Ramayanaand Political Imaginationin India

SHELDON POLLOCK

FROM DECEMBER 1992 THROUGH JANUARY 1993, morethan 3,000 people werekilled in "communal"rioting across India, fromSurat to Calcutta,from Kanpur to Bangalore. The likes of thisrioting had not been seen forgenerations; in Bombay,for example, morethan 600 people died, and the citywas broughtto a standstillfor a week and a half.These recentevents were related to but exceededeven the gruesomeslaughters that took place in the last quarterof 1990, when a communal"frenzy" took hold thatwas thenviewed as unprecedentedin post-PartitionIndia (Engineer1991a, cf. 199 lb). It is impossible,even irresponsible,to generalizeabout the causes of what were verydisparate acts of violence,unquestionably inflected by local factorsthat usually had littleor nothingto do withantagonism between Hindu and Muslimcommunities. Yet howevercomplex the causal nexus of these eventsmay be, the occasion and excuse-the symbolicnexus-is simple. This nexuswas firstannounced in the act thatprecipitated the earlierviolence, the "ChariotProcession" (rathydtra) undertaken by the then-presidentof the Bharatiya JanataParty ("Indian People's Party,"BJP), L. K. Advani, in October 1990. In a Toyotatruck turned into an epic chariot,Advani traveledfrom Somnath in Gujarat to Ayodhyain northIndia, the putativebirthplace of the hero-godRama. As court documentssubmitted subsequently by the BJP's ally, the Vishva Hindu Parishad ("World Hindu Council," VHP), put it, Rama is an immemorialobject of worship basic to Hinduism,and thisworship was beingimpeded by the presenceof a mosque built on the site of his birthplacetemple ([Vishva Hindu Parishadl 1991:4, 70). It was this ydtrathat led, with the forceof logic, to the event that inaugurated, the most recentriots, the actual demolitionof the mosque on December 6, 1992, not by a mob but by whatappears to have been a. trainedgroup of Hindu militants. Far fromdamaging the BJP, this most dangeroussymbolic act since Partitionhas onlyserved to enhanceits stature;it is now thinkablethat this organization-which calls for, among other things, the immediate "nuclearization"of India's war capability-may become the next rulingparty of the country. SheldonPollock is George V. BobrinskoyProfessor of Sanskritand Indic Studiesat the Universityof Chicago. In differentincarnations during 1991 thispaper was presentedbefore challenging audiences at the Universityof Hyderabad, College de France, Universityof Chicago, Universityof Washington,and the Joint Committeeof South Asia of the SSRC/ACLS and the South Asian Insitute,University of Heidelberg, all of whom I would like to thank. Some of the data in this paper appear in preliminaryform in U. P. Shah MemorialVolume (Baroda, forthcoming). TheJournal of Asian Studies52, no. 2 (May 1993):261-297. ? 1993 by the Associationfor Asian Studies, Inc.

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It is the symbologyof these eventsthat I want to examine in what follows. For whateverideological cohesion the BJP secured, and the primaryimpetus for politicalmobilization-in the name of a Hindu theocraticpolitics and againstthe Muslim population-derived in large part fromthe invocationof a specificset of symbols:the figureof the warrior-godRama, his birthplacetemple in Ayodhya, and the liberationof this sacredsite. The readyavailability to reactionaryIndian politicsof centralcultural icons like the Ramayana text has proved challengingto understandand explain. It seems incomprehensiblethat a divisivecontemporary political discourse is so accessibleto, or maybe shapedby, what is commonlyviewed as a narrativeof the divinepresence and care forthe world. It seems improbablethat a heroictale of love, loss, and recoveryfrom the classicalpast should be invokedto empowerand give substance to the politicsof the present.It seems perversethat what have usuallybeen taken to be the utopian impulsesof social harmonyresonating in the symbolof Rama and his dominion should be directedand directabletoward dystopian,indeed, homicidalends as happenedin late 1990 and again in late 1992. There is a long historyto the relationshipbetween Ramayana and political symbology.From an earlyperiod the storysupplied, continuouslyand readily,if in a highlydifferentiated way, a repertoryof imaginativeinstruments for articulating a rangeof political discourses.In fact,it may be doubted whetherany othertext in South Asia has ever supplied an idiom or vocabularyfor political imagination remotelycomparable in longevity,frequency of deployment,and effectivity.This is a history,however, that for premodern India, at least, remainslargely unwritten. About the earliestcourse of the politicallife of the Ramayanatheme, especially its genetichistory in contrastto its receptivehistory, we know littleat present,in partbecause our sourcesare so few,but also because the sourceswe do possesshave neverbeen read mythopolitically.Little systematic research has been devotedto the politics of the narrativein the thousand-yearperiod fromthe putativeorigins of the Sanskritversion to the floweringof the regional-languagetreatments of the tale (Kamban, Kirtibas,Tulsi Das, etc.). Nor have we learnedmuch about the specific historicallocations of this vernacularlanguage productionitself. We know, for example,that a large numberof dramasand otherforms of narrativebased on the Rama theme in Sanskrit,Prakrit, and regionallanguages were commissionedby, performedbefore, or indeed composedby kings over a thousand-yearperiod: from the court of the Vakataka (less likely Kashmiri) king Pravarasenain the fifth century(Setubandha), to thatof Yasovarmanof Kanauj in the seventh(Rdmdbhyudaya), Bhimataof Kalafijarain theeighth (Svapnadasanana), Bhoja ofDhara in the eleventh (Campz7rdma-yana),to that of Sivaji in the seventeenth(the Ramdyanaof Ramdas). But of the social and politicalontologies of mostof thesetexts, we understandlittle to date beyondthe factthat they occupy a centralposition in elite formsof cultural activity. The gaps in our presentknowledge about the political life of the Ramayana theme, then, make it risky to talk of sudden, discontinuousrevaluation or appropriation.Yet that is what I thinkhappened. For I believe I can show thatat a particularhistorical juncture a Ramayana imaginarycame more centrallyand dramaticallyto inhabit a public political space, as opposed to simply a literary space, than it ever had done before,while at the same time its social and political

'Note also Kulacekaralvar(ca. A.D. 800, but cf. Dasgupta and De 1962:38 in.), a king of the Kongu-Cheraline and authorof some of the most notabledevotional poetry to Rama, to whom Zvelebil is preparedto ascribe the foundingof Rama worshipin Tamil country (Zvelebil 1974:102).

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RAMAYANA AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN INDIA 263 valenceswere endowed with a moreconcrete referentiality than ever before. In fact, aftertracing the trajectoryof the historicaleffectivity of the Ramayanamytheme- tracing,that is, the penetrationof its specificnarrative into the realmsof public discourseof post-epicIndia, in templeremains, "political" inscriptions,and those historicalnarratives that are available-it is possible to specifywith some accuracy the particularhistorical circumstances under which the Ramayanawas firstdeployed as a centralorganizing trope in the political imaginationof India. I should make clear that when I speak of "Ramayana"in the contextof north India and the Deccan in the middle period, I am referringto the basic structure of the storyas transmittedin Valmiki'spoem. This is the textthat lies at the heart of all the materialI discuss below, fromthe externalfrieze on the centralshrine of Vijayanagar,the Ramacandratemple, to Jayanaka'sgreat biographyof Prthviraja III. One may readilyconcur that the Ramayanacan interestinglybe viewed not as a fixedtext but as a "multivoicedentity, encompassing tellings of the Rama story thatvary according to historicalperiod, regional literary tradition, religious affiliation, genre,and politicalcontext" (Richman 1991:16). But thesetellings are alwaysretellings of a texteveryone knows. Moreover, it is hard to find evidenceof effectivityin the realm of literary,let alone public, discourse of these "many" Ramayanas in Rajasthan,Gujarat, or the Deccan in middle-periodIndia. (This holds truefor the highly"oppositional" Jain versions,which were somethingof a local specialty.)In short,the foundationalversion, the versioneveryone knows in A.D. 1000-1400 and forthe wholemillennium preceding this period, is thatof Valmikiand his epigones, where the Rama presentedis kodan.darama,dharmabhrtdm varah, "Rama with the curved bow, the chief of the righteous," and Ravana is always lokaravana, sarvalokabhaydvaha,"He who makes the world weep, who fillsall the world with terror."It is the politicalvalences of thisversion, which I detail laterin thisarticle, that are its most importantdistinguishing feature. Unquestionably,the discourseof the epic had already intersectedwith, or reprocessed,or perhapseven providedan idiom for,the ideologiesof earlyIndian imperialpolities, especially that of Asoka (Pollock 1986:9-24). Yet if one actually plots a historyof the Ramayana in the two realms of the political and literary imaginations,one findsa starkdisparity. For a thousandyears from at least the fourthcentury A. D., the literaryimagination of India received undiminished stimulationfrom the Rama legend, even to the point of hypertrophy(as manylater poets themselvescame to recognize,e.g., Ulldghardghava2; Hammiramadamardana 1.8). This beginsas earlyas the secondor thirdcentury with Bhasa, continueswith Kalidasa and Kumaradasa in the fourand fifth,extends through to Bhavabhiuti, Bhatti,Murari, Rajasekhara in the seventhto ninthcenturies, and onwardinto the next millennium-the list is almost endless and seems at times an entirelibrary of Sanskritliterature. In strikingcontrast to this,however, the political imagination during the firstthousand years of the life of the Ramayana is only superficially affectedby its existence.The epic may have inflectedor embellishedthe political imagination,supplying an epitheticalparadigm of, or argumentfor, royal sovereignty and indeedroyal divinity; it certainlydoes not shapethis imagination. But something verydifferent happens early in the nextmillennium; at thatmoment the tale comes alive in the political sphere and for the firsttime, perhaps, kings becomeRama. Althoughthe logic of my argumentmight entail that these political-cultural processes of middle-periodIndia should themselvesrecuperate, indeed imitate,earlier ones, all my evidencesuggests that this is not the case; the traditionof invention-of inventingthe king as Rama-begins in the twelfthcentury.

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It is this historicalmoment and its culturalrepresentations that providethe startingpoint forthis article. Initially,I was interestedonly to discoverwhen, in what circumstances,and with what significationsthe Ramayanaentered the arena of political discoursein South Asia, to become a language in which the political imaginationexpresses itself. But the materialsand the historicalspecificity they revealbecame intriguingin theirown right. They also raisedquestions that were larger and more puzzling, questions for cultural theorygenerally and for our theorizationof forms of Indian culture, and to some extent even for the self-understandingand sense of purposeof critical-historicalIndian studies. One of thesequestions is theproblem of whatmay be termedhistorical imitation. What concernsme underthis rubric is whyand how it is thatpeople seem to bring to consciousnessor even enact world-historicalevents only or especiallythrough a revivificationof a culturalpast; why "revolution,"in the sense of profoundand sudden social-politicalchange, is oftenconceptualized by its agents as a kind of repetition.A second and more specificquestion relatesto the Ramayananarrative itself.Can we identifyany conceptualor imaginativeresources it may providethat made thisnarrative in particularthe representationalinstrument of choicefor figuring forththe historicalevents that are at issue here?More difficultstill is the question of what, if anything,this evidence suggests for our understandingof the modalities of relationsbetween communities in westernand centralIndia in the eleventhto fourteenthcenturies. Finally, since all historicalwork is informedby, if not an argumentabout, the present,what differencedoes knowing this past make in comprehendingthe present-dayredeployment of Ramayanasymbology, let alone in addressingthe currentcrisis? What criticalvalue can attachto historiography,and what are the possibilitiesof historicistintervention in the social-politicalworld of the present,especially given the role of objectivisthistory in creatingthat world? In short,why should we want any longerto be historical? I suggestin what followsthat the Ramayanacame alive in the realmof public politicaldiscourse in westernand centralIndia in the eleventhto fourteenthcenturies in a dramaticand unparalleledway. I believe the text offersunique imaginative instruments-infact, two linkedinstruments-whereby, on the one hand, a divine political ordercan be conceptualized,narrated, and historicallygrounded, and, on the other,a fullydemonized Other can be categorized,counterposed, and condemned. The makersof elite culturein medievalSouth Asia chose theseinstruments for the work of divinizationand demonizationat this historicalmoment because of the emergenceof two enablingconditions. One was the peculiarsalience that a farolder politicaltheology now seems to have achievedin the serviceof the legitimationor enhancementor perhaps just self-understandingof kingship. The other was the appearanceof Others who-whether, in fact, they presentedan unprecedented unassimilabilityor could opportunisticallybe representedas such-were especially vulnerableto the demonizingformulation the Ramayanamade available. All this I feel reasonablyconfident in arguing. What remainsfar less easy to figureout is how this materialis to be interpretedin understandingcommunity interaction and what pertinencethis kind of genealogyhas with respectto the problemsof the present.The properand criticaltask of history here may be notwhat "really happened" but how people come to believe what happened.The symbolicmeaning system of a politicalculture is constructed,and perhapsknowing the processesof construction is a way to controlit.

