Ashok Banker on Twitter
Those of you who always knew I was a twit won’t be surprised.
I’m on Twitter now.
What’s Twitter?
It’s the new rage in social networking, an sms-or-email update service whereby you can subscribe to all your friends, colleagues, and favourite celebs Twitter accounts, and receive regular updates of no more than 140 characters each (a line or two) telling you what they’re currently doing.
So if you want to know the trivial details of my everyday routine–or those trivial details that I find the time to post on Twitter–go ahead and subcribe to my Twitter feed.
Don’t go ‘Eu!’ if I Twitter from the loo (I promise to try not to) or similarly unglamorous locations. I’m a writer, I have a really boring life. Don’t expect much.
In fact, come to think of it, why on earth would anyone want to know what I’ve been doing today, or anyday?
Haven’t a clue.
But I’ve gone and signed up.
So you might as well take a look.
The Twitter box is in the permanent sidebar of this blogsite–look at the right-hand column of this page, and scroll down till you find it. Clicking on my name will take you to a page where you can subscribe to my Twitter feed.
Until the next Twit, then.
I TOT I SAW A BANKER-TAT!
“…Ashok K. Banker se pose là en candidat déclaré au titre de nouvelle sensation…”
Review of the first three Ramayana series books in French translation, posted on the French website Elbakin.net by a reader named Gilossen. Thanks to three years of French in school and college (I wanted Sanskrit, couldn’t get it), I can follow it reasonably well, but translating is not my cup of chai. And while Google auto-translation is amusing at times, in this case, it leaves too many key words untranslated and too much grammatical wrangling to be coherent. So here’s the review in French. For what it’s worth, it’s an 8.5 (out of 10) review on the reviewer’s sliding ‘sword’ scale at the bottom of the page. –AKB
La Fantasy épique est sans aucun doute la branche la plus balisée du genre, mais il arrive encore que nous soyons surpris ! Quel plus bel exemple que le cycle d’Ea pourrions-nous citer ici ?
Eh bien, Ashok K. Banker se pose là en candidat déclaré au titre de nouvelle sensation fantasy ! Se basant sur l’une des plus célèbres légendes indiennes, vieille de trois millénaires, l’auteur revisite et réactualise le mythe, par le biais d’une prose “moderne”.
Et nous voilà donc embarqués dans une lutte entre le Bien et le Mal qui, bien que
classique, se révèle tout simplement palpitante, et ce, en partie grâce à son univers si dépaysant. Du moins, pour la plupart d’entre nous. Qu’il est bon donc de se retrouver plongés dans la moiteur et la splendeur de cette Inde de merveilles, au lieu de supporter une énième décalcomanie moyenâgeuse !
Mais les points positifs ne s’arrêtent pas au cadre et à l’atmosphère qui s’en dégage. Les personnages sont loin d’être négligés, évitent pour la plupart les clichés, et le lecteur s’y attache très rapidement. On retiendra par exemple la figure du vieux maharaja Dasaratha; et Rama lui-même, le héros de ce cycle, possède un réel charisme et ne tombe pas dans le piège du “Pourquoi moi ?” lorsque vient le temps pour lui de s’engager.
De plus, l’auteur voit les choses en grand, et le mot épique prend indéniablement tout son sens avec le Ramayana, dès le premier tome. Une ambiance d’épopée flamboyante qui n’étouffe pas des moments plus intimistes, traités avec le même talent. La plume de Banker est faconde et poétique, douce ou plus dure. Par la suite, si cela semblait impossible, l’auteur parvient à repousser toujours plus loin ses limites et celles de ses personnages et des épreuves qu’ils doivent endurer.
Et le tout sans en faire pour autant des super-héros totalement insensibles et devenus comme inhumains tant ils sont différents du commun des mortels. Un petit tour de force supplémentaire, notamment lorsque l’on songe au nombre de scènes tout simplement stupéfiantes qui parcourent les différents tomes. Banker croit à fond en son histoire, sans retenue, et nous aussi ! Le saut de 13 ans à l’orée du quatrième tome ne pertube d’ailleurs en rien ce rythme et ces envolées.
On pourra seulement regretter quelques rebondissements assez prévisibles – encore que… – mais il ne faut pas oublier après tout que l’auteur reste dans les pas du vénérable sage Valmiki, même s’il propose aussi quelques interprétations et modifications de son cru. Le rythme aussi se fait parfois quelque peu indolent, mais ce n’est pas sans charme, et cela ne remet pas en cause pour autant la structure et la mélodie des romans. La noirceur elle-même peut se faire éclatante… Il n’y a pour cela qu’à se pencher sur ce que nous réserve l’ultime tome de cette grande saga, peut-être le meilleur jusqu’à présent, quand bien même certaines réactions de tel ou tel personnage pourrait surprendre.
