The Ramayana

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Narayan, R. K., 1906-2001.

The Ramayana : a shortened modern prose version of the Indian epic (suggested by the Tamil version of

Kamban) / R.K. Narayan ; introduction by Pankaj Mishra.

p. cm.—(Penguin classics)

eISBN : 978-0-143-03967-9

1. Rama (Hindu deity)—Fiction. 2. Epic literature, Tamil—Adaptations. I. Kampar, 9th cent.

Ramayanam. II. Title. III. Series.

PR9499.3.N3R36 2006

297.5’922—dc22 2006045201

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Introduction

In the summer of 1988 sanitation workers across North India went on strike. Their demand was simple: they wanted the federal government to sponsor more episodes of a television serial based on the Indian epic Ramayana (Romance of Rama). The serial, which had been running on India’s state- owned television channel for more than a year, had proved to be an extraordinarly popular phenomenon, with more than eighty million Indians tuning in to every weekly episode. Streets in all towns and cities emptied on Sunday mornings as the serial went on the air. In villages with no electricity people usually gathered around a rented television set powered by a car battery. Many bathed ritually and garlanded their television sets before settling down to watch Rama, the embodiment of righteousness, triumph over adversity.

When the government, faced with rising garbage mounds and a growing risk of epidemics, finally relented and commissioned more episodes of The Ramayana, not just the sanitation workers but millions of Indians celebrated. More than a decade and many reruns later, the serial continues to inspire reverence among Indians everywhere, and remains for many the primary mode of experiencing India’s most popular epic.

The reasons for this may not be immediately clear to an uninitiated outsider: the serial, cheaply made by a Bollywood filmmaker, abounds in ham acting and tinselly sets, and the long, white beards of its many wise, elderly men look perilously close to dropping off.

But it wasn’t so much its kitschy, Bollywood aspect that endeared the serialization to Indians as its invoking of what is easily the most influential narrative tradition in human history: the story of Rama, the unjustly exiled prince. It may be impossible to prove R. K. Narayan’s claim that every Indian “is aware of the story of The Ramayana in some measure or other.” But it will sound true to most Indians. Indeed, the popular appeal of the story of Rama among ordinary people distinguishes it from much of Indian literary tradition, which, supervised by upper-caste Hindus, has been forbiddingly elitist.

There is really no Western counterpart in either the Hellenic or Hebraic tradition to the influence that this originally secular story, transmitted orally through many centuries, has exerted over millions of people. The Iliad and The Odyssey are, primarily, literary texts, but not even Aesop’s fables or the often intensely moral Greek myths shape the daily lives of present-day inhabitants of Greece. In contrast, The Ramayana continues to have a profound emotional and psychological resonance for Indians.

By invoking the utopian promise of Rama-Rajya (kingdom of Rama), Gandhi attracted a large mass of apolitical people to the Indian freedom movement against the British. Postcolonial India may not resemble Rama-Rajya, but the emotive appeal of Ramayana seems to be undiminished, and often vulnerable to political exploitation: in the late eighties and early nineties, the Hindu nationalist movement to build a temple on the alleged birthplace of Rama claimed thousands of lives across India.

Like millions of other children, I first heard the story of Rama from my parents. Or so I think: I can’t remember a time when I did not know it. Religious occasions at home began with a recital of the Ramacharitamanas, the long sixteenth-century devotional poem based on the story of Rama. All the older people I knew were only two or three decades away from village life, and they had memorized the verses in their childhood. I remember my elder sisters arguing with them about just how righteous Rama was when he killed a monkey king in cold blood or forced his wife, Sita, to undergo a test of chastity after her return from captivity.

Every autumn, I looked forward to Diwali, the most important Indian festival, which commemorates Rama’s return from exile, and which children in particular love since it gives them an opportunity to buy new clothes and firecrackers and eat sweets. Autumn was also the time of the Ramleela, the folk pageant-play based on Rama’s adventures, which is performed even today in not only all North Indian small towns and cities but also in the remote Fiji Islands and Trinidad, where descendents of nineteenth-century Indian immigrants try to hold on to their cultural links with their mother country.

I remember the performers with bare torsos, walking in an exaggerated, mincing style on their toes; Hanuman “flying” across the stage on a transparent wire; and, at the end of ten days, the burning of the big ten-headed tinsel effigy of Ravana. Armed with a bamboo bow and arrow, I imagined myself to be Rama, pursuing the forces of disorder. But it was only later I realized that though there is much of the fairytale in The Ramayana to engage the child—the prince thrown upon fate, the kidnapped princess, flying monkeys —it also has a complex adult and human aspect. Far from representing a straightforward battle between good and evil, it raises uncomfortable ethical and psychological questions about human motivation; it shows how greed and desire rule human beings and often make them arrogant and prone to self-deception. Even the idealized figure of Rama hints paradoxically at the difficulty of leading an ethical life.

Most versions of Rama’s story begin with Dasaratha, the heir-less king of Kosala who, on the urging of his spiritual advisors, performs a sacrificial ritual that enables his three wives to conceive sons. The firstborn, Rama, is the ablest and most popular of Dasaratha’s offspring, who proves his superiority by stringing an enormous bow others can barely lift and by winning his bride, Sita.

When Dasaratha decides to retire from worldly duties, he chooses Rama as his successor. This greatly dismays his second wife, who wants her own son to be king. Just as the coronation of Rama is about to begin, she asks her husband to redeem two boons he had once made to her at a weak moment in his life. She demands that Rama be banished from Ayodhya for fourteen years and her son be anointed king in his place.

Dasaratha is deeply distraught by this unreasonable demand. But he is unable to refuse her—to keep one’s vow is deemed one of the highest moral achievements in The Ramayana. Similarly, it is part of Rama’s virtue to be obedient to and unquestioning of his parents. He accepts his father’s decision and, accompanied by his wife, Sita, and half-brother Lakshmana, he abandons Ayodhya, much to the grief of its inhabitants.

Traveling through forests, Rama and his companions have many adventures. But none proves more dramatic than Rama’s encounter one day with a demoness called Soorpanaka. She falls in love with Rama and proposes