1

The Ramayana Narrative Tradition as a

Resource for Performance
Paula Richman

Where does the Ramayana narrative begin and end? The question sounds
straightforward, yet no single answer applies to every textual rendition.
Most pre-​colonial Hindu narratives which retell Rama’s story begin with his
birth on earth, but Chandravati’s 16th-​century Bengali telling of the story
opens with Sita’s birth.1 Some retellings of the story end triumphantly with
Rama’s coronation and the inauguration of his dharmic rule. Others, such
as a set of women’s songs, take the story onward to narrate Sita’s trials as a
“single” parent, raising her sons at Valmiki’s ashram. The Indian Ramayana
tradition encompasses many retellings in hundreds of literary works of dif-
ferent lengths and narrative arcs. Consider, for example, how differently the
story unfolds in these two examples. A brief one in Telugu consists of just
three words: kaṭṭe, koṭṭe, tecche, “built [the bridge to Lanka], beat [Ravana],
brought [back Sita].”2 The12th-​century Irāmāvatāram [The Descent of
Rama] in Tamil appears near the opposite side of the spectrum in length;
even without counting its extensive interpolations, it runs to more than
10,000 verses.3
Selectivity shapes where and how a retelling starts and ends, as well as
which episodes receive emphasis. Selectivity plays an even greater role in
how events from the Ramayana tradition are represented in performance.
The long and complex Ramayana narrative contains so many episodes and
characters that it is rarely performed today in its entirety.4 Most enactments

1 For an English translation of this unique text, see Bose and Bose (2013).
2 Velcheru Narayana Rao, a Telugu scholar, shared this three-​word summary with me.
3 The oldest extant Irāmāvatāram manuscript dates from 1578, but some later ones include up to

12,000 couplets, many added significantly later by Velli Tampiran (Blackburn 1996: 30).
4 A noteworthy exception is the Ramlila of Ramnagar, which includes recitation of the entire

Rāmcaritmānas by Tulsidas over 30–​31 days. See Rani’s Chapter 15 in this volume.

Paula Richman, The Ramayana Narrative Tradition as a Resource for Performance In: Performing the Ramayana
Tradition. Edited by: Paula Richman and Rustom Bharucha, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197552506.003.0001
4 Orientations and Beginnings

focus on one or a few linked episodes (episodic treatments) or consist of

greatly simplified plots (condensed treatments) presented in language ac-
cessible to their audience. The analysis of Ramayana performances in this
volume reveals intriguing patterns in selection of episodes, choice of lin-
guistic registers, and decisions about what to elaborate or condense.
To avoid confusion, the co-​editors of this volume use a consistent set of
terms to refer to different renditions of the Ramayana story. Valmiki’s ancient
Rāmāyaṇa epic, whose origins lie in bardic songs in praise of warriors’ valor,
presents Rama as a courageous warrior and ideal king. (Rāmāyaṇa in italics
with diacritical marks refers to Valmiki’s text. Without them, “Ramayana”
refers to the core story.) In contrast, “devotional Ramayanas,” composed in
Indian regional languages centuries later, represent Rama as fully divine on
earth and praise his compassionate salvific deeds. “The Ramayana tradition”
refers to the diverse corpus of texts and enactments that tell the story. Neither
a synopsis nor synthesis of multiple texts, the phrase encompasses Indian
Ramayana renditions collectively.
Performing the Ramayana Tradition contains two introductory essays, 10
essays on specific performances, three translations, two play scripts, and two
sets of interviews—​organized into six parts. Each part engages with issues
shared in two or more performances of episodes from the Ramayana tradi-
tion. The essay which you are reading provides a road map for the volume,
showing how each performance in each part draws (or does not draw) on
previous written or oral texts, but first we turn to the narrative units that in-
form Ramayana performances.

Narrative Units

The Ramayana narrative arc contains seven units called kandas (kāṇḍas;
“books,” “cantos,” or “sections”). Familiarity with the contents of the kandas
enables readers to locate enactments within the narrative’s arc. The earliest,
extant, full, literary text in the Ramayana tradition, Valmiki’s Rāmāyaṇa,
begins with the kanda that tells of Rama’s birth on earth and concludes
with the kanda that recounts his return to heaven.5 Valmiki’s depiction of

5 Robert Goldman, general editor of the authoritative, seven-​volume, annotated, English trans-

lation of the Rāmāyaṇa, concludes that the text’s oldest parts date to the mid-​6th century bce
(1984: 22–​23) and the final kāṇḍa to no later than the 2nd or 3rd centuries ce (2017: 69).
 The Ramayana Narrative Tradition 5

Rama’s story has been expanded, condensed, reordered, supplemented, re-

cast, rejected, opposed, allegorized, and critiqued by authors over the centu-
ries. Yet, his division of the story into six (or sometimes seven) kandas largely
endures in most Hindu retellings. To those familiar with the core story, a
kanda’s name quickly calls to mind specific events, characters, and settings.
The first three kandas narrate episodes that lead to Ravana’s abduction of
Sita. Bāla-​kāṇḍa focuses on Rama’s youth (bāla), dealing with his unusual
birth, initiation into his warrior duties, victory in the bow contest, and mar-
riage to Sita. Ayodhyā-​kāṇḍa relates the dynastic crisis in the capital city of
Ayodhya, which propels Rama’s exile to the forest and Bharata’s rule as re-
gent. Araṇya-​kāṇḍa depicts events in the forest (araṇya), where Shurpanakha
offers to marry Rama and is disfigured by Lakshmana when she tries to at-
tack Sita. Ravana’s revenge for his sister’s mutilation and his desire for Sita
lead him to abduct her and carry her off to Lanka.
The next three kandas culminate with the war between Rama and Ravana.
In Kiṣkindhā-​kāṇḍa, Rama secures as an ally Sugriva (exiled ruler of the
monkey kingdom of Kishkindha) by slaying Sugriva’s usurping brother. In
return, Sugriva sends his monkey army to locate Sita. In Sundara-​kāṇḍa
(sundara means “beauty”), Sita refuses Ravana’s offer of marriage and fixes
her mind on Rama. Hanuman locates Sita in Lanka and assures her that
Rama will soon rescue her. Yuddha-​kāṇḍa depicts battles (yuddha) in the
war. After many losses on each side, Rama slays Ravana, Sita proves her pu-
rity, and Rama ascends the throne, inaugurating his ideal rule.
Rāmāyaṇa includes another kanda, uttara (final), which most orthodox
Hindus also attribute to Valmiki.6 Textual historians, however, view much
of the Uttara-​kāṇḍa as a later work due to its heterogeneous content and a
style that differs from that of previous kandas. Sanskritist Sheldon Pollock
distinguishes between two different ways of understanding the history of
Valmiki’s Rāmāyaṇa. Philologists concern themselves with the text’s “ge-
netic history” (how the text grew into its present form), assuming that a text
changes over time as new layers are added, so they view textual passages
which contradict each other as proof that one was a later interpolation.7 In
contrast, the text’s “receptive history” refers to how pious Hindus revere the
text; to them it is irrelevant if one part of the text was written after the others,

6 For an astute introduction and helpful notes, see Sattar’s translation of Uttara-​kāṇḍa (2016).
7 Pollock (1991: 5–​6).
6 Orientations and Beginnings

since the whole Rāmāyaṇa attributed to Valmiki is perceived as a sacred and

indivisible text.
Uttara-​kāṇḍa’s longest backstory, which fills nearly half of the kanda,
recounts Ravana’s ancestry, birth, and deeds.8 It also depicts two controver-
sial deeds during the reign of Rama: his beheading of Shambuka, a Shudra,
and his banishment of pregnant Sita. The Ramayana tradition encompasses
a range of themes, including protection of ascetics, proper marital alliances,
a son’s duty to his father, friendship, valor in war, upholding social hierarchy,
and educating princes. Most of them appear in the enactments analyzed in
this volume.