A noter pour conclure la présence d’un très pratique glossaire, traduisant les termes sanskrits que l’on retrouve au fil des pages, ajoutant ainsi au parfum d’inédit. Bonne idée reprise d’ailleurs par le Pré aux Clercs dans son édition française du cycle, qui compte actuellement trois tomes.
Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation, by A. K. Ramanujan
And this is the complete text of the controversial Ramanujan essay, copied and pasted from the online text of the complete book, Many Ramayanas.
Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation
A. K. Ramanujan
How many Ramayanas ? Three hundred? Three thousand? At the end of some Ramayanas , a question is sometimes asked: How many Ramayanas have there been? And there are stories that answer the question. Here is one.
One day when Rama was sitting on his throne, his ring fell off. When it touched the earth, it made a hole in the ground and disappeared into it. It was gone. His trusty henchman, Hanuman, was at his feet. Rama said to Hanuman, “Look, my ring is lost. Find it for me.”
Now Hanuman can enter any hole, no matter how tiny. He had the power to become the smallest of the small and larger than the largest thing. So he took on a tiny form and went down the hole.
He went and went and went and suddenly fell into the netherworld. There were women down there. “Look, a tiny monkey! It’s fallen from above? Then they caught him and placed him on a platter (thali ). The King of Spirits (bhut ), who lives in the netherworld, likes to eat animals. So Hanuman was sent to him as part of his dinner, along with his vegetables. Hanuman sat on the platter, wondering what to do.
While this was going on in the netherworld, Rama sat on his throne on the earth above. The sage Vasistha and the god Brahma came to see him. They said to Rama, “We want to talk privately with you. We don’t want anyone to hear what we say or interrupt it. Do we agree?”
“All right,” said Rama, “we’ll talk.”
Then they said, “Lay down a rule. If anyone comes in as we are talking, his head should be cut off.”
“It will be done,” said Rama.
Who would be the most trustworthy person to guard the door? Hanuman had gone down to fetch the ring. Rama trusted no one more than Laksmana,
― 23 ―
so he asked Laksmana to stand by the door. “Don’t allow anyone to enter,” he ordered.
Laksmana was standing at the door when the sage Visvamitra appeared and said, “I need to see Rama at once. It’s urgent. Tell me, where is Rama?”
Laksmana said, “Don’t go in now. He is talking to some people. It’s important.”
“What is there that Rama would hide from me?” said Visvamitra. “I must go in, right now.”
Laksmana said, “I’11 have to ask his permission before I can let you in.”
“Go in and ask then.”
“I can’t go in till Rama comes out. You’ll have to wait.”
“If you don’t go in and announce my presence, I’ll burn the entire kingdom of Ayodhya with a curse,” said Visvamitra.
Laksmana thought, “If I go in now, I’ll die. But if I don’t go, this hotheaded man will burn down the kingdom. All the subjects, all things living in it, will die. It’s better that I alone should die.”
So he went right in.
Rama asked him, “What’s the matter?”
“Visvamitra is here.”
“Send him in.”
So Visvamitra went in. The private talk had already come to an end. Brahma and Vasistha had come to see Rama and say to him, “Your work in the world of human beings is over. Your incarnation as Rama must now he given up. Leave this body, come up, and rejoin the gods.” That’s all they wanted to say.
Laksmana said to Rama, “Brother, you should cut off my head.”
Rama said, “Why? We had nothing more to say. Nothing was left. So why should I cut off your head?”
Laksmana said, “You can’t do that. You can’t let me off because I’m your brother. There’ll be a blot on Rama’s name. You didn’t spare your wife. You sent her to the jungle. I must be punished. I will leave.”
Laksmana was an avatar of Sesa, the serpent on whom Visnu sleeps. His time was up too. He went directly to the river Sarayu and disappeared in the flowing waters.
When Laksmana relinquished his body, Rama summoned all his followers, Vibhisana, Sugriva, and others, and arranged for the coronation of his twin sons, Lava and Kusa. Then Rama too entered the river Sarayu.
All this while, Hanuman was in the netherworld. When he was finally taken to the King of Spirits, he kept repeating the name of Rama. “Rama Rama Rama . . .”
Then the King of Spirits asked, “Who are you?”
“Hanuman.”
“Hanuman? Why have you come here?”
― 24 ―
“Rama’s ring fell into a hole. I’ve come to fetch it.”
The king looked around and showed him a platter. On it were thousands of rings. They were all Rama’s rings. The king brought the platter to Hanuman, set it down, and said, “Pick out your Rama’s ring and take it.”