Rama in the World: Temple Cult The cult of Rama, its role in the ideologyof kingship,and the expressionof this doctrinein templeworship have not been mapped forthe subcontinentin any

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RAMAYANA AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN INDIA 265 historical detail. What I present here, consequently, will no doubt bear supplementationas thismapping takes place, but I doubt thatthe main conclusions will be seriouslyaffected: The Rama cult in SouthAsia is almosttotally nonexistent untilat the earliestthe eleventh,or morelikely the twelfthcentury, and the growth of thiscult tookplace in virtualsynchrony with a set ofparticular historical events.2 It is manyyears since R. G. Bhandarkarfirst made the point that, while the divinityof Rama was known fromquite early on, the temple cult of Rama was veryslow to develop(Bhandarkar 1913:47). Yet just how limitedthis development was priorto the twelfthcentury and, whatis moresignificant, the conditionsunder which it was initiatedafter that date have been little explored. Early evidencefor cultic practicedevoted to Rama is sparse, as we can now judge, thanksto Hans Bakker'scareful work. There is inscriptionaltestimony for the foundingof a Sarngadharatemple during the earlyGupta period(Skandagupta), and were this in Ayodhya(and, more, were it a Rama temple)it mightsuggest a royalcult of Rama in the late fifthcentury. But thereis reallylittle reason to believe thatit was or to acceptthe hypothesisof a relocationof the Gupta courtto Ayodhya (cf. Bakker 1986:24ff.).Aside fromthis instance,itself dubious, the evidenceprior to the twelfthcentury that Rama may have been the object of worshipis scanty indeed. There is a well-knownfifth century charter issued by the Vakatakaqueen Prabhavatiguptafrom "Ramagirisvamipadamuilat" (recalling Kalidasa's raghupatipdda, Meghadhita9), whichis takento be "Nandivardhana"in northernMaharashtra. But even if this were to be acceptedas a Rama shrine(there are problemshere, too, whichI noticebelow), thisremains a singleinstance, in a verylimited geographical area and narrowtemporal frame (ca. A.D. 400-65; Bakker 1986:62). From that point on forthe next 700 years,we hear nothinganywhere of Rama sanctuaries. This is not, of course,to say that we do not encounterin templesthroughout this period scenes fromthe Ramayanaand occasionalsculptural representations of Rama. In AndhraPradesh, for example, reliefs bearing Ramayana themes are found in the rock-cutcaves at Undavalli(10 kilometersfrom Vijayawada in coastalAndhra) thatmay reachback to Visnuk-undintimes (fourth to fifthcenturies A.D.; Rajendra Prasad 1980:72). Yet no epigraphicaltestimony attesting to any templeexplicitly dedicatedto Rama is foundin Andhrauntil farlater. Throughoutthe Deccan, the same situationpresents itself. From the seventhcentury on, substantialinterest in the Ramayanatale is attested,as in the Calukya templesof Viriupaksaand Papanath at Pattadakal,which are among the firstto attemptany kind of systematicnarration (some evenprovide identifying labels in Prakrit),or in the greatfrieze on thevimana of the Rastrak-utatemple of Kailasanatha at Ellora, A.D. 757-72 (Nagarajarao 1978:306; Sivaramamurti1980:638). From around this period individual scenes also begin to appear in the east and southof the subcontinent-in the late seventh centuryParasurama temple at Bhubaneshwar;the eighthcentury Kailasanatha temple at Kaficl,and theOlakkanesvara temple at Mahaballipuram(Nagaswamy 1980:409ff.). Yet nothingin all this indicatesdedication to or a cultic significanceof Rama. On the contrary,all thesetemples are Saiva, and the majorityof Ramayanascenes selected for representationvare likewise Saiva in character (the ubiquitous Ravana-shaking-Kailasa,for example). In the north,so faras I can tell, the situationis no different.Again, we find Ramayanarepresentations from an earlyperiod but nothingto suggesta Rama cult.

2This, I now see, is also the tentativeif undevelopedsuggestion of Hans Bakker, at least fornorth India (he cites no evidencefrom the south), in Bakker 1987:21-22.

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The well-knownVisnu shrineat Deogarh (ca. A.D. 500), forexample, has some eight Ramayanapanels; similarlyembellished is the recentlydiscovered Visnu tem- ple at Aphsad, thirtykilometers northeast of Nawadah in the Nawadah District, Bihar, which arguablywas erectedby the Gupta king Adityasenain the seventh century(cf. Simha 1968:216ff.; CII 3:202ff.). But the Deogarh temple has manyother Visnu motifs,and in view of the fact that a large Varaha image was also found in Aphsad.,it is likely that this, too, was a standarddai'dvatdra tem- ple. The same is true in the west. Throughoutthe vast Gurjara-Pratiharaempire (ca. 725-1000), for example, which at its height extendedout fromRajasthan beyondKanauj in the east and south to the Vindhyas,there are no Rama temples to be found. By the mid-twelfthcentury, however, the situationbegan to change, with a sudden onset of activityof building templesto Rama, which intensifiedover the next two hundredyears. Among earlyexamples of templesdedicated to Rama are two built under the Kalachurisof Ratnapur(Raipur district,Madhya Pradesh),a firstone at Rajim in A.D. 1145 by a ministerof King PrthvidevaII, and a second (in Rewa near Makundpur)in 1193, by a feudatoryof Vijayasimhaof the later Kalachuridynasty ruling at Tripuri. The firstbears an inscriptionthat, although obscure in places, helps us begin to situate the politics of the Rama cult as it developsin thisperiod: "Through fear of [this King Jagapalal,the formidablefoes- theMayarikas and thevaliant Savantas-the lordsof mandalas completely submitted to him. Just as the ksatriyaRama, (best of) warriors,destroyed the families[sc., of the demons;or: familiesof bowmenl,even so did this [King Jagapalal kill the forcesof his enemieswith multitudesof arrows. . . . Reciting all [worksl such as the Rdmdyana,[beingl the supportof living beings, self-respecting,con-ferring giftson Brahmanfamilies for their learning-such is Jagapala. He has caused this beautifultemple to be constructedfor manifestingthe splendorof Rama." Al- though the identificationof the enemy is unclear here, what is importantto registeris the explicitcomparison of the king with Rama and the establishmentof a cult to celebrate,if not operationalize,their relationship (Mirashi 1955:450ff.; the temple was originallybuilt as a temple to Visnu, 451 n.2; 346ff.; Bakker 1986:64-65). It is around this same time-between the mid-eleventhand the end of the twelfthcenturies-that the Gahadavala dynastybegins to develop Ayodhyaas a majorVaisnava center by way ofa substantial temple-building program. Unfortunately, the inscriptionalrecord here is verydisappointing, but it seems likelythat a Rama templewas constructedat the Svargadvaraghat, probablyby Candradeva.(And was a birthplacetemple built by the last Gahadavalaking, Jayacandra? Cf. Bakker1986: 5 lff., 1987:17ff.;contrast Sharma 1990:10.) At the end of the thirteenthand the beginningof the fourteenthcenturies, severalmajor cultic centersdevoted to Rama are createdor reinvigorated.I'll look at only two of these, ratherdifferent in characterbut, I think, identicalin their mythopolitics,the Rama complexat Ramtek(Ramatekdi, "Rama's Hill," forty-five kilometersnortheast of Nagpur) and the Ramacandrashrine at Vijayanagar. Accordingto "local legend" recordedby HenryCousens, Ramtek is the place Rama executedthe outcasteascetic, Sambiuka."Afterwards one Hemadpant(some say a Rakshasa, and othersa Brahman)built the followingfive temples on the Ramtekhill: one dedicatedto Rama, and containingimages of Rama and Sita; one dedicatedto Lakshmanasvami;one to Hanuman;one templededicated to thegoddess 'Ekadasl'; and a temple of Lakshmi-Narayana"(Cousens 1897:7ff.;this is what is knownas apancdyatanacomplex). The site has recentlybeen studiedin muchgreater

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RAMAYANA AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN INDIA 267 detail by A. P. Jamkhedkarand by Bakker (Jamkhedkar1986; Bakker 1989a). Thereare perhapsas manyas fivestructures dating from Vakataka times on Ramtek, and a Calukyan-eratemple, in addition to the severalYadava structures.None of these Vakataka temples, although Vaisnava, gives iconographicor inscriptional indicationof dedicationto Rama (theyare dedicatedinstead to Narasimha,Varaha, Bhagavan); those associatedwith Rama are of the Hemadpant style,and we have little reasonto believe these replaceany earlierRama structures. Since Cousens's time, an undated inscription,unfortunately in a state of decomposition,found on the garbhag.haof the Laksmanasvamitemple has been published(El 25:7ff.; cf. Bakker 1989b). The identityof the rulinghouse hinted at by the mentionof yddavovamsah and, furtheron, of "Simhana," is made clear in line 17, where we find the name of "King Sri Ramacandra,who made [the subordinateofficial in question)the repositoryof a royaltybrilliant with the prosperity of empire." The recordis referringto the Yadava king of Devagiri, Ramacandra (great-grandsonof Simhana), who ascended the thronein A.D. 1271. Among the recordsof this king we read elsewhere,"How is this Rama to be described. . . who freedVaranasi fromthe mlecchahorde, and built there a golden temple of Sarngadhara."3Although he is said to be a mahdmihes(varaor "great devotee of Siva," who "anointseight icons of Sambhu with the milk of his fame," he is also called rdyandrdyana,"a veryNarayana among kings," while his ministeris describedas a descendantof Vasistha, the familypriest of Rama and the whole Raghu clan (El 25:199ff.vss. 18ff.;IA 14:314ff.,lines 47, 58). Now, while thereis no contemporaryarchaeological evidence, the textualsources cited above-Ramtek and Ramagiri(of the Vakatakagrant) being identical-could suggestthat Ramtekwas a site of Rama worshipprior to the time of this grant. What is in any case indisputableon the evidenceof this praise-poem(prasasti) is that King Ramacandraempowered his viceroysubstantially to embellishthe Rama cult there.And the factthat some major investmentin the site took place nearthe end of the Yadava dynastyis a historicalconjuncture unlikely to be coincidental. There will be occasionbelow to returnto thisYadava king, but beforeleaving the question of the Ramtek center,I want to tie up the loose end in Cousens's reportof the figure named Hemaadpant. There is no doubtthat this name-associated withother temple projects dating from the Yadava period(although not withother Rama temples,since none exist in the area; see Verma 1973)-refersto the celebrated Hemadri Pandit, the mantrinof the Yadava king Ramacandraand his father.It is to him thatwe owe a text(a dharmanibandhaor "law code") thatprovides liturgical instructionsfor worshiping Rama as an incarnation,and describesa ceremonyconnected withhis birth,the rdghavadvddasfvrata (Caturvargacintdmani, Vratakanda: 1034-35). Hemadrialso reproducesa part of the Agastyasayhitd,the firstwork to treatof the most importantfestival associated with Rama, the rdmanavamf,and which itself cannotbe dated beforethe twelfthcentury. It is Hemadri's"law code" thatprovides the cult of Rama withbrahmanical sanction for the firsttime (Kane 1962-75, Vol. 5:84-88; Bakker 1986:153ff., 1987:15). The apogee of the growthof a royalcult of Rama suggestedby the foregoing materialis reachedin the middle(or end) of the fourteenthcentury with the founding of the Vijayanagarempire in the Deccan. Priorto this, Rama templesin the region of northernKarnataka or AndhraPradesh are as rareas theyare in otherparts of

3SarngadharaVisnu ("Visnu bearingthe bow sarniga")likely becomes an allomorphof Rama in this period, as later (fdr[La]gapdyziis an epithetof Rama in Bhaktamdld,vss. 55 and 128). The historicalcontext of Ramacandra'sclaim to have"liberated" Banaras is unknown.

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 268 SHELDON POLLOCK the subcontinent.The earliestI can locatedates fromGuntur district in the Kakatiya period,with an inscriptionof &aka 1245 (ca. A.D. 1323) declaringthat the inhabitants agreed to give to the templesof Varada Gopinathaand Rama-Laksmanaa portion of theirincomes for the meritof PratapaRudradeva (SIl 10:288). With the establishmentof Vijayanagara,however-at a site, "Kiskindha"and Lake Pampa, permeatedby Ramayana lore-we find incorporatedinto the very structureof the imperialcity a temple devoted to Rama. Situated at the nucleus of the royal center, the Ramacandratemple (beforeA.D. 1450, cf. Fritz et al. 1984a:62), probablythe "state chapel," is at the same time the focal point of a spatiallyarticulated political theology.First noticed by A. H. Longhurstin 1917, the political-theologicalcode of the city has been best analyzedby John Fritz. He arguesthat urban form itself-such featuresas the movementdictated by the plan of the city,with the Rama templeas the destinationof the "sacredway" orienting the city,and the mythologicalassociations of the site itself-was designedto establish a homologyof the king and the divine hero-kingRama and a congruencebetween the terrestrialrealm of the king and that of the god. "The king's actions were a manifestationof Rama's and he participatedin the sanctityof the deity." As an inscriptionof A.D. 1379 puts it, "In thatsame city(Vijayanagar) did (King) Harihara dwell as in formertimes Rama dwelled in the city of Ayodhya"(Fritz 1986:53, 1985:266; Fritzet al. 1984a:146-54).4 In the subsequentVijayanagar/Nayaka period separatetemples with Rama as the main deity become somewhatmore common, but are still strikinglyfew (two importantexamples are the Ramasvamitemple in Kumbakonam built by Raghunatha Nayaka in the sixteenthcentury, and the Bhadracalamtemple on the Godavarlin Khammamdistrict, Andhra Pradesh, built in the eighteenthcentury with the end of the Qutb Shahi dynasty,but almost certainlydating back to Kakatiyatimes). What may constitutethe sole, yet still a minor,exception to what must thus be viewed as a twelfth-centurydate forthe origin of the temple cult of Rama is foundin the earlyCola realm.5Attention is oftencalled to severalCola bronzesof Kodanda Rama, but these seem to have been highlyrestricted in both time and place, to tenth-centuryThanjavur district and the reignof Aditya,who apparently assumedthe title "Kodanda Rama." Whetherthese figureswere "made underthe influenceof Kamban'sRanma-Kathoi"-or, more interesting, whether the greatTamil poem was composedin thatpolitical context-depends on the notoriouslyuncertain dating of that text; anywherefrom the late ninthto the late twelfthcentury has been suggested,the latterend of this rangebeing most generallyaccepted. But it

4The narrativefollowed in the friezeon the centralshrine is that of Valmiki (A. L. Dallapiccola, personalcommunication, cf. Dallapiccola 1992; this applies to the outerwalls of the main shrine."A changeoccurs with the set sculptedon the innerface of the enclosure wall of the same complex," writesDallapiccola, for which she suspects the influenceof Telugu versions). Stein 1980:388ff. points to the particularimportance attached in the Vijayanagarempire to the Mahanavamifestival, which commemoratesRama's propitiation of Durga beforemarching out to defeatRavana. A tenthday commemoratingRama's victory (vijayadaami) may actuallyhave been inventedin Vijayanagar.The identificationbetween the Vijayanagarking and Rama will be strengthenedin the followingcentury, when the usurper of the Vijayanagar throne, Narasa (1486-1508), is represented in the Acyutaraydbhyudayaas "an avatarof Him who built the bridge over the ocean, and who, perhaps by virtueof powers stored fromthis formerbirth, laid down a bridge over the watersof the Sahyaja [= Kaveri1and took the city of Sriraiiga"(1.30). 5N. P. Unni of the Universityof Kerala (personalcommunication) refers to the existence of a Musikavams'atemple dedicated to Laksmana according to an inscriptiondated A.D. 920 (the inscriptionis unavailableto me).

