sections; Vimalasuri’s Jain Ramayana and the Thai epic focus not on Rama but on the genealogy and adventures of Ravana; the Kannada village telling focuses on Sita, her birth, her wedding, her trials. Some later extensions like the Adbhuta Ramayana and the Tamil story of Satakantharavana even give Sita a heroic character: when the ten-headed Ravana is killed, another appears with a hundred heads: Rama cannot handle this new menace so it is Sita who goes to war and slays the new demon (see Shulman 1979). The Santals, a tribe known for their extensive oral traditions, even conceive of Sita as unfaithful – to the shock and horror of any Hindu bred on Valmiki or Kampan, she is seduced both by Ravana and by Laksmana. In South-east Asian texts, as we saw earlier, Hanuman is not the celibate devotee with a monkey face but a ladies’ man who figures in many love episodes. In Kampan and Tulsi, Rama is a god; in the Jain texts, he is only an evolved Jain man who is in his last birth and so does not even kill Ravana. In the latter, Ravana is a noble hero fated by his karma to fall for Sita and bring death upon himself while he is in other texts an overweening demon. Thus in the conception of every major character there are radical differences, so different indeed that one conception is quite abhorrent to those who hold another. We may add to these many more: elaborations on the reason why Sita is banished, the miraculous creation of Sita’s second son and the final reunion of Rama and Sita. Every one of these occurs in more than one text, in more than one textual community (Hindu, Jain or Buddhist), in more than one region.

Now, is there a common core to the Rama stories except the most skeletal set of relations like that of Rama, his brother, his wife and the antagonist Ravana who abducts her? Are the stories bound together only by certain family resemblances, as Wittgenstein might say? Or is it like Aristotle’s jackknife? When the philosopher asked an old carpenter how long he had had his knife, the latter said, ‘Oh, I’ve had it for thirty years. I’ve changed the blade a few times and the handle a few times but it’s the same knife.’ Some shadow of a relational structure claims the name of Ramayana for all these tellings but on a closer look one is not necessarily all that like another. Like a collection of people with the same proper name, they make a class in name alone.

Thoughts on translation

That may be too extreme a way of putting it. Let me back up and say it differently, in a way that covers more adequately the differences between the texts and their relations to each other, for they are related. One might think of them as a series of translations clustering around one or another in a family of texts: a number of them cluster around Valmiki, another set around the Jain Vimalasuri and so on.

Or these translation-relations between texts could be thought of in Peircean terms, at least in three ways.9

Where Text 1 and Text 2 have a geometrical resemblance to each other, as one triangle to another (whatever the angles, sizes or colours of the lines), we call such a relation iconic. In the West, we generally expect translations to be ‘faithful’ i.e. iconic. Thus when Chapman translates Homer, he not only preserves basic textual features such as characters, imagery and order of incidents but tries to reproduce a hexameter and retain the same number of lines as in the original Greek – only the language is English and the idiom Elizabethan. When Kampan retells Valmiki’s Ramayana in Tamil, he is largely faithful in keeping to the order and sequence of episodes, the structural relations between the characters of father, son, brothers, wives, friends and enemies. But the iconicity is limited to such structural relations. His work is much longer than Valmiki’s, for example, and it is composed in more than twenty different kinds of Tamil metres while Valmiki’s is mostly in the sloka metre.

Very often, although Text 2 stands in an iconic relationship to Text 1 in terms of basic elements such as plot, it is filled with local detail, folklore, poetic traditions, imagery and so forth – as in Kampan’s telling or that of the Bengali Krttivasa. In the Bengali Ramayana, Rama’s wedding is very much a Bengali wedding with Bengali customs and Bengali cuisine (Sen 1920). We may call such a text indexical: the text is embedded in a locale, a context, refers to it, even signifies it and would not make much sense without it. Here, one may say, the Ramayana is not merely a set of individual texts but a genre with a variety of instances.

Now and then, as we have seen, Text 2 uses the plot and characters and names of Text 1 minimally and uses them to say entirely new things, often in an effort to subvert the predecessor by producing a counter-text. We may call such a translation symbolic. The word translation itself here acquires a somewhat mathematical sense, of mapping a structure of relations onto another plane or another symbolic system. When this happens, the Rama story has become almost a second language of the whole culture area, a shared core of names, characters, incidents and motifs with a narrative language in which Text 1 can say one thing and Text 2 something else, even the exact opposite. Valmiki’s Hindu and Vimalasuri’s Jain texts in India – or the Thai Ramakirti in South-east Asia – are such symbolic translations of each other.

One must not forget that to some extent all translations, even the so-called faithful iconic ones, inevitably have all three kinds of elements. When Goldman (1984-) and his group of scholars produce a modern translation of Valmiki’s Ramayana, they are iconic in the transliteration of Sanskrit names, the number and sequence of verses, the order of the episodes and so forth. But they are also indexical, in that the translation is in English idiom and comes equipped with introductions and explanatory footnotes which inevitably contain twentieth century attitudes and misprisions; and symbolic, in that they cannot avoid conveying through this translation modern understandings proper to their reading of the text. But the proportions between the three kinds of relations differ vastly between Kampan and Goldman. And we accordingly read them for different reasons and with different aesthetic expectations. We read the scholarly modern English translation largely to gain a sense of the original Valmiki and we consider it successful to the extent that it resembles the original. We read Kampan to read Kampan and we judge him on his own terms – not by his resemblance to Valmiki but, if anything, by the extent that he differs from Valmiki. In the one, we rejoice in the similarity; in the other, we cherish and savour the differences.

One may go further and say that the cultural area in which Ramayanas are endemic has a pool of signifiers (like a gene pool), signifiers that include plots, characters, names, geography, incidents and relationships. Oral, written and performance traditions, phrases, proverbs and even sneers carry allusions to the Rama story. When someone is carrying on, you say, ‘What’s this Ramayana now? Enough.’ In Tamil, a narrow room is called a kiskindha; a proverb about a dim-witted person says, ‘After hearing the Ramayana all night, he asks how Rama is related to Sita’; in a Bengali arithmetic textbook, children are asked to figure the dimensions of what is left of a wall that Hanuman built after he has broken down part of it in mischief. And to these must be added marriage songs, narrative poems, place legends, temple myths, paintings, sculpture and the many performing arts.

These various texts not only relate to prior texts directly, to borrow or refute, but they relate to each other through this common code or common pool. Every author, if one may hazard a metaphor, dips into it and brings out a unique crystallisation, a new text with a unique texture and a fresh context. The great texts rework the small ones, for ‘lions are made of sheep’, as Valéry said. And sheep are made of lions too: a folk legend says that Hanuman wrote the original Ramayana on a mountain top after the great war and scattered the manuscript; it was many times larger than what we have now. Valmiki is said to have captured only a fragment of it.10 In this sense, no text is original yet no telling is a mere retelling – and the story has no closure although it may be enclosed in a text. In India and in South-east Asia, no one ever reads the Ramayana or the Mahabharata for the first time. The stories are there, ‘always already’.

What happens when you listen

This essay opened with a folk tale about the many Ramayanas. Before we close, it may be appropriate to tell another tale about Hanuman and Rama’s ring. But this story is about the power of the Ramayana, about what happens when you really listen to this potent story. Even a fool cannot resist it; he is entranced and caught up in the action. The listener can no longer bear to be a bystander but feels compelled to enter the world of the epic: the line between fiction and reality is erased.

A villager who had no sense of culture and no interest in it was married to a woman who was very cultured. She tried various ways to cultivate his taste for the higher things in life but he just wasn’t interested.

One day a great reciter of that grand epic the Ramayana came to the village. Every evening he would sing, recite and explain the verses of the epic. The whole village went to this one-man performance as if it were a rare feast.

The woman who was married to the uncultured dolt tried to interest him in the performance. She nagged him and nagged him, trying to force him to go and listen. This time he grumbled as usual but decided to humour her. So he went in the evening and sat at the back. It was an all night performance and he just couldn’t keep awake. He slept through the night. Early in the morning, when a canto had ended and the reciter sang the closing verses for the day, sweets were distributed according to custom. Someone put some sweets into the mouth of the sleeping man. He woke up soon after and went home. His wife was delighted that her husband had stayed through the night and asked him eagerly how he enjoyed the Ramayana. He said, ‘It was very sweet.’ The wife was happy to hear it.

The next day too his wife insisted on his listening to the epic. So he went to the enclosure where the reciter was performing, sat against a wall and before long fell fast asleep. The place was crowded and a young boy sat on his shoulder, made himself comfortable and listened open-mouthed to the fascinating story. In the morning, when the night’s portion of the story came to an end, everyone got up and so did the husband. The boy had left earlier but the man felt aches and pains from the weight he had borne all night. When he went home and his wife asked him eagerly how it was, he said, ‘It got heavier and heavier by morning.’ The wife said, ‘That’s the way the story is.’ She was happy that her husband was at last beginning to feel the emotions and the greatness of the epic.

On the third day he sat at the edge of the crowd and was so sleepy that he lay down on the floor and even snored. Early in the morning a dog came that way and pissed into his mouth a little before he woke up and went home. When his wife asked him how it was, he moved his mouth this way and that, made a face and said, ‘Terrible. It was so salty.’ His wife knew something was wrong. She asked him what exactly was happening and didn’t let up till he finally told her how he had been sleeping through the performance every night.