Situating the Volume’s Endeavor

The volume brings together case studies that display different kinds of diver-
sity in enactments drawn from Ramayana narratives. Performances studied
include enactments from different historical periods and Indian regions.
All the productions in the volume have been staged in recent years; most
continue to be part of the repertoire of specific performance traditions. The
volume’s authors examine these enactments to tease out how they represent
Ramayana events and characters while adhering to (or departing from) the
conventions of individual performance traditions. In the process, the volume
reveals multiple narrative strands within the Ramayana tradition. In doing
so, it also highlights some of the ways that playwrights have conceptualized—​
and performers have represented—​episodes that exemplify these strands.
The majority of published scholarship on the Ramayana tradition focuses
on literary works, in manuscript or print, that recount or take the story for
granted. Yet Valmiki’s Rāmāyaṇa includes an account of its first recitation
by Rama’s sons, thereby locating oral performance at the start of the textual
lineage: Valmiki trained Rama’s twin sons, Lava and Kusha, to perform his
Rāmāyaṇa, which is “sweet both when recited and when sung” and “emi-
nently suitable” for accompaniment with drums and stringed instruments;
the boys are described as excelling in “articulation and modulation” while
singing the poem.9 Furthermore, until the mid-​20th century, literacy in

8 Robert Goldman and Sally Sutherland Goldman call this account of Ravana “a mini-​epic in it-

self ” (2017: 6).

9 Bāla-​kāṇḍa 4: 6–​9 (Goldman, trans. 1984: 132).
 The Ramayana Narrative Tradition 7

India was limited to small elite groups, so performances—​recitations, mu-

sical performances, and physical enactments—​served as major ways to
disseminate the story. Thus, focusing on performances of the Ramayana nar-
rative deepens our understanding about how most Indians have encountered
the story.
The volume’s contributors ask new questions about Ramayana-​ based
enactments, both well-​studied ones and ones that have been little studied. For
example, the longest and most elaborate Ramlila, performed in Ramnagar
(Varanasi) for audiences of thousands, has received more attention from
scholars than any other Ramayana performance in India. Shaktibhadra’s
Āścaryacūḍāmaṇi [The Wondrous Crest-​Jewel], enacted in the Kutiyattam
tradition, has also received meticulous scrutiny in Sanskrit, Malayalam, and
English studies. These two performances richly deserve the attention that
scholars have paid to them.10 Yet, by contextualizing them on a spectrum of
Ramayana enactments, rather than in isolation, the Ramnagar Ramlila and
Āścaryacūḍāmaṇi can be viewed in fresh ways. The volume also analyzes less
well-​known enactments, so readers who know only local productions can learn
of others. Thus, the volume demonstrates the centrality of performance to the
Ramayana tradition’s diversity.
The volume expands and extends Kapila Vatsyayan’s pioneering study of
Ramayana-​based performances (1975: 54–​100) by also analyzing enactments
in Sanskrit (Kutiyattam) but also in regional languages, such as Tamil (for
Kattaikkuttu), Kannada (Talamaddale), and Brajabuli (Bhāonā). Some per-
formance traditions have been ignored or shortchanged in standard surveys
of Indian theater, but this volume takes each case study seriously within the
framework of the Ramayana enactments across India. For example, outside of
Karnataka, few have heard of the verbal art called Talamaddale; Akshara K.V.’s
Chapter 13 in the volume provides the first analysis in English of strategies it
uses to debate about complex episodes from the Ramayana tradition.
Moreover, secondary literature about Indian performance traditions that
include Ramayana-​based productions tends to focus largely on legends of its

10 Space limitations make it impossible to cite all secondary literature on the Ramnagar Ramlila,

but the following exemplify diverse approaches: Schechner and Hess (1977); Kapur (1990); Kumar
(1995); Hess (2006); Lothspeich (2020). A team of scholars published a translation and analysis of
Āścaryacūḍāmaṇi in Jones, ed. (1984). Another volume by Margi, edited by P. Venugopalan (2009),
brings together for the first time the āṭṭaprakāraṃs (acting manuals) for seven acts (including three
manuscripts from Ammannur Madhava Chakyar) and krāmadīpikas (production manuals) for six
acts of Āścaryacūḍāmaṇi. Also see the regularly updated bibliography on Kutiyattam, under Heike
Oberlin (Moser)’s supervision: https://​publikationen.uni-​tuebingen.de/​xmlui/​handle/​10900/​46921.
8 Orientations and Beginnings

origins, enumerations of certain guru/​disciple lineages, comments on its aes-

thetics, accounts of styles of costumes and makeup, and/​or appreciative writing
about a few famous artists, without considering its relation to other forms of
Ramayana-​based arts in the region. A notable exception is the Ramayana tradi-
tion in Odisha, which has received more intensive study than other regions due
to Joanna Williams’s analysis of its literature, sculpture, illustrated palm leaves,
and performance (1996).11 The essays in this volume also contextualize specific
performance traditions in relation to, among other issues, political changes, is-
sues of caste and gender, and the economics of production. Furthermore, be-
cause the volume contains multiple case studies of performance traditions,
larger patterns emerge than if looking at only one performance tradition.
In addition, the volume encompasses multiple kinds of voices. They in-
clude remarks of Kutiyattam performers and scholars after a performance of
Āścaryacūḍāmaṇi and excerpts from conversations with the head of a monas-
tery that stages devotional dramas. In one essay, a director recounts how Marxist
teachings led to a production with caste violence as its core plot: in another
essay, a theater connoisseur who has regularly attended Talamaddale for several
decades shares observations about its arguments. One essay shows how local
legends represent the power of improvisation. Another scrutinizes prefaces to
printed playscripts for clues about publication history. By bringing together
voices of playwrights, actors, scholars, and spectators, the volume reveals how
differing interpretations of Ramayana episodes circulate in society.

Part I: Orientations and Beginnings

Part I in this volume provides three ways to orient readers to Ramayana-​based

performances. This chapter, “The Ramayana Narrative Tradition as a Resource for
Performance,” focuses on texts (e.g., those by Kamban, Sankaradeva, Valmiki) that
shape how performers enact episodes. By understanding the textual lineages of
the Indian Ramayana tradition, scholars of theater and performance and general
readers can see how playwrights and performers interpret, enact, and innovate