They were all exactly the same. “I don’t know which one it is,” said Hanuman, shaking his head.
The King of Spirits said, “There have been as many Ramas as there are rings on this platter. When you return to earth, you will not find Rama. This incarnation of Rama is now over. Whenever an incarnation of Rama is about to be over, his ring falls down. I collect them and keep them. Now you can go.”
So Hanuman left.
This story is usually told to suggest that for every such Rama there is a Ramayana .[1] The number of Ramayanas and the range of their influence in South and Southeast Asia over the past twenty-five hundred years or more are astonishing. Just a list of languages in which the Rama story is found makes one gasp: Annamese, Balinese, Bengali, Cambodian, Chinese, Gujarati, Javanese, Kannada, Kashmiri, Khotanese, Laotian, Malaysian, Marathi, Oriya, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Santali, Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan—to say nothing of Western languages. Through the centuries, some of these languages have hosted more than one telling of the Rama story. Sanskrit alone contains some twenty-five or more tellings belonging to various narrative genres (epics, kavyas or ornate poetic compositions, puranas or old mythological stories, and so forth). If we add plays, dance-dramas, and other performances, in both the classical and folk traditions, the number of Ramayanas grows even larger. To these must be added sculpture and bas-reliefs, mask plays, puppet plays and shadow plays, in all the many South and Southeast Asian cultures.[2] Camille Bulcke, a student of the Ramayana , counted three hundred tellings.[3] It’s no wonder that even as long ago as the fourteenth century, Kumaravyasa, a Kannada poet, chose to write a Mahabharata , because he heard the cosmic serpent which upholds the earth groaning under the burden of Ramayana poets ( tinikidanu phaniraya ramayanada kavigala bharadali ). In this paper, indebted for its data to numerous previous translators and scholars, I would like to sort out for myself, and I hope for others, how these hundreds of tellings of a story in different cultures, languages, and religious traditions relate to each other: what gets translated, transplanted, transposed.
Valmiki and Kampan: Two Ahalyas
Obviously, these hundreds of tellings differ from one another. I have come to prefer the word tellings to the usual terms versions or variants because the latter terms can and typically do imply that there is an invariant, an original or
― 25 ―
Ur -text—usually Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana , the earliest and most prestigious of them all. But as we shall see, it is not always Valmiki’s narrative that is carried from one language to another.
It would be useful to make some distinctions before we begin. The tradition itself distinguishes between the Rama story (ramakatha ) and texts composed by a specific person—Valmiki, Kampan, or Krttivasa, for example. Though many of the latter are popularly called Ramayanas (like Kamparamayanam ), few texts actually bear the title Ramayana ; they are given titles like Iramavataram (The Incarnation of Rama), Ramcaritmanas (The Lake of the Acts of Rama), Ramakien (The Story of Rama), and so on. Their relations to the Rama story as told by Valmiki also vary. This traditional distinction between katha (story) and kavya (poem) parallels the French one between sujet and recit , or the English one between story and discourse.[4] It is also analogous to the distinction between a sentence and a speech act. The story may be the same in two tellings, but the discourse may be vastly different. Even the structure and sequence of events may be the same, but the style, details, tone, and texture—and therefore the import—may be vastly different.
Here are two tellings of the “same” episode, which occur at the same point in the sequence of the narrative. The first is from the first book (Balakanda ) of Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana ; the second from the first canto (Palakantam ) of Kampan’s Iramavataram in Tamil. Both narrate the story of Ahalya.
The Ahalya Episode: Valmiki
Seeing Mithila, Janaka’s white
and dazzling city, all the sages
cried out in praise, “Wonderful!
How wonderful!”
Raghava, sighting on the outskirts
of Mithila an ashram, ancient,
unpeopled, and lovely, asked the sage,
“What is this holy place,
so like an ashram but without a hermit?
Master, I’d like to hear: whose was it?”
Hearing Raghava’s words, the great sage
Visvamitra, man of fire,
expert in words answered, “Listen,
Raghava, I’ll tell you whose ashram
this was and how it was cursed
by a great man in anger.
It was great Gautama’s, this ashram
that reminds you of heaven, worshiped even
by the gods. Long ago, with Ahalya
he practiced tapas [5] here
― 26 ―
for countless years. Once, knowing that Gautama
was away, Indra (called Thousand Eyes),
Saci’s husband, took on the likeness
of the sage, and said to Ahalya:
‘Men pursuing their desire do not wait
for the proper season, O you who
have a perfect body. Making love
with you: that’s what I want.
That waist of yours is lovely.’
She knew it was Indra of the Thousand Eyes
in the guise of the sage. Yet she,
wrongheaded woman, made up her mind,
excited, curious about the king
of the gods.
