Ramayana Stories In Modern South India

Fresh perspectives on the classic Indiana epic.

The Ramayana, one of the two pre-eminent Hindu epics, has played a foundational role in many aspects of India's arts and social norms. For centuries, people learned this narrative by watching, listening, and participating in enactments of it. Although the Ramayana's first extant telling in Sanskrit dates back to ancient times, the story has continued to be retold and rethought through the centuries in many of India's regional languages, such as Hindi, Tamil, and Bengali. The narrative has provided the basis for enactments of its episodes in recitation, musical renditions, dance, and avant-garde performances. This volume introduces non-specialists to the Ramayana's major themes and complexities, as well as to the highly nuanced terms in Indian languages used to represent theater and performance. Two introductions orient readers to the history of Ramayana texts by Tulsidas, Valmiki, Kamban, Sankaradeva, and others, as well as to the dramaturgy and aesthetics of their enactments. The contributed essays provide context-specific analyses of diverse Ramayana performance traditions and the narratives from which they draw. The essays are clustered around the shared themes of the politics of caste and gender; the representation of the anti-hero; contemporary re-interpretations of traditional narratives; and the presence of Ramayana discourse in daily life.

According to Vālmīki’s Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa (early centuries CE), Śambūka was practicing severe acts of austerity to enter heaven. In engaging in these acts as a Śūdra, Śambūka was in violation of class- and caste-based societal norms prescribed exclusively by the ruling and religious elite. Rāma, the hero of the Rāmāyaṇa epic, is dispatched to kill Śambūka, whose transgression is said to be the cause of a young Brahmin’s death. The gods rejoice upon the Śūdra’s death and restore the life of the Brahmin. Subsequent Rāmāyaṇa poets almost instantly recognized this incident as a blemish on Rāma’s character and they began problematizing this earliest version of the story. They adjusted and updated the story to suit the expectations of their audiences. The works surveyed in this study include numerous works originating in Hindu, Jain, Dalit and non-Brahmin communities while spanning the period from Śambūka’s first appearance in the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa through to the present day. The book follows the Śambūka episode chronologically across its entire history—approximately two millennia—to illuminate the social, religious, legal, and artistic connections that span the entire range of the Rāmāyaṇa’s influence and its place throughout various phases of Indian history and social revolution.

About the Author He is the CEO and Founder of Authorland Self Publishing LLP. He is a young businessman who is really enthusiastic about book publishing. His true calling is as a creative designer, but he has made publishing his vocation. He spent more than 12 years working as a designer, and for three of those years, he helped well-known firms go from failure to success. He only became a prosperous entrepreneur because of this. He values acquiring new skills and applying them to the company. He fervently thinks that every person in the world has a special life story and outlook. Yet, not everyone is able to create their own original narrative and publish it as a book. He entered the publishing industry in order to turn those folks into bestselling writers, not merely authors. About the Book Step into the enchanting world of Indian mythology with “Ramayana: A Brief Retold Version of True Indian Mythology.” This captivating book offers a concise and accessible retelling of one of the greatest epics ever written. Join Lord Rama on his extraordinary quest to rescue his beloved wife Sita from the clutches of the powerful demon king Ravana. In this retold version, the essence of the Ramayana is brought to life, weaving together intricate plotlines, compelling characters, and timeless moral teachings. Dive into a world of gods, goddesses, heroic deeds, and divine intervention, as you explore the depths of love, loyalty, courage, and the triumph of good over evil. With evocative illustrations and engaging storytelling, this book is a gateway to the rich cultural heritage and spiritual wisdom of India. Whether you are a mythology enthusiast, a scholar, or simply curious about Indian culture, “Ramayana: A Brief Retold Version of True Indian Mythology” will captivate your imagination and leave you inspired. Join the millions of readers who have been enchanted by the Ramayana for centuries. Discover the epic tale that has shaped the cultural fabric of India and continues to resonate across the world. Open the pages of this book and immerse yourself in the timeless saga of honor, devotion, and the eternal battle between good and evil.