11 The case differs somewhat for Mahabharata narratives of the Pandavas and Krishna. For ex-

ample, Aparna Dharwadker analyzes plays drawn from the Mahabharata narrative during the
modern period (2005). Also see M. L. Varadpande’s Mahabharata in Performance, which contains an
overview of its episodes from various performance traditions (1996). For stories of Krishna’s life, see
Norvin Hein’s study of Ramlila and Raslila plays in Mathura (1972: 129–​271) and John S. Hawley on
enactments of Krishna’s deeds, especially in Vrindavan (1981).
 The Ramayana Narrative Tradition 9

within the Ramayana tradition. Next, Rustom Bharucha’s Chapter 2, “Thinking the
Ramayana Tradition through Performance,” orients general readers and Ramayana
scholars by analyzing relevant Indian terms dealing with theater and performance
across regions and performance traditions to facilitate a critical grasp of the psycho-
physical, dramaturgical, and contemporary registers of Ramayana performances.
A third approach to the Ramayana tradition emerges from looking at the narrative’s
role for beginning students of Kutiyattam, a centuries-​old Sanskrit theatrical form
whose plays are still enacted in India’s southwestern state of Kerala today. Chapter
3, “Where Narrative and Performance Meet: Nepathya’s Rāmāyaṇa Saṃkṣēpam,”
is introduced and translated from Malayalam into English by Rizio Yohannan.
This Rāmāyaṇa Saṃkṣēpam [Ramayana Condensed] forms part of a lineage of
summaries, which first appear in Valmiki’s Rāmāyaṇa itself. Some scholars view
them as vestiges of memory aids that ensured accurate transmission by bards who
recited oral narratives in court. The first chapter of Valmiki’s Rāmāyaṇa contains a
summary called Saṃkṣipta Rāmāyaṇa [Condensed Ramayana], which provides a
retrospective account of how Valmiki composed his Rāmāyaṇa.12 First, he heard
Narada, a celestial seer, summarize Rama’s deeds. It was only after this summary
that Valmiki created a new poetic meter, meditated, and composed his text. Thus,
Valmiki transformed Narada’s summary into a memorable poetic work.
Rāmāyaṇa Saṃkṣēpam, too, plays a transformative role as the initial text
through which students of Kutiyattam learn to perform memorable works
of theater. Yohannan analyzes how its linguistic and temporal features facil-
itate learning Kutiyattam’s basic gestures and expressions; students master
the skills and aesthetics of their art by watching, hearing, and imitating their
guru who enacts the summary. Its pedagogical role attests to the pivotal role
of Rama’s story in India’s oldest continuous performance tradition.13

Part II: The Politics of Caste

This volume’s Part II includes a poem and four plays that criticize the out-
come of the story of the Shudra named Shambuka, which first appears in the
Uttara-​kāṇḍa attributed to Valmiki. The story legitimates the social hierarchy

12 Saṃkṣēpam and saṃkṣipta both derive from the Sanskrit sam (together) and the verb root kṣip

(to condense, concentrate, compress), each denoting a concise summary.

13 What is often labeled Kutiyattam’s Ramayana trilogy consists of Aścaryacūḍāmaṇi,

Pratimānāṭakam [The Mirror Play], and Abhiṣekanāṭakam [The Coronation Play]. Many scholars
attribute the latter two plays to Bhasa.
10 Orientations and Beginnings

prescribed in brahminical texts, which divides humans into four ranked cat-
egories called varnas (varṇas). Brahmins (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas
(warriors), and Vaishyas (merchants) are classified as “twice-​borns,” having
two births: a physical one and later a ritual one that qualifies them to study
sacred texts. Thus initiated, according to brahminical texts, they are eligible
to perform tapas (asceticism). In contrast, those texts define Shudras as
servants, whom it ranks as the lowest and most polluting varna, denies study
of sacred texts, and forbids to perform tapas. The Sanskrit story culminates
with Rama maintaining the varna hierarchy by beheading Shambuka for
practicing tapas.
This first extant narration of Shambuka’s story contains four components,
each stressing that one must never perform the duties of a varna other than
one’s own. The first component depicts a Brahmin entering Rama’s court,
carrying his son’s corpse. He accuses the king of failing to uphold the social
order because a son would never die prior to his father in a well-​governed
kingdom. Second, Sage Narada warns King Rama that if a Shudra performs
tapas, it threatens the order of the cosmos, so the miscreant must be executed
immediately. I call the third component the “textual seed;” it depicts Rama
interrogating Shambuka, who is practicing extreme austerities. Warning
the ascetic to speak the truth, Rama asks Shambuka’s varna and the goal of
his tapas. Shambuka replies that he was born a Shudra and has engaged in
tapas to attain “the status of a god in this very body.” Even before Shambuka
finishes speaking, Rama decapitates him. The fourth component describes
sages and gods lauding Rama, certifying that Shambuka’s beheading is un-
ambiguously worthy of praise. In 20th-​and 21st-​century plays in this cluster
about Shambuka (Hindi, Shambuk), the only component that remains is the
textual seed, providing the basis for condemnation of upper-​caste violence
against Shudras.
Part II begins with Chapter 4, “Shambuk’s Severed Head,” written by
acclaimed poet and writer, Omprakash Valmiki (1950–​2013), translated by
Aaron Sherraden from Hindi into English. “Valmiki” at the end of the poet’s
name signals a connection between the allegedly low social rank into which
Omprakash was born and the ancient author of Rāmāyaṇa. Legend says that
the original Valmiki was born into a family of robbers, a group that brah-
minical texts classify as “impure.” Since they viewed Valmiki as polluting,
he was not judged worthy to chant Rama’s pure name. Instead, he was given
the mantra “marā” which, repeated constantly (ma-​rāma-​rāma), meant
that he uttered Rama’s name inadvertently, thereby accumulating merit. The
 The Ramayana Narrative Tradition 11

Dalit caste into which Omprakash Valmiki was born claims Valmiki as its
ancestor.14 “Shambuk’s Severed Head” assumes familiarity with the seed of
Shambuk’s story and charges that self-​proclaimed Rams today continue to
murder Shambuks, while society turns a blind eye to such atrocities.
The two remaining essays clustered in Part II examine the story’s textual
seed as it developed between the 1930s and the present. Sherraden’s Chapter 5,
“Recasting Shambuk in Three Hindi Anti-​Caste Dramas,” shows how a net-
work of Hindi publishers in North India printed plays about Shambuk’s life
and sold them at Dalit gatherings and local melās (fairs) starting in the 1930s.
The plays all feature (or take for granted) the textual seed of the interroga-
tion and beheading of Shambuka. He is portrayed as a disciplined and articu-
late ascetic who contravenes prohibitions against Shudras performing tapas.
The playwrights transform Valmiki’s solitary forest ascetic into a teacher at
whose ashram his followers imbibe self-​respect. After he is martyred to pre-
vent others from emulating his actions, his students unite to prevent future
upper-​caste violence against them.
Part II’s last essay, Chapter 6, on “The Killing of Shambuk,” by director
Sudhanva Deshpande, recounts how Jana Natya Manch (People’s Theatre
Front, known as Janam), a Marxist-​inspired street theater group, used
Shambuk’s beheading as the core of a 2004 play written to spread leftist ideals.
Janam staged “The Killing of Shambuk” in more than 50 proscenium and
open-​air productions in Delhi, Maharashtra, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh. The
play also integrated elements that expanded its scope, such as a subplot (a
love story), dramatic variety (a play within a play), and humor (a tale where
a clever laborer outwits a cruel landowner), but at its core lay the Shambuka
story’s textual seed.
At least five textual strands about Shambuka circulate in India. We know
that the first strand occurs in the Uttara-​kāṇḍa attributed to Valmiki. The
second strand, which appears mainly in Jaina texts, casts Shambuka as
Shurpanakha’s son, whom Lakshmana kills. A third strand in Hindu devo-
tional retellings portrays those slain by Rama as attaining moksha (eternal
dwelling in Vishnu’s heaven); these texts praise Shambuka’s killing as moti-
vated by Rama’s compassion because it enables Shambuka to attain the

14 For the Valmiki caste, see Lynch (1969), Juergensmeyer (1982: 169–​ 180) and Leslie (2005).
Besides an autobiography, Omprakash wrote a history of the Valmikis. Valmiki sanitation workers
in North India made newspaper headlines in 1988 by refusing to collect garbage until the serial
Rāmāyaṇ, which appeared on the state-​sponsored television channel, added the episode in which
(their alleged ancestor) Valmiki sheltered Sita in his ashram, which the serial had not included.
12 Orientations and Beginnings

highest spiritual goal. A modern Kannada retelling of Shambuka’s story alters

events so that Rama does not kill Shambuka; instead, after Shambuka uses his
accrued tapas to save the Brahmin from death, he realizes that all ascetics de-
serve his respect.15 These strands differ strikingly from the fifth strand, fea-
tured in the “Politics of Caste,” built around the textual seed of Shambuka’s
story and its present-​day implications.