And then, her inner being satisfied,
she said to the god, ‘I’m satisfied, king
of the gods. Go quickly from here.
O giver of honor, lover, protect
yourself and me.’
And Indra smiled and said to Ahalya,
‘Woman of lovely hips, I am
very content. I’ll go the way I came.’
Thus after making love, he came out
of the hut made of leaves.
And, O Rama, as he hurried away,
nervous about Gautama and flustered,
he caught sight of Gautama coming in,
the great sage, unassailable
by gods and antigods,
empowered by his tapas , still wet
with the water of the river
he’d bathed in, blazing like fire,
with kusa grass and kindling
in his hands.
Seeing him, the king of the gods was
terror-struck, his face drained of color.
The sage, facing Thousand Eyes now dressed
as the sage, the one rich in virtue
and the other with none,
spoke to him in anger: ‘You took my form,
you fool, and did this that should never
be done. Therefore you will lose your testicles.’
At once, they fell to the ground, they fell
even as the great sage spoke
― 27 ―
his words in anger to Thousand Eyes.
Having cursed Indra, he then cursed
Ahalya: ‘You, you will dwell here
many thousands of years, eating the air,
without food, rolling in ash,
and burning invisible to all creatures.
When Rama, unassailable son
of Dasaratha, comes to this terrible
wilderness, you will become pure,
you woman of no virtue,
you will be cleansed of lust and confusion.
Filled then with joy, you’ll wear again
your form in my presence.’ And saying
this to that woman of bad conduct,
blazing Gautama abandoned
the ashram, and did his tapas
on a beautiful Himalayan peak,
haunt of celestial singers and
perfected beings.
Emasculated Indra then
spoke to the gods led by Agni
attended by the sages
and the celestial singers.
‘I’ve only done this work on behalf
of the gods, putting great Gautama
in a rage, blocking his tapas .
He has emasculated me
and rejected her in anger.
Through this great outburst
of curses, I’ve robbed him
of his tapas . Therefore,
great gods, sages, and celestial singers,
help me, helper of the gods,
to regain my testicles.’ And the gods,
led by Agni, listened to Indra
of the Hundred Sacrifices and went
with the Marut hosts
to the divine ancestors, and said,
‘Some time ago, Indra, infatuated,
ravished the sage’s wife
and was then emasculated
by the sage’s curse. Indra,
king of gods, destroyer of cities,
― 28 ―
is now angry with the gods.
This ram has testicles
but great Indra has lost his.
So take the ram’s testicles
and quickly graft them on to Indra.
A castrated ram will give you
supreme satisfaction and will be
a source of pleasure.
People who offer it
will have endless fruit.
You will give them your plenty.’
Having heard Agni’s words,
the Ancestors got together
and ripped off the ram’s testicles
and applied them then to Indra
of the Thousand Eyes.
Since then, the divine Ancestors
eat these castrated rams
and Indra has the testicles
of the beast through the power
of great Gautama’s tapas .
Come then, Rama, to the ashram
of the holy sage and save Ahalya
who has the beauty of a goddess.”
Raghava heard Visvamitra’s words
and followed him into the ashram
with Laksmana: there he saw
Ahalya, shining with an inner light
earned through her penances,
blazing yet hidden from the eyes
of passersby, even gods and antigods.[6]
The Ahalya Episode: Kampan
They came to many-towered Mithila
and stood outside the fortress.
On the towers were many flags.
There, high on an open field,
stood a black rock
that was once Ahalya,
the great sage’s wife who fell
because she lost her chastity,
the mark of marriage in a house.
547
― 29 ―
Rama’s eyes fell on the rock,
the dust of his feet
wafted on it.
Like one unconscious
coming to,
cutting through ignorance,
changing his dark carcass
for true form
as he reaches the Lord’s feet,
so did she stand alive
formed and colored
again as she once was.
548
In 550, Rama asks Visvamitra why this lovely woman had been turned to stone. Visvamitra replies:
“Listen. Once Indra,
Lord of the Diamond Axe,
waited on the absenceLord of the Diamond Axe,
of Gautama, a sage all spirit,
meaning to reach out
for the lovely breast
of doe-eyed Ahalya, his wife.
551
Hurt by love’s arrows,
hurt by the look in her eyes
that pierced him like a spear, Indra
writhed and cast about
for stratagems;
one day, overwhelmed
and mindless, he isolated
the sage; and sneaked
into the hermitage
wearing the exact body of Gautama
whose heart knew no falsehoods.
552
Sneaking in, he joined Ahalya;
coupled, they drank deep
of the clear new wine
of first-night weddings;
and she knew.
