300 ramanayanas

THREE HUNDRED RAMANAYANS – A K Ramanujam “For every such Rama, there is a Ramayana.”

There is a group of 10 people. A person from that group decides to narrate a story to a person privately and asks him narrate the same story to the next person in the same manner and so on. And when the chain is completed, the person asks the last person to hear the story, to come and narrate the story. Then the person narrates the story which he had narrated. Both the stories to everyone’s amazement were totally different. What created those differences is what has been hinted by A K Ramanujam in this essay by taking the example of the “Ramayana”.

The essay starts by comparing the Ahalya episode written by two different writers- Valmiki and Kampan. What are common in both the stories are the relationships between the characters and the overall structure. The difference is in the weave, the texture and the colors i.e. the sequence of both the stories is different and the projection of the characters are also different. In his opinion the Kampan version of the Ahalya episode is very dramatic.

Rama has been perceived differently by different poets, saints or people; henceforth their narration of the story varies accordingly. He explained this by taking the example of the Jain version of the Ramayana. In the Vimalsuri’s Jain Ramayana the main focus is shifted from Rama, to the antagonist, “Ravana”. For the Jains, Ravana is noble, learned and a devotee of Jain masters. The Jains justify his nobility by making Ravana a tragic figure.

Surprisingly in this version of the “Ramayana” Rama doesn’t even kill Ravana!

For different languages, the sequence in which Ramayana occurs also changes. This can be explained by taking the example of the Kannada version of the Ramayana. In the folk narrative, the story opens with Ravana and his queen Mandodari and the birth of Sita. And then the birth and adventures of Rama and Lakshmana are narrated.

If there are so many variations within India itself, then if we go outside India, we meet entirely different tellings of the Rama story. One example that was taken is the Thai Ramakirti. The Thai version opens up very differently, and other instances like Sita’s birth the reunion of Rama and Sita have been modified. The Thai Ramakirti emphasizes more on the War part (Yuddhakhanda) of the Ramayana. And they are more interested in the character of Hanuman. Even the abduction of Sita by Ravana is seen as an act of love!

As the language changes, the radical differences are created. This is because how different tales start and end. This has been explained by taking the examples of the Sanskrit version

by Valmiki and the Tamil version by Kampan. In the Sanskrit version by Valmiki, the Ramayana starts with the story of Valmiki himself. Whereas the Kampan version the opening sections of each major work set into motion the harmonics of the whole poem, passaging themes and patterns of images. Another major difference among the Ramayanas is the intensity of focus on a major character like in the Jain Ramayana and the Thai Ramakirti. In the conception of every major character there are radical differences.

A K Ramanujam’s theory on the differences in the story due to translations is that all the translations of the Ramayana play on the knowledge of previous tellings and are called meta- Ramayanas. There are translations of Ramayana that are inspired from a Ramayana that was already written or told. And these translations travelled through different routes and varied accordingly. But Kampan and Valmiki Ramayanas are not translations of each other; they are just different versions or interpretations.

Conclusion The essay can be seen as comment on how human beings interpret things. This essay goes back to the question of why was a Ramayana written? Maybe different stories of the Ramayana are an answer to this question. If seen the other way round, the different versions of Ramayana from different regions can also be used as an analytical method to analysis different cultures or ethnic groups.

Stories are narrated to people in order to inspire them, teach them, entertain them, and enlighten them with things which they didn’t know before. The story of Ramayana is something that is very important to Hindu mythology as it tells us about both the religious values and teaches us the basic ethics and family values that a person should follow, by personifying the Gods! It tells us what is right and what is wrong. And the parameters of right and wrong vary from culture to culture, gender to gender and person to person.

Different interpretations f right and wrong by different people affects their way of narrating the story; focus on the characters, and how the story unfolds.

Therefore, these differences in interpretations of right and wrong gave birth to,” THREE HUNDRED RAMAYANAS.” Chandra UA1012