1st Edition
The Multivalence of an Epic Retelling the Rāmāyaṇa in South India and Southeast Asia
This volume examines The Rāmāyaṇa traditions of South India and Southeast Asia. Bringing together 19 well-known scholars in Rāmāyaṇa studies from Cambodia, Canada, France, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, UK, and USA, this thought-provoking and elegantly illustrated volume engages with the inherent plurality, diversity, and adaptability of the Rāmāyaṇa in changing socio-political, religious, and cultural contexts.
The journey and localization of the Rāmāyaṇa is explored in its manifold expressions – from classical to folk, from temples and palaces to theatres and by-lanes in cities and villages, and from ancient to modern times. Regional Rāmāyaṇas from different parts of South India and Southeast Asia are placed in deliberate juxtaposition to enable a historically informed discussion of their connected pasts across land and seas. The three parts of this volume, organized as visual, literary, and performance cultures, discuss the sculpted, painted, inscribed, written, recited, and performed Rāmāyaṇas. A related emphasis is on the way boundaries of medium and genre have been crossed in the visual, literary, and performed representations of the Rāmāyaṇa.
Prologue
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Exploring the Epic’s Multivalence: Rāmāyaṇas in Visual, Literary, and Performance Cultures
Parul Pandya Dhar
I. Visual Cultures: Sculptures, Paintings, and Inscriptions
1. The Rāmāyaṇa Retold by Sculptors and Scribes in pre-Vijayanagara Karnataka
Parul Pandya Dhar
2. Stone, Wood, Paint: Rāma-Story Representations throughout Southeast Asia
John Brockington
3. Looking for Rāma: Traces of the Rāmāyaṇa in Temples of the Pallava Dynasty
Valérie Gillet
4. Rāmāyaṇa Retold in Khmer sculpture with Special Reference to the Yuddhakāṇḍa, c. 10th-12th centuries
Rachel Loizeau
5. Rāmāyaṇa Bronzes and Sculptures from the Cōḻa to Vijayanagara Times
Sharada Srinivasan
6. Mighty Messenger: Adaptation and Localization of Hanumān and the Rāmāyaṇa in Southeast Asia
Gauri Parimoo Krishnan
7. The Rāmāyaṇa Paintings of the Māliruñcōlai Temple: Nationalism under the Spell of Regionalism
RKK Rajarajan
8. Expressions of the Rāmāyaṇa Epic in Malaysian Arts
Cheryl Thiruchelvam
II. Literary Cultures: Texts, Recitation, and Associated Imagery
9. The Discourse on Governance and Ethics as a Leitmotif in the Old Javanese Rāmāyaṇa or Rāmāyaṇa Kakawin
Malini Saran
10. Thai Rāmakīen: Its Close Links with South India
Chirapat Prapandvidya
11. From Kanauj to Laos: Development of the ‘Floating Maiden’ Episode in the Southeast Asian Rāma Tradition
Mary Brockington
12. Making of a Language and the Making of a Bhakti Text: The Story of the Composition of Tunćat Ezhuttaććan’s Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇaṃ Kiḷippāṭṭu
A J Thomas
13. Kumaran Asan’s ‘Cintāviṣṭayāya Sītā’, Sītā, Deep in Thought, a Translation
Sudha Gopalakrishnan
14. Mabasan Rāmāyaṇa, a Continuous Retelling of the Rāmāyaṇa in Bali
Thomas M Hunter
III. Performance Cultures: Theatre, Puppetry, and Folk Practices
15. Representations of Rāvaṇa in a Kathakalī Piece and a Mythological Drama
Paula Richman
16. The Rāmāyaṇa of the Malay Shadow Play, Wayang Kulit Kelantan, and its Possible Parallels and Connections with the Epic Versions in Northern Southeast Asia
Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof
17. From Palace to Streets: Many Rāmāyaṇas from the Bylanes
Krishna Murthy Hanuru
18. The Making of Rāmāyaṇa in the Yakṣagāna of Coastal Karnataka
Purushottama Bilimale
19. Reamker Performance in Khmer Society
Sirang Leng
The Contributors
Index
Biography
Parul Pandya Dhar is art historian and professor in the Department of History, University of Delhi. She has authored The Toraṇa in Indian and Southeast Asian Architecture (2010), edited Indian Art History: Changing Perspectives (2011), and co-edited Temple Architecture and Imagery of South and Southeast Asia (2016), Asian Encounters: Exploring Connected Histories (2014), and Cultural Interface of India with Asia (2004), besides contributing several research articles.
