AK Ramanujan's essay.

Many of the readers of my Blog have asked for the Original essay by AK Ramanujan.

For all who are interested in reading the full text, please click on the link given below -

“Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation.”  http://www.sacw.net/IMG/pdf/AKRamanujan_ThreeHundredRamayanas.pdf

Part 2 – Ramayana from the Jain Texts

According to AK Ramanujan’s essay, the Jain texts disregard the fantastic elements of Valmiki’s version of Ramayana. Here the epic starts with the raising of doubts on the extravagant parts of the epic – how could monkeys vanquish a strong and intelligent Ravana, how could someone like Kumbhakarna sleep for six months, etc. The Jain version does not start with the introduction of Ram, but with Ravana.

It talks about Ravana and his greatness and the fact that he was a devotee of the Jain masters. During one of his great siege, he comes to know that he is destined to die because of a woman, by the name of Sita. Later he meets Sita, abducts her and tries in vain to win her favour, but does not and is killed in a battle that follows, as is the original version. In some other texts, Sita is Ravana’s daughter, but Ravana does not know about it and later she is responsible for his death.

Another important aspect of the Jain texts is that it is not Ram who kills Ravana, rather it is Lakshaman who kills Ravana. This is because Ram is an evolved soul and was in his last mortal birth and thus cannot commit any crime. It was thus left to Lakshaman to do so.

Another very important distinction of the Jain texts is that their version is devoid of the elements of fantasy. There are no miracles and no acts of disbelief and the reason is that the Jains consider themselves as rationalists and are not prone to such extravaganza which is unbelievable. Their heroes can be heroic, but not unbelievably so. Further, the idea of Ravana with ten heads has been explained differently, rather rationally. According to the Jain texts, when Ravana was born, his mother was given a necklace with nine gems, which she put on Ravana’s neck. When she did so, she could see his reflection in the nine gems and thus she named him “Dasamukha” – ten-faced. Further it also goes on to explain, that the monkeys were not really monkeys, but a clan of ‘celestials’ who had a monkey as their emblems on their flags.

Some versions say that Dasharatha had four wives as against Valmiki’s version of three wives. Further, some versions even say that Ram had four wives, Maithili (i.e. another name for Sita) being one of the wives. This aspect of Ram is contrary to any of the other versions across the world. Further, after Rama abandons Sita, she renounces the world and becomes a Jain ascetic, again a different ending for Sita, but something that the Jains can understand and relate with.

There are many more differences which are beyond the scope of such an article, so I have highlighted only a few of them. The idea is to impress upon the fact that the text has reached out to a wider audience only after it has been made understandable within a cultural or a social milieu. If not done, then the text would be that much more alien to a group of people as the life of Archies (from the famous Archies comics) to a group of youngsters from a remote village in the district of Bolangir, Orissa, about 30-40 years back.

Next we will read about the Thai version of Ramayana

Part 1 – Ramayanas from South India

Ramayana is an epic written by Sage Valmiki. But as is the case for any work of literature, it undergoes changes and adaptations. In oral tradition, the characters undergo a transformation based on the orators understanding and his/her own personality and preference. The same is the case in writing too. In such a scenario, it is quite understandable to find different versions of Ramayana based on the writer’s cultural upbringing and milieu. Just as every generation has its own take and preference, so does every writer who is re-writing the epic for his/her audience.

This adaptation only leads to a newer audience which associates itself better to the epic and thus starts relating to the same. The original English movie “Sound of Music” has seen so many Indian adaptations – be it Gulzar’s “Parichay” or the different versions in Bengali cinema and many others, besides the stage adaptations. Each took it on itself to make changes in characters to suit the understanding of its audience and the cultural setting. Same can be said about Shakespearean plays and many short stories by O’Henry or Dostoyevsky or Maupassant. Closer home, we have seen different versions of Saratchandra Chatterjee’s “Devdas”, of which I have seen at least four Hindi versions and two Bengali versions myself!

Ramayana is no different, except that its age has given it more versions than any other epics.



Tamil poet Kamban



Valmiki’s Ramayana is considered to be the oringal and all other versions are thus meta-Ramayanas. However, in South India, Kamban’s Ramayana has given rise to other versions like that of Telegu and Malayalam versions. Needless to say that Kamban’s version has been close to the Valmiki’s version with a minor difference. In Valmiki’s version Ram was not a god, but a human form of god who took birth on earth and ‘died’ a mortal. He was an avatar of Lord Vishnu who took the human form to eliminate the evils of earth and depart once the objective was achieved. However, Kamban’s influence was of the Tamil Bhakti movement and in his version, Ram was a god on a mission to eliminate evil from earth. Kamban also uses a lot of folk-motif in this rendition of the epic, again not found in Valmiki’s Ramayana.

In a folk-version of the Kannada Ramayana, the entire Ramayana is Sita-centric. The epic opens with Ravana (Ravalu, in this version) and his wife Mandodhari pining for a child. Here after a lot of penance, Ravalu and his wife are given a mango to share equally, but Ravalu ends up eating the whole mango with just the seed left for his wife. With a twist in the tale, it is Ravalu who ends up conceiving Sita and Sita comes out of his nose through a sneeze (in Kannada, the word Sita means ‘he sneezed’). Later he leaves Sita in King Janak’s field where she is found in a furrow (once again, in Sanskrit, Sita means ‘furrow’). The epic moves on, but at every step, the epic returns to Sita, her birth, her marriage, her abduction, saving her from Lanka and then again her misery, the birth of her children, etc. This return to Sita every now and then is a far cry from many versions which is very Ram-centric and this again could be due to the orators focus on the state of women in the culture he belonged to.

