The Ramayana Revisited
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The Ramayana Revisited MANDAKRANTA BOSE, Editor OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS The Ra¯ma¯yanfia Revisited This page intentionally left blank The Ra¯ma¯yanfia Revisited edited by mandakranta bose 1 2004 1 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sa˜oPaulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright ᭧ 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Ra¯ma¯yanfi a revisited / edited by Mandakranta Bose. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-516832-1; 0-19-516833-X (pbk.) 1. Va¯lmı¯ki Ra¯ma¯yanfia I. Bose, Mandakranta, 1938– BL1139.26.R359 2004 294.5'922046—dc22 2003058112 987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To my sisters Mriducchanda and Madhusraba This page intentionally left blank Preface Like other pervasive presences one grows up with, until recently the Ra¯ma¯yanfia was for me a part of life I took for granted with no ex- penditure of conscious effort. The passage of years, the reposition- ing of the Ra¯ma¯yanfia in present-day public life, and conversations with friends, colleagues, and students have increasingly drawn me to a more critical engagement with what I see as a foundational text of South and Southeast Asian societies. My studies through the past five years have led me to organize several scholarly gatherings, out of which a modest volume of essays by diverse hands has already appeared in print and the present, fuller collection conceived. In bringing these essays together, my aim was to offer the reader some of the most informed and imaginative work currently under way in major areas of Ra¯ma¯yanfia studies, including its design, ideology, and performance. The crop of Ra¯ma¯yanfia scholarship in the past two de- cades has been singularly rich, not only in expanding and develop- ing the fields of research but in questioning received wisdom and discovering fresh instruments of inquiry. In like manner, the pres- ent volume attempts to press ahead with revaluations and rediscov- eries that, I believe, will animate what I suspect will be a continuing debate on the Ra¯ma¯yanfia for a long time to come. The two great ep- ics of India, the Maha¯bha¯rata and the Ra¯ma¯yanfia, have the distinc- tion of never having turned into dead if revered classics, and remain embedded in the living cultures of many Asian peoples, including those in the various Asian diasporas. The essays presented here rec- ognize this contemporaneity of the Ra¯ma¯yanfia and engage with it on the many levels of its existence. Among an editor’s many tasks the pleasantest is the acknowl- edgment of debts, both personal and professional. I have been par- viii preface ticularly fortunate in the varied and consistent help I have received from in- stitutions, colleagues, friends, and family, and I take this opportunity to thank them all. I have been fortunate to have received support from many corners, including my colleagues and friends. I would like to acknowledge them all. My first debt of gratitude is to the University of British Columbia for providing research grants that enabled me to make research trips, organize conferences, and publish conference proceedings. My thanks are due in particular to the Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia for its generous funding, and to its director, Dr. Ken McCrimmon, who believed in me, helped me finance and organize two international Ra¯ma¯yanfia confer- ences, and gave me invaluable practical advice. Both the past and present di- rectors of the Institute of Asian Research, Dr. Terrence McGee and Dr. Pitman Potter, have helped me beyond the call of mere institutional duty, providing resources for an entire Ra¯ma¯yanfia conference and an exhibition, “The Ra¯ma¯y- anfia in View”; without their support I could not have generated the interest in the Ra¯ma¯yanfia at this university that it enjoys today. I must also acknowledge the unfailing support of Dr. Frieda Granot, Dean of Graduate Studies, in all my research ventures. The Museum of Anthropology at the University of Brit- ish Columbia helped me to organize performances of the Ra¯ma¯yanfia on several occasions, and I am grateful to the Museum’s director and staff. I would also like to acknowledge with much pleasure a very substantial research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada that has al- lowed me to enlarge the scope of my work on the Ra¯ma¯yanfia. I record with equal gratitude and much personal warmth the support I have