Some excerpt from A K Ramanujan's wonderful essay exploring the genre or gene-pool of Ramayan stories
 |
| Ahilya and Indra's story : Valmiki's colourful version and Kamban's sedate one |
 |
| Meta-ness of Ramayans |
 |
| Global journey of Ramayan genre |
 |
| Jain Ramayan - Paumcharita |
 |
| Jain Ramayan is almost without any of the 'fantastical' elements, very different telling |
 |
| Jain Ramayan's rationalizations |
 |
| Variation of themes across multiple Ramayans |
 |
| The multiple Ramas, the multiple Ramayans : an example |
 |
| Ramakien - Thai Ramayan was influenced mostly by South Indian Ramayans |
 |
| Wordplay on 'Sita' : different birth stories in Sanskrit and Telugu |
And the whole essay, which is full of such amazing insights, is a rather short part of a larger published collection of A K Ramanujan's essays, can be read at :
After reading this, one can only pity the asinine, revisionist re-tellings of Ramayan by the Amar Chitra Katha and Ramanad Sagar's TV Series, which robbed the epics of all their colourful diversity and complexity. In hindsight, those sanitized versions might have even provided a fillip to the Hindutva movement, at least the Ramjanmabhoomi episode, which really stemmed out of a complete lack of any understanding or connect with the epics. Needless to say, Hindutva political movement thrives on the disconnect of people from their own stories!
No comments:
Post a Comment