Part III: Interrogating the Anti-​Hero

Part III focuses on Ravana. Sanskritist Sheldon Pollock argues that in

Valmiki’s Rāmāyaṇa, Ravana represents “the demonization of the Other,” but
is this claim also true of post-​Valmiki performances?16 The two essays in this
cluster indicate that the situation is far more complex than Pollock’s state-
ment indicates. In Chapter 7, “Ravana Center Stage,” I examine Tapassāṭṭam
[The Performance of Tapas], an improvised sequence inserted into the
Kathakali work titled Rāvaṇodbhavam [Origins of Ravana], shortly after
the work’s debut in 1780.17 I juxtapose it with Manohar’s 1954 Tamil myth-
ological drama, Laṅkēswaraṉ [King of Lanka], where Ravana abandons his
daughter when he learns that she is destined to destroy Lanka. The second
essay in this cluster, Bharucha’s Chapter 8, “Ravana as Dissident Artist,”
analyzes two recent avant-​garde Ramayana performances in English, juxta-
posing Vinay Kumar’s The Tenth Head with Maya Krishna Rao’s Ravanama.
The performance texts of both the productions, written by Kumar and Rao,
are included along with Bharucha’s critical annotation.
Tapassāṭṭam draws directly from sargas 9–​10 of the Uttara-​kāṇḍa attrib-
uted to Valmiki, yet Kapalingattu Nambudiri’s small yet pivotal changes
in emphasis transform the story’s outcome. By comparing the first part of
Tapassāṭṭam with the Uttara-​kāṇḍa verses upon which Nambudiri draws,
I show the result of his tiny modifications. In Uttara-​kāṇḍa, when Kaikasi
(Ravana’s mother) sees Kubera (Ravana’s half-​brother) cross the sky in his
father’s majestic aerial chariot, Kaikasi declares that both boys were sired

15 For Jaina tellings, see ­chapter 3 in Sheradden (2019). An early form of the devotional strand

appears in Bhavabhuti’s Uttararāmacarita (Pollock, trans., 2007: 145–​146). For the Kannada play by
K. V. Puttappa and a Tamil play, see Richman (2008: 129–​148), and for a Telugu play, see Narayana
Rao (2001: 159–​177). These southern retellings are little-​known in North India.
16 Pollock (1993: 21).
17 Rāvaṇodbhavam is generally regarded as the first Kathakali work with an anti-​ hero (prati-​
nāyaka) as its central character.
 The Ramayana Narrative Tradition 13

by the same father, but Kubera took his father’s wealth, leaving Ravana
none. This account depicts Kaikasi as a second wife jealous of the privileges
obtained by Kubera, the first wife’s son. Kaikasi incites in Ravana an ambi-
tion to perform asceticism that will allow him to surpass his half-​brother. In
contrast, centuries later in the 1780s, Tapassāṭṭam depicts Ravana hearing
Kaikasi weeping out of fear that her inferior status as second wife will de-
prive Ravana of privileges enjoyed by Kubera. To prove to his mother that
Ravana can overcome the limitations of his birth, he goes off to perform as-
ceticism that eventually brings higher status to Kaikasi. Because Nambudiri’s
slight alterations show that Ravana conducted tapas neither out of greed nor
egotism, the audience realizes that the goal of his harsh self-​mortification
was to end his mother’s sorrow. Therefore, Ravana appears in a more altuistic
and sympathetic light in Tapassāṭṭam than the Ravana in the Sanskrit
Uttara-​kāṇḍa.
Laṅkēswaraṉ, the Tamil mythological drama written and first staged
in 1954 by Manohar, who also starred as Ravana, made excellent use of
Manohar’s talent for finding a hitherto unrecognized nobility in “evil”
characters. He borrowed aspects of Ravana’s character from Kamban’s Tamil
Irāmāvatāram [The Descent of Rama] at a time when Tamil scholars and
antiquarians had successfully revived interest in Kamban’s text, hailing it
as proof of the nobility, continuity, and epic scope of Tamil culture, which
they linked with Ravana’s Lanka.18 Although Kamban reserved his highest
praise for Rama, he also endowed Ravana with the pivotal qualities of the
ideal ruler found in Tamil’s earliest war poems: he led his warriors to victory
and used war booty to enrich his realm. Manohar also borrowed an incident
in which Ravana’s infant daughter was put in a box and placed in the sea from
the Sanskrit Ānanda Rāmāyaṇa (ca. 15th century). Far from undermining
the play’s success, the two borrowings from older texts attracted enthusiastic
Tamil audiences, who attended 1,800 performances of the play in India and
Ceylon.
Turning to Bharucha’s essay, which highlights two avant-​garde interpret-
ations of Ravana, Vinay Kumar’s The Tenth Head focuses on a conflict be-
tween Ravana’s Tenth Head and the other nine heads. Although the script
refers to some individual events from the Ramayana story (e.g., the protec-
tive circle drawn by Lakshmana to protect Sita), the production connects to
Ravana primarily through independently envisioned imagery, graphics, and

18 Cutler (2003: 279, 301–​305).

14 Orientations and Beginnings

video, with no elaborate retelling of episodes from any familiar Ramayana

text. Over the centuries, artists have faced challenges when they depict
Ravana with a central head: since four heads extend outward on one side of
the central head and five heads extend outward on the other side, the visual
representation is uneven. Kumar uses this iconographic asymmetry to cri-
tique social collectives that demand complete conformity to their norms. In
the play, Ravana’s Tenth Head regularly dissents from coercion and military
violence that the nine heads perpetrate on those who do not submit to their
dictates. The Tenth Head’s major strengths lie in its innovative performative
dimensions and multimedia inputs, analyzed in Bharucha’s essay with anno-
tation of Kumar’s play text. This experimental theatrical work presents one of
Ravana’s heads in an unprecedented way.
Maya Krishna Rao’s Ravanama assembles fragments drawn from mul-
tiple texts to emphasize Ravana’s impressive physique, enjoyment of life’s
pleasures, and sheer power to obtain what he wants. Rao draws on a fragment
from Valmiki’s account of Hanuman’s visit to Lanka, where he enters a palace
bedchamber and is dazzled by Ravana’s magnificent sleeping body (V:8).
Ravanama also refers to a song sung by some Telugu-​speaking Brahmin
women about how Shurpanakha lures Sita into drawing Ravana’s big toe, the
only part of him that she saw in captivity. Then, the drawing metamorphoses
into an animation of Ravana, which seeks Sita’s love, thereby inciting Rama’s
jealousy that causes him to banish Sita to the forest. Rao even incorporates
a scene from a recent Tamil short story by “Ambai” (C.S. Lakshmi), where
Ravana teaches Sita to play the veena. Rao’s choice of fragments deconstructs
notions of Ravana as utterly evil and highlights his unique presence.19
Part III illustrates how four playwrights shape distinctive representations
of Ravana as more complex and sympathetic than a mere demonization of
the Other. Tapassāṭṭam supplies a different motivation for Ravana’s tapas and
evokes sympathy for Ravana and his mother as members of a low-​ranked
group who fight to gain respect in a hierarchical society. Manohar modifies
relations between characters to reinterpret how the actions of Ravana, his
wife, and his siblings lead to Ravana’s death. Kumar’s focus on Ravana’s ico-
nography enables him to utilize video, animation, and graphic art to depict
a dissident artist battling a hostile society. Rao’s assembly of fragments from