This book discusses Ravanisation: the revitalisation of Ravana among Sinhalese Buddhists in post-war (after 2009) Sri Lanka. The Hindu Ramayana generally portrays Ravana as a cruel king. How and why, then, has Ravana gained the interest of Sinhalese Buddhists? This study takes an ethnographic perspective to answer these questions. The book discusses multiple Ravana representations that have emerged at an urban Buddhist site (the Sri Devram Maha Viharaya) and a rural site (Lakegala), and discloses how Ravanisation relates to Sinhalese Buddhist ethno-nationalism. In addition, the material, ritual, and spatial perspectives offer unique insights in the personal and local relevance of Ravana. Dr. Deborah de Koning holds a PhD degree in Religious Studies (Tilburg University, research funded by the Dutch Research Council) and currently works as lecturer Intercultural Communication and Hinduism and Buddhism at the Christian University of Applied Sciences (CHE, The Netherlands).

As a school of criticism, the central argument in Postcolonial studies revolves around dismantling the dominant narrative of colonial or imperial history. A colonization process not only captures the native people and culture but their lands too. Proper reading of postcolonial theory would be by understanding the epistemology of colonized environment or vice-versa. Even after decolonization the ideology of imperialism is persistent in native memory and thought. An embeddedness in native psyche not only nurtures imperialism but manifests them with the footprints of colonial masters. In postcolonial countries the discourse of social and economic justice is deeply rooted in ecology. As a consequence, environmental activists from postcolonial nations tend to see any modern policy as a disguised form of neocolonialism or imperial dominance, globalization and modernization. Since the shocks of imperialism and globalization are most strongly felt in the third world countries, most of them being former colonies, this edited volume intends to explore texts by South Asian writers examining how these writers and their characters cope with the destruction of the environment. This edited volume plans to seek out the writings of epistemological understanding of our environment. Moreover, the volume would also see a critical entanglement of race, class, gender, culture, modernization, globalization, nation and trans-nation etc. Furthermore, this book will attempt to show how different genres of literature ranging from fiction to non-fiction can bring out inimitable insights into varied understanding of postcolonial and ecocritical studies.

Cultures across the globe have embraced epics: stories of memorable deeds by heroic characters whose actions have significant consequences for their lives and their communities. Incorporating narrative elements also found in sacred history, chronicle, saga, legend, romance, myth, folklore, and the novel, epics throughout history have both animated the imagination and encouraged reflection on what it means to be human. Teaching World Epics addresses ancient and more recent epic works from Africa, Europe, Mesoamerica, and East, Central, and South Asia that are available in English translations. Useful to instructors of literature, peace and conflict studies, transnational studies, women's studies, and religious studies, the essays in this volume focus on epics in sociopolitical and cultural contexts, on the adaptation and reception of epic works, and on themes that are especially relevant today, such as gender dynamics and politics, national identity, colonialism and imperialism, violence, and war. This volume includes discussion of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Giulia Bigolina's Urania, The Book of Dede Korkut, Luís Vaz de Camões's Os Lusíadas, David of Sassoun, The Epic of Askia Mohammed, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the epic of Sun-Jata, Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga's La Araucana, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Kalevala, Kebra Nagast, Kudrun, The Legend of Poṉṉivaḷa Nadu, the Mahabharata, Manas, John Milton's Paradise Lost, Mwindo, the Nibelungenlied, Poema de mio Cid, Popol Wuj, the Ramayana, the Shahnameh, Sirat Bani Hilal, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Statius's Thebaid, The Tale of the Heike, Three Kingdoms, Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá's Historia de la Nueva México, and Virgil's Aeneid.

This book is the first to present current scholarship on gender and in regional and sectarian versions of the Rāmāyaṇa. Contributors explore in what ways the versions relate to other Rāmāyaṇa texts as they deal with the female persona and the cultural values implicit in them. Using a wide variety of approaches, both analytical and descriptive, the authors discover common ground between narrative variants even as their diversity is recognized. It offers an analysis in the shaping of the heterogeneous Rāma tradition through time as it can be viewed from the perspective of narrating women's lives. Through the analysis of the representation and treatment of female characters, narrative inventions, structural design, textual variants, and the idiom of composition and technique in art and sculpture are revealed and it is shown what and in which way these alternative versions are unique. A sophisticated exploration of the Rāmāyaṇa, this book is of great interest to academics in the fields of South Asian Studies, Asian Religion, Asian Gender and Cultural Studies.