The Ramayana Tradition in Asia

THE RAMAYANA TRADITION IN ASIA *

The rhetorical remark of Kippling: “What do they know of England who only England know?” is applicable to the Ramayana ofValmiki. What do they know of the Ramayana who only know Valmiki? The polysemy or radiation of this Adikavya, though it is not as old as the Pali Kavyas, is astoni­shing. Ramayanam anantakam.Just as the Fable travelled from our country to the land ofthe Grimms and Hans Andersen, the Ramayana spread fromthe banks of the Volga to the Philippines. It travelled in space and it travelled in time from first century B. C. to the present day. It travels still; it has a self-propelling vitality; it renews itself in every age and clime: to adapt Casca’s prophecy

How many ages hence
Shall, this our lofty poem be acted over
In state’s unborn and accents yet unknown!

Brahma’s verdict is incontrovertible and irreversible:
Yavat sthasyanti girayah saritasch mahitale
            Tavar ramakatha lokeshu pracharishyati.

            Ramayana-making is in the present continuous tense. Of course, there were voices of dissent. Buddhaghosha, the famous Pali commentator, dismisses the Ramayana and the Mahabharata as useless and frivolous just as Ben Jonson dismisses Shakespeare’s tempests and such drolleries. The Bengali poet, Madhusudan Dutt: said: “I despise Rama and his followers.” Some moderns dismiss Rama as a mugwump and condemn the killing of Vali and Sambuka as unethical and indefensible and see in the un­pardonable treatment of Sita the unceasing sob of a woman at the hands of male pigs. There is a felicitous propriety in the choice of this Lokeshu pracharishyati as the motto for “The Ramayana Tradition” in Asia edited by the late Dr.Raghavan. The book is a compilation of papers presented at the International Seminar on the Ramayana Tradition in Asia in New Delhi in December 1975; it was published by the Sahitya Akademi in 1980, with a Preface by Shri Umashankar Joshi who promises a critical inventory of Ramayana Studies; it is a joint venture of the Sahitya Akademi and the Government of India. Scholars from eleven countries – Indian and foreign – over forty and authori­ties on the Ramayana lore in their respective countries and languages discuss the multi-mundity of the epic: in poem and play, in song and picture, in inscriptions and coins, in wood­work and stone, in dance and recitation, in shadow and puppet play, in scrolls and murals in India and further India. The monumental reliefs of Angkorvat and the temples of Prambanan in East Java and of Wat Po temple in Thailand hold a dialogue with the Kailasa temple at Ellora and the monuments of Vijayanagara and the Rama bronzes of Vadakkupayanur. Ramacharitamanasand Iramavataramspeak to the Kakawin Ramayana of Indonesia, and the Thai Ramakien and the Malaysian Hikayat Sri Rama and the Chinese classic Monkey. The Eastern Archipelago was heavily Sanskritizcd or Brahmanized so much so the Thai monarchy required the presence of court Brahmans for the proper performance of ceremonials and the river Mekong means Mother Ganga.

Surprising are the variations of the Ramayana story in India and Greater India. The Ramayanas in Indian languages, from the Kashmiri to the Malayalam are a legion. The singular is a lie and the plural is a fact. The Ramayana is part of the consciousness and conscience of the Hindus. A scholar remarks that between the covers of the First Folio of Shakespeare you have the whole of the English language. Between the covers of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata you have the entirety of Indian literature in Samskrit and the regional languages. The epics are the quarry for later Samskrit poets and playwrights and next only to Valmiki is the Adhyatma Ramayana which saints and enskies Rama. A hero becomes a God and a Kavya a scripture: devotees make a daily Parayana of Gayatri Ramayana or Sundarakanda. As Rajaji put it, one who has not read the Ramayana at least in a translation does not understand this country. To study the Ramayana is to know ourselves. Not to know me argues yourselves unknown. If any writing can make a mere man a Superman, it is the Ramayana. Goethe remarks that in reading the Iliad we are enacting Hell. In reading the Ramayana we are enacting Heaven. The Ramayana is the epic of attainable human excellence; it is the biography of the aspirations and ideals of the Hindus.

To one attuned to the loftiness of Valmiki the deviations or additions or adaptations in the various Ramayanas are distressing indeed! An Assamese poet Madhava Kandali defends tampering with the Ramayana on the ground that it is not Daivavani but a mere Katha.

In the Jain Ramayana, Sita is the sister of Rama and she becomes his queen. In Gunabhadra, Sita is the daughter of Ravana and she slays the hundred-headed Ravana whom Rama could not quell. In the Padmacarita of Vimalasuri, Ravana is a mighty king. Hanuman is related to him, Lakshmana kills Rama and goes to hell! Ravana’s ten heads are reflections in a jewel. Sita tired of Samsara begs Rama permit her to do penance. The Jaina Ramayana versions are said to be an attempt to bring in an element of rationalism in the fantastic story of Valmiki! In Malayalam there is the Patala Ramayana making Hanuman the hero and in Sitaduhkham there is the folk story of the drawing of Ravana by Sita and Rama’s suspicion of her chastity and her banishment. In Telugu Ramayanams we find several non-Valmikian episodes: Indra crows like a cock near Gautama’s cottage; Lakshmana asks the goddess of sleep to approach Urmila till the exile is over; he draws seven lines near the hermitage warning Sita not to step beyond; Jambukumar the son of Surpanakha is killed and hence her vengeance; the squirrel helps Rama in building the bridge; Vibhishana discloses the secret of Amrita near the navel of Ravana; Angada drags Mandodari to disturb Ravana’s Homa; Rama’s birth is on a Wednesday; Ahalya becomes a stone; the story of Kalanemi and Lakshmana’s laughter are other additions.