19 During a post-​performance conversation, Rao identified a key performance that shaped her

view of Ravana: the intensity and single focus of Tapassāṭṭam in Kathakali. As an actress who
has created her own one-​person show on Ravana, she vividly recalls how a Kathakali actor enacts
Tapassāṭṭam, sitting alone “in deep reflection, holding the entire space of the stage.”
 The Ramayana Narrative Tradition 15

multiple texts allows her to perform Ravana as a larger-​than-​life archetypal

presence who enjoys pleasure to its fullest, while challenging the norms of
established society.

Part IV: Performing Gender

Part IV investigates the complexities of performing male and female iden-

tities and highlights factors that facilitate or discourage actresses from per-
forming on stage, where the preponderance of Indian theatrical productions
has long featured only men, who play male and female characters. In doing
so, the two essays probe the nature of a performer’s agency in relation to the
Ramayana tradition and Indian society at large. Hanne M. de Bruin analyzes
a Tamil play that draws mainly on Kattaikkuttu theatrical conventions to
critique patriarchal norms embedded in the Ramayana narrative. Mundoli
Narayanan details the process by which Usha Nangiar first reconstructed
and enacted solos of female Ramayana characters that were part of the
Nangyarkuttu repertoire, yet now are almost never performed.20 Then she
began to create and enact her own solos that engage with the dilemmas of
women in Kerala today.
Bruin’s Chapter 9, “The Making of RāmaRāvaṇā,” analyzes a probing and
boundary-​breaking play developed at Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam, a residen-
tial school that trained talented girls and boys from socially underprivi-
leged backgrounds in theater and performance.21 The gurukulam promoted
women’s presence and voices on stage in Kattaikkuttu, which continues to be
a nearly all-​male performance tradition in rural Tamil Nadu. P. Rajagopal,
who comes from a family of Kattaikkuttu performers and was trained in it
from childhood, composed RāmaRāvaṇā, taught it to students, and directed
it. The play’s nonlinear structure focuses on episodes where Ravana and
Rama (via Lakshmana), perceiving their power and honor to be under
threat, respond by perpetrating violence on women: Lakshmana mutilates
Shurpanakha (at Rama’s order), Ravana abducts Sita, and Rama rejects Sita
after her rescue from captivity. Intriguingly, the major roles in RāmaRāvaṇā
were all played by girls and young women.

20 Henceforth, I refer to Usha Nangiar as “Usha,” as she is known in the Nangyarkuttu world.
21 Bruin was program director and main fundraiser at the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam. After training
a new generation of female and male performers, the school closed in the spring of 2020.
16 Orientations and Beginnings

By focusing on how both Rama and Ravana use women as pawns in male
rivalry, the play deconstructs binary oppositions between the demonic and
the divine, as well as adharmic and dharmic modes of conduct. The play also
dismisses binary opposition between Sita and Shurpanakha by representing
each as beautiful and independent.22 RāmaRāvaṇā draws on Irāmāvatāram’s
verses for song lyrics, quotes the passage in Kamban’s text where Rama
refuses to accept Sita back as part of this play’s dialogue, and depicts Rama
as being unaware of his divinity. During the play, a crown symbolizing power
and rule hangs above the stage; as the play ends, Sita pauses briefly under it
and then exits the stage, while the lyric of a song poignantly asks where a just
king is hidden. It asks that the king come forward to govern in an enlight-
ened way.
Narayanan’s Chapter 10, “Writing Her ‘Self,’ ” traces how Usha revived
and expanded female solos in the Nangyarkuttu repertoire, thus imbuing
them with a contemporary sensibility. The Nangyarkuttu performance tra-
dition consisted largely of actresses performing solos of female characters
who appear in the Kutiyattam repertoire; Nangyarkuttu is called a “sister”
form to Kutiyattam since both share the same theatrical conventions, yet
over time, female solos had nearly vanished. Some writers attribute their loss
to an oral tradition that claims it is inauspicious to portray the pañcakanyās
(five virgins):23 Sita, Tara, Ahalya, and Mandodari (four of the five) come
from the Ramayana story. In 1980, when Ammannur Madhava Chakyar, the
doyen of Kutiyattam performers and teachers, decided to resume training
students in Nangyarkuttu, Usha studied with him and also immersed herself
in Kutiyattam manuscripts of production and acting manuals. She discov-
ered that Nangyarkuttu had once been replete with female solos, even ones
later proscribed as inauspicious.
Realizing that the manuals served to authorize reviving women’s solos,
Usha reinstated and enacted several female characters in accord with
directions from the manuals. For example, in the production manual on
Āścaryacūḍāmaṇi, she learned about a solo on Mandodari (Ravana’s wife),
which included its first and last verses. After commissioning a Sanskrit

22 Valmiki depicted Shurpanakha as ugly, but Kamban set a precedent in southern depictions of

Shurpanakha in Irāmāvatāram, where she adopts a beautiful form when she approaches Rama.
23 Rama banished Sita because she was abducted by Ravana. Tara was Vali’s wife, who was appro-

priated by Sugriva. The husband of Ahalya cursed her for adultery with Indra. Mandodari, born to
Maya and a celestial apsara, married Ravana, who was a rakshasa. For analysis of the five virgins, see
Bhattacharya (2019).
 The Ramayana Narrative Tradition 17

scholar and Kutiyattam connoisseur to compose suitable poetry for the rest,
Usha enacted the solo, to great acclaim. In 2019, she received a request to
create a solo for the 100th publication anniversary of Kumaran Asan’s 1919
Malayalam poem, Cintāviṣṭayāya Sīta [Sita in Reflection], which poet and
Malayalam scholar K. Satchidanandan characterizes as interrogating “the
whole value system that led to her [Sita’s] tragedy.”24 Perceiving how pre-
sciently Kumaran Asan depicted patriarchy as trapping Sita and Rama in a
gilded cage, Usha created and enacted Sita not as a passive wife, but rather a
woman becoming conscious of the culturally constructed gender roles that
rob individuals of agency.
The case studies in Part IV analyze two ways that girls and women have
gained access to the stage and have claimed agency as performers. The
Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam trained girls for the stage by educating them to
enact female and male roles and by staging productions in which they were
treated as equals to boys. By training a new generation of actresses, the school
prepared them to combat attempts to exclude them from future theatrical
productions. In a different context, consulting manuscripts of Kutiyattam
manuals led Usha to realize that Nangyarkuttu actresses possessed more
agency in the past than in the present, so she used their textual authority
to revive old solos. Then, in the new solos she created, she challenged male
representations of female characters. Thus, she modeled how Nangyarkuttu
performers could not only recover and expand their repertoire but also in-
crease their exercise of agency.