On the fourth day his wife went with him, sat him down in the very first row and told him sternly that he should keep awake no matter what might happen. So he sat dutifully in the front row and began to listen. Very soon he was caught up in the adventures and the characters of the great epic story. On that day the reciter was enchanting the audience with a description of how Hanuman the monkey had to leap across the ocean to take Rama’s signet ring to Sita. When Hanuman was leaping across the ocean, the signet ring slipped from his hand and fell into the ocean. Hanuman didn’t know what to do. He had to get the ring back quickly and take it to Sita in the demon’s kingdom. While he was wringing his hands, the husband who was listening with rapt attention in the first row said, ‘Hanuman, don’t worry. I’ll get it for you.’ Then he jumped up and dived into the ocean, found the ring on the ocean floor, brought it back and gave it to Hanuman.

Everyone was astonished. They thought this man was someone special, really blessed by Rama and Hanuman. Ever since, he has been respected in the village as a wise elder and he has also behaved like one. That’s what happens when you really listen to a story, especially to the Ramayana.11 n

(‘Three hundred Ramayanas: Five examples and three thoughts on translation’, extract from The Collected Essays of AK Ramanujan, edited by Vinay Dharwadker, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999.)

Notes

(Ramanujan first wrote this essay as a lecture delivered at the Workshop on South Asia at the University of Chicago in 1985-86. In a revised and expanded form it appeared in Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, ed. Paula Richman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 22-49, from where it is reprinted here. The second section of the essay draws on a short paper on ‘The Ahalya Episode in Two Ramayanas (Valmiki and Kampan)’ which Ramanujan presented at the Association for Asian Studies Conference in Boston in 1968. Gen Ed.)

This paper was originally written for the Conference on Comparison of Civilisations at the University of Pittsburgh, February 1987. I am indebted to the organisers of the conference for the opportunity to write and present it and to various colleagues who have commented on it, especially V. Narayana Rao, David Shulman and Paula Richman.

1 I owe this Hindi folk tale to Kirin Narayan of the University of Wisconsin.

2 Several works and collections of essays have appeared over the years on the many Ramayanas of South and South-east Asia. I shall mention here only a few which were directly useful to me: AK Banerjee 1983; P. Banerjee 1986; JL Brockington 1984; V. Raghavan 1975 and 1980; Sen 1920; CR Sharma 1973; and S. Singaravelu 1968.

3 See Bulcke 1950. When I mentioned Bulcke’s count of three hundred Ramayanas to a Kannada scholar, he said that he had recently counted over a thousand in Kannada alone; a Telugu scholar also mentioned a thousand in Telugu. Both counts included Rama stories in various genres. So the title of this paper is not to be taken literally.

4 Through the practice of tapas – usually translated ‘austerities’ or ‘penances’ – a sage builds up a reserve of spiritual power, often to the point where his potency poses a threat to the gods (notably Indra). Anger or lust however immediately negates this power; hence Indra’s subsequent claim that by angering Gautama he was doing the gods a favour.

5 The translation in the body of this article contains selected verses from I.9, the section known in Tamil as akalikaipatalam. The edition I cite is Kampar Iyarriya Iramayanam (Annamalai: Annamalai Palikalaikkalakam, 1957), Vol. 1.

6 See, for example, the discussion of such views as summarised in Goldman 1984, 15. For a dissenting view, see Pollock 1984.

7 See Desai 1980, 63. In the discussion of the Ramakirti to follow, I am indebted to the work of Desai and Singaravelu. For a translation of the Thai Ramayana, see Puri and Sarahiran 1949.

8 Kampar Iyarriya Iramayanam, Vol. 1, selected verses from I.1, in the section known as nattuppatalam. My translation.

9 One source for Peirce’s semiotic terminology is his ‘Logic as Semiotic’, in Peirce 1940, 88-119.

10 Personal communication from V. Narayana Rao.

11 I heard the Telugu tale in Hyderabad in July 1988 and I have collected versions in Kannada and Tamil as well.

From Communalism Combat Archives, May 2008

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Greetings for the Season!

Faiths travelled across the seas first, then on horseback with the men and women who espoused their beliefs. Just as Buddhism travelled south and then east and north, Hinduism did too. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, sailed across the Arabian seas to settle on Indian shores, even before the conquests from the north.

As we savour this intermingling this season, in the midst of world turmoil and needless violence, let us light up the lives of the less fortunate, regardless of the faith she or he was born into.

Indonesia, a republic with a Muslim-majority population spread over 17,000 islands including Sumatra, Java, Sulwesi and others boasts a special cultural heritage –the Ramayana. Walk into the handicraft boutiques with their exquisite leather puppetry and the figures of the much loved Ramayana will be proudly on show. The celebrated popularity of the Ramayana here is a testament to the epic’s enduring cultural legacy. Yes, there is a Ramayana in Indonesia too; where, while the first half of the Indonesia Ramayana is similar to the Indian version, the second half includes the powerful Javanese deity Dhayana and his three sons.

Scripted in the old Javanese language, it became known as the Kakawin Ramayana. The text and performances, watched with joy among Indonesians even today, were centuries ago used to revive Hinduism at a time when Buddhism was well established in Sumatra, West and Central Java through shadow puppetry (Wayang Kulit and Wayang Purwa).

Historians trace the Kakawin Ramayana back to the Medang Kingdom (732-1006 AD) in Central Java when it was written in the old Javanese language. The other Indonesian version of Ramayana is the Balinese Ramakavaca, which is a developed version of the Kakawin Ramayana. The Javanese consider the Kakawin Ramayana, derived from an array of Sanskrit-based metrical patterns, as the ultimate in artistic expression and remains the lengthiest of all Old Javanese texts. A large number of preserved palm leaf manuscripts of Java and Bali attest to its popularity and adaptation.

Fascinatingly, the Kakawin Ramayana differs from the original Indian version in interesting e ways. According to several literary scholars, the source of the old Javanese Kakawin Ramayana was possibly the Sanskrit poem Bhattikavya written by Indian poet Bhatti around the 7^th century AD as the first half of Kakawin Ramayana is almost identical to the rendering of Bhattikavya. But Indian scholars find that the latter half almost indistinguishable from the original.

Though the characters of Rama, Sita, Lakshman, Hanuman, Ravan, etc. remain fundamental to its narrative, the Kakawin Ramayana also has several Javanese indigenous deities like Dhayana, (regarded as the Guardian God of Java Semar or ‘Twalen’ in Balinese literature) and four his sons called the four Punokawan or “clown servants”. However, these characters are most popular and figure prominently in all Wayang performances.

Sita, almost akin to the Janaki Ramayan in southern parts of India, is depicted powerfully. While a section of the north and western Indian Ramayana depicts her (more recently) paints her as a soft, demure and loyal woman, Indonesia’s Kakawin Ramayana portrays her as strong, individualistic and bold, depicted as fighting with Asuras in Ravana’s Lanka instead of waiting for Rama to rescue her!

It is not uncommon in Indonesian Wayang performances to see Sita’s character being played with her chin and head up in a defiant position. She is portrayed as a bit weak for desiring the golden deer, while Rama is shown as a wee bit imperfect since he trusted people over Sita after she was rescued from Lanka.

Hanuman is a much-respected and revered character in Indonesia as he figures in many of the historic dance and drama artworks such as Wayang Wong found in Javanese culture and Odalan celebrations and other festivals in Bali. In many medieval era Hindu temples, archeological sites, and manuscripts discovered in Indonesia, Hanuman features prominently along with Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, Vishvamitra, and Sugriva.

On the island of Java (Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia lies on the northwest coast of Java), the Ramayana is performed in many cities through wayang kulit or puppet shows that can last multiple nights and also through Wayang Wong tradition, a lovely theatrical dance.

In Java also stands the ancient heritage city of Yogyakarta, which, experts say, is derived from Ayodhya in India. Nearby is located Prambanan, a 10^th-century UNESCO World Heritage-Inscribed temple compound. It is famous for stunning reliefs illustrating the Ramayana. Residents with tourists enjoy the exquisite dance performance based on the epics that are performed here regularly. Often with the sun setting in the background an open air performance holds guests enthralled. Bali too — Uluwatu and Ubud—host Ramayana-themes dances for Indonesians and visitors.

Then there is Thailand where one of the classics of Thai literature is Ramakien (Ramakian), is the Thai version of the Ramayana. Researchers tell us that Indian traders brought Ramakien to Thailand. As trade and business ties became stronger, the popularity of Ramakien also became widespread. Also, it is learned that the name of the historic city of Ayutthaya (around 80 km from country capital Bangkok) is a transliteration from Ayodhya. Even in 2023, you can see paintings and statues depicting Ramakien are on display across Thailand. The plot of the epic has similarities, whereas the depictions of characters and stories differ. The Thai theatre dance –famed khan dance –also draws from the epic.

Khan, an ancient theatrical art included in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, was originally performed only at the royal courts. The style combines graceful movements, war choreography, rituals, traditional music, narration, singing and poetry. Equally beautiful are the exquisite khan masks, jewellery and richly embroidered costumes, all of which require the highest skills in craftsmanship. Traditionally, all actors and dances wore the masks but today, some prefer a form of makeup influenced by Thai mural paintings.