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RAMAYANA AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN INDIA 269 certainlyremains possible that Aditya prefiguredthe political instrumentationof the Ramayana(Nagaswamy 1983:7, 154-59). How far beyond this one case we can go in Tamil countryis uncertain.To inferfrom temples bearing Rama reliefsthat a cult of Rama existed in the ninth and tenthcenturies is not possible; even to attributea special significanceof Rama forCola kingshipis difficult.The positiveevidence for such a significanceis scant forthe earlyCola domainand weakenedby negativecomparative evidence: Nothing in the epigraphicalrecord of the Badami Calukyas,for example, indicates a political valorizationof the Ramayana,yet the same area, as alreadynoted, producedsome ofthe earliest plastic representations ofthe epic. Furthermore,the Ramayana competed with a varietyof otherepic friezes-the Mahabharata,the Krsna-cycle-in places like Ellora and indeedin the Cola countryitself, which certainly seems to diminish the positionof centralitysome have strivento establishfor it (Sanford1974). The epigraphicalremains, too, as I showbelow, contain little beyond the standard rhetorical ornamentation. Additional supportfor the developmentof the Rama cult sketchedabove is providedby the historyof Rama culticsculpture, that is, worksdesigned for worship and not simplyassociated with templenarrative panels. This, too, remainslargely untraced,but as far as I can see, nothingwould contradictthe chronologyof Rama-dedicatedtemples. Such sculptureis extremelyrare prior to the twelfthcentury and, in fact,continues to be rareuntil long afterthat date.6 Bruno Dagens's findings forwestern Andhra may be somewhatatypical-this is admittedlya stronglySaivite region-but they confirmin importantways the differentialdevelopment of the purelydecorative and morecentrally cultic dimensions of thefigure of Rama: Whereas Ramayanaepisodes play a considerablerole on the pillarsof templesthroughout the area betweenAlampur and Srisailamfrom at leastthe tenthcentury on, culticimages of Rama are foundonly farlater. In this region,in fact,Rama appearsnot to have gained fullautonomy as a majorgod untilperhaps as late as the eighteenthcentury (Dagens 1984:614-15; cf. 63 and 174-75). I am not asserting,then, that Rama was neverthe object of cultic worship priorto the period with which I am concernedhere. Even less am I claimingthat the Rama cult, whenit did arise,superseded all others;in Vijayanagar,for example, Viriupaksaremained what might be called therdstradevatd ("imperial deity"), whereas many of the kings identifyingthemselves with Rama through inscriptionsor patronizinghis templecult are thoroughly Saiva (theYadava kingRamacandra already noted,for example, or othersI mentionbelow, such as JayasimhaSiddharaja, whose mostfamous architectural achievement is the Sahasraliingatank at Anahilavada,and Prthviraja III himself, who is described as a lifelone devotee of Siva in Prthvirdjavijaya11. 105). What is certain,however, is that the cult of Rama has a history.At firstextraordinarily restricted in time and space, it exhibitsstriking effloresenceand assumesa prominentplace withinthe contextof a politicaltheology fromthe end of the twelfthcentury onward, achieving in some instancesa centrality by the middle of the fourteenth.This developmentis paralleledin otherareas of culturalproduction as well.

6The terracottasof the fifthcentury found in the northeast(Saheth-Maheth, etc.) hardly constitutean exception,given that they almost certainlyformed friezes on the walls of buildings. See Pal, 1986-87, Vol. 1:232 (a fifthcentury Rama terracottabearing a verse of Valmiki's); cf. also Vogel 1906-8:96 and pl. xxvii, p. 155 (fifthcentury Hanuman); Sotheby'sSale Cataloguefor March 1990, No. 236 (Hanumanspeaking to Sita in theasokavana). But note the prescriptionin the (ninth century)Visnudharmottarapurdna for the svarz7paof Rama and Laksmana(cited Caturvargacintdmani,Vratakanda: 103 5).

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Rama in the World: Inscriptions

If the architecturalremains associated with Rama have yet to be systematically workedthrough and syntheticallyanalyzed, this is even more the case with the inscriptionalmaterials (beyond those associated with a templecult) that referto or invoke the god-king or in one way or anotherprocess Ramayana themes(Sircar 1980 and Diskelkar 1960 are the sole, unhelpfulguides). So here,too, my findings have to be regardedas provisional,but again I would be surprisedif furtherwork would requirefundamental revision of my conclusion: The Ramayanasupplies serious materialto the politicalimagination of premodernIndia as coded in the inscriptional recordonly fromthe later medievalperiod on; referencesin the firstmillennium are remarkablyfew but gain in frequencyand complexityespecially after the twelfth century.I will glance at the quality of the earliermaterial, and then go on to examinein moredepth a fewexamples of the verydifferent discourse we encounter later. Rama, to be sure, furnishesa standardof comparision(upamana) in hyperbolic inscriptionaldiscourse from an earlyperiod, but theseare static,formulaic allusions. Theirquality may be gaugedfrom what is perhapsthe earliestinstance, the Salivahana pras'astiat Nasik (ca. A.D. 150), whereRama is simplyone among a seriesof heroes: ndbhdga-nahusa-janamejaya-sakara-yaydti-rdma-abarizsa-samatejasa("equal in majesty to Nabhaga," etc.). Hardly an exceptionto such uninterestingformulae in the early periodis the comparisonwith Rama of the Gupta emperorSkandagupta, "equal to Rama in his great offensivepower" (CII 3:318.5; he is likened to Yudhisthirain the same line). This is, in fact, the single time Ramacandrais mentionedin the entirecorpus of Gupta inscriptions,and if we knew nothingabout the putative moveof the Gupta capitalto Ayodhya,the referencewould hardlyclaim our attention at all.7 The public discourse of major dynasties for centuries made virtuallyno appropriationof the Rama theme. In the recordsof the Gurjara-Pratiharaempire (ca. 725-1000), forexample, it seems that referenceto Rama is altogetherabsent (Puri 1986:211). Thereis one exception,however: the ninth-centuryGwalior pra&asti of King Bhoja. This record, commemoratingthe constructionof a domestic Visnu shrine,reads in vs. 3, "In theirfamily [i.e., the familyof the solar kings], [in which] the luster [of Visnu, dhdmaleventually set foot, Rama of auspicious birthmade a war of destructionand slaughteragainst the demons . . . in which Ravana was killed." This is followedby a verseon Nagabhata I thatalludes to the campaignof the Arab armyof Junaid against Ujjain (ca. A.D. 725): "In thatfamily . . a shelterof the threeworlds, there miraculously appeared the image of the AncientSage [Narayana} [in the personof) the god-king [devahjNagabhata. For when crushingthe large armiesof the powerfulmleccha king, a destroyerof pious deeds [sukrta-1,[Nagabhatal shone with fourarms brilliant with glitteringterrible weapons."This meaning-conjunctureoccurs nowhere else in India beforethe twelfth century;it is a prefigurement,I think, of a political semioticsto come.

7Pal 1986-87, Vol. 1:74 (cf. 232), assertsthat "ArdentVaisnavas, the royal Guptas would naturallyhave chosen to model theirstandard portrait type on the idealized image of Rama." But what evidencedo we have that thereexisted an "idealized image" of Rama in Gupta India? The paucityof representationsin a recentsurvey (Williams 1982) implies insteadthe figure'sirrelevance to Gupta-periodartists.

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Furtherto the west, among the Silaharas,contemporaries of the Pratiharas, Rama is never mentioned(Mirashi 1977). This is true, too, for the Badami Calukyas(ca. 500-750), who, despitetheir well-attested knowledge of and respect forthe Sanskritepic (e.g., IA 7:161.3), make no referenceto Rama in theircharters. Among the Gaingas,their neighbors to the southwest,a single, pedestrianallusion is found(Ramesh 1984:196), and onlyone in the entireextant corpus of inscriptions of the north-centralParamaras (El 2:15). Besides thesecases of simple similes,the mostcommon reference to Rama in earlyinscriptions is a minatoryverse that begins to appear commonlyat the end of land-grantsfrom the earlyninth century on, in Rastrak-utaregions: "Common to (all) kings is the dam [setulof dharma;you should abide by it momentby moment.Again and again Ramabhadra[v.1., Ramacandral imploresall futurekings to do this" (the firstoccurrence is El 23.212, a recordof A.D. 807 of the Rastrak-utasof Gujarat). Still, all this presentsus with in the end is an image of Rama as superordinateking, an image the literarytexts had already been promulgatingfor centuries. More complexin theirreferentiality are inscriptionsthat exploit the narrative ofthe poem witha historicistturn. Although Rama is otherwiseabsent from Pallava records,an inscriptionof King Nandivarman(undated; ca. eighthcentury) describes Narasimhavarmanas surpassing"the gloryof the valourof Rama by (his) conquest of Lanika"(SII 2:348. 22), the same boast RajendraCola I was to make two hundred yearslater, taunting the Sinhalesewith the mythemewhen referring to his general's defeatof the king of Lanka: Rama needed the help of monkeysto build his setu, and onlywith greateffort could he slay the lord of Lanka; "but my generalcrossed the ocean in ships and easily destroyedthe lord of Lanka-and so put Rama to shame" (SII 3:421. 80, ca. A.D. 1018; Prthivipatia feudatoryof ParantakaI, is awardedthe sobriquetsatigrdmardghava, "Battle-Rama," for his defeat,again, of a Sinhaleseking, SII 2:383. 10). Considerablymore informedby the Rama tale is the Kanyakumariinscription of Virarajendradeva(ca. 1030), which contains a fascinatingpras'asti on the Cola dynasty.After praising Rama in severalstriking verses,the accountgoes on to providea historyof the firstCola king: While out huntinghe is led astrayby a magical deer-rdksasa(as Rama was), to the banks of the Kaveri River. He findsthe region to be devoid of brahmans,relocates many fromAryavarta southward and thus establishesthe Colamandalam (El 18:2 1ff., 37.139ff.). Not unrelated to the Cola discourse is the pras'astiof the reconstituted Calukyandynasty of Kalyanii(northeast Karnataka) under Vikramaditya V (reigned A.D. 1008-15): For the firsttime the dynastichistory seeks to establisha connection with the solar kings of Rama's lineage, describinghow, afterfifty-nine kings of the Calukya vams'ahad ruled in Ayodhya,the familyemigrated southward to its presentlocation (IA 1887:15ff.;p. 21.11-12).8 VikramadityaVI of the same dynasty comes to be referredto as "Calukya-Rama"(El 15:348ff.vs. 20, Kannada) and, as in-the Cola records,Ramayana narrative elements are used to framehistorical events: The firstpolitical-historical claim in the narrativeof VikramadityaVI, in a record of A.D. 1077, is made by means of a complexpunning verse on the Rama story (whichbeyond the obviousallusion to an alliancewith a southernpower, no doubt againstthe Colas, is hardto decode):"He wentto seekLaksmi [royalty/Sital produced 8The impulse to establish this sort of lineage may be as old as the Andhra Iksvakus (Sircar 1939:10ff.). It is foundelsewhere in middle-periodIndia, forexample among the Pratiharas,who representthemselves as descendantsof Laksmana, the pratihdraor "door- keeper"of his brotherRamabhadra (El 18:95. 4, 107, vss. 3-4). But note thattheir political discourses,like theirritual practices, are otherwisedevoid of Rama.

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 272 SHELDON POLLOCK by his [her] father(Janaka); along with his brother,the son of Sumitra,and with a forceof monkeys;to the banks of the ocean came the vast royaltyof Vibhisana (the lord of Dravid.a)out of fearof the Many-headed,and the Calukya-Ramabowed to him [in compliancewith his supplication?}"(El 12.269ff., lines 88ff.).9 Yet again, in virtuallyall the inscriptionalmaterials considered thus far,the semiotic situation is analogous to what we find in the developmentof temple representations:Rama and Ramayanamythemes function as peripheralrhetorical embellishments,inflecting and texturinga given discoursebut not constitutingit. Very differentare the materialsof the succeedingperiod. Again, I will examine hereonly a couple of examples,where we can see how the politicalworld comes to be read through-identifiedwith, cognized by-the narrativeprovided by the epic tale. 1o The Dabhoi (Darbhavati)stone inscriptionof samrvat1311 (ca. A.D. 1253), composedby thepoet Somesvaradeva,describes, among other members of theVaghela dynastyof Gujarat, Lavanaprasada, a feudatoryand ministerof the Caulukya/Solanki king, Bhima II (A.D. 1178-1242), who was eventuallyto establishthe Vaghelas as an independentruling house (El 1:20ff.;HIG 3:46.6ff.): He [sc., Arnoraja1placed upon his son,Lavanaprasada, the burden of theland of theGurjjaras.. .. While he was rulingthis land . . . was not thethe G-urjjara-rajya even greaterthan ramarajya?" . . . So many the immortalkings on earth, yet virtuallyall ofthem were beside themselves with fear even to hearmention made of the king of the Turuskas.When he came for battle in a rage it was [Lavanaprasadalalone (lacuna). [The Turk who) dyed the earth with blood dripping fromthe severed heads of manykings, even he, whenhe camebefore this [King Lavanaprasadal,went dry-mouthed in fear.And [Lavanaprasadaldefeated him (lacuna)with his pillar-like arm terrible for the sword it held(lacuna). How could he be a meremortal who defeated the king of themlecchas whom no othermortal coulddefeat?