Yet unable
to put aside what was not hers,
she dallied in her joy,
but the sage did not tarry,
he came back, a very Siva
with three eyes in his head.
553
― 30 ―
Gautama, who used no arrows
from bows, could use more inescapable
powers of curse and blessing.
When he arrived, Ahalya stood there,
stunned, bearing the shame of a deed
that will not end in this endless world.
Indra shook in terror,
started to move away
in the likeness of a cat.
554
Eyes dropping fire, Gautama
saw what was done,
and his words flew
like the burning arrows
at your hand:
‘May you be covered
by the vaginas
of a thousand women!’
In the twinkle of an eye
they came and covered him.
555
Covered with shame,
laughingstock of the world,
Indra left.
The sage turned
to his tender wife
and cursed:
‘O bought woman!
May you turn to stone!’
and she fell at once
a rough thing
of black rock.
556
Yet as she fell she begged:
‘To bear and forgive wrongs
is also the way of elders.
O Siva-like lord of mine,
set some limit to your curse!’
So he said: ‘Rama
will come, wearing garlands that bring
the hum of bees with them.
When the dust of his feet falls on you,
you will be released from the body of stone.’
557
The immortals looked at their king
and came down at once to Gautama
in a delegation led by Brahma
and begged of Gautama to relent.
― 31 ―
Gautama’s mind had changed
and cooled. He changed
the marks on Indra to a thousand eyes
and the gods went back to their worlds,
while she lay there, a thing of stone.
558
That was the way it was.
while she lay there, a thing of stone.
From now on, no more misery,
only release, for all things
in this world.
O cloud-dark lord
who battled with that ogress,
black as soot, I saw there
the virtue of your hands
and here the virtue of your feet.”[7]
559
Let me rapidly suggest a few differences between the two tellings. In Valmiki, Indra seduces a willing Ahalya. In Kampan, Ahalya realizes she is doing wrong but cannot let go of the forbidden joy; the poem has also suggested earlier that her sage-husband is all spirit, details which together add a certain psychological subtlety to the seduction. Indra tries to steal away in the shape of a cat, clearly a folklore motif (also found, for example, in the Kathasaritsagara , an eleventh-century Sanskrit compendium of folktales).[8] He is cursed with a thousand vaginas which are later changed into eyes, and Ahalya is changed into frigid stone. The poetic justice wreaked on both offenders is fitted to their wrongdoing. Indra bears the mark of what he lusted for, while Ahalya is rendered incapable of responding to anything. These motifs, not found in Valmiki, are attested in South Indian folklore and other southern Rama stories, in inscriptions and earlier Tamil poems, as well as in non-Tamil sources. Kampan, here and elsewhere, not only makes full use of his predecessor Valmiki’s materials but folds in many regional folk traditions. It is often through him that they then become part of other Ramayanas .
In technique, Kampan is also more dramatic than Valmiki. Rama’s feet transmute the black stone into Ahalya first; only afterward is her story told. The black stone standing on a high place, waiting for Rama, is itself a very effective, vivid symbol. Ahalya’s revival, her waking from cold stone to fleshly human warmth, becomes an occasion for a moving bhakti (devotional) meditation on the soul waking to its form in god.
Finally, the Ahalya episode is related to previous episodes in the poem such as that in which Rama destroys the demoness Tataka. There he was the destroyer of evil, the bringer of sterility and the ashes of death to his enemies. Here, as the reviver of Ahalya, he is a cloud-dark god of fertility. Throughout
― 32 ―
Kampan’s poem, Rama is a Tamil hero, a generous giver and a ruthless destroyer of foes. And the bhakti vision makes the release of Ahalya from her rock-bound sin a paradigm of Rama’s incarnatory mission to release all souls from world-bound misery.
In Valmiki, Rama’s character is that not of a god but of a god-man who has to live within the limits of a human form with all its vicissitudes. Some argue that the references to Rama’s divinity and his incarnation for the purpose of destroying Ravana, and the first and last books of the epic, in which Rama is clearly described as a god with such a mission, are later additions.[9] Be that as it may, in Kampan he is clearly a god. Hence a passage like the above is dense with religious feeling and theological images. Kampan, writing in the twelfth century, composed his poem under the influence of Tamil bhakti . He had for his master Nammalvar (9th C.?), the most eminent of the Srivaisnava saints. So, for Kampan, Rama is a god who is on a mission to root out evil, sustain the good, and bring release to all living beings. The encounter with Ahalya is only the first in a series, ending with Rama’s encounter with Ravana the demon himself. For Nammalvar, Rama is a savior of all beings, from the lowly grass to the great gods:
By Rama’s Grace
Why would anyone want
to learn anything but Rama?