Another Ramayana-based art form is nang yai, or grand shadow puppets, in which performers manipulate large, leather puppets while dancing to the melodies of the piphat (instrumental) ensemble.

Cambodia

It’s not just the famed Angkor Wat temple complex at Krong Siem Reap, located on a site measuring 162.6 hectares that is touted as the largest religious structure in the world. In  Cambodia, stone reliefs on temples from as far back as the 10^th century depict scenes from the Ramayana, and historian researchers say that the Cambodian version of the epic, the Reamker, dates to the 16^th or 17^th century. Again, while the kernel of the story is similar as the Indian Ramayana, it contains a few episodes unique to Cambodian culture. An example is that of an encounter between Hanumana and Savann Maccha, the mermaid, a favourite of Cambodian audiences, and this is often performed as a stand-alone piece in theatrical depictions, even today.

The Reamker dance form serves as an inspiration for various genres of performance in Cambodia – classical dance-drama, masked dance-drama, and shadow puppet plays. On special days, performances of the traditional shadow puppet shows. SbekThom, are also very popular. Key scenes from the Reamker are depicted in ancient sculptures at Angkor Wat too.

And then Myanmar….

In neighbouring Myanmar (Burma) –today the scene of violent turmoil– the oral tradition of the Ramayana is believed to date as far back as the reign of Kind Anawrahta (1044-77). The story – known as Yama Zatdaw in Burmese – was, it is believed, orally passed on from generation to generation up till the 16^th century, especially in oral courts. In later decades, it was turned into a Burmese classical drama, with music and songs.

Today, Ramayana performances are very popular in Burma and yama zat pwe (dramatic performances of the story), marionette stage shows are held very often. Its use of an exuberant, acrobatic, and highly stylised form of traditional Burmese dance as well as intricate costumes, marks it apart from all other versions of the Ramayana. Scenes from the Ramayana can also be found as motifs or design elements in Burmese lacquer ware and wood carvings.

Faiths travelled across the seas first, then on horseback with the men and women who espoused their beliefs. Just as Buddhism travelled south and then east and north, Hinduism did too. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, sailed across the Arabian seas to settle on Indian shores, even before the conquests from the north.

As we savour this intermingling this season, in the midst of world turmoil and needless violence, let us light up the lives of the less fortunate, regardless of the faith she or he was born into.

Greetings for the Season!

–Editors

The post Epics Journeys—How the Ramayana sailed to faraway lands, Indonesia, Thailand and more appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Shocked?

He displayed all the characters of Ramayana written from Vedas to Books. In his book Ram Katha, the characters & theories developed in the last 3-4 thousand years in different regions are all explained beautifully.

Late Prabhash Joshi founder Editor of Jansatta said that ‘after reading father Camille Bulcke’s Ram Katha, you feel that though Sri Ram is the Avatar of Sri Vishnu but he himself comes to earth in different Yugs again & again. After reading and understanding this masterpiece it becomes clear that by breaking all ethics of Ramayana there is a deformity of the character Sri Ram in an attempt to show him like a ‘Singha Avatar’. (Hindu Hone Ka Dharam, page no 350).

Those who created this Singha avatar of Sri Ram are busy beating & harassing Christian Missionaries these days as they can see the international conspiracy behind Missionary activities.

Camille Bulcke was a Roman Catholic Padri who came to India after leaving his nation. While on Missionary work he did his M.A. from Prayag University. Later he did research work on Sri Ram and obtained his doctorate in Hindi. He gained Indian citizenship in 1951, became a member of the National Commission for the promotion of Hindi as the national language, and wrote the ‘English to Hindi’ Dictionary. He spent his life serving this Hindi Language.

Premchand’s son Amritrai said “I was stunned reading his Ramkatha that in this country crores are worshipping Sri Ram but to create a full complete study on him one Missionary had to come from Belgium. This work is the pride of Hindi Literature.”

Acharya Dhirendra Verma said it is a Dictionary of Ram Katha. Leave Hindi, in no other language such a study on Ramayana is available.

Missionaries do not only run conversion campaigns but also do study and research on Indian Culture. They also serve those sick people in inaccessible forests, hills. However, those who identify themself as RamBhakt beat them and sometimes burn them inside the car with family. Remember Graham Staines?

Neither have they heard of RasKhan (Syed Ibrahim) the Muslim who fell in love with Sri Krishna and began living in Vrindavan and spent the rest of his life serving Sri Krishna.
It is because the ideology they are following is all destruction and about exclusion. Read this, if anywhere in their ideologue’s book you find any inclusiveness.

The diversity and Vibrancy of Ramayana tradition and the character of Sri Ram is vast across countries, languages. This is being used as a political tool and not as a cultural symbol which unites people across different cultures, regions, nations and faith.

When they say

‘Jab Mulle kaate Jayenge

Ram Naam Chillayenge

‘I hear’Jab RasKhan Kaate Jayenge

Ram Naam Chillayenge’.

(From the twitter handle of @RahulSeeker)

The post When I hear bloodthirsty slogans of ‘Jai Sri Ram,’ I remember Fr Camille’s ‘Ram Katha’ appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The head priest of the newly constructed Ram temple in Ayodhya that has huge political backing, has demanded an immediate ban on one of the latest films released by Bollywood. the movie ‘Adipurush’. Reason for the ‘outrage?’ Unsurprisingly, he alleges that the movie has ‘wrongly portrayed Lord Ram, Hanuman and Ravana’. Only recently, a 1.46-minute teaser of the movie, based on the Hindu epic Ramayana, was launched at a lavish ceremony in Ayodhya. However, it has been receiving strong criticism on social media since then for a number of ‘issues’.

Not surprisingly, the supremacist, Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) echoed Ayodhya priest priest Satyendra Das’s objections. The outfit criticised the portrayal of Lord Ram, Lakshman and Ravana in the teaser of the film, claiming that it “ridiculed Hindu society”.What are social media users riled about? While some are complaining about ‘poor VFX’, others have claimed that the film is ‘misrepresenting’ Lord Ram and Ravana. Hindustan Times (HT) has reported that the head priest has alleged that the film ‘wrongly portrays’ Lord Ram, Hanuman and Ravana and is therefore against their dignity. “Making a film is not a crime but they should not be made to create deliberate controversies to hog the limelight,” head priest Satyendra Das reportedly told HT.

Not to be outdone, it was the vocal Madhya Pradesh (MP) Home Minister Narottam Mishra also accused the filmmakers of wrongly depicting the Hindu deities in the teaser reported The Indian Express. “I have seen the trailer of Adipurush. There are objectionable scenes in it,” he has said.

How many Ramayanas exist and which depiction is ‘real’ and ‘authentic?

The realm of study, history and anthropology tell a rich and varied tale. Communalism Combat’s exclusive cover story of May 2008, Three Hundred Ramayans documents this scholarship.[1]

While the entire text is fascinating the footnotes to the translation are no less so. Ramanujan first wrote this essay as a lecture delivered at the Workshop on South Asia at the University of Chicago in 1985-86. In a revised and expanded form it appeared in Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, ed. Paula Richman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), The second section of the essay draws on a short paper on ‘The Ahalya Episode in Two Ramayanas (Valmiki and Kampan)’ which Ramanujan presented at the Association for Asian Studies Conference in Boston in 1968. Gen Ed.)

Ramanujan mentions, and credits that several works and collections of essays have appeared over the years on the many Ramayanas of South and South-east Asia. Some of these are : AK Banerjee 1983; P. Banerjee 1986; JL Brockington 1984; V. Raghavan 1975 and 1980; Sen 1920; CR Sharma 1973; and S. Singaravelu 1968.Ramanujan notes that when he mentioned Bulcke’s (1950) count of three hundred Ramayanas to a Kannada scholar, he said that he had recently counted over a thousand in Kannada alone; a Telugu scholar also mentioned a thousand in Telugu. Both counts included Rama stories in various genres. So there are many many more than 300 Ramayans even.

Hindutva supremacists got this essay removed from the curriculum of Delhi university’s undergraduate course in 2008.  Today, now instead of this rich and varied scholarship within history and anthropology. the Mukesh Ambani-owned television channel and web portal, News 18, has delved deep into what is considered as ‘objectionable around this film as also several portrayals of the Ramayana.

Today, Adipurush is the latest big-budget Indian film to draw on Hindu mythology and culture, following in the footsteps of SS Rajamouli’s RRR and Ayan Mukerji’s Brahmastra. Director Om Raut, who directed Adipurush has called it a ‘passion project’ for the entire crew, according to a report by Indian Express.

The grand launch event took place at Ram ki Paidi in Ayodhya, on the banks of the Sarayu River, and featured the unveiling of a 50-foot poster of the film that emerged from water. Sunny Singh, who plays Lakshman in Adipurush, and Saif Ali Khan were both absent from the premiere.

Bollywood has been currently seeing a rise in films based on Hindu mythology, which have received mixed reviews and reception. The recently-released Brahmastra, starring Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhat and Mouni Roy, also got its fair share of controversy. The film revolves around a superhero drama about a simpleton who has a special relationship with fire. The films takes inspiration from Hindu mythology, with the plot following Brahmstra, a supernatural weapon said to be capable of destroying the universe.

