Devdutt Pattanaik - Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana
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- Book:Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana
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Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana: summary, description and annotation
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And so the mythologist and illustrator Devdutt Pattaanik retells the Ramayana, drawing attention to the many oral, visual and written retellings composed in different times, in different places, by different poets, each one trying to solve the puzzle in its own unique way.
This book approaches Ram by speculating on Sita: her childhood with her father, Janaka, who hosted sages mentioned in the Upanishads; her stay in the forest with her husband, who had to be a celibate ascetic while she was in the prime of her youth; her interactions with the women of Lanka, recipes she exchanged, emotions they shared; her connection with the earth, her mother, and with the trees, her sisters; her role as the Goddess, the untamed Kali as well as the demure Gauri, in transforming the stoic prince of Ayodhya into God.
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To all those who believe that the Mahabharata is more realistic
and complex than the Ramayana:
May they realize that both epics speak of dharma,
which means human potential,
not righteous conduct:
the best of what we can do
in continuously changing social contexts,
with no guarantees or certainties,
as we are being constantly and differently judged
by the subject, the object and innumerable witnesses.
In one, the protagonist is a kingmaker who can move around rules,
while in the other the protagonist is a king who must uphold rules,
howsoever distasteful they may be.
Before 2nd century BCE : Oral tellings by travelling bards
2nd century BCE : Valmikis Sanskrit Ramayana
1st century CE : Vyasas Ramopakhyan in his Mahabharata
2nd century CE : Bhasas Sanskrit play Pratima-nataka
3rd century CE : Sanskrit Vishnu Purana
4th century CE : Vimalasuris Prakrit Paumachariya (Jain)
5th century CE : Kalidasas Sanskrit Raghuvamsa
6th century CE : Pali Dashratha Jataka (Buddhist)
6th century CE : First images of Ram on Deogarh temple walls
7th century CE : Sanskrit Bhattikavya
8th century CE : Bhavabhutis Sanskrit play Mahavira-charita
9th century CE : Sanskrit Bhagavat Purana
10th century CE : Muraris Sanskrit play Anargha-Raghava
11th century: Bhojas Sanskrit Champu Ramayana
12th century: Kambans Tamil Iramavataram
13th century: Sanskrit Adhyatma Ramayana
13th century: Buddha Reddys Telugu Ranganath Ramayana
14th century: Sanskrit Adbhut Ramayana
15th century: Krittivasas Bengali Ramayana
15th century: Kandalis Assamese Ramayana
15th century: Balaram Dass Odia Dandi Ramayana
15th century: Sanskrit Ananda Ramayana
16th century: Tulsidass Avadhi Ram-charit-manas
16th century: Akbars collection of Ramayana paintings
16th century: Eknaths Marathi Bhavarth Ramayana
16th century: Toraves Kannada Ramayana
17th century: Guru Govind Singhs Braj Gobind Ramayana, as part of Dasam Granth
18th century: Giridhars Gujarati Ramayana
18th century: Divakara Prakasa Bhattas Kashmiri Ramayana
19th century: Bhanubhaktas Nepali Ramayana
1921: Cinema, silent film Sati Sulochana
1943: Cinema, Ram Rajya (only film seen by Mahatma Gandhi)
1955: Radio, Marathi Geet Ramayana
1970: Comic book, Amar Chitra Kathas Rama
1987: Television, Ramanand Sagars Hindi Ramayana
2003: Novel, Ashok Bankers Ramayana series
*Dating is approximate and highly speculative, especially of the earlier works.
- The Ramayana literature can be studied in four phases. The first phase, till the second century CE , is when the Valmiki Ramayana takes final shape. In the second phase, between the second and tenth centuries CE , many Sanskrit and Prakrit plays and poems are written on the Ramayana. Here we see an attempt to locate Ram in Buddhist and Jain traditions as well, but he is most successfully located as the royal form of Vishnu on earth through Puranic literature. In the third phase, after the tenth century, against the backdrop of the rising tide of Islam, the Ramayana becomes the epic of choice to be put down in local tongues. Here the trend is to be devotional, with Ram as God and Hanuman as his much-venerated devotee and servant. Finally, in the fourth phase, since the nineteenth century, strongly influenced by the European and American gaze, the Ramayana is decoded, deconstructed and reimagined based on modern political theories of justice and fairness.
- The story of Ram was transmitted orally for centuries, from 500 BCE onwards, reaching its final form in Sanskrit by 200 BCE . The author of this work is identified as one Valmiki. The poetry, all scholars agree, is outstanding. It has traditionally been qualified as adi kavya, the first poem. All later poets keep referring to Valmiki as the fountainhead of Rams tale.
- Valmikis work was transmitted orally by travelling bards. It was put down in writing much later. As a result, there are two major collections of this original work northern and southern with about half the verses in common. The general agreement is that of the seven chapters the first (Rams childhood) and last (Rams rejection of Sita) sections are much later works.
- The brahmins resisted putting down Sanskrit in writing and preferred the oral tradition (shruti). It was the Buddhist and Jain scholars who chose the written word over the oral word, leading to speculation that the Jain and Buddhist retellings of Rams story were the first to be put down in writing in Pali and Prakrit.
- Regional Ramayana s were put down in writing only after 1000 CE , first in the south by the twelfth century, then in the east by the fifteenth century and finally in the north by the sixteenth century.
- Most womens Ramayana s are oral. Songs sung in the courtyards across India refer more to domestic rituals and household issues rather than to the grand ideas of epic narratives. However, in the sixteenth century, two women did write the Ramayana: Molla in Telugu and Chandrabati in Bengali.
- Men who wrote the Ramayana belonged to different communities. Buddha Reddy belonged to the landed gentry, Balaram Das and Sarala Das belonged to the community of scribes and bureaucrats and Kamban belonged to the community of temple musicians.
- Keen to appreciate the culture of his people, the Mughal emperor Akbar, in the sixteenth century, ordered the translation of the Ramayana from Sanskrit to Persian, and got his court painters to illustrate the epic using Persian techniques. This led to a proliferation of miniature paintings based on the Ramayana patronized by kings of Rajasthan, Punjab, Himachal and the Deccan in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
* Locations not drawn to scale
- Across India there are villages and towns that associate themselves with an event in the Ramayana. In Mumbai, for example, there is a water tank called Banaganga created by the bana (arrow) of Ram.
- Most Indians have heard songs and stories of the Ramayana or seen it being performed as a play or painted on cloth or sculpted on temple walls; few have read it. Each art form has its own unique narration, expression and point of view.
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