received and continue to enjoy from my students, Tanya Boughtflower, Nandita Jaishankar, Nicki Magnolo, Amandeep Mann, and Daniel Winks. Pho- tographs of temple sculptures were provided by Michael Dowad, for which I am grateful to him. Other photographs that accompany the articles have been mostly provided by the authors, and some are from my personal collection, including reproductions of painted scrolls that I have acquired through the years from village painters of West Bengal. I take this opportunity to thank these often obscure but always vigorous artists. My husband, Tirthankar Bose, has provided constant help by going through every stage of the book with me meticulously. Without his help this book would not have seen the light. I am grateful to Margaret Case and Rebecca Johns-Danes for their meticulous copyediting. Finally, I would like to thank Cynthia Read and Theodore Calderara of Oxford University Press for taking on the task of steering this book through the complex publication process with patience and understanding. Note on Transliteration Non-English words are italicized and marked with diacritics, other than terms that appear in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary or have passed into common usage in the critical literature of South and Southeast Asia, such as “guru,” “pandit,” and “kathakali.” Proper names are transliterated according to usage in their language of origin. Exceptions, if any, are stated in notes to individual chap- ters. This page intentionally left blank Contents Contributors, xiii Introduction, 3 1. Resisting Ra¯ma: Dharmic Debates on Gender and Hierarchy and the Work of the Va¯lmı¯ki Ra¯ma¯yanfia,19 Robert P. Goldman 2. Gendered Narratives: Gender, Space, and Narrative Structures in Va¯lmı¯ki’s Ba¯laka¯nfidfia,47 Sally J. Sutherland Goldman 3. Ra¯ma¯yanfia Textual Traditions in Eastern India, 87 William L. Smith 4. Reinventing the Ra¯ma¯yanfia in Twentieth-Century Bengali Literature, 107 Mandakranta Bose 5. Why Can’t a Shudra Perform Asceticism? S´ambu¯ka in Three Modern South Indian Plays, 125 Paula Richman 6. Hanuma¯n’s Adventures Underground: The Narrative Logic of a Ra¯ma¯yanfia “Interpolation,” 149 Philip Lutgendorf xii contents 7. “Only You”: The Wedding of Ra¯ma and Sı¯ta¯, Past and Present, 165 Heidi Pauwels 8. When Does Sı¯ta¯ Cease to Be Sı¯ta¯? Notes toward a Cultural Grammar of Indian Narratives, 219 Velcheru Narayana Rao 9. Representing the Ra¯ma¯yanfia on the Ku¯tfiiya¯tfifitam Stage, 243 Bruce M. Sullivan 10. The “Radio-Active” Gı¯ta-Ra¯ma¯yanfia: Home and Abroad, 259 Vidyut Aklujkar 11. Mysticism and Islam in Javanese Ra¯ma¯yanfia Tales, 275 Laurie J. Sears 12. Chasing Sı¯ta¯ on a Global/Local Interface: Where Cartographies Collide, Silent Vessels “Tell in Full,” 293 Kaja M. McGowan 13. The Ra¯ma¯yanfia in the Arts of Thailand and Cambodia, 323 Julie B. Mehta 14. The Ra¯ma¯yanfia Theme in the Visual Arts of South and Southeast Asia, 335 Kapila Vatsyayan Appendix 1 The Ra¯ma¯yanfia in Asia, 355 Appendix 2 Variant Names of Main Characters, 359 Index, 361 Contributors Vidyut Aklujkar has taught Hindi, Indian literature, and Indian my- thology at the University of British Columbia, and Sanskrit at Har- vard. In addition to several research publications in international journals and anthologies, she has a monograph on the philosophy of language, The Primacy of Linguistic Units, Indian Philosophical Quar- terly Publication No. 12 from the University of Poona (1987). She has six books to her credit in Marathi, including two edited vol- umes, one on Konkani idioms and the other, entitled Videshini,an anthology of prizewinning short stories written by authors in the Marathi diaspora. For three years she has written a series of articles on language for the Marathi weekly Saaptaahik Sakaal, published from Pune, India. She has been an editor and now serves as an edi- torial counselor on the Marathi quarterly Ekata, published from To- ronto. She has also served for many years as a final judge on the prestigious literary awards committee for the annual awards given by Maharashtra Foundation in the United States. Mandakranta Bose is Director of the Centre for India and South Asia Research at the University of British Columbia, where she teaches Eastern religions and women’s studies. A fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of London, she studied at the universities of Calcutta, British Columbia, and Oxford, earning a D.Phil. from the last. Among her recent books are: Speaking of Dance: The Indian Critique (Delhi: D.