In both Kambar and Tulasidas there is the un-Valmikian pre-marital love between Rama and Sita and this is also found in Thai Ramakien, According to Tulasidas, Ravana carries away the illusory Sita and Sita is not exiled. The Bhusundi Ramayana is largely influenced by Sakta and Buddhistic Tantric code. Rama becomes an amorous hero. In Kashmiri Ramayana, after the Agnipariksha, Sita refuses to open the doors in spite of Valmiki’s recommendations and Rama’s entreaties complaining about the wrongs done to her. The Bengali Ramayana of Krittivasa represents the hostility of Ravana as the highest type of Bhakti in disguise and in Ramalila Jhumuru, Ravana carries away Sita to Lanka and treats her as his own mother. The Oriya Ramayana is characterised by a striking similarity to the Idonesian Rama literature and by deviations and stories of the mushrooms (Ravanacharitra), of the crane, the chakravaka, the cock, the milkman, the sabara, which are popular myths in Orissa. When Vali was boro, half his strength was distributed among seven trees surrounded by a Naga, as Brahma felt that the universe might not bear the burden. In the Assamese Ramayana, Kunji the hunch(Manthara) expresses a violent carnal desire for union with Bharata. In the Simhala Ramayana, Sita gives birth to a son, not twins, but Valamiga or Valmiki saddles her with two more and all three live happily in Malaya country. Sita in another story is one of the seven goddesses bathing at a pond; Vishnu secures the clothes of this goddess and makes her his wife. In the Burmese Ramayana, Hanuman brings Sita after the burning of Lanka. In the Japanese Ramayana, Ravana is the king of dragons, Nagraja and the story of the hermit’s son slain by Dasaratha has a happy ending. In Mongolian Ramayana, Rama is identified with the Buddha and in a Tibetan version Rama is unable to find out the king of demons in a crystal palace because of the reflections till Hanuman helps him.

Wayang Siam, a Malay shadow play, mentions the transformation of Rama and Sita into monkeys. Sita becomes a man and marries many princesses. Rama is seduced by Surpanakha and sets up as a householder! Lakshmana is a hermaphrodite and Hanuman begets sons. In a Malay Fairy Tale based on the Ramayana, Kusa and Lava are the monkey sons of Rama and Sita and Lakshmana is the elder brother of Rama. Ravana has seven or twelve, not ten, heads, he changes himself into a lizard to get into Vishnu’s grotto or Indra’s to seduce his wife. In the Hikayat Seri Rama, Hanuman is the son of Srirama and Sitadevi through Anjanidewi. In the Hikayat Maharaja Ravana, Rama wins Sita by shooting an arrow through forty palm trees. Lakshmana is the monkey son of Radia Mangandiri or Rama by Langawi Queen of the East who swallows the testicle gored out by carabao of Mangandiri mistaking it for a gem and becomes pregnant.

In this welter of Ramayanas, Valmiki would have been puzzled and a bit distressed. Does not this acculturation stain the white radiance of Valmiki based on: “Dharmo rakshati rakhitah.” It is sad to note in this scholarly publication many errors and misprints. “Aneka dantam bhaktanam...” is translated: “You Ganesha have many teeth and we thy devotees want one of them.” This is ignorance of Samskrit and English. Beowulf is said to be a German Epic and Virgil’s epic is Punic War. Ravana is the God of winds. There are numerous instances of slipshod English: “When a bullet in a tiger hunt is described, a modern time rushes in to look on the story.” But these lapses do not take away the value of this fine volume to students of Ramayana studies.

Perhaps the finest remark on the Ramayana theme and the Ramayana redactor, translator diaskeuast, exegete, poet, rhapsodist or guslar is the following from the Padma Puranam (1-12-15): “The Rama stories are an ocean; what can one like me, a mosquito, do? Still I shall have to deal with it according to my capacity; in the wide sky each bird flies according to its capacity. The Rama carita is a hundred crore of verses; according to one’s intellect one writes about it. The fame of Rama will purify my mind even as fire, the gold.” And wherever Rama story comes the spirit of Valmiki, genuine or modified or even distorted and torsioned, is behind it as a woman is said to be behind any great achievement:

            Teshu teshu puraneshu mahabharala evacha
            Yarra ramacharitam syat tadaham tatra saktiman.

The Ramayana is a contemporary book. It is daily enacted in our lives. It is the Epic of “both man and bird and beast.”

He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

The remark made at the beginning: “What do they know of the Ramayana who only know Valmiki?” has to be supplemented by the remark: “What do they know of Valmiki who only know the other Ramayanas?”

* Ramayana Tradition in Asia: Edited by Dr.V. Raghavan. Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi. Price Rs. 75