A moreelaborate variation on thistheme is containedin an inscriptionpublished by D. R. Bhandarkarin 1912, although nevertranslated and neverdiscussed in

9In the Vikramd?kadevacaritaBilhana describesthe fatherof VikramadityaVI: "Then came Ahavamalladeva,also known as Trailokyamalla[Somesvara I].... Because of his purifyinghistory [pavitracdritratd) he has been representedby poets as a second Rama in stories,tales, poems, and plays" (1.87-88). 1O1 forgohere detailed considerationof those many inscriptionsasserting the identityof the king and Visnu, althoughI believe, as in the case of the Gahadavalas, theseare almost certainlyintended as referencesto Rama (who is otherwise,strikingly, absent fromtheir records).Cf. El 9:319ff., vs. 16, "Asked by Hara to protectVaranasi fromthe foul Turk warrior[ddustdt turuskasubhatdt)-for he alone was able to guard the earth-Hari came into being here, with the illustriousname of Govindacandra";and the copper-plateinscription of his grandsonJayacandra (cited in Bakker 1986:5 3 n. 4): "Fromhim, a man of miraculous power, therearose Jayacandra, lord of kings, who was [in fact]Narayan.a descended to save the earth." " The historyof the appropriationof this termin Indian polities has not been traced;as forGujarat, this is almost, but not quite, the firstinstance. In a recordof Mularaja II, dated v.s. 1232 (= ca. A.D. 1176), we find, in referenceto Ajayapala, that "he caused rdmarcjyato descendto earth"(-avatdritardmardjya-, ed. Gadre n.d:73.9). There is no record of Ajayapala'shaving fought with the CentralAsians. It may be, however,to his notorious reassertionof Saiva Brahmanism as againstthe very public Jainism of his predecessorKumarapala that the epithetrefers; elsewhere he is said to have "planted once more the treesof vedic dharma"(bhuvam babharajayadeva taruprakandan uvapa yo naigamadharmavrksan,El 2.442, vs. 21). See furtheron rdmardjyabelow.

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RAMAYANA AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN INDIA 273 laterliterature with referenceto the specificand reallyquite strikingclaims of its discourse.The inscription,dated samvat1224 (ca. A.D. 1168), was originallyfound near Hansi (appearingas Asi or Asika in the inscription),a town in Haryana of strategicimportance for controlling the westernapproach to Delhi, and an object of strugglesince at least the middle of the eleventhcentury (Sharma 1975:67). The recordis a prasiastiof the Cahamanaking PrthvirajaII, whichrecounts how he put his maternaluncle Kilhana in commandof the fortat Hansi, concernedas he was about an attackof the Turks ("in his beliefthat the mightyHammira warriorwas a thornin the side of all the world," lines 4-5). Kilhana fortifiesthe stronghold, and checksthe advance of theinvaders ("You there,Hammira! Where is yourgreatness now!" line 7; cf. El 9:77 vs. 34, whereKelhana [sic] is describedin a recordof the Cahamanasof Naddula: "Having soundlydefeated the mightyTuruska, he built a towerof gold, like a crownof the dwellingof Somesa"). We are then told how Kilhana receiveda letterfrom one Vibhisana, who remindshim how the two of them once had aided Rama in the building of the setu. Then he declares: prthvirdjomahdrdjo rdmo 'sau san2sayamvind/hani7mdn nis'citam vfra bhavdn adbhutavikramah//"And thatRama has withoutdoubt becomePrthviraja the great king, and certainlyHantuman has become you, great hero, a man of miraculous deeds" (line 14). What is implicitin the fragmentaryremains of the previousrecord is heremade absolutelyclear: the thoroughidentification (pace Bhandarkar 1912:17) of a historicalruler with the divineking Rama, and whatwill becomean increasingly explicit demonization-"raksasization"-of the agents of the profoundhistorical changeseffected during this epoch, the Turkic peoples fromcentral and western Asia.

Rama in the World: Historiography

I wantto adduceone lastgenre of evidence, the historiographical (or "textualized," to distinguishit fromthe "documentary"inscription), in supportof the argument I have been makinghere, that the periodof some two hundredyears starting around the mid-twelfthcentury witnessed a codingof politicalreality via Ramayanathemes such as did not exist-or at least not to anywherenear the same degree-in any previousera. I'll cite only two Sanskritdocuments, the one a briefepisode froma Jain anthologyof historicalaccounts (prabandha), the othera full-scalehistorical poem contemporarywith the eventsit narrates. In the Dvyasirayakdvyaof Hemacandra, a poem that recountsthe historyof the first patron of this Jain polymath and poet, the Caulukya/Solanki king JayasimhaSiddharaja of Gujarat (A.D. 1094-1143), the king is identifiedas an incarnationof Ramacandra(15.56-57), as othershave alreadynoticed (Majumdar 1956; note that in his actual inscriptions,like the just-publishedBilpank prasasti, he is called"the Supreme Person himself [Visnu} comeas avatarto earth,"El 40:27ff., vs. 15). We can, however,flesh out the briefallusion of Hemacandra'sby means of a passage in Merutuinga'sPrabandhacintdmani (A.D. 1304), the earliestof a new genre of Jain historiographicaltexts that appears to have come into being in the fourteenthcentury. The sectionin question occurs in the Siddhardjachapter, and is called the "Narrativeof the Preventionof the Invasionof the Mlecchas":

While the chiefsof the lordof themlecchas were assembling as a host,the king summonedsome spies who had come from Madhyadesa, gave them secret instructions

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and dismissedthem. On the followingday at twilight,when a wind as wild as the wind at the end of time began to blow, the king went offto his assembly hall-like the gods' hall Sudharmait was-and as he looked on, a pair of Paladas, each carryinga gold brick on his head, descendedfrom the sky. The crowdsof people were overcomewith fearon seeing them. The two presentedtheir gift at the footstoolof the king, and fallingat his feet,they said, "Today while paying worshipto the gods, the great king of Lanika,Sri Vibhlsana, called to mind the one who put him on the throne,the crest-jewelof the Raghu clan, the glorious Sri Rama. And with his eye of wisdom Vibhisana at that momentrealized that his own master Rama had descended into the avatar [Cavatire'vatirna-3 of Sri Siddharaja,crest-jewel of the Caulukyaclan. His firstthought was how deeplyhis heartdesired to come and pay you homage, but he sent us to inquire whetherthe lordhimself would favorhim witha visit. May yourHighness indicate your decision throughyour royal mouth." [The king declines,presents the golden chain on his own neck as a returngift] and when theyasked leave to go he gave thema special message, to the effectthat he shouldn'tbe forgottenby their lord on any other occasion when help was needed. The two rdksasasdisappeared into the air. From thenon, themleccha chiefs were filled with fear, they lost their courage, and summoned beforethe king theyspoke wordsladen with devotionfor him. They presentedto the king appropriatetribute, and then Sri Siddharajadismissed them. (Jinavijaya1933:72-73)

This arresting intermixtureof fantasyand concrete local particularity,a sort of proto-magical realism that we find elsewhere in Merutuniga'sengaging work, resists easy historical interpretation. But several elements of the new code of interest to me are easily identified: the historical king as incarnation of Rama-Merutunga's Siddharaja cycle ends with the verse, "Just as Rama, a treasureof virtues, was born of Dasaratha, so the world-conquering Jayasimha was born of him (i.e., Karna)" (Jinavijaya 1933:55, vs. 88); the threatof the mleccha;and the reading of the historical event through the narrative of the old epic poem. Far more fully developed is this code in the key text for my argument, the long-ignored Prthvirdjavijaya.12A historical kavya by a Kashmiri poet resident at the Ajmer court named Jayanaka (or perhaps Vinayaka Pandita),13 the Prthvirdjavijayadeals with the life of the last independent "Hindu" king of Ajmer. It was written between 1178-93-the dates of the defeat of Muhammad bin Ghur by Bhimadeva of Gujarat (Prthvfrdjavijaya11.9) and Prthviraja's own defeat by Muhammad bin Ghur in 1193-and quite likely between the years 1191-93, a specificitywe can achieve with few other historical poems. Admittedly this was not

12The work, already famous by A.D. 1200 (it is quoted by Jayarathaon Ruyyaka's Alamkdrasarvasva,Dasgupta and De 1962:360n.; Sarda 1913:261), survivesin fragmentary formin a single birch-barkmanuscript. Serious analysis of this crucial text is nonexistent. Besides the superficialnotices of Sarda 1913:259ff.; Sharma 1975:112, 220, 378.; Prabha 1976:145-78; Lienhard 1984:219, see Pathak 1966:98-136, who manages to ignorethe mythopoliticalequivalence that is the centraland informingtheme of the poem. 13"'Jayanaka,"a Kashmiripoet introducedin the poem itself(12.63, 68), is usuallytaken as the name of the author. Note, however,that to one Vinayaka Pandita is attributeda strikingverse in praise of Prthvirajafound in the S'drhgadharapaddhati(No. 1254): "I have little relishfor paying homage to Siva, no desire to worshipKrishna; I am stiffwhen it comesto bowingdown to Siva's consort,indifferent to the templeof Brahma. It was through King Prthviraja,by his sacredsign upon our face [?], that we were protectedfrom enemy destruction[asmdkam paramardano 'sti vadanenyastena samraksitah prthvirdjanares'vardtj, and so I worshipthe verygrass on the streetsof his capital." One Kavinayakavinayakabhatta is creditedwith completingBhavabh-uti's early Rama play, Mahdvfracarita(ed. Todar Mall, London, 1928, ms. ad 5.46).

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RAMAYANA AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN INDIA 275 the firstliterary-historical text to imagine the career of a king fromwithin a Ramayana framework.One importantpredecessor is the Rdma[pd/alcaritaof Samdhyakaranandin(another Pala textfrom two centuriesearlier, the Rdmacaritaof Gauda Abhinanda,has no recoverableconnection with any historicalking). The Rdma[pf1alcaritahas nothingto do withCentral Asians, but ratherconcerns political developmentsin eleventh-twelfthcentury Bengal; the slot of Ravana, minus demonization,is filled by the Kaivartaking Bhima (cf. 1. 12 and com. ad loc.). But therethe epic narrativeprovides only a rhetoricalvehicle, if even that, forthe expositionof the life of the Pala king. Indeed, the veryform of double entendre that constitutesthe discourse(the work is technicallya /lesakdvyaor paronomastic poem) servesto establishdifference of referencerather than identity.Moreover, the lives of Ramapala and Ramacandraare not presentedas parallel,let alone identical. In the political imaginationinforming Jayanaka's history, by contrast,Prthviraja III (like his ancestorPrthvlrajaII) systematically and throughoutthe poem is Rama.14 The mythopoliticalequivalence that informs the entirepoem is made clearfrom the start.After a prelude in whichJayanaka calls Valmiki's poem "as true as the Veda" (com. on 1.5), he moves in his apologia to addressthe king himselfbefore whom he is recitinghis work: "Let him alone who,residesin my hearthear me, he who has entereda body consistingof Rama" (i.e., who is Rama reborn,jagdma yordmamayam s'ariram s'roth sa evdstuhrdi sthito me, 1. 33). In keepingwith the actuality of this address,the workis verymuch a history,a highlyreferential history, of the present.The avatdraof Visnu/Ramaas Prthvirajais precededby an accountof the pollutionby mlecchas of the region of Ajayameru, especially the tirtha Puskara. Brahma, as per convention,is representedas beseechingVisnu to descendto earth:In this, the Kali age, Siva has become indifferent,his bull [here,dharmal having only one leg to stand on (1.44); the asceticBuddha avataris devotedto peace (1.45); Indra is too weak forlack of sacrificialofferings (1.46); while "having seen his clan as shockedby the birthof the Buddha as it was energizedby the birthof Rama, the sun doubts his own ancestrynow and has lost his glow" (1.48). But at this point the poet departsfrom formula, to have Brahmadescribe what is happeningat the most celebratedpilgrimage site in Rajasthan:

Withyou become an ascetic[i.e., becomethe Buddha]-with you become a friend ofthe deer, Visnu-my dwellingplace Puskara has beenovercome with terror of themdtangas [ "outcastes,"i.e., Turks].The placewhere I myselfperformed the finalablutions after the great sacrifice of world creation, the mleccha army now uses to refreshthemselves after their violent destruction of templesand brahman settlements.The placewhere Sacd forbids even heavenly courtesans to bathe. . . therenow bathethe menstruatingwives of theselowest of men. Half dead with thirstfrom their ride across the desert those evil men slit their horses' throats and dranktheir blood. But theirthirst was stillnot slaked,and theynow drink the watersonly those who feed on nectarshould drink. (1.49-50; 53-54)

The firstthird of thepoem is takenup withan accountof Prthviraja'sancestors, with the immediategenealogy of Prthvlrajagiven in chapter6. King Arnorajahad two wives, one of whom was the daughterof the celebratedking of the Gujarat

14Such total identificationseems not have been made withoutsome resistance.In both the Prabandhakos'aof Rajasekhara (Jinavijaya 1935:81-82), and the Purdtanaprabandha- samzgraha(Jinavijaya 1936:8-9), the storyis told of "Vikramaditya,"who soughtto arrogate to himselfthe title "AbhinavaRama." He is disabusedof his arroganceby a displayof the power of the real Rama.

