Ramayana's role in carving out an Asian identity

by Nagalingam KUMARAKURUPARAN

The Ramayana, an ancient Sanskrit epic from India, is generally believed to surpass other works of world literature in its popularity, influence and longevity.

For more than 2,000 years, Ramayana - the tale of Prince Rama's life and exploits - has spread across the world and inspired retelling by saints, poets, scholars and performers for generations. In South East Asia and East Asia, the story was creatively adapted to reflect local cultures, beliefs and practices, and with globalisation, the growing interest in the epic has spread all over the world.

Ramayana the ancient epic remains relevant and meaningful even in the modern times.

The epic is a powerful metaphor, but its message is simple, the triumph, in the face of overwhelming odds of Dharma over Adharma or of Good over Evil.

Cultural life

Ramayana pervades the cultural life of South Asia and South East Asia in one form or another at all times. It appears in literature, in music, dance and drama, in painting and sculpture in classical and folk traditions and in all Asian languages.

Ramayana's appeal is broad and widespread. The Ramayana remains one of the most popular and influential narratives in South Asia, South East Asia and beyond, with mounting interest in its academic study around the world.

Originating in a very distant past as a corpus of tales, it received its earliest coherent form as a literary epic in Sanskrit under the genius of the sage Valmiki, the Adikavi or ‘First Poet’ and his Ramayana came to be known as the Adikavya, the first poem. Since then, innumerable versions have been composed, long and short, faithful to Valmiki or with alterations, in Sanskrit and in other languages, within India and outside.

Ramayana is successfully adapted in the art forms and traditions of Thai, Khmer, Malay, Balinese and Javanese (Indonesian) centuries ago.

Ramayana has broken the geographical and linguistic barriers. Different characters of the epic resonate differently in different cultures.

For example, the main female character Sita takes the centre stage in the Khmer (Cambodian) dance tradition.

Even the civil war in Cambodia could not dampen the spirit of the Cambodian women specially to celebrate the virtues of Sita.

Likewise in Kangra paintings the grandeur of Ravana's empire is portrayed in detail.

In the Kangra painter's eyes Ravana appears as the unrivalled monarch, ruling the dazzling city of Lanka.

The Japanese and Chinese scholars have written extensively on Ramayana's reach in Japan and China and on the extent of absorption the epic has had on literary traditions in East Asia.

They examine the characters, metaphors, situational context of the epic and its transformation in the Japanese and Chinese folk and classical literature including popular cultural practices.

Local versions

In South East Asia local versions of Ramayana had spearheaded creativity in painters, sculptors puppeteers, embroiderers and story tellers. Epics have the power of shaping societies. Ramayana has had a significant impact on ancient Asian societies with the spread of the story from South Asia to the South East, central and East Asia.

In many of these societies, especially those located in South East Asia, Ramayana evolved into unique and localised forms. Some characters in the story took on different roles than those found in the original version in Sanskrit, and new story lines were added to the epic. In other societies, including China and Japan, the story was introduced through Buddhist texts.

The Ramayana story was transmitted both by the Hindus and the Buddhists. In ancient times ‘The Rama story’ was as much a favourite of the Buddhists as of the Hindus.

In fact the discourse on Ramayana in China goes beyond the epic itself and is part of the larger issue of the cultural interactions between two great nations India and China.

Where Japan is concerned, the Ramayana (The title was rendered in Sino-Japanese as Ramaenna or Ramaensho) was known in pre modern Japan from Buddhist texts translated into Chinese (and circulated in Japan) which include several stories based, more or less indirectly, on the Ramayana, namely a summary of the entire tale; a variation on the Dasharatha Jataka; version from the Vessantara Jataka.

Pre-modern Japanese knew the basic narrative segments and several conceptual themes of the Ramayana. Ramayana in Japan existed in a sort of virtual fashion as an inter textual nebula, a repository of narratives were indeed exploited and developed at various levels during the history of Japanese literature.

The Ramayana epic is widespread throughout South East Asia and has become an important performance emblem in the region and surely Ramayana has contributed in the development of a shared Asian identity.