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Ramayan Studies over the Years

 


Ramayan Studies over the Years

Dr. Somrita Dey (Mondal)

Assistant Professor of English

Durgapur Government College

Durgapur, West Bengal, India

 

 

Abstract: The story of Ram has been adapted, appropriated and reiterated a countless times in scores of different modes. It has been repeatedly re scripted each time with new concerns contributing to and modifying the existing body of discourse. In tandem with creative outputs there is also a substantial corpus of scholarly materials centering the “Ramkatha” given to the study of the multiple telling of the story. Whereas early critical speculations revolved round the evaluation of the historicity of the text and its transmission through the ages, and considered Valmiki’s Ramayan to be the source text from which the other tellings have branched off, recent studies reject the centrality of Valmiki’s narrative. This approach ascribes equal status to all “Ramayan” narratives, repudiates the concept of any original source text and engages with the socio-cultural underpinnings of the narratives. From the closing decades of the twentieth century scholarly pursuits concerning the “Ramkatha” analyze how immediate contexts influence the manner of representation of the tale in a narrative.

Keywords: Many Ramayans, Scholarship, Traditional, Contemporary

            The story of Ram has been adapted, appropriated and reiterated a countless times in scores of different modes. It has been repeatedly retold, each time with new concerns contributing to and modifying the existing body of “Ramayan” narratives. Recreation of the story of Ram is an ever proliferating process persisting through ages. The stance the existent retellings assume range anywhere between reification and subversion, recreation and rejection. The modes of expression too, are disparate as the discourses informing them. It has also been observed that at many instances certain episodes are singled out, highlighted or expunged to interrogate, reject or assert certain values, in compliance with the specific demands of an individual or any political or religious group.

            The entire body of “Ramayan” narratives is a testimony to the politics inherent in the process of representation that metamorphoses a singular story line into multiple texts and assigns them with their distinctive discursive textures. The basic story element is what A.K. Ramanujan calls the “Ramkatha” or the “Rama story” that he distinguishes from the ‘texts composed by a specific person- Valmiki, Kampan, or Krttivasa, for example’ (Ramanujan 25). “Ramkatha” denotes the ‘general narrative that recounts or takes for granted most of the following: Rama’s birth and youth in Ayodhya, his marriage to Sita and subsequent exile to the forest, the abduction of his wife by the demon Ravana, Rama’s search for her with the aid of an army of monkeys and Rama’s defeat of Ravana’ (Richman, “Questioning and Multiplicity” 3) that get channeled into literary creations like Iramavataram, Ramcaritamanas, or Ramkein. According to Ramanujan, the difference between the two can be understood by perceiving the relationship that “story” bears with “discourse”. The “story”, he suggests, ‘ may be the same in two telling, but the discourse may be vastly different…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’ (Ramanujan 25). The implication is that, in spite of engaging with the same source material, the creative outputs can exhibit substantial difference because of the variance in their treatment that is conditioned by the social environs in which they are produced. To validate his argument, Ramanujan cites the same episode from two different texts and elucidates how cultural affiliations of the creator influence the manner of representation. He elaborates on the Ahalya episode as depicted by Valmiki and Kamban and demonstrates how motifs from ‘South Indian folklore’, ‘ Southern Rama stories’, ‘Tamil poems’(Ramanujan 31) and the hold of  Bhakti tradition have imparted a discursive dimension to the creation of Kamban , that is very different from that of Valmiki’s. Though the basic plot resembles Valmiki’s work, Kamparamayanam, composed in the 12th century ‘under the influence of Tamil bhakti’ (Ramanujan 32) registers sufficient departures in relation to the tenor of Valmiki’s text. The aforementioned example is proof of the fact that politics of representation can generate multiple “Ramayans” from a singular tale of the “Ramkatha”.  The cultural context, the social ambience and the target audience arbitrate the representational paradigms and determine whether the accepted premise is to be reiterated, modified or contested and subverted. Accordingly, the tone is set, the episodes framed and the characters restructured. Often episodes and characters are selectively highlighted or erased and even new ones formulated if deemed essential for the purpose that the concerned “Ramayan” narrative is to serve. Since time immemorial the “Ramkatha” has provided fertile ground to innumerable sections of people to voice their concerns pertaining to issues as myriad as the number of people appropriating the story. This phenomenon of repeated adaptation, appropriation and recreation of the story has generated such a humongous body of “Ramkatha” centric creative outputs, that neither can their proper estimate be made nor can a definite narrative premise of the story be chalked out.

