Alternative Rāmāyaṇas:

Variations in an Epic Tradition

The Ramayana in Southeast Asian Performance and

Reworking the Ramayana in Puppetry in West Java

Kathy Foley, The University of California, Santa Cruz

The Ramayana is widely known and performed in Southeast Asia and forms a core part of the classical repertory of mainland Southeast Asian puppet and dance forms. This lecture will look at the Ramayana's reinterpretations in Khmer, Thai, Burmese, and Malay versions, noting differences from normative Indian antecedents in story and characterization with explanation of the choices as the narrative was indigenized. After an overview of various countries, specifics about the use of the tale in West Java will be discussed.  The Ramayana has been part of the repertory of Sundanese wayang golek, the rod puppet theatre of West Java, since the form was developed in the 18th century in the highland areas of Pasundan in Indonesia. In the late twentieth century the story has gained increased popularity under the influence of various outside forces, starting with the International Ramayana Festival in the l960s at Prambanan. The explosion of new recording media from the l970-80s led performers to recording the tale which led to yet more performances of Ramayana stories at hajat (family celebrations). The epic was again a focal narrative in the late l990s as pro- and anti-Suharto forces drew attention to the story as economic and other issues rocked the last years of the New Order.  Performers used the epic to envision the direction of the nation.  Through examining the well-known lakon (play) Reincarnation of Rama's Crown, narrative strategies of the Sudanese puppet masters to create links between Ramayana and Mahabharata stories will be seen.  How the Ramayana and Mahabharata characters are paired to represent the recurrent forces of righteous and destructive powers in society and the universe will clarify Sundanese reworking of this pan-South and Southeast Asian epic.

Kathy Foley is a Professor of Theatre at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She teaches in the Theatre Arts Department at UCSC and has taught at the University of Hawaii, Yonsei University (Seoul) and Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok). She is author of the Southeast Asia section of Cambridge Guide To World Theatre and editor of Asian Theatre Journal and her articles have appeared in TDR/The Drama Review, Modern Drama, Asian Theatre Journal, Puppetry International and other publications. She trained in mask and puppetry in the Sundanese region of Indonesia and was the first non-Indonesian invited to perform in the prestigious all Indonesia NationalWayang Festival. As an actress her performance of Shattering the Silence: Blavatsky, Besant, Rukmini Devi toured the U.S. and England in 2005. She performs frequently in the US and Indonesia and has curated exhibitions of Puppets of South and Southeast Asia and Masks of Southeast Asia for Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, the East-West Center in Hawaii, Northern Illinois Museum of Anthropology, the National Geographic Society and other institutions. Her research has been supported by Fulbright, East-West Center, the Asian Cultural Council and other grants.

A la mode: Medieval Jain Ramayanas

Phyllis Granoff, Yale University

In discussing the Jain Ramayana, scholars have tended to focus on the Sanskrit versions of Ravisena and Gunabhadra or the Prakrit version of Vimalasuri. They have explored in detail the differences between these texts and Valmiki’s Ramayana. In this paper I look at several other versions of the Jain Ramayana to argue that the Jain Ramayana tradition was as richly varied as the tradition that grew from Valmiki's Ramayana; in fact Jain monks were very much a la mode in their writing. Thus Ramacandra's Raghuvilasanataka with its plays within plays and illusions reflects the fashion in medieval drama for exploring reality and illusion. Kesaraja's Gujarati poem, very different in tone and plot, was set to music in the fashion of his day. A rare illustrated manuscript of Kesara’s poem further illustrates the compelling power of popular visual art forms. At crucial points the illustrations deviate from the text to create striking hybrid visual images, relying on the painting tradition associated with Valmiki’s Ramayana. In all these cases, I argue, Jain poets and artists were very much up to the minute, and very much a part of mainstream Indian culture.

Phyllis Granoff received her PhD in Sanskrit and Indian Studies and Fine Arts from Harvard University. After teaching for many years at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, she recently moved to Yale, where she is Lex Hixon Professor of World Religions. Her research centers on the classical religions of India, Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism, their texts and art.

 

Diving Into the Lake:

On the Necessity, Joy, and Terror of (Re)Translating Tulsidas’ Rāmcaritmānas

Philip Lutgendorf, The University of Iowa

The epic retelling of the Rāmāyaṇa composed in ca. 1574 AD by the poet Tulsidas, in the dialect of Hindi known as Avadhi, has long been considered one of the most sacred and beloved texts of the North Indian Hindu tradition. It has also, through seven complete English renderings, become one of the most translated works of the pre-modern “bhakti” tradition. In this presentation, I will first briefly introduce the epic and some of its notable features as a work in the larger “Rāmāyaṇa tradition.” I will then reflect on some of the difficulties that it presents for the translator into English, discuss why I am undertaking a new translation at this time, and share some examples of my approach.