According to A K Ramanujan, the birth of Sita from a male could also be a case of “male-envy of the womb and childbirth, which is a frequent theme, in Indian literature, and an Indian oedipal theme of fathers pursuing daughters”, which is not alien to Indian mythology. According to a Kannada version, Ravana had molested a woman in his youth and she had vowed vengeance and is thus reborn as his daughter leading to his death. This we see that this version has taken a lot of liberty on many a count from the original Valmiki’s Ramayana.

The richness of any literature lies in its ability to get adapted. The rigidity of any epic will only alienate it with its potential audience and that will be its greatest failure. If Ramayana is still read and told in India, then it is because of its ability to touch every generation through its adaptability. This is not the case with other cultures like the Egyptians and the Greeks, who don’t read their mythology as we do in India. You will find Indians with names like Ramkrishna, Lakshmi, Vaidehi, Bharat, etc. But have you found any Greek with names like Zeus, Adonis and Aphrodite or even Hercules and Atlas? Would you find a Thor or Odin or Loki in the Scandinavia today?

It is the adaptability which enables such assimilation.

Next we will discuss the Jain version of Ramayan.

The controversy surrounding AK Ramanujan’s Essay

Who was A. K. Ramanujan –

It is very tough to categorize A K Ramanujan (AKR). He was a poet, an author, translator, folklorist, playwright and a scholar. He was educated in Mysore University and was a Fullbright Scholar at Indiana University. He was also a lecturer at M. S. University of Baroda for about eight years before moving on to US, where he taught at many US Universities, like Harvard, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc.  He was honoured by the ‘Padmashri’ by the Government of India besides the number of accolades that he would have received during his life time. He breathed his last in 1993.

He was also credited for compiling folk-tales from across the country and categorizing them according to topics and analyzing them according to the cultural milieu. It’s a seminal work which is today considered a reference point in the study of folk-literature.

The Essay –

“Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five examples and Three Thoughts on Translations”, written in 1991, is a seminal work on the different versions of Ramayana in our country and abroad. The many diverse versions give it a local flavor and its assimilation in the said culture. But just as India is different every 15kms you travel, so is the interpretation and treatment of the epic. If it is impossible for one to read all the texts in one’s lifetime, then this essay allows you to peep into different versions which give you a view of the diversity in each, maintaining the unity with the original.

Ramayana is written in many of the Indian languages, viz. Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, etc. besides many foreign languages like, Malaysian, Sinhalese, Balinese and Thai amongst then being the prominent ones. In Sanskrit itself, there are about twenty-five versions available.

Rishi Valmiki

The main works compared by AKR in this essay are that of the Ramayana written in Sanskrit by Valmiki, the original author of the epic, Kampan’s Ramayana in Tamil, Bengali Ramayana by Krittivasa, Ramayana in Jain texts and the Thai version of Ramayana. The essay brings out the major difference in each of the works and at times also goes on to explain the reasons of difference and how cultural and geographic outlook shapes the changes in the personalities of the central characters.

The Controversy –

The said essay was included in the B.A., History syllabus of Delhi University in the year 2006. ABVP, the youth wing of the BJP sought banning of the said essay as it hurt the religious sentiment of the majority and termed it ‘blasphemous’ and ‘anti-Hindu’, besides many other things not worth mentioning. In 2008, the Delhi High Court directed a four member committee to give its opinion on the inclusion of the essay in the syllabus and the committee gave a 3-1 verdict in favour of inclusion of the essay on the merit of its academic value. The DU Council however, ignored the recommendation of the Committee and in October 2011, decided to bend its knees to the demand of the ABVP and banned the essay.

The Issue –

The issue is deeper than what it seems, not surprising though. It is less to do with anti-Hindu and blasphemy, and more to do with politics – which is the tragedy. The academia has succumbed to the hegemony of politics. This might not have happened for the first time, but that is hardly a solace and neither should it be.

One of the reasons of raising the issue is that the panel which decided on the inclusion of the essay had Ms. Upinder Singh, the daughter of PM, Dr. Manmohan Singh. The move by ABVP was more to embarrass the ruling party than anything else. To avoid another embarrassment for the PM (amongst many) the DU council came to his ‘rescue’ by simply ‘dropping’ the essay as against ‘banning’ it.

In all this politics it is the students who actually stand to lose. Besides being an issue of academic freedom, it is also a case of an effort to control education by a bunch of goons. When illiterates and goons who have nothing to do with academics decide what to teach and study in temples of education then the society is going nowhere except down the tube. Delhi University is not an exception – sometime back we had seen the dropping of a book in Mumbai University sought by the student wing of the Shiv Sena. The Academia protested but nothing worthwhile happened.

In erstwhile Communist Russia and many other societies and cultures, we have seen the banning and systemic-stymying of literature. This stifling of debate will lead to the growth of regressive mindset of a supposedly progressive society. Any culture or progressive societies have to be open to debate and what has been discussed in AKR’s essay is the mindset of different cultures and their views of the epic, which have been written hundreds of years back. Can the Tamil version of Ramayana be banned or can Krittivasa’s Bengali version be banned? The tribal version of Ramayana is a far cry from Valmiki’s Ramayana, but nobody has sought for a ban on that, then why the essay which critically analyses the said versions.

The essay by AKR is about 25 pages of sheer literary genius. In the forthcoming articles I will take up some of the well-known Ramayanas and discuss the difference and the reasons for the same. While doing this, I will be leaning heavily on the essay to bring the work of literary genius to all my readers, which some wayward elements are trying to sabotage.  

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