Beginning with the low grass
and the creeping ant
with nothing
whatever,
he took everything in his city,
everything moving,
everything still,
he took everything,
everything born
of the lord
of four faces,
he took them all
to the very best of states.
Nammalvar 7.5.1[10]
Kampan’s epic poem enacts in detail and with passion Nammalvar’s vision of Rama.
Thus the Ahalya, episode is essentially the same, but the weave, the texture, the colors are very different. Part of the aesthetic pleasure in the later poet’s telling derives from its artistic use of its predecessor’s work, from ring-
― 33 ―
ing changes on it. To some extent all later Ramayanas play on the knowledge of previous tellings: they are meta-Ramayanas . I cannot resist repeating my favorite example. In several of the later Ramayanas (such as the Adhyatma Ramayana , 16th C.), when Rama is exiled, he does not want Sita to go with him into the forest. Sita argues with him. At first she uses the usual arguments: she is his wife, she should share his sufferings, exile herself in his exile, and so on. When he still resists the idea, she is furious. She bursts out, “Countless Ramayanas have been composed before this. Do you know of one where Sita doesn’t go with Rama to the forest?” That clinches the argument, and she goes with him.[11] And as nothing in India occurs uniquely, even this motif appears in more than one Ramayana .
Now the Tamil Ramayana of Kampan generates its own offspring, its own special sphere of influence. Read in Telugu characters in Telugu country, played as drama in the Malayalam area as part of temple ritual, it is also an important link in the transmission of the Rama story to Southeast Asia. It has been convincingly shown that the eighteenth-century Thai Ramakien owes much to the Tamil epic. For instance, the names of many characters in the Thai work are not Sanskrit names, but clearly Tamil names (for example, Rsyasrnga in Sanskrit but Kalaikkotu in Tamil, the latter borrowed into Thai). Tulsi’s Hindi Ramcaritmanas and the Malaysian Hikayat Seri Ram too owe many details to the Kampan poem.[12]
Thus obviously transplantations take place through several mutes. In some languages the word for tea is derived from a northern Chinese dialect and in others from a southern dialect; thus some languages, like English and French, have some form of the word tea , while others, like Hindi and Russian, have some form of the word cha(y) . Similarly, the Rama story seems to have traveled along three routes, according to Santosh Desai: “By land, the northern route took the story from the Punjab and Kashmir into China, Tibet, and East Turkestan; by sea, the southern route carried the story from Gujarat and South India into Java, Sumatra, and Malaya; and again by land, the eastern route delivered the story from Bengal into Burma, Thailand, and Laos. Vietnam and Cambodia obtained their stories partly from Java and partly from India via the eastern route.”[13]
Jaina Tellings
When we enter the world of Jains tellings, the Rama story no longer carries Hindu values. Indeed the Jaina texts express the feeling that the Hindus, especially the Brahmins, have maligned Ravana, made him into a villain. Here is a set of questions that a Jaina text begins by asking: “How can monkeys vanquish the powerful raksasa warriors like Ravana? How can noble men and Jaina worthies like Ravana eat flesh and drink blood? How can Kumbhakarna sleep through six months of the year, and never wake up even
― 34 ―
though boiling oil was poured into his cars, elephants were made to trample over him, and war trumpets and conches blow around him? They also say that Ravana captured Indra and dragged him handcuffed into Lanka. Who can do that to Indra? All this looks a bit fantastic and extreme. They are lies and contrary to reason.” With these questions in mind King Srenika goes to sage Gautama to have him tell the true story and clear his doubts. Gautama says to him, “I’ll tell you what Jaina wise men say. Ravana is not a demon, he is not a cannibal and a flesh eater. Wrong-thinking poetasters and fools tell these lies.” He then begins to tell his own version of the story.[14] Obviously, the Jaina Ramayana of Vimalasuri, called Paumacariya (Prakrit for the Sanskrit Padmacarita ), knows its Valmiki and proceeds to correct its errors and Hindu extravagances. Like other Jains puranas , this too is a pratipurana , an anti- or counter-purana . The prefix prati , meaning “anti-” or “counter-,” is a favorite Jaina affix.