Other upcoming films on Hindu themes include Akshay Kumar’s ‘Ram Setu’. Kangana Ranaut’s ‘Sita’ is also set to present a portrayal of the centric female character of Lord Ram’s wife Goddess Sita from Ramayana. However, with recent ‘anti-Bollywood’ sentiments expressed on social media sites, the films’ reception has been ‘mixed’.

Why has Adipurush received hate flak?
The film has received criticism from right-wing Hindu leaders, online and otherwise. In his criticism of the film, Ajay Sharma, Prachar Pramukh of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s (VHP) Sambhal unit, told reporters that the way in which Lord Ram, Ravana and Lakshman had been portrayed in ‘Adipurush’ was a mockery of Hinduism. “The values of Hindu society have been ridiculed. Hindu society will not tolerate this,” he said. He also said that the way Ravana had been depicted was not in line with the Ramayana and related religious scriptures.

The multilingual period saga sees Saif Ali Khan play the role of a 10-headed demon king called Lankesh. With a beard, fierce eyes and a buzz cut, this Lankesh seems barbarism personified and many called out the filmmakers for the apparent Islamisation of Ravana. The portrayal of Hanuman, with a beard, without a moustache and dressed in leather, also attracted criticism.

Ramayana’s Earlier Depictions

While the much politicised epic (since the 1980s) has inspired many movies, shows, two that saw love from the audiences was the 1987 TV series Ramayana and the 1993 ‘anime’ film on the Hindu epic. The show first aired on DD National between 1987 and 1988, and was narrated by Ashok Kumar and directed by Ramanand Sagar. The show became the most watched television series in the world, with an 82 percent viewership. The repeat telecast aired at various times on 20 different channels in 17 countries across all five continents. The series’ success was well documented by the media. According to the BBC, over 650 million people watched the serial.

The serial’s success coincided with the VHP-driven movement for construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya –launched in 1986 precisely –at the exact spot where the Babri Masjid stood. Ayodhya already had hundreds of temples to honour Lord Ram when the Babri Masjid was demolished in cold daylight on December 6, 1992. Between 1986-1992, the deadly and violent Rath Yatra, led by former mahapurush (militant man) of the party and subsequent Indian home minister, LK Advani, caused violence and bloodhed in its wake, be it Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra or Karnataka.

The “love” for the series coincided with the spiralling growth of the RSS’ parliamentary wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), politically. Arun Govil who starred in the serial joined the BJP in 2021. A clear political bent to the ‘standardisation’ of the Ramayan epic is now in place as can be seen from the reactions of even Dipika Chikhlia, who then portrayed Sita. She was quick to criticise Adipurush. “I have seen the teaser of Adipurush. Ramayan is a true story with which the emotions and beliefs of millions of people are associated. Since Ramayan is an important part of people’s faith, it is important to be careful about how its characters, simplicity, and emotions are depicted. I know times have changed and that VFX has become an essential part of movie-making but VFX is good only till it does not hurt people’s sentiments. However, it is only a teaser and may not do justice to the film,” she reportedly told India Today.

Another ‘popular’ depiction is that of Yugo Sako, who produced and directed the 1993 anime film based on the Hindu epic Ramayana, which was co-produced by Japan and India. It captivated audiences with its faithful adaptation and svelte, godly depictions of Hindu deities.

Japanese producer and director Yugo Sako had detailed his immense preparation before making the Ramayana, “Sako spent months researching the narrative and checking out clothes and architectural aspects, meeting with academics, archaeologists, and historians. He wanted to be extra careful as a foreigner to keep loyal to the epic,” reports said.

Today, in the 75th year of Indian independence, as the India of 2022 veers towards an authoritarian totalitarianism based on majoritarian faith and culture, the location of the multi-dimensional epic(s) Ramayan and Mahabharat in a standardised and stultified form has shorn the epics and Indian culture itself of the magic of the many-dimensional. As the Karnataka scholar told Ramanujan, there are not 300 but one thousand depictions of the lores and tales ad characters in this much loved and lived epic fable, but the rigid hawkishness of the powers that be will prevent Indians from enjoying these. At least on the massively visible silver screen.

The post Raavan Islamised! Purging the complex Ramayan text evident in attacks by far right on Adipurush appeared first on SabrangIndia.

While the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration must be looking forward to its first ever Ramayana inspired webinar titled: ‘Leadership lessons through Ramayana’, the students it hopes to educate seem far from amused. The online seminar will be conducted on May 2 and 3 and is only open to JNU students, staff and teachers who have to register for access. The announcement was made a few days ago by the vice chancellor himself and got a lot of media attention. 

Even JNU’s Vice Chancellor Jagadesh Kumar Mamidala, hopes that his students make sure they log on and attend this webinar and learn some ‘leadership lessons,’ from Ramayana the JNU Students Union has issued a statement on how they interpret the “priorities” of their university administration.

“We definitely hope that wherever the JNU administration and the Vice Chancellor are deriving their ‘leadership prowess’ from, it helps them to focus on the issues faced by the students and workers employed in JNU.” 

The JNUSU says that the university has already seen “a failure of leadership on issues of a serious nature. Leadership requires a sense of responsibility and care for the constituents you are assigned to serve.”

The students’ union also addressed the media, as many had dutifully reported that the seminar would be held, though it is not known yet if some friendly journalists may even be invited to attend the seminar as guests. The students union has asked the media to also focus equally on the grave issues which should be addressed by JNU administration on a priority basis.

JNU admin’s leadership failure?

It is International Workers’ Day,  May Day, and Labour Day, but at JNU the daily wage workers including sanitation workers, laborers and those employed in various manual jobs on contractual basis have not been paid by the administration states the JNUSU. The workers have apparently not been paid their salaries of up to three months. “The JNU administration and the companies which provide the contractual staff for housekeeping and sanitation- *Max, and Bedi & Bedi in particular,* are doing a back and forth of putting the blame on each other and hence denying workers their salary. On top of that, the supervisors and the company management are compounding the misery of the workers by making a lot of workers go back without marking their attendance when they travel from far off places. This makes them miss out on their daily wage,” alleged the JNUSU on record.

This of course is also in violation of the Union Government’s Covid-19 lockdown guidelines on engaging and paying labourers even on days they have to stay at home and follow all the lockdown protocols. The JNUSU has also alleged that even though labourers are coming to work as easily as 5 am, many of them are being “marked absent”. 

“This treatment of workers who are vulnerable is an absolute scandal and the companies *Max, Bedi & Bedi* as well as the JNU administration should be ashamed of themselves for treating workers this way,” stated JNUSU.

The webinar will go live on May 2 and 3 from 4 pm to 6 p.m and is “strictly for JNU Faculty, Staff and Students.” It has been organised by JNU’s School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies and School of Sanskrit & Indic Studies. It will be conducted by Professor Santosh Kumar Shukla from JNU’s School of Sanskrit and Indic Studies and Professor Mazha Asif from School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies. This Ramayana inspired leadership webinar is a collaboration with The Ramayana School. 

https://www.facebook.com/pg/theramayanaschool/photos/?ref=page_internal

For the skeptics and the rationalists who may criticise his inspiration for the webinar, Vice Chancellor Jagadesh Kumar Mamidala, quotes Mahatma Gandhi as saying: “About Rama, in 1946, Mahatma Gandhi said: He is one without a second. He alone is great. There is none greater than He. He is timeless, formless, stainless. Such is my Rama. He alone is my Lord and Master.”  

The JNUSU has also reminded everyone that the university administration had recently conducted an Academic Council meeting online to discuss the academic period lost due to the lockdown. However the students, who are directly affected, were not asked for their suggestions.

“Shamefully, again no suggestions were taken from the elected JNUSU as the representatives of the stakeholders- the students who are going to be most affected,” stated JNUSU. 

However the JNU administration had released a timetable which the students alleged is far from understanding ground realities. They say the  administration is “conjuring up dates in thin air” even as the intensity of cases of the Covid-19 pandemic increases. 

JNU has not proposed that students get back by June, and in the meanwhile continue with online classes. “Ludicrous suggestions of conducting synopsis related RAC online and keeping the returning students two weeks in isolation (knowing full well the logistical non starter that such a proposal without any preparation would be) shows that not only were suggestions not taken, there was scant preparation of detailed study of the crisis by the administration appointed Deans of Schools,” stated the JNUSU, “overall the administration is at sea and unprepared for detailing a return to academics that does not cause any inconvenience to the students.” 

The JNUSU has demanded that the JNU administration consult the stakeholders regarding issues related to lag in academics and provide relief to workers at the earliest. 

Related:

Lockdown special: JNU webinar on Leadership through Ramayana 

Saptapadi: Modi’s se7en steps to fighting Covid-19

Light diya, manifest collective superpower, boost morale: Modi

The post May Day JNU: Pay the workers before you learn leadership from the Ramayana appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has among its alumni, scores of prominent individuals recognised the world over for their leadership qualities in social, political, scientific, economic, academic, artistic, and journalistic circles to name a few. But those award winning personalities must be now wondering if they missed what their alma mater is now offering its students, and teachers. 