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Caulukya/Solanki dynasty (whom we have already mentioned), Siddharaja Jayasimha.This wifegave birthto Somesvara,whose own firstson, the astrologers predict,will be an incarnationof Rama:15"[Your} son will be Rama himself,born [again] in his desireto completethe task he had started"(6.35). The son eventually born is "the enemyof Ravana, become an earthlyking in the Kali age" (7.6), "a form of Visnu become a man" (8.10), "an avatar of Rama" (remdvatdrasyaiva prthvirdjasya,8.62), while his ministers,Kadambavasa and Bhuvanaikamalla,are avatars of Hanuman and Garuda, respectively(9.38-39; 86-89). When Prthvirajabecomes king, "the earthbecomes a site ofthe richesand joysof rdmardjya in the verymidst of the Kali age" (9.35). In chapter 10, afterconsolidating his power by the defeatof his regionalenemies, Prthvirajareturns to his capital and firsthears mention of Muhammadbin Ghur:

The victoriousking entered the town,where a wreathabout the citytower of Ajmer-a terriblewreath made of his enemies'heads-stopped the Goddessof Royaltyfrom ever leaving. Now, everyking in thenorthwest is as powerfulas the wind;but the Lord of Horses had true courage to boot,and so surpassedall others. But evensuch a kingas thishad beenrobbed of rulein Garjani[Ghazni], and renderedempty and lightas an autumncloud by the evil Gori-him who was givento eatingfoul foods, the enemy [aril ofcows [go-], from whence he got his veryname. 16 Theysay he stroveto becomeEclipse itself, to darkenthe royal fortune of the entirecircle of kings. . . . What moreto say?Heedless that the king [Prthviraja)had vowed to exterminateall demon-men["nararaksasdm" mlecchdndm, accordingto the commentator],he sentan ambassadorinto the presence of this lion in his den-King Prthvirajain Ajayameru. (10.38-42)

The Ghuridambassador is thendescribed in what may be the firstand is certainly the most detailed earlyrepresentation of a CentralAsian in Indian literature,one that providesalmost a paradigmof xenophobicdifferentiation:17

His headwas so bald and his foreheadso broadit was as ifGod had intentionally madethem thus to inscribe[as on a copperplate) the vast number of cows he had

'5Prthviraja'sfather Somesvara married the daughterof the Kalachuri king of Tripuri, in whose realm some of the earliestRama cultic activitieshave been traced. (There seem to have been earliermarriage alliances here as well: the factthat the queen of the Kalachuri kingJayasimhadeva of Rewa [A.D. 11671 is named Kelhanadevi[EI 21:921, links her with the Ki[eJlhanawho was ministerto PrthvirajaII.) 16The referenceis, of course, to Muhammad bin Ghur. According to Bosworth's reconstruction,the firstmajor success against Ghazna on the part of the Ghurids, a local familyof centralAfghanistan (Islamized firstby Mahmud of Ghazna), was in late 1148 when Saif al-Din S-uricaptured the town. For some 12 to 15 years (perhaps 1160-73) Ghazna was thenoccupied by Oghuz "militaryadventurers," until capturedby Muhammad bin Ghur, who used the town as a springboardto the Punjab firstin 1178 (Bosworth 1977:5, 68-69, 111-29). These Oghuz horsemen,rather than the Ghaznavids,may be the referentof hayapatiin verse 39 (althoughthis is not, admittedly,a rareepithet of Turkic kings, and is applied to Ghori himselfin 11. 12). The accessionof PrthvirajaIII seems to have takenplace by 1178 (Sircarin El 32:299ff.,esp. 302), not in 1180 (Sharma 1975:8 1). 17Inthe dramaLalitavigrahardja of Somadeva(A.D. 1153), composedin honorof Vigraharaja IV, two Turuska prisonersare introduced at the beginning of the fourthact (they speak Magadhi but are not described),and lateran ambassadorfrom Hammira, who speaks Sanskritand, indeed, cites the pura-nas("[no king) is not [in part] Visnu" [read: nacvisnuh prthivipatirity eva)), ed. Kielhorn 1901:10-15. Incidentally,this drama is preserveden- gravedon stoneused by QutbuddinAibak to build a mosque in Ajmerafter its capitulation, ca. A.D. 1200 (El 29:178).

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slain. The color of his beard, his eyebrows,his verylashes was yellowerthan the grapes that grow in his native region [of Ghazni]-it was almost as if even the colorblack had shunnedhim in fearof beingstained by his bad reputation.Horrible was his speech, like the cry of wild birds, forit lacked cerebrals;indeed, all his phonemeswere impure,impure as his complexion.. . . He had what looked like skin disease, so ghastlywhite he was, whiterthan bleachedcloth, whiterthan the snow of the Himalayan regionwhere he was born. (10.43-46)

The poet then summarizes:

Ten-foldhave theseGoris harassedthe worldand so earnedtheir name: speechthey destroyby theirfaulty language; the directions,waters, eyes, raysof the sun by the clouds of dust raisedby theirarmies; the veryheaven and earthby the weight of theircrimes; lightning they destroy by [= exceed in] theircruelty, arrows by theirattachment to murderousways [?i; and cows theydestroy by slaughtering them.18 News came that the fortof the G-urjarasat Nadvala [Naddula in Marwad) had been overrunby these demons with the bodies of men (nrtanubhirasuraih), who fill to overcrowdingthe prisons of the God of Death, and drive Him to distraction.And thereappeared on Prthviraja'sface a terriblefrown-the boundary line of securityfor the world-announcing it was now the momentto span the bows of war. (10.49-50)

In the following, penultimate chapter of the extant text, afterlearning that "Gori" has been defeated in Gujarat (11.9), Prthviraja enters his picture gallery (like the Rama of earlier poets such as Bhavabhtuti)to view a full exhibition of scenes of his earlier life as the divine king Rama (11.24-11.104).

Plotting Against History

Whereas the Ramayana may certainly have played a substantial role, in some instances a central role, in the political imagination of earlier India, it comes to be deployed with a fuller and more referentiallydirect expression-in royal cultic, documentary, and textual representations-from the twelfth century onward. The temporal trajectoryof this development, especiallyplotted against the spatial, suggests compellingly that it was in reaction to the transformativeencounter with the polities of Central Asia-with Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Khaljis (and perhaps even earlier, with the Arabs, as the Gwalior prasasti cited above suggests)-and the resultant new social and political order instituted by the establishment of the Sultanate that the Ramayana lived anew in royal discourse. A minimal correlation of the reasonably secure (and generallywell-known) historical record of the invasionswith the half-dozen or so important materials adduced above sufficesto show this. In 1008 Mahmud of Ghazni defeated at Peshawar a confederacyof kings from the subcontinent under the leadership of the Shahi Jayapala, which included the rulers of Ujjain, Gwalior, Kalafijara, Delhi, and Ajmer. Over the following decade Mahmud made repeated raids over the Punjab as far as (but not into) Kashmir and eastern Rajasthan; by September 1018 he penetrated east of Delhi and Mathura; in "'All ten items are possible meaningsof the word gauh, to whom the Turks are "ene- mies," ari, whence they are called "Gori" (an etymologicalscheme foundalso in vs. 40 above).

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Decemberof the same yearhe enteredKanauj; thereafterhe movedtoward Kalafnjara, capital of the Candellasof Bundelkhand,but was repulsed;19 in 1026 he raidedthe great temple at Somnath-Prabhasain Gujarat. AlthoughMahmud died in 1030, Ghaznavid militarycampaigns continued, and within half a centuryor so of the death of Mahmud, the Gahadavalas begin to transformAyodhya into a major Vaisnava center,a building programthat was to continuefor a century.Within threegenerations, the firstdedicated Rama sanctuariesare attestedjust to the south of Klafijara among the TripuriKalachuris, whose own king Jayasimhaboasted in 1167 that by his doing "the Turuskahas lost the powerof his arms" (El 21:95 = ClI 4:327; Jayasimha'sson Vijayasimharepeats the claim in A.D. 1180, ClI 4:649 and n. 3). Turkiccampaigns continued throughout the periodfrom the death of Mahmud to the rise of the Ghurids in the last thirdof the twelfthcentury. We have no directevidence of any military actions in therealm ofJayasimha Siddharaja of Gujarat, but Persiansources suggest that the generalof the Ghaznavid Bahram Shah may have assembledan armyto attackhim, and this theprabandha material cited above would corroborate(Majumdar 1956:495-96).20 His nearcontemporary, Vigraharaja IV ofthe Cahamana dynasty of Sakambhari (reigned ca. 1152-67), foughtfrequently with the Turks; he is once describedas "the god who made Aryavartaonce again true to its name [i.e., making it "the land of the Aryans(alone)"} by extirpating the mlecchas,"and as a king "of whom no doubt can be entertainedthat he is the Primal Person"(sankd vd purusottamasyabhavato nasty eva, IA 19:218). 21 It was his successorPrthviraja II who in 1168 took the Hansi fortover which Ghaznavids (and Tomaras and Cahamanas)had foughtfor some generations.Within a decade, the ascendantpower of the Ghuridsburst into Gujarat, when Bhima II (or his brother MiularajaII) met in battle and defeatedMuhammad bin Ghur in 1178, and was himselfdefeated by Muhammad'sviceroy Qutb al-Din Aibak in 1195-96. Bhima II was the nominalsovereign of Lavanaprasada,and it is likely to Lavanaprasada's expulsionof Aibak from Gujarat that the inscription noticed above refers (Ei 1:22-23). Furtherto the east, Muhammad sufferedanother defeat in 1191 at the hands of PrthvirajaIII at Tarain (125 kilometerswest of Delhi), onlyto returnthe following yearto crushhim and 150 chieftainsin his alliance. Within two yearsthe last king of the Gahadavaladynasty, Jayacandra, was slain in battlewith the Turks, Banaras was raidedand, two yearslater, Kanauj. Malwa and Bundelkhandcontinued to be targets;in 1202 Muhammad bin BakhtyarKhalji enteredBihar and established himselfin Bengal severalyears later (an inscriptionfrom Kanaibarshi, Assam, reads,

19As his fatherhad earlierbeen; cf. the Candellainscription from Mahoba: "Thereappeared [in the Candella dynasty]a blessingfor the earthcalled the illustriousDhaniga, who . . . by the strengthof his arms equaled even the powerfulHamvira [sic), who had proved a heavyburden for the earth" (this may referto Sabuktagin,cf. El 1:217ff.). 201t remains uncertain whether the mysteriousrdksasa named Barbaraka, whom Jayasimhadefeated and with whom he is ever associatedin legend, is, in fact,to be iden- tifiedwith Bahalim, the viceroyof the Ghaznavid Bahram Shah, A.D. 1116-57 (cf. also Majumdar 1956:408-9). Anotherof Jayasimha's contemporaries was the Paramarachieftain Dharavarsa,who helpeddefeat Ghori's soldiers at MountAbu in A. D. 1 178 (Bhatia 1970:176), and of whom it is said in an Abu inscriptionof 1230, "Evidentlyit is the son of Dasaratha [i.e. Ramal that has been born again on earthas this (prince)of uncheckedstrength" (El 8:211 vs. 37). 2'The pillar text is reproduced in the fourteenth-centurypoetry anthology from Sikambhariitself, the Paddhatiof SariigadharaNo. 1255-56). In the palace libraryof this king was a prized manuscriptof the Valmiki Ramayana,the sourceof a copy now in Bonn (Katre 1954:13).

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RAMAYANA AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN INDIA 279 with annalisticsimplicity: "On the thirteenthday of Chaitraof the Saka [sic] year 1127 [ca. A.D. 12051, the Turuskascame to Kamartupa,and wentdown to defeat," IHQ 3:843; JIH 15:175). By 1206 almost all of northIndia fromthe Ravi River to Assam had come underTurkic militarydomination. The last phase of thesepolitical eventspertinent to my argumentbegins near the end of the thirteenthcentury, when Jalaluddin Firuz became the firstKhalji sultan of Delhi, followedby his nephew 'Ala al-Din. Within a few years(A.D. 1296-1309), and with spectacularsuccess, 'Ala al-Din subjugated the kings of Anahilavsada(the Caulukya/SolankiKarna II), those of present-dayRajasthan and MadhyaPradesh, and, notably,the Yadavas of Devagiri, who as we saw had begun aroundthis time the construction(or substantialreconstruction) of the Rama sanctuary on Ramtek,under the patronageof Ramacandra,the last Yadava king of Devagiri. 'Ala al-Din's general Malik Kafur began his campaign against the Kakatiyas of Warangal in 1302, and in 1309 finallydefeated King Prataparudra,with whom, as I noted earlier,one of the fewRama sanctuariesin Andhrais associated,and at whose court it is likely that the firstmajor Sanskritpoem on Rama in Andhra countrywas composed (the Udcrarcghavaof Sakalyamalla, cf. Venkatacharya 1990:ivff.).Governors of the Delhi Sultanatewere appointed throughout the Deccan, and soon thereafterthe Vijayanagarkingdom was established(1346), with a Rama templeat its citycore. 22 There are cases, let me repeat,where Ramayana mythemes in inscriptionand possibly in temple cult had played a role in texturingthe political imagination priorto or outside of the coming of the Turks and the foundingof the Sultanate; such may be the case in the earlyCola realm,for instance. Conversely, this political narrativeapparently failed to make an appearancein a numberof places wherethese eventshad as profoundconsequences as anywhereelse; Bengal is such a case. There is also a disquietingneatness to the concomitanceI havedrawn between the activation of the politicalimaginary of the Ramayanaand the historicalevents of the eleventh to fourteenthcenturies that brings to mind Bacon's "idols of the tribe" and his admonitionthat "the human Intellect,from its peculiarnature, easily supposesa greaterorder and equality in things than it actuallyfinds." Grantingthat, the concomitanceremains striking and invitessome attemptat explanation.

Historical Imitation

One of the most suggestivefeatures of this whole problematic,to my mind, is the veryfact that imagining and representingthe politicalpresent in twelfth-century India was enabled by a recuperationof the past. The figuresof the Ramayanawere as fullyhistorical and real fornon-modern India as Achillesfor the Alexandriansor Brut forthe earlyBritons ("Everything that happenedin the [Valmlkil Rdmdyana was absolutelyreal," says the sixteenth-centurycommentator Mahesvaratirtha tad 2.41. 10 vulg.1). Morethan this, they seem to playa rolefor the kings of middle-period Rajasthan,Gujarat, and the Deccan rathersimilar to thatof Cato and otherRoman 22J.G. de Caspari and I. W. Mabbett, in referringto the single temple "foundation (pratisthd)devoted to Rama as a deity"in Indonesia(recorded in an East Javaneseinscription of A.D. 1486), point to the "revivalof Hinduism" in Vijayanagarat the same time and argue that "it is likelythat therewas a directrelation between the developmentsin South India and easternJava at a time when both were confrontedwith the expansionof Islam" (Tarling 1992:307-8).