Vimalasuri the Jains opens the story not with Rama’s genealogy and greatness, but with Ravana’s. Ravana is one of the sixty-three leaders or salakapurusas of the Jaina tradition. He is noble, learned, earns all his magical powers and weapons through austerities (tapas ), and is a devotee of Jaina masters. To please one of them, he even takes a vow that he will not touch any unwilling woman. In one memorable incident, he lays siege to an impregnable fort. The queen of that kingdom is in love with him and sends him her messenger; he uses her knowledge of the fort to breach it and defeat the king. But, as soon as he conquers it, he returns the kingdom to the king and advises the queen to return to her husband. Later, he is shaken to his roots when he hears from soothsayers that he will meet his end through a woman, Sita. It is such a Ravana who falls in love with Sita’s beauty, abducts her, tries to win her favors in vain, watches himself fall, and finally dies on the battlefield. In these tellings, he is a great man undone by a passion that he has vowed against but that he cannot resist. In another tradition of the Jaina Ramayanas , Sita is his daughter, although he does not know it: the dice of tragedy are loaded against him further by this oedipal situation. I shall say more about Sita’s birth in the next section.
In fact, to our modern eyes, this Ravana is a tragic figure; we are moved to admiration and pity for Ravana when the Jainas tell the story. I should mention one more motif: according to the Jaina way of thinking, a pair of antagonists, Vasudeva and Prativasudeva—a hero and an antihero, almost like self and Other—are destined to fight in life after life. Laksmana and Ravana are the eighth incarnations of this pair. They are born in age after age, meet each other in battle after many vicissitudes, and in every encounter Vasudeva inevitably kills his counterpart, his prati . Ravana learns at the end that Laksmana is such a Vasudeva come to take his life. Still, overcoming his despair after a last unsuccessful attempt at peace, he faces his destined enemy in battle with his most powerful magic weapons. When finally he
― 35 ―
hurls his discus (cakra ), it doesn’t work for him. Recognizing Laksmana as a Vasudeva, it does not behead him but gives itself over to his hand. Thus Laksmana slays Ravana with his own cherished weapon.
Here Rama does not even kill Ravana, as he does in the Hindu Ramayanas . For Rama is an evolved Jaina soul who has conquered his passions; this is his last birth, so he is loath to kill anything. It is left to Laksmana to kill enemies, and according to inexorable Jaina logic it is Laksmana who goes to hell while Rama finds release (kaivalya ).
One hardly need add that the Paumacariya is filled with references to Jaina places of pilgrimage, stories about Jaina monks, and Jaina homilies and legends. Furthermore, since the Jainas consider themselves rationalists—unlike the Hindus, who, according to them, are given to exorbitant and often bloodthirsty fancies and rituals—they systematically avoid episodes involving miraculous births (Rama and his brothers are born in the normal way), blood sacrifices, and the like. They even rationalize the conception of Ravana as the Ten-headed Demon. When he was born, his mother was given a necklace of nine gems, which she put around his neck. She saw his face reflected in them ninefold and so called him Dasamukha, or the Ten-faced One. The monkeys too are not monkeys but a clan of celestials (vidyadharas ) actually related to Ravana and his family through their great grandfathers. They have monkeys as emblems on their flags: hence the name Vanaras or “monkeys.”
From Written to Oral
Let’s look at one of the South Indian folk Ramayanas . In these, the story usually occurs in bits and pieces. For instance, in Kannada, we are given separate narrative poems on Sita’s birth, her wedding, her chastity test, her exile, the birth of Lava and Kusa, their war with their father Rama, and so on. But we do have one complete telling of the Rama story by traditional bards (tamburi dasayyas ), sung with a refrain repeated every two lines by a chorus. For the following discussion, I am indebted to the transcription by Rame Gowda, P. K. Rajasekara, and S. Basavaiah.[15]
This folk narrative, sung by an Untouchable bard, opens with Ravana (here called Ravula) and his queen Mandodari. They are unhappy and childless. So Ravana or Ravula goes to the forest, performs all sorts of self-mortifications like rolling on the ground till blood runs from his back, and meets a jogi , or holy mendicant, who is none other than Siva. Siva gives him a magic mango and asks him how he would share it with his wife. Ravula says, “Of course, I’ll give her the sweet flesh of the fruit and I’ll lick the mango seed.” The jogi is skeptical. He says to Ravula, “You say one thing to me. You have poison in your belly. You’re giving me butter to eat, but you mean something else. If you lie to me, you’ll eat the fruit of your actions yourself.”
― 36 ―
Ravula has one thing in his dreams and another in his waking world, says the poet. When he brings the mango home, with all sorts of flowers and incense for the ceremonial puja , Mandodari is very happy. After a ritual puja and prayers to Siva, Ravana is ready to share the mango. But he thinks, “If I give her the fruit, I’ll be hungry, she’ll be full,” and quickly gobbles up the flesh of the fruit, giving her only the seed to lick. When she throws it in the yard, it sprouts and grows into a tall mango tree. Meanwhile, Ravula himself becomes pregnant, his pregnancy advancing a month each day.
In one day, it was a month, O Siva.