Still hailed as one of the most rational spaces for scientific, socio-political thought, JNU has now announced a two-day webinar on ‘Leadership lessons through Ramayana’. The webinar will go live on May 2 and 3 from 4 pm to 6 p.m. Registrations are now open and the web link confirms that, “this webinar is strictly for JNU Faculty, Staff and Students.” It has been organised by JNU’s School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies and School of Sanskrit & Indic Studies. It will be conducted by Professor Santosh Kumar Shukla from JNU’s School of Sanskrit and Indic Studies and Professor Mazha Asif from School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies.

What is interesting that this Ramayana inspired leadership webinar is a collaboration with The Ramayana School. The ‘school’ has a page on Facebook and calls its work an :”initiative to take Lord Rama’s life – The Ramayana,” to the schools, colleges and corporates with meaningful value-oriented workshops, reflective exercises and quizzes.”
https://www.facebook.com/pg/theramayanaschool/photos/?ref=page_internal

The webinar was proudly announced by JNU’s Vice Chancellor Jagadesh Kumar Mamidala, who quotes Mahatma Gandhi as saying: “About Rama, in 1946, Mahatma Gandhi said: He is one without a second. He alone is great. There is none greater than He. He is timeless, formless, stainless. Such is my Rama. He alone is my Lord and Master.”  

“Mahatma Gandhi emphasised how Lord Rama taught us to uphold truth, justice, equality even under adverse circumstances, there is a great deal to learn from Ramayana to enrich our lives particularly during these challenging times of coronavirus,” Mamidala had said. 

This perhaps inspired him to bring lessons from the Ramayana to the scholars and teachers at JNU: “JNU organizes leadership lessons from Ramayana. All from JNU are welcome,” he said.

JNU to organise ‘Leadership Lessons From Ramayana’ session, says VC Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar https://t.co/7dOHPBRNlh

— Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar (@mamidala90) April 28, 2020

That the university has undergone many changes in its tone and tenor, along with some policies since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) first came to power in 2014 is a matter of public record. Jagadesh Kumar Mamidala, was appointed JNU’s VC in 2016. 

Interestingly, Rajiv Malhotra, a right wing NRI author and commentator was appointed as an “honorary visiting professor at the Centre for Media Studies” at JNU in October 2018. A month later he was invited to deliver a lecture organized by the School of Sanskrit and Indic studies on Sanskrit non-translatables, recorded a Reddit post.  

New agency ANI quotes JNU VC Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar: “Some people have asked me why there is a webinar on leadership lessons from Ramayana at JNU. During the lockdown period we have conducted several webinars related to COVID-19. This is a part of such series of webinars that we have been conducting,”

According to news reports the university had also organised a webinar on challenges and solutions to Covid-19 recently where over a thousand people from India and abroad had reportedly participated.

Students and faculty of the Jawaharlal Nehru University have always been at the forefront of civil society protests against draconian laws and stood tall against hate speech and bigotry. They have been attacked continually, the latest being a serious assault in the campus in January 2020. The attacks continue in court cases, and from right-wing media, on many fronts. Two prominent JNU scholars, Dr Umar Khalid, And Dr Kanhaiya Kumar have for long been charged under various laws including the draconian UAPA, and have been accused of sedition. 

Perhaps things will be better at the varsity once the leadership lessons from the Ramayana have been internalised. There is no word yet on a possible edition where lessons from the epic Mahabharata will also be featured in a JNU webinar soon.

Related:

Protest against indiscriminate arrest of hundreds of Muslims in violence affected NE Delhi
Delhi gov’t paves way for prosecution of Kanhaiya Kumar

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But what is the history of Ram and is the Ayodhya that we know today, the same as the Ayodhya described in Balmiki’s Ramayana?
A panel of speakers that included Romila Thapar, Kunal Chakrabarti, Zoya Hasan, and Valay Singh, discussed this and other questions at the book launch of Ayodhya: City of Faith, City of Discord in New Delhi. Kunal Chakrabarti, professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, talked about how there is no conclusive archaeological evidence of a temple at the Ramjanmabhumi; the evolution of Ram in the many versions of Ramayana that have been introduced over the centuries and more.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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The following is an excerpt from the chapter “Scripture, Myth and Reality” of the book.

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The Ramayana’s conversion into a divine or holy text began in the second millennium ce. Ram was not always worshipped as a god even though the worship of Ram certainly preceded the emergence of present-day Ayodhya as a centre of Ram worship. Moreover, it was after Tulsidas’s version of the Ramayana appeared in the sixteenth to seventeenth century that Ayodhya became an important centre of pilgrimage in north India and Ram worship grew rapidly. In the following centuries, it would become the most dominant cult, if not the most prevalent one among Hindus.

Ram embodies many values that are attributed to India itself, such as tolerance, secularism, social harmony, equality, moral propriety and courage. As the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Atal Bihari Vajpayee said, Ram is also to many ‘the symbol of India’s cultural heritage and its national ethos’.¹ ‘Ram-bharose’, or ‘thanks to Ram’, is a common phrase heard in high-rises as well as weekly haats. Ram has come to be synonymous with God, at least since the time of the poet-saint Kabir.

It was not always so. Ram worship erupted slowly and quite late in Indian religious history (as evidenced by most Ram temples and Ramayani art dating from the medieval period) and the Ayodhya of today offers us reason to believe that it developed even later as a place of Ram worship. The power of the Ram story as a legitimizing force was used in the fifth century by Vikramaditya (Skandagupta) when he moved his capital from Pataliputra to Saket (Ayodhya). Saket, till then a town with Buddhist and Jain histories, now became the Ayodhya of the Gupta king. After the fall of the Guptas, Ayodhya too faded away till the Gahadvalas rose to power in the aftermath of Ghaznavid raids.² Bear in mind that this was a time of intense conflict between raiding Muslim armies from the northwest and regional struggles between Hindu kings. It is against the backdrop of a strife-torn political-social landscape that Vaishnavism began to emerge as a religious cult that would subsume many other sects in Hindu life. Some scholars believe that the Gahadvalas built five Vishnu temples in Ayodhya that survived till the time of Aurangzeb.³ However, it is baffling that even after extensive excavations, so little has been discovered of their remains.

Till at least the 1700s, Ayodhya was a regional military centre of the Mughal empire, from where the nawabs of Awadh ruled. It had been in the wilderness for centuries, the continuous armed struggle between the Delhi Sultanate and its feudatories kept the region in turmoil and despite or probably because of that, Ayodhya attracted only the religiously and spiritually inclined of all faiths. In fact, this aspect of Ayodhya needs to be appreciated much more than it has been. Like most pilgrim spots, some parts of today’s Ayodhya offer the spiritual minded, the seeker of peace and the renunciate solace and solitude.

As we have seen earlier, Nageshwarnath, the oldest temple in Ayodhya, is dedicated to Shiva, and as in most of the country, Shiva worship preceded the cult of Ram in Ayodhya as well.⁴ Shiva is a peer of Vishnu and hence there cannot be a direct comparison between him and Ram, who is the seventh incarnation of Vishnu.⁵ The six incarnations that precede him are Matsya or the fish avatar, Kurma or tortoise, Varaha or boar, Narasimha or half-man, half-lion, Vaman or the dwarf, and Parshuram or the priest with an axe. Then comes Ram, followed by Krishna of the Mahabharata, and after him, in the Vaishnava tradition, the Buddha as the ninth avatar of Vishnu. The tenth and final avatar is Kalki, a man on a white winged horse; he is to appear at the end of the present cosmic age.

1. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, ‘My musings from Kumarakom–I: time to resolve problems of the past’, The Hindu, 2 January 2001.

2. Vasudha Paramasivan, ‘Yah Ayodhya vah Ayodhya: earthly and cosmic journeys in the Anand-Lahari’ in Heidi Pauwels, ed., Patronage and Popularisation, Pilgrimage and Procession: Channels of Transcultural Translation and Transmission in Early Modern South Asia; Papers in Honour of Monika Hortsmann, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2009, pp. 101–16.

3. Ibid.

4. An inscription on a shivling dated 435–36 ce records a gift for the worship of Mahadeva (another name for Shiva). This shivling was found in the village Karamdande in Faizabad district (Meenakshi Jain, Rama and Ayodhya, New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2013, p. 95).

5. However, from the Valmiki Ramayana, where Shiva is supposed to have asked Vishnu to manifest as Ram to kill Ravan to the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, where Shiva is shown to be worshipping Ram and narrating the Ramayana to his consort Parvati, Ramcharitmanas marks the ultimate adoption of Shiva by Vaishnavism.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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राजनीतिक बयानबाजी के लिए चर्चित रहे शंकराचार्य स्वरूपानंद सरस्वती ने एक ओर जातिगत आरक्षण हटाने की माँग की तो दूसरी ओर रामायण और महाभारत की पढ़ाई स्कूलों में कराने पर भी जोर दिया। स्वरूपानंद सरस्वती ने कहा कि मदरसों में कुरान पढ़ाई जाती है, क्रिश्चियन स्कूलों में बाइबिल पढ़ाई जाती है, तो हिंदू स्कूलों में रामायण और महाभारत क्यों नहीं पढ़ाई जातीं।
 
 

The post जातिगत आरक्षण हटाओ-रामायण पढ़ाओ: शंकराचार्य स्वरूपानंद appeared first on SabrangIndia.