Part V: Conversations and Arguments

Part V explores discourse about the Ramayana tradition in verbal

interactions among those who enact, watch, teach, or administer enactments
drawn from it. In Chapter 11, Bharucha interviews a scholar of South Indian
texts and two Kutiyattam performers. Chapter 12 contains excerpts from a
set of conversations with the head of a preeminent Vaishnava sattra (monas-
tery) led by a scholar researching monastic culture in Assam, along with this
volume’s co-​editors. Akshara K.V.’s Chapter 13, “Performing the Argument,”
examines episodes in Talamaddale, a Kannada verbal performance tradi-
tion, in which actors play Ramayana characters who argue about morality,

24 Satchidanandan (2005: 150). See Asan’s poem in English translation (Yohannan 2008: 64–​87).
18 Orientations and Beginnings

controversies, and ambiguities in the narrative, drawing on Kannada

retellings.
The interviews in Chapter 11, “Reflections on Ramayana in Kutiyattam,”
occurred after a multi-​night performance of Āścaryacūḍāmaṇi’s final act
concluded. They reveal different ways that textual scholar David Shulman,
actor Margi Madhu Chakyar, and actress Dr. Indu G.—​the latter two affili-
ated with the Kutiyattam cultural center Nepathya—​approach Kutiyattam.
Shulman has studied Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu literary texts for many
decades; only much later in life did he watch Kutiyattam performances at
Nepathya with deep intensity over many years. In contrast, Madhu Margi and
Dr. Indu G. began study of Kutiyattam by learning Rāmāyaṇa Saṃkṣēpam
and then spent an extended period in physical training, engaging with tex-
tual interpretations only afterward. In addition, Shulman encountered
Āścaryacūḍāmaṇi’s acts sequentially as he read the play-​text, while the two
performers learned each of the play’s acts as separate productions. Despite
differences in how they interact with texts, all three concur that the intrica-
cies of time and imagination play pivotal roles in enacting Ramayana-​based
works from the Kutiyattam tradition.
Chapter 12, “Questions around Rām Vijay,” provides excerpts from three
days of conversations with Sri Narayan Chandra Goswami, led by Parasmoni
Datta, along with Richman and Bharucha. They begin by discussing Rām
Vijay, one of the six one-​act plays written by Sankaradeva. Incorporating
dance, mimetic acting, songs, and percussion, the plays helped Sankaradeva
and his disciples spread Vaishnava bhakti (devotion) in Assam. Sankaradeva
also founded the sattra (monastic order), where, among other duties,
senior monks train talented novices to enact devotional plays. Rām Vijay
portrays the youthful deeds of Rama: defeating demons who harassed
Vishwamitra’s ashram, stringing the bow and marrying Sita, and encoun-
tering Parashurama.25 Rām Vijay lauds Rama’s protection of sages and su-
perior skill in archery. It also provides a model of devotion by stressing Sita’s
love for Rama, not only in this life but in her past one. Sankaradeva also
introduces humor in depicting Vishwamitra, whose ascetic practice should
have endowed him with equanimity of mind and control over his emotions.
Instead, when he beholds Sita’s beauty, he faints; when he sees Parashurama,

25 Medhi (1997: lix–​lx) analyzes the selection of episodes in Rām Vijay, commenting on ones
which appear (or do not appear) in Sankaradeva’s retelling of incidents from the Bāla-​kāṇḍa.
 The Ramayana Narrative Tradition 19

he trembles in terror. As I watched the play, the audience laughed heartily at

these scenes, as I did.
The monks venerate Krishna as the Supreme Lord, yet Rām Vijay, which
was written at a royal patron’s request, focuses on another avatar of Vishnu,
Rama, whom followers of Sankaradeva consider less powerful than Krishna.
In order to contextualize the apparent anomaly of Rām Vijay, the interview
with Sri Narayan Chandra Goswami covers a wide-​ranging discussion of de-
votional, philosophical, and monastic frameworks in Assam that directly af-
fected Sankaradeva’s conflicts with local kings, his familiarity with Valmiki’s
Rāmāyaṇa in Assam’s textual lineage, and the pivotal role played by worship
in the nāmghar (community prayer hall), which is also the primary perfor-
mance space of Sattriya. These factors illuminate aspects of Krishna-​centric
Assamese Vaishnavism that shape how Rām Vijay represents Rama.
Akshara K.V.’s “Chapter 13, Performing the Argument,” explains how
Yakshagana and Talamaddale both rest on a corpus of vocal music that serves
as a musical reservoir from which the bhāgawata (vocalist) selects which
songs to sing in a specific performance. After a song, actors improvise di-
alogue which is neither written down nor considered part of the prasanga
(prasaṅgas; text of an episode). Although these features are common to both
Yakshagana and Talamaddale, the two forms have become increasingly dif-
ferentiated over the last 40 years.26 While Yakshagana uses vivid costumes,
towering headgear, choreographed footwork, and, at times, adaptations of
plots and music from films, Talamaddale concentrates on verbal art; actors
wear ordinary clothing, sit while performing, and retain their focus on re-
ligious stories. Further, Talamaddale actors use their improvised dialogues
to showcase their specialized skills: some emphasize emotions, others as-
semble their arguments according to logic in philosophical texts, and yet
others represent characters in domestic settings. Actors generally receive
their assigned roles only upon arriving at a venue, so the most talented excel
at being ready to play any major character (e.g., Rama one day, Ravana the
next). Talamaddale spectators watch debates that resemble statements of
opposing lawyers in court, listen to arguments that unfold according to the
rules of philosophical logic, and laugh at humor that—​at times—​resembles
present-​day standup comedy.

26 My discussion here was enriched by conversations with, and performances by, Yakshagana and

Talamaddale artists and also spectators in Karnataka in January 2011 and December 2016.
20 Orientations and Beginnings

Pioneering Parti Subba (ca. 17th century) composed prominent

prasangas based on episodes in the Ramayana tradition. Some Talamaddale
actors draw directly on Kannada retellings from which the prasangas drew,
especially Narahari’s 16th-​century Torave Rāmāyaṇa and Lakshmisha’s
15th–​16th-​century Jaimini Bharata. They also draw on recent sources,
such as Helavanakatte Giriyamma’s women’s ballad and K. V. Puttappa’s
Rāmāyaṇa Darśaṇa, which interweaves ideas from Freud and Sri
Aurobindo. The two alternative titles used for one of Parti Subba’s most often
performed works, Vāli Vadhe [Slaying Vali] or Vāli Mōkṣa [Saving Vali], il-
lustrate Talamaddale’s openness to differing interpretations; the former title
interprets Vali’s killing as a cruel deed, while the latter title interprets it as a
salvific act since it releases Vali from the cycle of death and rebirth. Akshara
calls Talamaddale a “cultural forum for arguing with texts and previous
performers” because when actors perform competing interpretations of an
episode, they preempt any claim that an episode must only be interpreted in
one way. Actors playing Ramayana characters and Talamaddale audiences
credit performances with engaging, informing, and sharpening their
intellect.
Part V explores ways of conversing about episodes that illuminate
how various interpretations can coexist within Ramayana discourse. The
conversations, interviews, and arguments reveal the dynamic nature of
exchanges among performers and spectators of Ramayana episodes. They
show how region, language, and religious affiliation have produced a robust
body of diverse practices in performing the Ramayana tradition over time.