            There is not only a formidable corpus of “Ramayan” narratives, but also a substantial range of scholarly pursuits that explore such texts. Given the compass of “Ramkatha” it is not unlikely that it would stimulate critical speculations. Making an excursion into the trajectory of “Ramayan” studies, Mandakranta Bose claims that the initial phase of critical enquiry that continues ‘up to the middle of the twentieth century’ was ‘dominated by textual, philological, and philosophical commentary and by research on its origins, literary parallels, historicity, and transmission’(Bose 5). Nilmadhab Sen’s linguistic analysis of the Ramayana , Camille Bulcke’s work on the evolution of the “Ramkatha" falls into this category of  “Ramayan” study that investigates the “Ramkatha’s” origins, its transmission and the historical authenticity of the events described . Evidently, it is Valmiki’s text, which constituted their focus as the source and the primary narrative of Ram’s story.  With the foundation laid, scholarly scrutiny became more nuanced from the latter part of the twentieth century. Critical studies started ‘searching assessments of the cultural and political instrumentality of the Ramayana’ (Bose 50), and exploring the narratives’ ‘ideological meanings and functions’ (Bose 4). Gauri Parimoo Krishnan too, opines that   ‘ using an ancient epic to validate one’s present circumstance seems to have been a phenomenon which the 20th century researchers have uncovered and interpreted to reveal completely new ways of engaging with the epic on human level’ (Krishnan 14). Previously, scholarly research was directed towards the study of the origin and historical basis of the events of the “Ramkatha”. By the end of the century critical exploration started engaging with the fact that how the story is employed to express the concerns immediate to its context of production. Mandakranta Bose opines that the ‘recharged social appeal of the Ramayana has been responsible in large part for the current scholarly focus on its ideological meanings and functions’ (Bose 4). Consequently, whereas previous “Ramayan” studies focused more on the revered texts like Valmiki, Kampan, Tulsidas and so on and so forth, the latter approach brought all forms of “Ramayan” centric creative outputs within its purview. This broadening of the scope of “Ramayan” studies to incorporate within its critical ambit the entirety of “Ramayan” renditions-textual, visual or oral, is a significant milestone. The past few decades have witnessed the emergence of scholarly volumes that not only make vivid excursion into various forms of “Ramayan” telling but also expatiate on the social, gender, political and religious sensibilities that have gone into the structuring of the narratives. Mandakranta Bose makes the following observation:

Much of the present-day “Ramayana” scholarship aims at…subjecting them [local retellings] to intense rhetorical, structural, and ideological scrutiny. Studies in the choice of narrative structures and strategies of representation have revealed a relationship of subscription and resistance to the ethical and political formulas authorized by standard versions. (Bose 5)

 

Contemporary “Ramayan” studies scrutinise the facets of the act of representation- selection of genre, framing of the narrative, diction, medium of expression. It is aimed at discerning the discourse implicit in a text, the sociocultural forces that were operative at the time of its production and the relationship that a latter telling bears with the authoritative narratives. This is not to suggest that the awareness of the existence of multiple “Ramayan” narratives was absent in the past, it is only that for the first time they are eliciting critical interest. Paula Richman’s Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, Questioning Ramayanas: A South Asian Tradition, Ramayana Sories in Modern South India, Mandakranta Bose’s The Ramayana Revisited, Malashri Lal’s and Namita Gokhale’s In search of Sita, V. Raghavan’s The Ramayana Tradition in Asia, Avdesh Kumar Sing’s Ramayana Through the Ages are some of the contributions in this direction.