The saffron agenda of confounding mythology with history also undermines India’s magnificently multi-religious and heterodox history
 

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In an often–quoted remark, Henry Ford, the great captain of indus try, said, “History is more or less bunk.”  As a general statement about history, this is perhaps not an assessment of compelling delicacy. And yet Henry Ford would have been right to think, if that is what he meant, that history could easily become “bunk” through motivated manipulation.

This is especially so if the writing of history is manoeuvred to suit a slanted agenda in contemporary politics. There are organised attempts in our country, at this time, to do just that, with arbitrary augmentation of a narrowly sectarian view of India’s past, along with undermining its magnificently multi-religious and heterodox history. Among other distortions, there is also a systematic confounding here of mythology with history. 

An extraordinary example of this has been the interpretation of the Ramayana, not as a great epic, but as documentary history, which can be invoked to establish property rights over places and sites possessed and owned by others. (1) The Ramayana, which Rabindranath Tagore had seen as a wonderful legend (“the story of the Ramayana” is to be interpreted, as Tagore put it, not as “a matter of historical fact” but “in the plane of ideas”) and in fact as a marvellous parable of “reconciliation,” (2) is now made into a legally authentic account that gives some members of one community an alleged entitlement to particular sites and land, amounting to a license to tear down the religious places of other communities.  

Thomas de Quincey has an interesting essay called “Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” Rewriting of history for bellicose use can also, presumably, be a very fine art. I note the contemporary confounding of historical studies in India as the starting point of this lecture, even though I shall not be directly concerned with addressing these distortions: there are many superb historians in India to give these misconstructions their definitive due.  

Instead, I shall be concerned with outlining some methodological issues that relate to the subject of truth and falsehood in general history.  I will also try to develop and defend a view of history as “an enterprise of knowledge.”  There will be occasional references to contemporary debates (because I shall illustrate the general points with examples from Indian history), but the overall focus will be on more general themes. 

There will be occasions, in this context, to take a fresh look at India’s persistent heterodoxy, which includes not only its tendency towards multi–religious and multi–cultural coexistence (a point emphasised in Rabindranath Tagore’s “vision of India’s history”), but also its relevance for the development of science and mathematics in India. For history is not only an enterprise of knowledge in itself, it cannot but have a special involvement with the history of other enterprises of knowledge. The view of history as an enterprise of knowledge is, of course, very old–fashioned: I am not trying to innovate anything what-soever. However, this and related epistemic approaches to history have taken some hard knocks over the last few decades. These have come not so much from sectarian bigots (who have barely addressed issues of method), but in the hands of sophisticated methodologists who are not only sceptical of the alleged virtues of modernity and objectivity (often for understandable reasons), but have ended up being deeply suspicious also of the idea of “truth” or “falsehood” in history.  

They have been keen, in particular, to emphasise the relativity of perspectives and the ubiquity of different points of view. Perspectives and points of view, I would argue, are indeed important, not just in history, but in every enterprise of knowledge. This is partly because our observations are inescapably “positional.” Distant objects, for example, cannot but look smaller, and yet it is the job of analysis and scrutiny to place the different positional views in their appropriate perspectives to arrive at an integrated and coherent picture. The elementary recognition of the “positionality” of observations and perceptions does not do away with ideas of truth and falsehood, nor with the need to exercise reasoned judgement faced with conflicting evidence and clashing perspectives. I shall not here reiterate the methodological arguments I have presented elsewhere, but will discuss their relevance to the interpretation of Indian history. (3). 

Indeed, describing the past is like all other reflective judgements, which have to take note of the demands of veracity and the discipline of knowledge. (4).  The discipline includes the study of knowledge formation, including the history of science (and the constructive influences that are important in the cultivation of science) and also the history of histories (where differences in perspective call for disciplined scrutiny and are of importance themselves as objects of study).  

I shall be concerned with each. I should make one more motivational remark. I address this talk primarily to non-historians, like myself, who take an interest in history. I am aware that no self–respecting historian will peacefully listen to an economist trying to tell them what their discipline is like. But history is not just for historians. It affects the lives of the public at large.  

We non–historians do not have to establish our entitlement to talk about history. Rather, a good point of departure is to ask: why is history so often invoked in popular discussions?  Also, what can the general public get from history? Why, we must also ask, is history such a battleground? 

Knowledge and Its Use 

Let me begin by discussing some distinct motivations that influence the public’s interest in history. 

(1) Epistemic interest: The fact that we tend to have, for one reason or another, some interest in knowing more about what happened in the past is such a simple thought that it is somewhat embarrassing to mention this at a learned gathering. But, surely, catering to our curiosity about the past must count among the reasons for trying to learn something about historical events. An ulterior motive is not essential for taking an interest in history (even though ulterior reasons may also exist often enough). The simplicity of the idea of historical curiosity is, however, to some extent deceptive, because the reasons for our curiosity about the past can be very diverse and sometimes quite complex. The reason can be something very practical (such as learning from a past mistake), or engagingly illuminating (such as knowing about the lives of common people in a certain period in history), or largely recreational (such as investigating the chronology and history of India’s multiplicity of calendars). (5).

Also, the historical questions asked need not be straightforward, and may even be highly speculative. (6).  Whether or not it is easy to satisfy our curiosity (it may not always be possible to settle a debate regarding what actually happened), truth has an obvious enough role in exercises of this kind. In fact, curiosity is a demand for truth on a particular subject.

 Thomas de Quincey has an interesting essay called “Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” Rewriting of history for bellicose use can also, presumably, be a very fine art.

(2) Practical reason:  Historical connections are often invoked in the context of contemporary politics and policies. Indeed, present-day attitudes in politics and society are often strongly influenced by the reading — or misreading — of the history of past events. For example, sectarian tensions build frequently on grievances (spontaneous or cultivated) linked to past deeds (real or imagined) of one group against another. 
This is well illustrated, for example, by the recent massacres in Rwanda or former Yugoslavia, where history — or imagined history — were often invoked, concerning alleged past records of hostilities between Hutus and Tutsies, or between Serbs and Albanians, respectively.  Since these uses of history are aimed primarily at contemporary acts and strategies, the counteracting arguments which too invoke history,
though in the opposite direction, also end up being inescapably linked to current affairs.  

Given the dialectical context, we may be forced to take an interest in historical disputations on battlegrounds that have been chosen by others — not ourselves. For example, in defending the role of secularism in contemporary India, it is not in any way essential to make any claim whatsoever about how India’s Mughal rulers behaved whether they were sectarian or assimilative, whether they were oppressive or tolerant. 

Yet in the political discussions that have accompanied the activist incursions of communal politics in contemporary India (well illustrated, for example, by the rhetoric that accompanied the demolition of the Babri Masjid), a heavily carpentered characterisation of the Mughal rule as anti–Hindu was repeatedly invoked.  

Since this characterisation was to a great extent spurious and based on arbitrary selection, to leave that point unaddressed would have, in the context of the on going debate, amounted to a negligence in practical reason, and not just an epistemic abstinence.  Even the plausibility or otherwise of the historical argument that some of the juridical roots of Indian secularism can be traced to Mughal jurisprudence (a thesis I have tried to present in my paper, “Reach of Reason: East and West”), even though a matter of pure history, ends up inescapably as having some relevance for contemporary politics (even though that was not a claim I made). (7).

The enterprise of knowledge links in this case with the use of that knowledge. However, this does not, in any way, reduce the relevance of truth in seeking knowledge. The fact that knowledge has its use does not, obviously, make the enterprise of acquiring knowledge in any way redundant.  In fact, quite the contrary.

(3). Identity scrutiny:  Underlying the political debates, there is often enough a deeper issue related to the way we construct and characterise our own identities, in which too historical knowledge — or alleged knowledge — can play an important part.  Our sense of identity is strongly influenced by our under standing of our past. We do not, of course, have a personal past prior to our birth, but our self–perceptions are associated with the shared history of the members of a particular group to which we think we “belong” and with which we “identify.” Our allegiances draw on the evocation of histories of our identity groups. 

A scrutiny of this use of history cannot be independent of the philosophical question as to whether our identities are primarily matters of “discovery” (as many “commu-nitarian” thinkers claim), (8) or whether they are to a significant extent matters of selection and choice (of course, within given constraints — as indeed all choices inescapably are). (9).  

Arguments that rely on the assumption of the unique centrality of one’s community–based identity survive by privileging — typically implicitly — that identity over other identities (which may be connected with, say, class, or gender, or language, or political commitments, or cultural influences). In consequence, they restrict the domain of one’s alleged “historical roots” in a truly dramatic way. Thus, the increasing search for a Hindu view of Indian history not only has problems with epistemic veracity (an issue I discussed earlier), but also involves the philosophical problem of categorical oversimplification.

A good point of departure is to  ask: why is history so often invoked in popular discussions? Also, what can the general public get from history? Why, we must also ask, is history such a battleground?

