Sometime later, the burgeoning Buddhist literature, usually composed in the Pali dialect, also included stories from the Ramayana, recast in a somewhat different light. Indeed, Buddhist literature redefined the term dharma itself, restating it as
dhamma
and changing the definition of this and several other core concepts.
In the eleventh century, a Tamil poet named Kamban undertook his own retelling of the Ramayana legend. Starting out with what seems to have been an attempt to translate Valmiki’s Ramayana, Kamban nevertheless deviated dramatically from his source material. In Kamban’s Ramayana, entire episodes are deleted, new ones appear, people and places are renamed or changed altogether, and even the order of some major events is revised. Most of all, Kamban’s Ramayana relocates the entire story in a milieu that is recognizably eleventh-century Tamil Nadu in its geography, history, clothes, customs, etc., rather than the north Indian milieu of Valmiki’s Sanskrit original. It is essentially a whole new Ramayana, retold in a far more passionate, rich and colourful idiom.
A few centuries later, Sant Tulsidas undertook his interpretation of the epic. Tulsidas went so far as to title his work
Ramcharitramanas
, rather than calling it the Ramayana.
By doing so, he signalled that he was not undertaking a faithful translation, but a wholly new variation of his own creation. The differences are substantial.
In art, sculpture, musical renditions, even in dance, mime and street theatrical performances, the story of Valmiki’s great poem has been retold over and over, in countless different variations, some with minor alterations, others with major deviations. The tradition of retellings continues even in modern times, through television serials, films, puppet theatre, children’s versions, cartoons, poetry, pop music and, of course, in the tradition of
Ramlila
enactments across the country every year.
Yet how many of these are faithful to Valmiki? How many, if any at all, actually refer to the original Sanskrit text, or even attempt to seek out that text?
Should they even do so?
So many Ramayanas
Does a grandmother consult Valmiki’s Ramayana before she retells the tale to her grandchildren at night? When she imitates a rakshasa’s roar or Ravana’s laugh, or Sita’s tears, or Rama’s stoic manner, whom does she base her performance on? When an actor portrays Rama in a television serial, or a Ramlila performer enacts a scene, or a sculptor chisels a likeness, a painter a sketch, whom do they all refer to? There were no illustrations in Valmiki’s Ramayana. No existing portraits of Rama survive from that age, no recordings of his voice or video records of his deeds.
Indeed, many of the episodes or ‘moments’ we believe are from Valmiki’s Ramayana are not even present in the original Sanskrit work. They are the result of later retellers, often derived from their own imagination. One instance is the ‘seema rekha’ believed to have been drawn by Lakshman before leaving Sita in the hut. No mention of this incident exists in Valmiki’s Ramayana.
Then there is the constant process of revision that has altered even those scenes that remain constant through various retellings. For example, take the scene where Sita entreats Rama to allow her to accompany him into exile. In Valmiki’s Ramayana, when Rama tells Sita he has to go into exile, and she asks him to allow her to go with him, he refuses outright. At first, Sita pleads with him and cries earnest tears, but when Rama remains adamant, she grows angry and rebukes him in shockingly harsh terms. She refers to him as a ‘woman disguised as a man’, says that ‘the world is wrong when they say that there is no one greater than Rama’, calls him ‘depressed and frightened’, ‘an actor playing a role’, and other choice epithets. It is one of the longer scenes in Valmiki’s Ramayana, almost equalling in length the entire narration of Rama’s early childhood years!
Tamil poet Kamban retells this incident in his more compressed, volatile, rich style, reducing Sita’s objections to a couple of brief rebukes: ‘Could it be that the real reason [for Rama not taking her into exile] is that with me left behind, you’ll be free to enjoy yourself in the forest?’