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 280 SHELDON POLLOCK republicansfor the Frenchrevolutionaries of 1789. In a celebratedpassage in The EighteenthBrumaire, Marx ascribesan almost lawlike characterto this process of historicalimitation: With the weightof the dead generationson theirbrain, the living "anxiouslyconjure up the spiritsof the past to theirservice and borrowfrom them names, battlecries and costumesin orderto presentthe new scene of world history."This points, in a way, to what I intend by the term "imaginary,"the constructionand representationof realitythrough a moreor less systematichistorical fantasy.For Marx, further,the "awakeningof the dead" in the FrenchRevolution "servedthe purposeof glorifyingthe new struggles. . . of magnifyingthe given taskin imagination. . . offinding once more the spirit of revolution" (Marx 1963:15, 17). Those who have consideredthe problemof "historicalrevivification" since Marx's formulationhave expandedthe focusto includemore complex questions of intention and self-understandingin human agency. The most acute analysisin this spiritis probablythat of Jean-PaulSartre. In an effortto combat the aprioristeconomism of 1950s FrenchMarxism and to develop a more nuancedpsychosocial conception of agency,Sartre wanted to findin Marx's meditationon the relationshipbetween the "subjectivedrama" and the "real" a "new idea of humanaction." The bourgeois of 1789, saysSartre, both "pretendsto be Cato in orderto stop the Revolutionby denyingHistory and by substitutingvirtue for politics," and also "gives himselfa mythicalcomprehension of an action which he carriesout but which escapes him" (Sartre1963:45-46; cf.Jameson 1971:225ff.). I thinkit may be possibleto identify, followingMarx, some functionaldimensions of the representationalgestures based on the Rama theme,and I suggesttwo below. One remainstroubled, however, by what Sartrepersuasively argues is the reductionof "significations"to "intentions" that such functionalistanalysis invites. A less risky,though hardly a less complex,question concernsthe orientation toward the past that this sort of imaginarycomprises, and the wider cultural significanceof a historicizingconceptualization of thepresent. Some suggestiveanalysis has recentlybeen given of the ways in which, and the degree to which, action, especiallyin momentsof historicalcrisis, presents itself to human consciousness- or may be so represented-as a repetitionor returnof the past. In referenceto 1789, forexample, Pierre Vidal-Naquet has exploredhow the revolutionwas conceived of as a "return,with classicalantiquity as the privilegedinstrument of this return . . . marking the reappearanceof the 'happy days of Greece and Rome'" (Vidal-Naquet 1990:215). More generally,Philippe Lacoue-Labartheand Jean-Luc Nancy have arguedthat this phenomenon is somehowpeculiar to, even constitutive of,the world of modern Europe: "The factis . . . thatsince the collapse of Christianity a specterhas hauntedEurope: the specterof imitation-which means, above all, the imitationof theancients. The roleplayed by the classicalmodel (Athens, Sparta, Rome) in the constructionof nation-statesand of theirculture is well known:from the classicismof Louis XIV to the Antique posturingof 1789 or the neoclassicism of the Empire, an entireprocess of political structurationunfolds, as a national identificationand a technicalorganization (of government,of administration,of hierarchization,of domination,and so on) are simultaneouslyrealized. It is in this sense that it would be necessaryto give historicalimitation the statusof a political concept, as Marx, in fact, once thoughtof doing" (Lacoue-Labartheand Nancy 1990:299). I am clearlynot preparedto extendthe politicalimitative imaginary of twelfth-centuryIndia this far,but somethinganalogous, I think,is takingplace, whichalong with otherevidence-from the earlyGuptas who pretendthat they're the Kushans (or Mauryas)to the tenth-centuryKannada poets who transformtheir

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RAMAYANA AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN INDIA 281 royalpatrons into the heroicfigures of the Mahebhdrata-would promptus to give historicalimitation "the statusof a political concept"in India, too.23 But I cannotpursue that question further here, nor thosestimulated by Sartre's complex meditationon Marx. I want to push insteadon the question implict in all that has gone before,namely, why it is the Ramayana in particularthat is selected-suddenlyselected, as we'veseen, and withlittle precedent-as theprivileged instrumentfor encoding or interpretingthe political realitiesof the twelfthto fourteenthcenturies. There wereother choices available, not just greatmartial and dharmiccharacters from the otherepics (I've just alluded to the epic transformations into Arjuna and Bhima of the patronsof the greatpoets Pampa and Ranna), but a Vaisnava figureready-made for an end-of-timenarrative of the coming of the barbarians:Kalki, who is foundnumbered among the Vaisnava incarnationsfrom at least the seventhcentury, and who is describedby an anonymouspoet at the court of Ajmer in the middle of the twelfthcentury as "the formof Visnu who will come on horseback,spurning Garuda; he will carrya black swordin his hand to destroythe Kali age, will join bull with cow, bringback the best of times,the Krta age, and put an end to the mlecchas"(El 29:181). It may be argued,of course, that one cannot mobilize political sentiment(assuming for the sake of argument such a necessityin twelfth-centuryIndia) on the basis of a futureincarnation such as Kalki, no more than one can on the basis of one such as Krishna, the divine child (and quasi-fratricide).But I suggestthere are positive,narratological reasons whyit was Rama and no otherfigure who becamethe object of cult and theparadigm of royalidentity for kings of the period.

Imaginative Resources

The Ramayananarrative seems to me to offerspecial imaginative"resources," which though perhapsshared to a degree by othermythopolitical narratives, are presentin distilled formin this particularstory. They are constitutiveof it and remainstable, as semioticslots, howeverdifferently interpretive communities will specifytheir contents. I thinkthese can be categorizedunder the two broadheadings of divinizationand demonization.The firstpoints to the fact that, althoughthe politicalas in so manyother Indian textsis at the heartof the narrative,this text offersfor the firsttime a special assessment,or resolution,of the paradoxthat the political comprisesin premodernIndia. It does this by way of what I think is a new mediationof the religious,that is, the divine or numinous,and the political, by which I mean the natureof life in the humanpolity. The second heading, the demonizationof the Other-a shopwornyet still indispensablephrase-relates to thosewho standoutside this theologically sanctioned polity. Not onlyare thesetwo thematicsthe definingthematics of Valmlki'sepic, theyare two of the mostpowerful conceptionsof the social-politicalimagination. The firstproclaims that the order of everydayhuman life is regulatedby the active,immanent presence of the divine; the second, that those who would disturbor destroythat ordermust be enemies of God and not reallyhuman. ElsewhereI have exploredwhat I take to be the basic set of social questions towardwhich all earlySanskrit epic literaturedirects itself-the two greatepics as

23As,of course,elsewhere in the non-Europeanworld. See forexample Grabarand Blair 1980:46-55, forepic "mythification"of the earlyMongol rule in fourteenth-centuryIran, and, more generally,Harth and Assmann 1992.

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 282 SHELDON POLLOCK well as many subnarrativeswithin these texts-so I can be sketchyabout it here (Pollock 1986:9-25). Above all, and beyondthe admittedprofusion of othermotifs, the informingproblem is that of political power, especiallythe maintenanceand transferof politicalpower. How does this principalproblem-as the Mahdbherata puts it, obsessively,in those dreadfulmoments before the Bharata war is begun, "Man is slave to power, but power is slave to no man" (6.41.36, 51, 66, 77)- how does it work itselfout in the Mahdbhdrata?As we all know, it is resolved throughfratricidal struggle, leading to the death not onlyof the defeated,but also of the victors:"We are the livingdead," Yudhisthirareflects when, after the battle, the brothersreturn to Indraprastha(15.46.8). In addition to the tragicoutcome, thereis a tragicdilemma repeatedlysuggested throughout the poem: In part the political dilemma is intractablebecause it resultsfrom a fundamentalbifurcation of the (hegemonic)spiritual and the political,symbolically coded in the bifurcation of the principal characters(Yudhisthira, son of dharma,here as superordinated "righteousness,"and Arjuna, son of Indra, as representativeof the subordinated dharma, ksatriyadharma).It is this intractabilitythat the great ninth-century Kashmiriancritic, Anandavardhana,had in mind when arguing that the global meaningof the poem is profounddisenchantment with the world(vairdgya): "The greatpoet himselfis expliciton this: 'The morethe systemsof this worldfail, and fail miserably,the more transcendentaversion toward them inevitablyarises" tMahdbhhrata12. 168.41 (Dhvanydloka4.5). Presupposing,responding to, and advancingupon theMahdbhdrata's tragic aporia, the Rdmdyanaoffers a complexset of solutions.One componentof this, I think,is the promulgationof a new formof social and politicalsubordination and hierarchy, wherebythe claimsof a youngerbrother thatis to say, divisivepolitical interest- become,in fact,unthinkable. Considerably more important, however, is whatappears to be the incorporationin the personof the king of a spiritualmoment, whereby he becomes at times sage-like,almost renunciant.In fact, it is more than this: Valmiki's solutionto the politicalparadox of epic India is the divinizedking. Far frombeing a latergraft-the virtuallyunchallenged view in the West from the timeof Wilhelm von Schlegelonward-the divinityof Rama is, I have argued, constitutiveof the text. Not onlyis it a themethat nothing in the vast text-critical materialsnow at our disposalchallenges, but a littlethought suffices to demonstrate how centralRama's divinityis to the logic of the narrative.The poem is, in brief- and much of its aestheticpower derivesfrom this-an adaptationof an ancient mythopoeticmorpheme (found in such tales as the birthof Skanda, Nrsimha,and countlessothers) that requires the existenceof a new life-formto destroyextraordinary evil. This must be no simple god or man but an intermediate,combinatory being thatdraws from and transcendsthe powersof bothrealms. The Rdmdyanaarticulates this as clearlyas its conceptualand aestheticconstraints allow, at a key moment (key at least in view of the interestthat other cultural production, temple sculpture forinstance, evinces in it), the deathof Valin: "It is kings-make no mistakeabout it-who conferrighteous merit, something so hard to acquire, and preciouslife itself.One must neverharm them, nevercriticize, insult, or oppose them. Kings are gods who walk the earthin the formof men"(4.18.37-38; Pollock 1991:15-54). The Rdmdyanathus presentsa verypowerful-because direct and unequivocal- imaginativeformulation of the divine king as the only being capable of combating evil. The second featureI want to underscoreis preciselythe constitutionof this evil-what I've called the demonizationof the Other. The Rdm yana is profoundly and fundamentallya text of "othering,"if I can use thisawkward neologism. Outsiders

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RAMAYANA AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN INDIA 283 are made otherby being representedas deviant-sexually, dietetically,politically deviant.Ravana is notonly "other" in hisreckless polygyny-"others" always threaten to steal "our" women but is presentedwithout question as a tyrant,perhaps even as a kindof "Orientaldespot" constructed by a preformof Orientalism.To appreciate thisothering, we need onlythink how verydifferent it all is fromthe Mahebhhrata, wherethe sharedidentity of the antagonistsis nearlytotal; not only are theynot "othered,"one group fromthe other,but instead theyare "brothered,"whereby the fundamentalproblem of the storybecomes all the more insolubleand terrible. The question of the demons (rdksasas) of the Romdyaynahas tested the interpretativeingenuity of generations of Indian and Europeanscholars. In myview, all the positivisticattempts at concreteidentification-with this or that shamanic, tribal,Dravidian, Buddhist group, what have you-are irrelevantto our understanding of theirfunction within the confinesof the poem itself.There, as I've argued,one productiveway to thinkof themis froma psychosexualperspective, as representing all that certaintraditional Indians-within a Sanskritcultural formation-might most desire and most fear,concretized both togetherin a single symbolicform (Pollock 1991:68-84). However, from the point of the receptivehistory of the Romoyaynathe rdksasas,too, providea frameworkfor conceptualizing or representing historicalpolitical experience. But what does all this have to do with the world of the twelfthcentury? A dominantscholarly opinion holds that ruling elites in theeleventh and following centuriesoften met the challenge posed by the new political presence in the subcontinentnot just by a militarizationof the structureof the Hindu realmsbut also by a renewedemphasis on religiousprestige and the legitimationof the ruler via his unique relationshipwith divinity(Kulke and Rothermund1986:196). If this is the case, and if-a bigger if-there is any value to a functionalistanalysis of a symbolicsystem, it is clear the Rdmayanzacould do powerfulideological work. First,it is the privileged,if not, in fact,the sole South Asian narrativeof a hieratic politics. At the heartof the tale, or ratherin its logic, is not just a spiritualization of the king, but an ontogeneticargument: The king is a consubstantialentity participatingin both the humanand divine worlds. The identificationof the king withRama would thussuggest a wide rangeof transcendentqualities and powers.24 Moreover,the Radmdyana,with its demonizingimaginary, provides, as does no other Indian text, a conceptualinstrument for the utterdichotomization of the enemy.True, the Calukyascould imaginethe Colas as rdksasas,or the Colas could thus position the Sinhalese. Conversely,other evidence does show that non- Rdmoiyanoamythemes could on occasion be used to narratethe encounterwith the CentralAsians.2 But the peculiarapparatus of otheringoffered by the Rdmoyaza,

24Thename "Rama" and its varioushomologues become statistically very common among kings duringthis period. These include Ramaraya,the last king of the Vijayanagarempire (1564), and Ramacandra,the local king said to have rescuedwhat could be saved of Gajapati power and restoredthe Jagannathcult at Puri around 1590. 25Jaitrasimrhaof Mewar is "the sage Agastyato the ocean-likearmies of the Turuskas"; Samara, son of Tejahsimha, is "in veryperson the primal Boar, whose sword was, as it were, his outjuttingtusk, and who rescuedin an instantthe submergedland of Gurjara fromthe ocean-likeTuruskas" (cf. El 1:327 in referenceto Trailokyavarman[1203-411 of the Chandella dynasty);Kumbha is "a Garuda in destroyingthe hordesof the snake-like mlecchakings" (A Collectionof . . . Inscriptions:93, vs. 42, 94, vs. 46). I find only one Saiva trope,from eastern India, perhapslate twelfth-century:Visvarupa Sena was the "Rudra of the end of Time" to the lineageof the Yavanasof Gargya(= Gharjistan,JBORS 1918:171; Majumdar 1929:124, vs. 21). When it comes to non-Turkicreferences, Mahabharata or relatedallusions are found:King Manttataof the Sisodia kings of Chittor,for instance, was

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 284 SHELDON POLLOCK along with the political theologyit provided,seems to have been particularlywell suited to the political tasks confrontingan embattled cultural formationfor representing-andperhaps activating-the conflictingagencies of the period.