It would, for example, have problems in coming to terms with, say, Rabindranath Tagore’s description of his own background as “a confluence of three cultures, Hindu, Mohammedan and British.”(10).  No less importantly, it cannot but be in some tension with the sense of pride that an Indian may choose to have, irrespective of his or her own religious background, at the historical achievements of, say, Ashoka or Akbar, or Kalidasa or Kabir, or Aryabhata or Bhaskara.  

To deny the role of reasoned choice, which can draw on the knowledge of the past, can be a very serious loss indeed.  Even those who want to identify with India’s historical achievements and perhaps take some pride in them (a legitimate enough concern) must also examine critically what to take pride in, since it is easy to be misled into a narrow alley through incitements to ignore India’s capacious heterodoxy in favour of a constricted sectarian identity.

While discovery and choice compete as the basis of identity, knowledge and choice are essentially complementary to each  other. Engagement with issues of identity enriches the enterprise of knowledge and extends its reach. 

Science and Intellectual Heterodoxy 

Let me now move to a more active view of the enterprise of knowledge, and turn to the history of science, which is among the historical subjects of study. As has already been argued, history is not only an enterprise of knowledge, its subject matter includes other enterprises of knowledge. The issue of heterodoxy, to which reference was made earlier, is particularly important here. Indeed, I would argue that there is a general connection between intellectual heterodoxy and the pursuit of science, and that this connection deserves more attention than it tends to get. 

Heterodoxy is important for scientific advance because new ideas and discoveries have to emerge initially as heterodox views, at variance with established understanding. One need reflect only on the history of the scientific contributions of, say, Galileo or Newton or Darwin, to see the role of heterodoxy in the process. The history of science is integrally linked with heterodoxy.

If this interpretation is correct, then the roots of the flowering of Indian science and mathematics that occurred in and around the Gupta period (beginning particularly with Aryabhata and Varahamihira) can be intellectually associated with persistent expressions of heterodoxies which pre–existed these contributions. In fact, Sanskrit and Pali have a larger literature in defence of atheism, agnosticism and theological scepticism than exists in any other classical language.

The origins of mathematical and scientific developments in the Gupta period are often traced to earlier works in mathematics and science in India, and this is indeed worth investigating, despite the historical mess that has been created recently by the ill–founded championing of the so–called “Vedic mathematics” and “Vedic sciences,” based on very little evidence.  What has, I would argue, more claim to attention as a precursor of scientific advances in the Gupta period is the tradition of scepticism that can be found in pre-Gupta India — going back to at least the sixth century B.C. — particularly in matters of religion and epistemic orthodoxy.  

Indeed, the openness of approach that allowed Indian mathematicians and scientists to learn about the state of these professions in Babylon, Greece and Rome, which are plentifully cited in early Indian astronomy (particularly in the Siddhantas), can also be seen as a part of this inclination towards heterodoxy.

Observation, Experience and Scientific Methods

Indeed, the development of Indian sciences has clear methodological connections with the general epistemological doubts expressed by sceptical schools of thought that developed at an earlier period. This included the insistence on relying only on observational evidence (with scepticism of unobserved variables), for example in the Lokayata and Charvaka writings, not to mention Gautama Buddha’s powerfully articulated agnosticism and his persistent questioning of received beliefs.  

The untimely death of professor Bimal Matilal has robbed us of the chance of benefiting from his extensive programme of systematic investigation of the history of Indian epistemology, but his already published works bring out the reach of unorthodox early writings on epistemology (by both Buddhist and Hindu writers) in the period that can be linked to the flowering of Indian science and mathematics in the Gupta era. (11). 

Similarly, the expression of hereticism and heterodoxy patiently – if somewhat grudgingly — recorded even in the Ramayana (for example, in the form of Javali’s advice to Rama to defy his father’s odd promise) presents methodological reasons to be sceptical of the orthodox position in this field. (12).

Indeed, in A Vision of India’s History, Rabindranath Tagore also notes the oddity of the central story of Rama’s pious acceptance of banishment based on “the absurd reason… about the weak old king [Rama’s father] yielding to a favourite wife, who took advantage of a vague promise which could fit itself to any demand of hers, however preposterous.”  Tagore takes it as evidence of “the later degeneracy of mind,” when “some casual words uttered in a moment of infatuation could be deemed more sacred than the truth which is based upon justice and perfect knowledge.”(13). 

In fact, Javali’s disputation goes deeply into scientific methodology and the process of acquiring of knowledge: There is no after–world, nor any religious practice for attaining that.  Follow what is within your experience and do not trouble yourself with what lies beyond the province of human experience. (14).

The increasing search for a Hindu view of Indian history would, for example, have problems in coming to terms with, say, Rabindranath Tagore’s description of his own background as “a confluence of three cultures, Hindu, Mohammedan and British.

As it happens, the insistence that we rely only on observation and experience is indeed a central issue in the departures in astronomy — initiated by Aryabhata and others — from established theological cosmology. 

The departures presented in his book Aryabhatiya, completed in 421 Saka or 499 A.D., which came to be discussed extensively by mathematicians and astronomers who followed Aryabhata (particularly Varahamihira, Brahmagupta and Bhaskara, and were also discussed in their Arabic translations), included, among others: (1) Aryabhata’s advocacy of the diurnal motion of the earth (rather than the apparent rotation of the sun around it), (2) a corresponding theory of gravity to explain why objects are not thrown out as the earth churns, (3) recognition of the parametric variability of the concept of “up” and “down” depending on where one is located on the globe, and (4) explanation of lunar and solar eclipses in terms respectively of the earth’s shadow on the moon and the moon’s obscuring of the sun.

Observational arguments, based on what Javali calls “the province of human experience,” are central to the departures initiated by Aryabhata in these and related fields (more on this presently). In the enterprise of knowledge involving the natural sciences, the intellectual connections between scepticism, heterodoxy and observational insistence, on the one hand, and manifest scientific advances, on the other, require much further exploration and scrutiny than they seem to have received so far.

History of Histories and Observational Perspectives

The observational issue is important also for the particular subject of history of histories, or metahistories (as we may call them). Given the importance of perspectives in historical writings, history of histories can tell us a great deal not only about the subject of those writings, but also about their authors and the traditions and perspectives they reflect. 

For example, James Mill’s The History of British India, published in 1817, tells us probably as much about imperial Britain as about India. This three–volume history, written by Mill without visiting India (Mill seemed to think that this non–visit made his history more objective), played a major role in introducing the British governors of India (such as the influential Macaulay) to a particular characterisation of the country.  

There is indeed much to learn from Mill’s history — not just about India, but more, in fact, about the perspective from which this history was written. This is an illustration of the general point that the presence of positionality and observational perspective need not weaken the enterprise of knowledge, and may in fact help to extend its reach. (15).

James Mill disputed and rejected practically every claim ever made on behalf of Indian culture and intellectual traditions, but paid particular attention to dismissing Indian scientific works. Mill rebuked early British administrators (particularly, Sir William Jones) for having taken the natives “to be a people of high civilisation, while they have in reality made but a few of the earliest steps in the progress to civilisation.”(16).

Indeed, since colonialism need not be especially biased against any particular colony compared with any other subjugated community, Mill had no great difficulty in coming to the conclusion that the Indian civilisation was at par with other inferior ones known to Mill: “very nearly the same with that of the Chinese, the Persians, and the Arabians,” and also the other “subordinate nations, the Japanese, Cochin–Chinese, Siamese, Burmans, and even Malays and Tibetans” (p. 248).

Mill was particularly dismissive of the alleged scientific and mathematical works in India. He denied the generally accepted belief that the decimal system (with place values  and the placed use of zero) had emerged in India, and refused to accept that Aryabhata and his followers could have had anything interesting to say on the diurnal motion of the earth and the principles of gravitation.  

Writing his own history of histories, Mill chastised Sir William Jones for believing in these “stories,” and concluded that it was “extremely natural that Sir William Jones, whose pundits had become acquainted with the ideas of European philosophers respecting the system of the universe, should hear from them that those ideas were contained in their own books.”(17).

A Contrast of Perspectives 

It is, in fact, interesting to compare Mill’s History with another history of India, called Ta’rikh al–hind (written in Arabic eight hundred years earlier, in the 11th century) by the Iranian mathematician Alberuni.(18).  
Alberuni, who was born in Central Asia in 973 AD, and mastered Sanskrit after coming to India, studied Indian texts on mathematics, natural sciences, literature, philosophy, and religion. Alberuni writes clearly on the invention of the decimal system in India (as do other Arab authors) and also about Aryabhata’s theories on earth’s rotation, gravitation, and related subjects.

These writings contrast sharply with Mill’s history from a dominant colonial perspective, well established by the beginning of the nineteenth century. The interest in Mill’s dismissive history in imperial Britain (Macaulay described Mill’s History of British India to be “on the whole the greatest historical work which has appeared in our language since that of Gibbon” (19) contrasts with extensive constructive interest in these Indian works among Islamic mathematicians and scientists in Iran and in the Arab world.