Part VI: Beyond Enactment

Thus far, this volume’s essays analyze enactments and contextualize them
in relation to textual traditions, language, and regions. The final part
examines enactment but goes beyond it to study what happens after it ends.
In Chapter 14, “Revisiting ‘Being Ram,’ ” Urmimala Sarkar Munsi reflects
on not only 25 years of acting in Uday Shankar Indian Cultural Centre’s
dance-​drama, Seeta Swayambara, but also events following performances.
In Chapter 15, “The Night before Bhor Ārti,” Bhargav Rani investigates what
audiences at the Ramnagar Ramlila do after a scene of the lila ends but before
the next begins, especially on the night before the lila’s last day.
 The Ramayana Narrative Tradition 21

Seeta Swayambara, in which Sarkar Munsi played the role of Rama, was
one of the most popular shows in the group’s repertoire. It drew on selected
Bāla-​kāṇḍa episodes: Vishwamitra bringing Rama and Lakshmana to his
ashram to defeat the rakshasas, the breaking of the bow that was Sita’s mar-
riage test, and the wedding of Sita and Rama. Uday Shankar’s dance curric-
ulum, designed in the 1940s and 1950s, required all students to study the
“male” movements of Kathakali and the “female” movements of Manipuri
dance, so Sarkar Munsi learned to enact “male” characters with specific
walks, facial expressions, and gestures. To play Rama, Sarkar Munsi received
a list of “dos and don’ts” that prescribed precisely how she must step, smile,
and move. She learned to embody Rama with an upright spine and respond
graciously when viewers came to her for divine blessings.
Yet none of this prepared her for “being Ram” in two other ways. The day
after she had enacted Rama on the previous night, the performers attended
a lunch at the house of a prominent judge, and his wife prostrated herself
on the floor in front of Sarkar Munsi. In doing so, she treated Sarkar Munsi
as Rama incarnate, even though Sarkar Munsi had packed up her costume
and was wearing everyday clothes. As a modest young 22-​year-​old woman,
she felt uncomfortable when an elder treated her this way. In addition, and
much more problematically, even while Sarkar Munsi modeled her facial
expressions after a Sri Rama whose smile signified inner peace, Sri Rama
was being appropriated by Hindutva forces in relation to the destruction of
the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on the alleged birthplace of Sri Rama (Gopal
1991). Sarkar Munsi concludes with reflections on why dancers are subjected
to (non-​explicit) constraints on their agency in relation to events outside the
world of dance.
Rani’s essay provides an ethnographic account of the activities of audiences
at the Ramnagar Ramlila not only after, but also between enactments of
Rama’s deeds. While this Ramlila has received more scholarly scrutiny than
any other Ramayana-​based performance in India, Rani has nonetheless
chosen a hitherto under-​analyzed aspect of it: waiting. And since, unlike
Ramlila at any other site, the one at Ramanagar includes a month-​long recita-
tion of the entire Rāmcaritmānas (often referred as “the Mānas”) by Tulsidas,
the daily time spent waiting after the enactments of individual episodes adds
up significantly. Between scenes, during the extended break for evening wor-
ship before the night’s performance, and then waiting for the auspicious mo-
ment for worship (ārti) at the end of each night, men in the audience nap or
22 Orientations and Beginnings

roam the grounds to greet friends and kin, drink tea, eat savories and sweets,
and exchange gossip.
Furthermore, the night before the dawn of the final day of the Ramlila,
Bhor Ārti, is the longest period of waiting, filled with the largest number of
activities other than watching or chanting Ramlila. Rather than going home
and returning in the early morning hours, lots of spectators, especially men,
spend the night at the site in activities infused with banārasīpan, the local
ethos of Varanasi/​Banaras that centers on leisure and pleasure. Rani argues
that if one focuses only on the ritual drama without sufficient attention to the
everyday practices pursued when the ritual drama is not being enacted, one
misses a crucial part of the experience of attending the Ramlila of Ramnagar.
In Bharucha’s comments in Chapter 16, “The Challenges
Ahead: Researching the Ramayana Performance Tradition,” he reflects on
what occurs during enactment and what occurs beyond it. He also highlights
the larger implications of the political forces discussed in Sarkar Munsi’s
essay and the nature of the “everyday” documented in Rani’s essay. Finally,
he sets out some methodological issues to be considered for future research
about performing the Ramayana tradition: the challenge of translation, the
marginalization of the vocal registers in contrast to its psychophysical elem-
ents, the economics of grassroots and rural Ramayana performances, and the
crucial difference between diversity and plurality in understanding the larger
political resonances of the Ramayana tradition today.

Texts and Kandas as Resources

Three texts have served as the most influential resources for the performances
analyzed in this volume: the oldest one, Valmiki’s Rāmāyaṇa; the ear-
liest devotional retelling in a regional literary language, Kamban’s Tamil
Irāmāvatāram; the most widely known one in North and Central India today,
the Awadhi Rāmcaritmānas by Tulsidas.
Performances featured in this volume confirm that Valmiki’s text
has served as a reference work for many playwrights. We have seen that
Tapassāṭṭam reinterprets the motivations of Ravana and Kaikasi while other-
wise holding tightly to the words of the Uttara-​kāṇḍa attributed to Valmiki.
The same Uttara-​kāṇḍa served as a key source when the Sanskrit scholar,
whom Usha had commissioned, consulted the Uttara-​kāṇḍa’s account of
Mandodari’s parentage, birth, and marriage. In addition, a different debt—​to
 The Ramayana Narrative Tradition 23

the manner in which Valmiki’s Bāla-​kāṇḍa presents the text’s own genesis
according to Sage Narada—​is taken for granted in the prologue to Manohar’s
King of Lanka; there Ravana explains to Narada the correct way to tell the
Ramayana narrative, so the sage will no longer circulate an inaccurate one.
Two Tamil playwrights each draw on different parts of Kamban’s
Irāmāvatāram to engage with contemporary debates of their day. Manohar’s
Laṅkēswaraṉ follows Kamban by representing Ravana as a heroic chieftain-​
ruler, an ideal praised in classical Tamil poetry. By investing him with more
nobility and grandeur than Valmiki does, Manohar tacitly acknowledges that
Tamil ideologues of his day had elevated Ravana, whom they view as their
unjustly betrayed ancestor, to a great Tamil hero. Nonetheless, Manohar’s
final scene still depicts Rama’s triumphant coronation after slaying Ravana,
in effect rejecting the ideologues’ claim that Rama was wrong to slay Ravana.
Half a century later, RāmaRāvaṇā quotes from Kamban for quite another
purpose. Rajagopal condemns Rama’s refusal to accept Sita back after cap-
tivity and points out that both he and Ravana used women as pawns in
their rivalry. Thus, Rajagopal speaks to present-​day debates about women’s
equality by disagreeing with a fundamental premise in Kamban’s text.
The volume also analyzes Ramayana-​based performances that do not draw
significantly from a specific text. Instead, Maya Krishna Rao’s Ravanama
contains multiple fragments from written, oral, ancient, and recent tellings
from the Ramayana tradition to highlight Ravana’s charisma. The Tenth
Head by Vinay Kumar contains few references to texts, but he cites other
Ramayana-​based performances in his use of gesture and music. Rao and
Kumar each present original ways of thinking about Ravana and, in Kumar’s
case, the relations between his heads.
Despite widespread popularity in North and Central India, Rāmcaritmānas
appears only in a limited way in this volume due to at least three contin-
gent factors. First, Rani’s chapter on Ramlila focuses on what occurs after
enactments and chanting Rāmcaritmānas has ended for the scene or for the
day. Second, the Hindi playscripts analyzed by Sherraden focus on anti-​caste
plays that enact Shambuk’s story as drawn from Valmiki’s text; the Uttara-​
kāṇḍa by Tulsidas does not include Shambuk’s story. Third, many village
Ramlilas draw instead from Rādheśyām Rāmāyaṇ, a more accessible mid-​
20th-​century text in modern Hindi.27