Communities or Communalism?

Beyond the level of representationand activation,I think, we cannot easily penetrate.It is not possible, that is, to distinguishbetween representationand realityin theadoption of the demonizingformulation of the Ramayana-to separate out some authenticcategorical response of othernessfrom its construction;historical realityonly comes to us in formsof textualrepresentation. Even the evidenceprovided by non-Indianobservers themselves, as forexample al-Biruni (fl. 1030), whichseems to be almosta gloss on thepolitical imaginary I have been mapping,does notescape this constitutiveequivocation. In the masterpieceon India he wroteat the courtof Mahmud of Ghazni, al-Birunicomments in a famouspassage:

In all mannersand usagesthey [the "Hindus") differ from us to sucha degreeas to frightentheir children with us, withour dress, and ourways and customs,and as to declareus to be devil'sbreed, and ourdoings as thevery opposite of all that is goodand proper. [He adds,"We mustconfess, in orderto be just,that a similar depreciationofforeigners not only prevails among us andthe Hindus, but is common to all nationstowards each other.") . . . Mahmud[of Ghazni) utterly ruined the prosperityof thecountry, and performedthere wonderful exploits, by whichthe Hindusbecame like atoms of dust scattered in all directions,and likea taleof old in themouth of thepeople. Their scattered remains cherish, of course,the most inveterateaversion towards all Muslims.. . . The antagonismbetween them and all foreignersreceives more and more nourishment both from political and religious sources.26 (Sachau19 10:20-22)

Any easy assumptionof naturalhostility suggested by the beginningof this passage is canceled by the culturalpropagation identified at the end. We cannot, then, take a representationfor a "real"-yet can we say nothingwhatever about the realitythat informs it? Can we not at leastcomplicate the pictureso farprojected by "official"thinking? The representationof invaderas demon and defenderas the divineking Rama, in royaltemple cult, documentaryinscriptions, and historiographicaltexts, arising as it seemsto do firstin the wake of the politicalevents of theeleventh to fourteenth centuries,might suggest to some that it is a responseto what was perceivedto be a new and special sortof threat.But was it new and special?Surprisingly little, so faras I can see, has been writtenon the culturalprocesses of the initial stages in whatJohn Richards nearly twenty years ago properlydescribed as one of the most complex,prolonged cases of "culturalencounter" to be foundin worldhistory (Richards a Partha to the kings of Malwa (A Collectionof . . . Inscriptions:80); Madanavarmaof the Chandellas"defeated the king of Gurjara as Krsnain formertimes defeated Kamsa" (Majumdar 1956:77). 26Thatthe "othering"of the Turks is highlyrelational becomes evidentalso in visual representations.In the one attemptI am aware of to explorethis question, HermannGoetz reviewstheir sculptural representation in Vijayanagartemple panels and concludesthat they are viewedas grotesque,rude, awkward,and wild exceptfor those in stateservice, in which case theyare presentedwith the same "sympathy"as the "Hindus" (Goetz 1965-66:199).

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1974:91).27 For this reason,and also because data are devilishlyhard to find (in some of what I addressbelow I have been anticipatedby Athar Ali 1990), what can be said at present,especially from the perspectiveof a Sanskritist,has to be tentativeindeed. I want to concentratehere on what I'll call textualevents, certain new kinds of textualpractices and the culturalprocesses they presuppose that may invitewider social inferences. Despite al-Biruni,there is evidencefor long and, as faras we can tell, reasonably peacefulcoexistence with Arab communitiesin the subcontinentfrom even before the beginningof thisperiod (communities that, to be sure,were likely to have been demographicallyminute). New ways of life, Arab, Turkic, Parsee, could be accommodatedrather comfortably within preexistingconceptual frameworksof culture-by no meanswere these incommensurable worlds in collision.Some especially suggestivedata include a land-grant,of the time of Arjunadevaof the Vaghela dynasty,to one NuruddinFiruz of Hormuz(El 34:143-52; Majumdar1956:330ff.). He is with effortlessreconceptualization incorporated as a "deeply religiousman" (paramadhdrmika)who "in accordancewith the dictatesof his own religiouscodes" (svadharmasastrdbhiprayena)wished to build "a 'mosque,' that is, place of worship" (mijigitidharmasthana;mijigiti = masjid)in "theYear 662 of the Enlightener-Prophet Mahammada, that is to say, Year 1320 of King Vikrama tca. A.D. 12641" (bodhakarasulamahammadasamvatvikramasamvat [rasula < Arabicrasz7l, "messenger" '). Other evidenceshows that attemptsat communicationwere made fromthe other side, too, even fromthe seeminglyunlikeliest quarter. For example,in 1027, near the end of his life, Mahmud of Ghazni had a dirhamstruck at Lahorethat carried on the reverse,in Sdradd script,a colloquial Sanskritrendering of the confession of faith, the kalima: avyaktameka muhammadaavatara nrpatimahamuda, "The Unmanifestis one; Muhammad is [its] incarnation;Mahmud is king" (Deyell 1990:346, pl. 66; 73-74). ShihabuddinGhori also, fora shorttime, issued bilingual gold coins with images of a seated Laksm1(Sircar 1983:652ff.). The Qutb Minar itselfwas interpretedsimply as anothervictory pillar (kirtistambhaor jayastambha) by the workmenwho once repairedit, as theywrote, "during the victoriousreign (vijayarajye)of Sri Suratrana["sultan" as well as "saviorof the gods"' Pherojasahi by the graceof Visvakarma"(Prasad 1990:3, 19, 34-35). Full-dressSanskrit prasastis were composed in honor of later sultans such as "Sri Hammira Gaya.sadina" (GhiyasuddinBalban, reigned1266-86) and "Kuddi Alavadina"(Alauddin KhiljI, reigned 1295-1315); regardlessof the materialmotives underlying the discourse, thesedemonstrate a sustainedand largelysuccessful effort at interculturaltranslation (JASB 43:104-10; Prasad 1990:3ff.;El 12:23ff.;JIH 15:181-83). It was an effort,however, in the face of obstacles,as otherevidence suggests. The currenttextbook view of Indianhistory holds that prior to the medievalinvasions, "Neitherreligious wars nor otherwars involvingfundamental principles had ever been waged in India" (Kulke and Rothermund1986:166). The question whether the coming of the Central Asians did provoke "religious wars" or touch on "fundamentalprinciples" is altogetherunclear (as unclearas whetheror not such warsantedate this period); in fact,it has provenone of the deeperideological divides in the historiographyof the period. One thing we can say is that these historical eventshad textualeffects in the domain of elite Sanskritcultural production that were to a degreeunprecedented. For instance,whereas India had witnessedearlier immigrationsthat made lastingimpressions in the popularimagination (that of the Partho-Scythiansin the firstcentury B.C., forinstance, or the EphthaliteHuns in 27Theongoing work of Andre Wink (1990ff.) will fill manyof the enormousgaps that now exist at least with respectto the political and economichistory of this encounter.

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 286 SHELDON POLLOCK the sixthcentury A.D.), we have little in literarytexts of thoseearlier periods that is comparableto the ethnicallycoded representationsof differenceand visions of martialferocity found later. We have seen a tellingexample of this in the tenth chapterof the Prthv-rajavqjaya.Another is providedin a contemporarydescription of the invasionof Mewar ca. 1220 fromAct 3 of theHammframadam4rdana, "Crushing the Pride of the Amir ti.e., the Turk]," a drama of the "historicalpresent" with hardlya precedentin Sanskritliterature for the historicalspecificity of its violence. By contrast,however-and I would lay stresson this-the religiousidentity of the CentralAsians is not once thematizedin Sanskritsources. In the case of earliernewcomers, moreover, within a generationor two at most, these seem not only to have been assimilatedbut largelySanskritized. With the eventsin westernIndia of the eleventhand followingcenturies-which in addition markedthe firsttime Islamic cultureentered "Aryavarta" (the eventsin Avanti in A.D. 725 aside), despite a presenceon the westernborder of the subcontinent throughoutthe previous300 years-something new was encountered:A cultural forcepossessed of an apparentlysecure identity (or, perhaps,in the case of Turkic peoples recentlyconverted to Islam, a particularlyassertive identity), largely unassimilatingin such crucial areas as linguisticand religiouspractice. As A. B. M. Habibullah has put it, "For the firsttime in her history,India was to reconcile herselfto the existenceof a separateculture-community" (1961:53). Again, the discernibletextual consequences suggest a sense of destabilizationamong the elites of the periodwhose intellectual as well as politicaldominance was being challenged by an unfamiliarcultural formation, coupled with that kind of self-recognitionmade possible only by a contrastiveOther. It is, forinstance, during this period-just in advance of the temporal and spatial progress of the Sultanate-that the dharmanibandhas,those great encyclopedic constructions of "the Hindu wayof life," achieved perhaps their firstand certainlytheir most grandioseexpression: the Krtyakalpataruof Laksmidharaat the courtof the Gahadavala king Govindacandra in Kanauj and Banaras(ca. 1130); that composedat the courtof, or perhapseven by, King Ballalasenaof Bengal (ca. 1175); the Caturvargacintamaniof Hemadri at the Yadava courtin Devagiri(ca. 1270), and the Parasaramddhaviyaof Madhava at the Vijayanagar court of (probably) Bukka Raya (ca. 1400). Totalizing conceptualizationsof the society,one can argue,became possible only by juxtaposition with alternativelife-worlds; they became necessaryonly at the momentwhen the totalform of the societywas forthe firsttime believed,by the professionaltheorists of society,to be threatened.28In such a contextthe threatwas easily imagined,or imaged forth,as the threatof an antiworld. In the faceof substantialpolitical uncertainty, then, and consonantwith other kindsof culturalrepresentations, the Ramayanawas repeatedlyinstrumentalized by the rulingIndian elites of the middle period to providea theologyof politicsand a symbologyof otherness.One index of such instrumentalizationmay well be the finaltextual event I want to notice, the vast vernacularizationof the epic. For it is now. fromabout the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, and on thenerinherv 281 say "believed . . . to be threatened"because it is difficultto locate fundamental culturaldiscontinuity caused by theseevents. Al-Biruni'swell-known remark that "Hindu scienceshave retiredfar away fromthose parts of the countryconquered by us, and have fled to places which our hand cannot yet reach, to Kashmir, Benares, and otherplaces," bearsmore a figurativethan a literalinterpretation. From what I knowat presentit certainly seems that variousforms of Sanskritcultural production even in places at the centerof the maelstromlike Ajmer and Pattan remainedlargely unimpeded after their absorption into the Sultanate(see, forexample, the brieffamily biography of the court pandits of Ajmer reproducedin IHQ 16:569ff.). This was largelythe case in Bengal as well.

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RAMAYANA AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN INDIA 287 of the Sultanate,that rdmakathdfirst appears in manyregional languages, even in thosewith long antecedent literary histories. In Marathi,for instance, prior to Ramdas's versionca. 1680 we findonly the 1599 adaptationof Eknatha,which itselfhas a complex sociopoliticalagenda (Tulpule 1979:355ff.). The long literaryhistory of Kannada does not producea vernacularRamayana (beyond the Jain adaptationof "AbhinavaPampa," ca. 1150) until 1590, theso-called Torave-Rdmiyana of"Kumara Valmlki." The earliestRamayana in easternIndia is theAssamese version of Madhava Kandal1, composedat the requestof the Barahi king Mahamanikya,ca. 1350 (cf. Smith 1988:27, 35). Like the dharmanibandhas,these textualeffects followed the trajectoryover space and time of political change. Moreimportant than this, however, the valences now formulated and established- of the divine Hindu realm and the demonic "outsider,"a political mythologyof efficacioussimplicity-acquired a stabilityunlike any otherrepresentations, to be resortedto time and again over the coming centuries.The veryfact that earlier powerfulgroups had deployedthem made these symbolicproperties all the more ready to hand, and all the more univocal. The identificationof the Muslim as rdksasaor asura, for instance,begins to find its way into the later commentaries on Vlmi-ki'sRdm7yana itself: When in the thirdbook ofthe epic thedemon Viradha asks to be buried in a pit-for such, says the poet, is "the immemorialcustom with respectto dead rdksasas"-two Decanni commentatorsof the earlyeighteenth centurynote that "the Yavanas ti.e., Muslims] who are the r7ksasasof the Kali age still followthis custom"(Pollock 1991:25 1). The image becomesalmost automatic from the end of our period onward. In the western Rajasthani narrative Kainhadadeprabandhaof Padmanabha (A.D. 1455), forexample, the poet tells how "the asura stone-breakersclimbed up the Sikharaof the templetof Somnath}," and how Kanhadade returnedhome "afterdestroying the asuras. ... He has secured freedomto Lord Saiikarafrom the bonds of the Turks" (Bhatnagar1991:10, 28). In the late seventeenthcentury, Ram Das rewritesthe Ramayanafor Sivaji, king of Maharastra,casting Aurangzebas Ravana, while Kavi Bh-usandoes likewise, although for him, Aurangzeb is the incarnationof Ravanaa'sgigantic brother, Kumbhakarna(Ahmad 1963:476). In this light, too, we may wish to view it as an attempton the part of the Mughalsto neutralizeby appropriationthis meaning system of the Ramayanawhen, in the miniaturesaccompanying the Persiantranslation of the epic preparedat his court,Akbar is projectedas King Rama and the r7ksasasrecoded as Persiandivs. A little later,however, in his letterof 1665 to Raja Jaisingh,Sivajl uses just this Persianterm to referto Muslimsgenerally (they are "demonsin the guise of men," ki div ast dar si7rat-iddami), and Aurangzebin particular("tlet us] devise some spells against that mad demon,"fusni bar a div-i mastdvorim; Sardesai n.d: 163, 169). And aroundthe same time,Jagat Singh of Mewar (A.D. 1628-52), who traces his lineage from Rama (El 24:65 vs. 5), commissions an illustrated VilmikiRdmi7yana of unprecedented grandeur (Andhare 1987:74ff.; Losty 1978:3-14).29 The Mughal revalorization,it would seem, did not go uncontested. Whateverthe "real" stateof affairs,the rulingelites of the period wereclearly committedto drawingas keenaAdichotomy as theycould betweena troubledpresent and an unknownfuture, and a recreationof the imaginedpast of the Ramayana was the sharpestinstrument they could find.