In fact, Brahmagupta’s pioneering Sanskrit treatise on astronomy had been first translated into Arabic in the 8th century by Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al–Fazari, and again by Alberuni three hundred years later in the eleventh century (since Alberuni had certain criticisms of the previous translation). Several Indian works on medicine, science and philosophy had Arabic rendering by the 9th century, and so on. It was through the Arabs that the Indian decimal system and numerals reached Europe, as did Indian writings in mathematics, science and literature, in general. Indeed, history of histories, particularly about science, can tell us a great deal about the nature of political and social relations between the different countries (such as Iran and Gupta India, on the one hand, Britain and colonial India, on the other).

As it happens, Alberuni’s history also provides interesting illumination on scientific discussions within India, and particularly on the constructive role of heterodoxy in this context. Even though Alberuni himself tended to reject Aryabhata’s theory regarding the diurnal motion of the earth, he describes patiently the Indian arguments in defence of the plausibility of Aryabhata’s theory, including the related theory of gravity.

Conservatism, Courage and Science

It is, in this context, particularly interesting to examine Alberuni’s discussion of Brahmagupta’s conservative rejection of the exciting departures proposed by Aryabhata and his followers on the subject of lunar and solar eclipses. Alberuni quotes Brahmagupta’s criticism of Aryabhata and his followers, in defence of the orthodox religious theory, involving Rahu and the so-called “head” that is supposed to devour the sun and the moon, and finds it clearly unpersuasive and reactionary. He quotes Brahma-gupta’s supplication to religious orthodoxy, in Brahmasiddhanta: Some people think that the eclipse is not caused by the Head. This, however, is a foolish idea, for it is he in fact who eclipses, and the generality of the inhabitants of the world say that it is the Head that eclipses. The Veda, which is the word of God from the mouth of Brahman, says that the Head eclipses… On the contrary. Varahamihira, Shrishena, Aryabhata and Vishnuchandra maintain that the eclipse is not caused by the Head, but by the moon and the shadow of the earth, in direct opposition to all (to the generality of men), and from the enmity against the just–mentioned dogma. (20).

Alberuni, who is quite excited about Aryabhata’s scientific theories of eclipses, then accuses Brahmagupta (a great mathematician himself) for lacking the moral courage of Aryabhata in dissenting from the established orthodoxy. He points out that, in practice, Brahmagupta too follows Aryabhata’s methods in predicting the eclipses, but this does not prevent Brahmagupta from sharply criticising — from an essentially theological perspective — Aryabhata and his followers for being heretical and heterodox.  Alberuni puts it thus: … we shall not argue with him [Brahmagupta], but only whisper into his ear: …Why do you, after having spoken such [harsh] words [against Aryabhata and his followers], then begin to calculate the diameter of the moon in order to explain the eclipsing of the sun, and the diameter of the shadow of the earth in order to explain its eclipsing the moon?  Why do you compute both eclipses in agreement with the theory of those heretics, and not according to the views of those with whom you think it is proper to agree? (21).

  The interest in Mill’s dismissive history in imperial Britain contrasts with extensive constructive interest in these Indian works among Islamic mathematicians and scientists in Iran and in the Arab world.

The connection between heterodoxy and scientific advance is indeed close, and big departures in science require methodological independence as well as analytical and constructive skill. Even though Aryabhata, Varahamihira and Brahmagupta were all dead for many hundred years before Alberuni was writing on their controversies and their implications, nevertheless Alberuni’s carefully critical scientific history helps to bring out the main issues involved, and in particular the need for heterodoxy as well as moral courage in pursuit of science. 

A Concluding Remark 

To conclude, I have tried to illustrate the different ways in which history has relevance for non-historians — indeed the general public. First, there are diverse grounds for the public’s involvement with history, which include (1) the apparently simple attractions of epistemic interest, (2) the contentious correlates of practical reason, and (3) the scrutiny of identity–based thinking. All of them — directly or indirectly — involve and draw on the enterprise of knowledge. 

Second, history is not only itself an enterprise of knowledge, its domain of study incorporates all other enterprises of knowledge, including the history of science. In this context, it is easy to see the role of heterodoxy and methodological independence in scientific advance. The intellectual connections between heterodoxy (especially theological scepticism) and scientific pursuits (especially big scientific departures) deserve more attention in the history of sciences in India. 

Third, metahistories — or histories of histories — also bring out the relevance of an appropriate climate for the enterprise of knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge not only requires an open mind (the contrast between Alberuni’s scientific interest and Mill’s colonial predispositions radically differentiate their treatments of the same subject matter), it also requires an inclination to accept heterodoxy and the courage to stand up against orthodoxy (Alberuni’s critique of Brahmagupta’s criticism of Aryabhata relates to this issue).  The plurality of perspectives extends the domain of the enterprise of knowledge rather than undermining the possibility of that enterprise. (22).

Since the rewriting of Indian history from the slanted perspective of sectarian orthodoxy not only undermines historical objectivity, but also militates against the spirit of scientific scepticism and intellectual heterodoxy, it is important to emphasise the centrality of scepticism and heterodoxy in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. The incursion of sectarian orthodoxy in Indian history involves two distinct problems, to wit, (1) narrow sectarianism, and (2) unreasoned orthodoxy.  The enterprise of knowledge is threatened by both. 

(The writer, a Nobel prize winner is Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Lamont University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University. The above paper was presented by the writer at the Indian History Congress in Calcutta)

ENDNOTES 

1. The confusing story of a recent statement by a Director of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) announcing exact knowledge where Rama, the avatar, was born (not surprisingly precisely where the Babri Masjid stood — from which the property rights for building a temple exactly there is meant to follow!), combined with the assertion that the Masjid itself had no religious significance (followed by an embarrassed dissociation of the ICHR itself from these remarkable pronouncements), illustrates the confounding of myth and history.
2. Rabindranath Tagore, A Vision of India’s History (Calcutta: Visva–Bharati, 1951), p. 10; this essay was first published in Visva-Bharati Quarterly, 1923.
3. See “Positional Objectivity,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1993.  I have also illustrated the methodological issues involved in the context of Indian history in On Interpreting India’s Past (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1996), also included in Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, eds., Nationalism, Democracy and Development: Reappraising South Asian State and Politics (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996).
4. I have discussed the demands of descriptive discipline in “Accounts, Actions and Values: Objectivity of Social Science,” in C. Lloyd, ed., Social Theory and Political Practice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).
5. I have tried to argue elsewhere that the history of Indian calendars also provides some insights on the lives of the people and particularly on the state of science and mathematics at different times, and can even illuminate the political ideals that may be indirectly reflected in devising new calendars. The last is well illustrated, for example, by Emperor Akbar’s initiation of a synthetic solar calendar in the form of Tarikh–ilahi, in 1584, and its continuing influence on the Bengali san (on these issues, see my “India through Its Calendars,” The Little Magazine, 1, 1, May 2000). 
6. A good example of an interesting but rather bold speculation is Rabindranath Tagore’s conjecture about a story in the epics that “the mythical version of King Janamejaya’s ruthless serpent sacrifice” may quite possibly stand for an actual historical event involving an “attempted extermination of the entire Naga race” by the dominant powers in ancient India (Tagore, A Vision of India’s History, p. 9). 
7. Amartya Sen, “Reach of Reason: East and West,” The New York Review of Books, July 20, 2000. 
8. See Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 1998), for a fine presentation of the “discovery” view of identity, and in particular of the thesis (among others) that “community describes not just what they have as fellow citizens but also what they  are, not a relationship they choose (as in a voluntary association) but an attachment they discover, not merely an attribute but a constituent of their identity” (pp. 150–2).
9. I have discussed the role of choice in the selection of identities and in the determination of priorities in my Romanes Lecture at Oxford, Reason before Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), and in my Annual British Academy Lecture (to be published by the British Academy): for a shorter version, see “Other People,” The New Republic, September 25, 2000. 
10. See Rabindranath Tagore, The Religion of Man (London: Unwin, 1931, 2nd edition, 1961), p. 105.
11. See particularly Bimal Matilal, Perceptions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). 
12. Even though I shall not discuss in this paper the role and reach of Arjuna’s disagreements with Krishna’s high deontology in the  Mahabharata, and in particular in the Bhagavad–Geeta, that too is philosophically an important departure; on this see my “Consequential Evaluation and Practical Reason,” The Journal of Philosophy, 97 (September 2000). 
13. Tagore, A Vision of India’s History, p. 22.
14. The translation is taken from Makhanlal Sen, Valmiki Ramayana (Calcutta: Rupa, 1989), pp. 174–5.
15. On this general subject, see my “Positional Objectivity” (1993), and also “Accounts, Actions and Values: Objectivity of Social Science” (1983). 
16. James Mill, The History of British India (London, 1817; republished, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 225–6.
17. Mill, The History of British India, pp. 223–4.
18. For an English translation, see Alberuni’s India, translated by EC Sachau, edited by AT Embree (New York: Norton, 1971). 
19. Quoted in John Clive’s introduction to Mill, The History of British India (republished, 1975), p. viii. 
20. Alberuni’s India, pp. 110-1. 
21. Alberuni’s India, p. 111.
22. On this see also my “Accounts, Actions and Values: Objectivity of Social Science” (1983) and  “Positional Objectivity” (1993).

Archived from Communalism Combat, January 2001. Year 8, No. 65, Forum, Published under the title History and the enterprise of knowledge

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