27 Lothspeich (2013).
24 Orientations and Beginnings

More knowledge of Ramayana-​based episodes in performance traditions

in North India in addition to Ramlilas may reveal a more complete picture of
productions of episodes from the Ramayana tradition in the region. Equally
welcome would be studies of textual influences on performances of episodes
from the Ramayana tradition from languages such as Bengali (Bangla),
Marathi, and other regional literary languages of India.
Turning from texts to narrative units, it becomes clear that various
playwrights draw from the same kanda in order to achieve different results.
For example, Seeta Swayambara in the Uday Shankar dance repertoire and
Sankaradeva’s Rām Vijay both focus on episodes from Rama’s youth, as set
out in the Bāla-​kāṇḍa but, as the plays’ titles reveal, each performance has
its own emphasis. Seeta Swayambara depicts Rama’s leaving Ayodhya and
eventually arriving at King Janaka’s court, where his stringing of Shiva’s bow
wins Sita’s hand in marriage. In contrast, Rām Vijay centers on Rama’s three
victories in battle: with rakshasas harassing forest ascetics; with Sita’s suitors
who jealously attack Rama when he strings the bow; and with a furious
Parashurama.
Moving from Bāla-​kāṇḍa to the other “outer” kanda, Uttara-​kāṇḍa, its
heterogeneous content serves different purposes, depending on the perfor-
mance tradition being enacted.28 The poem and plays about Shambuka’s tapas
(in Part II) all draw from Valmiki’s Uttara-​kāṇḍa; each one contemporizes
the story’s “textual seed” to contest the power of brahminical Hinduism
over “lower” castes in present-​day India. Since Nambudiri’s Tapassāṭṭam,
Usha’s Maṇḍōdariyuṭe Niṟvahaṇaṃ, and Maya Rao’s Ravanama also draw
on the kanda, more plays analyzed in this volume draw on it than on any
other kanda. Although some textual scholars dismiss the last kanda as “late,”
that does not seem to deter playwrights and performers from authoring or
enacting episodes from it.
Among the middle five kandas, Araṇya-​kāṇḍa is the most frequently
enacted among those analyzed in this volume. For example, Akshara’s
essay examines impromptu dialogue inspired by a song about the beauty
of the forest, illustrating how Talamaddale actors connect the song to a
broader issue: how city life and forest life differ. Āścaryacūḍāmaṇi depicts
the forest as a dangerous place, where rakshasas deceive Rama and Sita
with māyā (illusion). RāmaRāvaṇā rejects the opposition between

28 Many textual scholars see the “outer kandas” (parts of the first and much of the last) as later

interpolations by a later hand, and the “middle kandas” as the work of Valmiki.
 The Ramayana Narrative Tradition 25

deceitful Shurpanakha from the forest and virtuous Sita from the palace by
representing both females as beautiful and independent in their own right.
Moreover, the forest kanda contains some of the most dramatic episodes,
many of which have significant elaboration or alteration by playwrights
and performers. For example, Manohar radically alters Shurpanakha’s
proposal of marriage to Rama; his father married three wives, so she wants
to test whether Rama will remain faithful to Sita when he is propositioned.
Episodes from Kiṣkindhā-​kāṇḍa appear in Yakshagana and
Talamaddale, particularly in prasangas by Parti Subba. A striking example
is a performance centered on an argument between Rama and Vali about
whether Rama deviated from dharma by shooting Vali while concealed
behind a tree. The prasanga seems tailor-​made for Talamaddale since the
two characters debate about an incident which contains apparent ambigu-
ities or contradictions; the complexity of Vali’s death ensures that two ac-
tors have sufficient evidence to debate opposing claims.29 The episode thus
exemplifies an affinity between this kanda and Talamaddale conventions.

Conclusions

Readers should keep in mind that the volume does not claim that the
performances analyzed in this book—​or the scene depicted on its cover—​
represent the corpus of Ramayana performances as a whole. In the future,
other scholars will probably focus on a different set of productions, which
will help increase our knowledge of the diversity of such performances.
This volume’s editors and contributors do not attempt to draw sweeping
conclusions from their multiple findings. Instead, they seek to prompt,
rather than foreclose, further study of performances that draw on the
Ramayana tradition.
Although many texts retell the story of Rama and Sita in dif-
ferent ways, this volume’s primary emphasis is not on texts but on
performances, documenting how playwrights and performers have re-​
envisioned episodes from the Ramayana tradition, from the first recita-
tion of Valmiki’s text to Usha Nangiar’s newly created solo on Sita in 2019.
Performing the Ramayana tradition remains an endeavor that grapples

29 For Vali’s slaying in the Ramnagar Ramlila, see Kapur (1990: 130–​131); in Tamil-​Malayalam

puppet plays, see Blackburn (1996: 82–​94), in Teyyam possession rituals, see Freeman (2001).
26 Orientations and Beginnings

with ultimate concerns about duty, love, rule, and death. Since a range
of Ramayana-​based performances have occurred so often over the centu-
ries, it is worth considering that when the newly decolonizing nation of
India selectively revived cultural narratives with the goal of uniting dis-
parate groups, Hindu nationalists chose the Ramayana narrative as a “na-
tional” epic that told of a golden age of perfect rule. Later, state-​sponsored
Ramayana cultural events and the televised Rāmāyaṇ in the mid-​1980s
claimed that they brought together texts from most regions of India into
one pan-​Indian framework.
Yet, additional ways of interpreting and performing the narrative de-
veloped early in the history of its dissemination. This volume shows how
the same episode can take on diverse meanings and outcomes when
represented in accordance with conventions of specific performance
traditions, in addition to the political circumstances of a production
in a specific region. Performances analyzed in this volume show how
arguments and differing perspectives are an intrinsic part of the Ramayana
tradition.
Conflict between brothers recurs across the Ramayana narrative, as
suggested by the volume’s cover image. The ruling family of Ayodhya
presents the most idealized fraternal relations, in which Rama and
Bharata argue, each insisting that the other ascend the throne. In Lanka,
two brotherly options unfold: Kumbhakarna vociferously disagrees with
Ravana’s abduction of Sita yet sacrifices his life for Ravana in battle; in
contrast, although Vibhishana also argues with Ravana, he later betrays
kin and kingdom by revealing military intelligence about Lanka to Rama.
In Kishkindha, Sugriva and Vali fight over territorial rights and try to kill
each other. These three sets of siblings testify to the tensions that arise
between kings and their brothers. At a different level, the cover of this
volume calls to mind broader themes. Like most literary epics that have
been appropriated for political ends, the Ramayana narrative leads in-
exorably to a violence justified by sectarian constituencies. Debates that
develop about what defines proper action rest on discussions of moral
behavior that play a major role in retellings of the story. Finally, the ar-
gumentative mode itself can be seen as part of a narrative tradition that
encompasses many kinds of—​at times—​conflicting interpretations of
episodes over time and across regions.
 The Ramayana Narrative Tradition 27

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