290n Dassehra, as witnessedby Tod, beforethe Rana of Mewar and his troopsthe bards would celebrate"the glories of the past, the fameof Samra . . . Sangran,Pratap, Umra, Raj, all descendedof the blood of Rama, whose exploits,three thousand five hundred years before,they are met to celebrate"(Tod 1884, Vol. 1:620).

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Historicist Interventionism

If theadoption of the Ramayana to processthe events of the eleventh to fourteenth centuriessuggests a complexinterplay of cultureand politicalpower, equally complex is the problem of the presentwith which I started,the reappropriationof this imaginaryin contemporaryIndia. And, indeed,all thatI've recordedseems to have little directlyto contributeto this question, to making sense of the display of culturalsymbols in the pursuitof politicalobjectives in contemporaryIndia. There are at leasttwo questionshere, both difficult to answer:What possiblerelationships, if any,can be positedbetween the reemergenceof Rama-the Rama of L. K. Advani of the BJP (illustration1)-and an earlierpolitical semioticsof Rama-the Rama, say, of PrthvirajaIII (illustration2)? And what does it mean to seek to intervene in the presentvia an archaeologysuch as I havepresented; what is the roleof history in the currentcontention? Can one arguethat, precisely because it had beenone of theprincipal components in a political imaginaryrepressed or displacedduring British colonial rule and the nationalistmovement-a nontheocraticmovement led by a westernizedelite-the Ramayanamytheme has returnedwith vigor in the post-Independence,or rather post-Partition,period markingthe quest forIndia's political self-understanding?30 If the Ramayanahas servedfor 1,000 yearsas a code in which protocommunalist relationscould be activatedand theocraticlegitimation could be rendered-if it constitutesan imaginarywithin which the public sphereis not sunderedfrom the religious,and at the same time cannot be conceptualizedwithout a concomitant demonizationof some other-it makessense that it would be throughthis mytheme par excellencethat reactionarypolitics in India todaywould findexpression in the interestsof a theocratizationof the state and the creationof an internalenemy as necessaryantithesis. A secondthought cautions that it is conceptuallyimpossible even to link these two historicalmoments. For one thing, the deity Rama in his abstract(nirguna) formhad intervened,occupying in differentdegrees and for some fourcenturies startingwith Kabir, a focalpoint of almostsupracommunal religious devotion. This is a phenomenondifficult to correlatewith a communalistcoding of thepersonalized form(sagu.a) of Ramacandra,although I don't thinkimpossibly so (it is not clear that "Ram" ever means Ramacandrafor Kabir; Vaudeville 1974:115). A rather strongerreason for caution is thatthe Ramayana-a workwhose fluidity and linguistic variabilityI alluded to at the beginningof thisessay but have a prioribracketed- is, to be sure, more than a single text. For some scholarsit ratherapproximates a literarygenre, library, or language, added to, reworked,rewritten in everyregion and everycommunity, and in everycentury for perhaps the last twenty;the tradition of the Ramayana,it is oftenargued, has been a traditionof contestationrather than a traditionof canonicity,starting at least with the Jain Palmacaria in the fourth or fifthcentury. For this reason,and because of even the Sanskrittext's instability (oftenexaggerated, though), some hold that theremay no longerexist any such thingas theRa-mayyana, if ever theredid (Rao 1991). Furthermore,literary meaning is historical,not essential,at the end of the millenniumno less thanat its beginning;it is generatedby interpretivecommunities,

30Severalcolleagues (includingJonathan Parry of the London School of Economics) do, however,tell of oral Ramayana narrativesthat projected the colonial administratorsas rdksasas(specifically descendants of Mandodarl),and England as Lanka. None has been re- corded to my knowledge.

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RAMAYANA AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN INDIA 289 not by texts in themselves,and these communitiesare always changing and repositioningthemselves. Beyond all this, the Ramayana has been the object of numerous,sustained attempts at reconceptualization.All the reworkingsI mentioned are, of course,themselves new interpretations,but the past centuryhas also witnessed new criticalreassessments and consciousretargetings of the epic. This might lead to theargument that any notion of a divinepolitical order has alreadybeen neutralized fora secularsociety by such reinterpretationsas that of MohandasGandhi, forwhom "Ramraj means rule of the people. A personlike Ram would neverwish to rule" (Lutgendorf1991:381); or thatthe Ramayanaa'sdemonization of the otherhas been neutralizedfor a pluralisticsociety by such reallegorizationsas that of Aurobindo, who somewhereasserts that "the incarnaterdksasa" is the "huge unbridledforce . . . of the exaggeratedego." Yet it seemsto me possibleto reasonotherwise. Consider how the Rama legend has continuouslybeen subjectto a processof canonizingpurification. The Ramanand Sagar televisionversion is onlythe mostrecent in a long seriesof attempts, of which Valmiki'smonumental text is doubtlessthe startingpoint, to establisha hegemonic version,and it is this, I've contended,all oppositionalversions presuppose in their opposition.A similarrecirculation of energyseems to be detectablewith respectto the narrative'sputative communal reading. Medieval codingsof the Ramayanaare an instanceof a mythopoliticalstrategy available forrecurrent deployment, such as is takingplace in India today.This is clearnot onlyin the tacticalchoice of Ayodhya itselfand the birthplaceof Rama as the site of struggle,but in the attempton the part of the BJP and Vishva Hindu Parishadto representMuslims as demonic(Hess 1992; the VHP's Hindu Vishva,August 1990:42ff.,reprints the letterof Sivaji noted above). Yet even if this is all true,it is by no meansself-evident what historical analysis of any sort,including the sortI have just made, can add by way of critiqueto the political conversationof the present.It's rathersurprising, actually, to find the question of the relationshipof historyand culturalcritique so rarelyposed amid the ever-proliferatinghistoricizations and genealogiesof both literaryand social texts. At issue are not only complex philosophicaland psycho-socialquestions of the relationshipof historicalknowledge and political action, althoughanalysis of these questionsseems usually to be foreclosedby shibbolethsabout ignoringand repeating history,or knowingand changinghistory. There are also equally difficultproblems of the public uses of textualforms. How complexthe questionof criticalinterventionism of textualscholarship can be is exemplifiedby the fateof Salman Rushdie's The SatanicVerses. It does little good to tryto demonstrateby a close readingof the novel that textuallyit escapes the charge of blasphemyleveled against it. For, afterall, the novel itself-the "object-text"-has neverbeen the issue; it is an occasionrather than a cause. Those who insist that the novel be banned admit freelythat theyhave not, and would not, read it. "I do not have to wade througha filthydrain to know what filthis," Rushdie'smain opponentin India famouslyproclaimed. Similarly, those who have now made Ayodhyaan issue-the BJP and VHP-seem less interestedin the text ofthe history of Ayodhya than in thedivisive politics it can articulate.The scientization of the problemadvocated by progressivehistorians at JawaharlalNehru University in New Delhi was shownfor the misdirectionit is when the BJP and VHP indicated their refusalto abide by court adjudicationbased on "historical"evidence. In a newspaperadvertisement taken out afterthe demolitionof the mosque, the VHP declared,"We expectothers to respectthe Hindu faiththat Lord Rama was born at the spot where the Ayodhyastructure stood. Mattersof faithare beyond the

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Illustration1. The then-Presidentof the BharatiyaJanata Party, L. K. Advani, picturedas Rama on the coverof one of India's largest news magazinesin May 1991.

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Illustration2. Portraitof "Cavana PrathiRajani, i. e. Cahamana PrthvirijaIII, Deogarh, ca. 1810 (possiblyby Bagata; see Daniel J. Ehnbom,Indian Miniatures: the Ehrenfeld collection. New York: Hudson Hills Press, in associationwith the AmericanFederation of Arts, 1985, no. 54).

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 292 SHELDON POLLOCK jurisdictionof Courts,acceptance by historians,or approvalof governmentagencies." Thermoluminescencedating of archaeologicalremains is hardlypertinent here. It is not easy, then, to sustaina claim forliterary-critical or historiographical interventionin the face of problems that are not, in fact, literary-criticalor historiographicalbut somethingelse, whetherpostcolonial nativism, religious identity crises,political mobilization, or a new phenomenonthat awaits categorization. One would think that our targetshould be the "denunciation-text"rather than the object-textto whichthe formerrefers by whatare oftenmost tenuous representations. What, then,grounds the logic of, let alone justifiesfaith in, criticalhistoriography in such crises? Not only is the relationshipbetween history and political action problematic, but so is historyitself. The veryconceptualization of the JNU scholars-of "the political abuse of history"-ignores the fact that objectivisthistory has been one of the principalknowledge-forms in whichpost-Enlightenment politics has expressed itself.The verysubject-matter of historyis the state,as Hegel put it, which"involves the productionof such historyin the veryprogress of its own being." One can soonerargue that, far fromenabling emancipation,historical writing itself-the positivist-objectivisthistoriography of Western science, what Hegel might call "historicalHistory"-bears a substantialmeasure of responsibilityfor the reactionary politicsand the romantichistoricism driving them for the past century,in Europe as well as Asia. Ayodhyawould hardlyhave assumedthe dimensionsof the present problemwere it not forscientized historicality itself (objectified in such texts as the archaeologicalreports and colonial gazetteersconstantly cited by the partiesto the dispute) and the pursuitof originsit delusivelyinspires. When we consider parallelif moreapocalyptic cases such as the roleof historicistnostalgia in postcolonial Cambodianpolitics-the link betweenmodern French historiography of precolonial Cambodia and the political programof the Khmer Rouge (Barnett 1990)-it is difficultnot to wonderhow a mode of inquirypartly responsible for the problem can be expectedto solve it. Perhapsit cannot,in fact.As ifin desperateacknowledgment of thisincapacity, colleagues in India have recentlybegun to speak of an "ethics of forgetting,"an almostpostmodern abandon and "dememorization"(Lyotard 1973:303), as if realizing thatit is notthose who forget,but thosewho "remember"the past that are condemned to repeatit. But, alas, forgettinghistory will neverbe a matterof ethics. History will alwaysremain a site of strugglesince, as Nietzschesaid, "only the beast lives unhistorically."What seems to me worthconsidering is how to change the terms of this struggle.Part of the difficultyin confrontinga complexand ongoingevent like thegrowth of a multiculturalsociety such as India'sis theever-renewed recognition of the aporia of narrative,of findingthe one true narrativeconfiguration of facts. There are no groundsfree from the politicsof the presentto determinewhat story to make this materialtell. It's a truismworth repeating that not only don't facts speak forthemselves, they're not even facts. The "documents"of political events of the eleventhto fourteenthcenturies in Gujarat, Rajasthan,and the Deccan are themselvesrepresentations, constructions, arguments, which offer only as transparent a vision of "reality"as the contemporaryreader wants to attributeto them. There seem, then, to be cases, not all cases but some like "Ayodhya,"where wisdom lies in turningfrom the historicalto the metahistorical.Abandoning the dangerousand chimericalquest forthe originaryin historyin favorof chartingthe ways in which meaning has been created and promulgatedin historyat least acknowledgesthe past as somethingboth the objects of our historiographyand we its subjectscreate; the past as somethingconstantly practiced. This isn'ta brandnew

This content downloaded from 128.112.203.157 on Thu, 21 Aug 2014 21:49:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RAMAYANA AND POLITICAL IMAGINATION IN INDIA 293 program;Marc Bloch seemed to envisionsomething of this orderfifty years ago: "The trealhistoriographical] question is no longerwhether Jesus was firstcrucified and then resurrected,but how it came to pass that so manyfellow humans today believe in the Crucifixionand Resurrection." Howeverunsuccessfully I may have gone about it here,such a projectremains for me compelling. If the grand Ramayana continues to be a language of mythopolitics-notbecause it is inherentlysuch a language but because thereis now a historyof its doing that specificsymbolic work-available forencoding the paired forcesof xenophobiaand theocracy,one way to begin to neutralizethose forcesis throughanalysis of the constructionand functionof sucha meaningsystem, and of its contemporaryredeployment. As theirportraits suggest, my two historical momentsmight be viewed, to returnto the greatMarxian tropology, as historical repetition:the firsttime as tragedy,the second as farce.But we have alreadyseen that the firsttime aroundmay have had less of the tragicabout it than is usually supposed. As forthe farce,Ernest Gellner warned recently that we shouldn'ttrust Marx's aphorismtoo much; the real tragedymay come the second time.

List of Abbreviations

BI BibliothecaIndica BORI BhandarkarOriental Research Institute BSOAS Bulletinof the School of Orientaland AfricanStudies CII CorpusInscriptionum Indicarum CI CriticalInquiry El EpigraphiaIndica EPW Economicand PoliticalWeekly HIG HistoricalInscriptions of Gujarat IA IndianAntiquary IHQ IndianHistorical Quarterly JAOS Journalof the American Oriental Society JASB Journalof the Asiatic Society of Bengal JBORS Journalof the Bihar and OrissaResearch Society JBRS Journalof the Bihar ResearchSociety JIH Journalof Indian History JRAS Journalof the Royal Asiatic Society JSAS Journalof South Asian Studies NLR New LeftReview SAS SouthAsian Studies Sil SouthIndian Inscriptions SS Social Scientist WZKSA WienerZeitschrift fur die KundeSlidasiens

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