Philip Lutgendorf is Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies and has taught in the University of Iowa’s Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literature since 1985. He regularly offers Hindi language classes as well as courses on written and oral narrative traditions of South Asia, including Indian film. His book on the performance of the Rāmcaritmānas, the Hindi version of the Ramayana, The Life of a Text (University of California Press, 1991) won the A. K. Coomaraswamy Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002-03 for his research on the Hindu “monkey-god” Hanuman, which has appeared as Hanuman’s Tale, The Messages of a Divine Monkey (Oxford University Press, 2007). He maintains a website devoted to popular Hindi cinema, a.k.a. “Bollywood” (www.uiowa.edu/~incinema). In 2010 he received a Fulbright-Hays “Faculty Research Abroad” for research on the cultural history of “chai,” and also began work on a planned three-volume, dual-language edition and translation of the Rāmcaritmānas for the Murty Classical Library of India/Harvard University Press. He serves as President of the American Institute of Indian Studies (www.indiastudies.org/).

 

On the Implications of Kulacēkara Āḷvār's Praise of Rāma's Killing of Śambuka

S. Palaniappan, SARII

Prior to the medieval Tamil poet, Kampan, the Vaisnava saint-king Kulacekara Āḷvār of Kerala (ca. 9 c. CE) summarized the Rāmāyaṇa in 11 verses.  This "mini-Rāmāyaṇa" is found in his Perumāl Tirumoli, part of the Nālāyirattivviyappirapantam, the Tamil Vaisnava canon. This mini- Rāmāyaṇa, unlike Kampaṉ's work, deals with stories from Uttarakāṇḍa too. In one of these verses, Rāma is praised as one who killed Śambuka, a śūdra who performed austerities (penance) and thus violated the norms of varṇa dharma.  This praise by Kulacēkara Āḷvār seems to go against the egalitarian notions generally associated with the Bhakti (devotional) movement. I shall explore the question of why Kulacēkara Āḷvār might have considered the killing of Śambuka to be praiseworthy.

S. Palaniappan is the President of South Asia Research and Information Institute.  He has presented papers at various academic conferences on topics such as: cultural change in ancient Tamil society, Tamil philology, Dravidian etymology, and Tamil nationalism.  He has published articles on the Tamil Bhakti (devotional) movement and the development of caste in Tamil society.  He earned a BS (Aeronautical Engineering) from IIT Madras, an MBA from the Wharton School, and a PhD (Civil Engineering: Transportation) from the   University of Pennsylvania where he also pursued his passion in Indology.  He is interested in researching Indian cultural history using philology, linguistics, and epigraphy.

 

When all is said and done, Rama is still God.

Velcheru Narayana Rao, Emory University

We have had anti-Ramayanas:  Dravidian, Marxist feminist, dalit, and plain reformist.  There is a large number of short stories and poems critical of Ramayana in the twentieth century in all major languages of India. Paula Richman’s Many Ramayanas, and Questioning Ramayanas and Mandakranta Bose’s Ramayana Revisited, show case some of them. Many of them are interesting as narratives, and refreshing for the new freedom they open up in reading Ramayana. Despite all this, Rama is still God in the minds of people. My paper investigates this phenomenon and explores the role of myth in the making of a culture and literature in the making of a civilization. I will use, in addition to Valmiki’s text, literary Ramayanas  from Telugu, especially Viswanatha Satyanarayana’s Ramayana Kalpavrksham, and oral Ramayana songs sung by women in presenting my argument.

Velcheru Narayana Rao is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. Since 1999, he was Krishnadevaraya Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he worked for almost four decades until his retirement.  In 2010-2011, he was Visiting Professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.  Narayana Rao is the foremost scholar of Telugu literature in North America and he has authored, co-authored, or edited more than fifteen books and numerous articles.  One of his more recent works is Girls for Sale: Kanyasulkam. A Play from Colonial India (Indiana University Press: 2007; Penguin India: 2011). He was the recipient of A.K. Ramanujan Prize in Translation awarded by the Association for Asian Studies in 2004.

Classical and Modern Ramayana Stories in South India

Paula Richman, Oberlin College

This talk will begin with a survey of how Kamban's Iramavatararam has portrayed some of the key episodes dealing with Sita and then go on to look at modern renditions of Sita in South India.  While each author featured in this presentation has chosen to rewrite incidents from the story of Rama and Sita for her or his own reasons, the cumulative result of their choices is a set of reinterpretations filled with fresh perspectives.  These writers present events within new frameworks, undertake psychological forays into the workings of characters’ minds, and add incidents not found in classical treatments of the story of Rama and Sita.

Paula Richman, Danforth Professor of South Asian Religions at Oberlin College (Ohio), received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in History of Religions, specializing in Tamil religious literature.  Her monographs include Women, Branch Stories, and Religious Rhetoric in a Tamil Buddhist Text and Extraordinary Child: Translations from a Genre of Tamil Devotional Poetry.  She has edited and contributed to 2 volumes on the Ramayana tradition: Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia and Questioning Ramayanas:  A South Asian Tradition.  Her recently published anthology, Ramayana Stories in Modern South India, contains translations into English of 20th century short stories, women's songs, plays, and poems originally published in Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, and Malayalam.  At present, she is finishing a book on modern Tamil reinterpretations of the story of Rama and Sita by prominent writers, political leaders, and social activists such as Pudumaippittan, C. Rajagopalachari, E.V. Ramasami, Kumudini and Cho.