            At this juncture the theoretical framework on which this contemporary “Ramayan” studies is based, requires elaboration. Paula Richman distinguishes between two sets of approach that critics adopt while dealing with “Ramayana” narratives. The traditional one is the ‘genealogical’ or ‘philological’ model that philologists concerned with transmission of the source text, generally subscribe to. It designates the status of the “ur” or “original” to Valmiki’s text and conceives of other narratives as variants and derivatives of the primary source. It envisions the corpus of the “Ramayan” narratives in the image of a family where Valmiki’s text is the begetter, the ‘trunk’, from which the succeeding tellings have ‘branch[ed] off in various directions and then bear their own smaller limbs’ (Richman, “Questioning and Multiplicity” 4). According to Richman this model has its own set of advantages. It accords the legitimate status of ‘the oldest extant rendition of Rama’s story in a highly ornate literary genre (kavya)’ (Richman, “Questioning and Multiplicity” 3) to the Ramayan, ‘takes into account the text’s long history of transmission’, and also ‘accurately reflects the extent to which Valmiki’s Ramayana has influenced the many telling of Rama’s story that developed over the centuries’ (Richman, “Questioning and Multiplicity” 3). Nevertheless, it is an overtly hierarchical model ‘that tends to induce comparison of all others to Valmiki’s text’, thereby generating a ‘Valmiki and Others’ (Richman “Questioning and Multiplicity” 4) binary. Within the parameters of the genealogical model the ‘other Ramayanas’ are assessed ‘against that standard according to their angle of divergence from Valmiki’s version’ (Richman, “Questioning and Multiplicity”  9). It ascribes a seal of authenticity and originality and hence superiority to Valmiki’s composition while reducing the subsequent narratives to the mere status of ‘its variants’ (Richman “Questioning and Multiplicity”, 4). This model thus tends to ‘oversimplify the complexity of The “Ramayan” tradition … [and] perpetuates a narrow view incommensurate with the amazing popularity of Rama’s story’ (Richman, “Questioning and Multiplicity” 4). The assumption of a definite origin that envisages a unidirectional traffic of linear transmission of a story from a source text to the secondary and tertiary ones undermines the value of all non-Valmiki “Ramayans”, which renditions are actually instrumental in fostering the vitality characterising the “Ramayan” tradition. Mandakranta Bose quite rightly remarks that “Ramayan” tradition’s ‘epic’ (Bose 7) quality owes to its potential to adapt itself to every generic form and its ability to accommodate contradictory ideological standpoints within its ambit. It is this attribute of providing discursive space to every narrative that comes its way that has kept the corpus extant and ever burgeoning. From this perspective, the genealogical or philological model seems incompatible to the very spirit of the “Ramayan” tradition as it prioritises a single text over the umpteen other tellings that are as important a part of the oeuvre as the earliest one.  An alternative approach to explore the corpus of “Ramayan” narratives has been forwarded by A.K. Ramanujan. It can be denoted as the ‘many Ramayanas’ (Richman, Introduction. Many Ramayanas 9) or ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’ (Ramanujan 22) model that denies the centrality of Valmiki Ramayana. It rather proposes an all- embracing pluralistic structure where ‘Valmiki’s telling is one, Tulsi’s another, Kampan’s another, the Buddhist Jataka yet another’ (Richman, Introduction. Many Ramayanas 9). It is even inclusive of “Ramayan” renditions in other genres, and acknowledges every current and cross-current within the “Ramayan” tradition. This accounts for Ramanujan’s preference of the term ‘tellings’ over ‘versions’ or ‘variants’ because the latter expressions tend to posit an idea of an ‘invariant, an original or Ur-text’ (Ramanujan 24-25). Ramanujan also clarifies as to why he refuses to assign Ramayana the privileged position of the source text, the fountainhead that has generated all subsequent narratives. He opines that ‘it is not always Valmiki’s narrative that is carried from one language to another’ (Ramanujan 25). There are myriad other tellings that have created their own sphere of influence. Often, more than one rendition furnishes textual material for a new composition, which further generates fresh narrative strands centering round the “Ramkatha”. Evidently the philological model proves inadequate in embodying this dynamics that inherently characterise the “Ramayan” tradition, and this lacuna is addressed by the pluralistic model proposed by Ramanujan and Richman. The ‘Many Ramayanas’ pattern negates the notion of “Ramayan” as  a particular text or a definite set of texts fostering a well- defined, closed narrative , but evinces an idea of an impalpable nebula of countless free floating signifiers , a complex matrix of myriad narratives in endless interaction , perpetually renewing itself from within and without. The essays in the volumes by Richman, Bose, Sing, Lal and Gokhale, Sing attest to this complexity and diversity characterising the “Ramayan” tradition. The aforementioned scholarly articles examine the diverse tellings within the “Ramayan” oeuvre and also take into account the social, political, religious and cultural discourse informing the specific mode and tenor of representation.

Thus it can be said in the end that in addition to the creative outputs there is also a substantial corpus of scholarly materials given to the study of the multiple tellings of the story. Whereas early critical speculations revolved round the evaluation of the historicity of the text and its transmission through the ages, recent studies primarily engage with the sociocultural underpinnings of the “Ramayan” narratives. From the closing decades of the twentieth century scholarly pursuits concerning the “Ramkatha” analyse how immediate contexts influence the manner of representation of the tale in a narrative. In spite of retaining the basic storyline the characters, episodes, the tone and the import can vastly vary from text to text owing to the difference in the cultural landscape in which these are produced. Recent “Ramayan” studies is given to the exploration of the factors like the  regional, religious, gender, class or racial concerns that underlie the process of representation of the “Ramkatha”. Characters, episodes ‘resonate differently in different cultures’ (Krishnan 14)  and this difference that they register becomes an index of the cultural matrix in which they crystallize.

 

Works Cited

Bose, Mandakranta. Introduction. The Ramayana Revisited. Ed. Bose, Oxford UP, 2004, pp- 3-18.

Krishnan, Gauri P. Introduction. Ramayana in Focus: Visual and Performing Arts of Asia. Ed.Krishnan, Asian Civilisation Museum, 2010, pp. 12-15.

Ramanujan, A.K. "Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation." Many Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, edited by Paula Richman, U of California P, 1991, pp. 22-49.

Richman, Paula .Introduction. Ramayana Stories in Modern South India: An Anthology. Ed. Richman, Indiana UP, 2008, pp. 1-36.

--- .Preface. Questioning Ramayanas: A South Asian Tradition, edited by Paula Richman, U of California P, 2001.

---. "Questioning and Multiplicity Within the Ramayana Tradition."  Questioning Ramayanas: A South Indian Tradition, edited by Paula Richman, Oxford UP, 2008, pp. 1-21.