By the time we reach Sant Tulsidas’s recension, Sita’s rebukes are reduced to a few tearful admonitions and appeals. Were these changes the result of the change in the socially accepted standards of behaviour between men and women in our country? Quite possibly. Tulsidas’s Ramcharitramanas depicts a world quite different from that which Valmiki or even Kamban depict. In fact, each of these three versions differs so drastically in terms of the language used, the clothes worn, the various social and cultural references, that they seem almost independent of one another.
Perhaps the most popularly known version in more recent times is a simplified English translation of a series of Tamil retellings of selected episodes of the Kamban version, serialized in a children’s magazine about fifty years ago. This version by C. Rajagopalachari, aka Rajaji, was my favourite version as a child too. It was only much later that I found, through my own extensive research that my beloved Rajaji version left out whole chunks of the original story and simplified other parts considerably. Still later, I was sorely disappointed by yet another version by an otherwise great writer, R. K. Narayan. In his severely abridged retelling, the story is dealt with in a manner so rushed and abbreviated, it is reduced to a moral fable rather than the rich, powerful, mythic epic that Valmiki created.
English scholar William S. Buck’s nineteenth-century version, dubiously regarded as a classic by English scholars, reads like it might have been composed under the influence of certain intoxicants: in one significant departure from Indian versions, Guha, the tribal chief of the Nisada fisherfolk, without discernible reason, spews a diatribe against Brahmins, and ends by kicking a statue of Lord Shiva. To add further confusion, in the illustration accompanying this chapter, Guha is shown kicking what appears to be a statue of Buddha!
If you travel outside India, farther east, you will find more versions of the Ramayana that are so far removed from Valmiki, that some are barely recognizable as the same story. In one recent study of these various versions of the epic across the different cultures of Asia, an ageing Muslim woman in Indonesia is surprised to learn from the author that we have our own Ramayana in India also! The kings of Thailand are always named Rama along with other dynastic titles, and consider themselves to be direct descendants of Rama Chandra. The largest Rama temple, an inspiring ruin even today, is situated not in India, or even in Nepal, the only nation that takes Hinduism as its official religion, but in Cambodia. It is called Angkor Vat.
In fact, it is now possible to say that there are as many Ramayanas as there are people who know the tale, or claim to know it. And no two versions are exactly alike.
My Ramayana: a personal odyssey
And yet, would we rather have this democratic melange of versions and variations, or would we rather have a half-remembered, extinct tale recollected only dimly, like a mostly forgotten myth that we can recall only fragments of?
Valmiki’s ‘original’ Ramayana was written in Sanskrit, the language of his time and in an idiom that was highly modern for its age. In fact, it was so avant garde in its style—the kraunchya inspired shloka metre—that it was considered ‘adi’ or the first of its kind. Today, few people except dedicated scholars can understand or read it in its original form—and even they often disagree vehemently about their interpretations of the dense archaic Sanskrit text!
Kamban’s overblown rhetoric and colourful descriptions, while magnificently inspired and appropriate for its age, are equally anachronistic in today’s times.
Tulsidas’s interpretation, while rightfully regarded as a sacred text, can seem somewhat heavy-handed in its depiction of man–woman relationships. It is more of a religious tribute to Lord Rama’s divinity than a realistic retelling of the story itself.
In Ved Vyasa’s version, the devices of ill-intentioned Manthara, misguided Kaikeyi and reprehensible Ravana are not the ultimate cause of Rama’s misfortunes. In fact, it is not due to the asuras either. It is Brahma himself, using the mortal avatar of Vishnu to cleanse the world of evil, as perpetuated by Ravana and his asuras, in order to maintain the eternal balance of good and evil.
My reasons for attempting this retelling were simple and intensely personal. As a child of an intensely unhappy broken marriage, a violently bitter failure of parents of two different cultures (Anglo-Indian Christian and Gujarati Hindu) to accept their differences and find common ground, I turned to literature for solace. My first readings were, by accident, in the realm of mythology. So inspired was I by the simple power and heroic victories of those ancient ur-tales, I decided to become a writer and tell stories of my own that would be as great, as inspiring to others. To attempt, if possible, to bridge cultures, and knit together disparate lives by showing the common struggle and strife and, ultimately, triumph of all human souls.
I was barely a boy then. Thirty-odd years of living and battling life later, albeit not as colourful as Valmiki’s thieving and dacoit years, I was moved by a powerful inexplicable urge to read the Ramayana once more. Every version I read seemed to lack something, that vital something that I can only describe as the ‘connection’ to the work. In a troubled phase, battling with moral conundrums of my own, I set to writing my own version of the events. My mind exploded with images, scenes, entire conversations between characters. I saw, I heard, I felt … I wrote. Was I exhorted by Brahma Himself? Probably not! I had no reader in mind, except myself—and everyone. I changed as a person over the course of that writing. I found peace, or a kind of peace. I saw how people could devote their lives to worshipping Rama, or Krishna, or Devi for that matter, my own special ‘Maa’. But I also felt that this story was beyond religion, beyond nationality, beyond race, colour, or creed.
Undertaking to retell a story as great and as precious as our classic adi-kavya is not an enterprise lightly attempted. The first thing I did was study every available edition of previous retellings to know what had been done before, the differences between various retellings, and attempt to understand why. I also spoke extensively to people known and unknown about their knowledge of the poem, in an attempt to trace how millennia of verbal retellings have altered the perception of the tale. One of the most striking things was that most people had never actually read the ‘original’ Valmiki Ramayana. Indeed, most people considered Ramcharitramanas by Tulsidas to be ‘the Ramayana’, and assumed it was an accurate reprise of the Sanskrit work. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
For instance, Valmiki’s Ramayana depicts Dasaratha as having three hundred and fifty concubines in addition to his three titled wives. In keeping with the kingly practices of that age, the ageing raja’s predilection for the fairer sex is depicted honestly and without any sense of misogyny. Valmiki neither comments on nor criticizes Dasaratha’s fondness for fleshly pleasures, he simply states it.
When Rama takes leave of his father before going into exile, he does so in the palace of concubines, and all of them weep copiously for the exiled son of their master. When Valmiki describes women, he does so by enumerating the virtues of each part of their anatomy. There is no sense of embarrassment or male chauvinism evident here: he is simply extolling the beauty of the women characters, just as he does for the male characters like Rama and Hanuman and, yes, even Ravana. Even in Kamban’s version, the women are depicted in such ripe, full-blown language, that a modern reader like myself blushes in embarrassment. Yet the writer exhibits no awkwardness or prurience in these passages—he is simply describing them as he perceived them in the garb and fashion of his time.
By the time we reach Tulsidas and later versions, Rama is no less than a god in human avatar. And in keeping with this foreknowledge, all related characters are depicted accordingly.
So Dasaratha’s fleshly indulgences take a backseat, the women are portrayed fully clad and demure in appearance, and their beauty is ethereal rather than earthly.
How was I to approach my retelling? On one hand, the Ramayana was now regarded not as a Sanskrit epic of real events that occurred in ancient India, but as a moral fable of the actions of a human avatar of Vishnu. On the other hand, I felt the need to bring to life the ancient world of epic India in all its glory and magnificence, to explore the human drama as well as the divinity that drove it, to show the nuances of word and action and choice rather than a black-and-white depiction of good versus evil. More importantly, what could I offer that was fresh and new, yet faithful to the spirit of the original story? How could I ensure that all events and characters were depicted respectfully yet realistically?
There was little point in simply repeating any version that had gone before—those already existed, and those who desired to read the Ramayana in any one of its various forms could simply pick up one of those previous versions.
But what had never been done before was a complete, or ‘sampoorn’, Ramayana, incorporating the various, often contradictory aspects of the various Indian retellers (I wasn’t interested in foreign perspectives, frankly), while attempting to put us into the minds and hearts of the various characters. To go beyond a simple plot reprise and bring the whole story, the whole world of ancient India, alive. To do what every verbal reteller attempts, or any classical dancer does: make the story live again.