In the second, it was the second month,
and cravings began for him, O Siva.
How shall I show my face to the world of men, O Siva.
On the third day, it was the third month,
How shall I show my face to the world, O Siva.
On the fourth day, it was the fourth month.
How can I bear this, O Siva.
Five days, and it was five months,
O lord, you’ve given me trouble, O Siva.
I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it, O Siva.
How will I live, cries Ravula in misery.
Six days, and he is six months gone, O mother,
in seven days it was seven months.
O what shame, Ravula in his seventh month,
and soon came the eighth, O Siva.
Ravula was in his ninth full month.
When he was round and ready, she’s born, the dear,
Sita is born through his nose.
When he sneezes, Sitamma is born,
And Ravula names her Sitamma.[16]
In Kannada, the word sita means “he sneezed”: he calls her Sita because she is born from a sneeze. Her name is thus given a Kannada folk etymology, as in the Sanskrit texts it has a Sanskrit one: there she is named Sita, because King Janaka finds her in a furrow (sita). Then Ravula goes to astrologers, who tell him he is being punished for not keeping his word to Siva and for eating the flesh of the fruit instead of giving it to his wife. They advise him to feed and dress the child, and leave her some place where she will be found and brought up by some couple. He puts her in a box and leaves her in Janaka’s field.
It is only after this story of Sita’s birth that the poet sings of the birth and adventures of Rama and Laksmana. Then comes a long section on Sita’s marriage contest, where Ravula appears and is humiliated when he falls under the heavy bow he has to lift. Rama lifts it and marries Sita. After that she is abducted by Ravana. Rama lays siege to Lanka with his monkey allies,
― 37 ―
and (in a brief section) recovers Sita and is crowned king. The poet then returns to the theme of Sita’s trials. She is slandered and exiled, but gives birth to twins who grow up to be warriors. They tie up Rama’s sacrificial horse, defeat the armies sent to guard the horse, and finally unite their parents, this time for good.
One sees here not only a different texture and emphasis: the teller is everywhere eager to return to Sita—her life, her birth, her adoption, her wedding, her abduction and recovery. Whole sections, equal in length to those on Rama and Laksmana’s birth, exile, and war against Ravana, are devoted to her banishment, pregnancy, and reunion with her husband. Furthermore, her abnormal birth as the daughter born directly to the male Ravana brings to the story a new range of suggestions: the male envy of womb and childbirth, which is a frequent theme in Indian literature, and an Indian oedipal theme of fathers pursuing daughters and, in this case, a daughter causing the death of her incestuous father.[17] The motif of Sita as Ravana’s daughter is not unknown elsewhere. It occurs in one tradition of the Jaina stories (for example, in the Vasudevahimdi ) and in folk traditions of Kannada and Telugu, as well as in several Southeast Asian Ramayanas . In some, Ravana in his lusty youth molests a young woman, who vows vengeance and is reborn as his daughter to destroy him. Thus the oral traditions seem to partake of yet another set of themes unknown in Valmiki.
A Southeast Asian Example
When we go outside India to Southeast Asia, we meet with a variety of tellings of the Rama story in Tibet, Thailand, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Java, and Indonesia. Here we shall look at only one example, the Thai Ramakirti . According to Santosh Desai, nothing else of Hindu origin has affected the tone of Thai life more than the Rama story.[18] The bas-reliefs and paintings on the walls of their Buddhist temples, the plays enacted in town and village, their ballets—all of them rework the Rama story. In succession several kings with the name “King Rama” wrote Ramayana episodes in Thai: King Rama I composed a telling of the Ramayana in fifty thousand verses, Rama II composed new episodes for dance, and Rama VI added another set of episodes, most taken from Valmiki. Places in Thailand, such as Lopburi (Skt. Lavapuri), Khidkin (Skt. Kiskindha), and Ayuthia (Skt. Ayodhya) with its ruins of Khmer and Thai art, are associated with Rama legends.
The Thai Ramakirti (Rama’s glory) or Ramakien (Rama’s story) opens with an account of the origins of the three kinds of characters in the story, the human, the demonic, and the simian. The second part describes the brothers’ first encounters with the demons, Rama’s marriage and banishment, the abduction of Sita, and Rama’s meeting with the monkey clan. It also describes the preparations for the war, Hanuman’s visit to Lanka and
― 38 ―
his burning of it, the building of the bridge, the siege of Lanka, the fall of Ravana, and Rama’s reunion with Sita. The third part describes an insurrection in Lanka, which Rama deputes his two youngest brothers to quell. This part also describes the banishment of Sita, tile birth of her sons, their war with Rama, Sita’s descent into the earth, and the appearance of the gods to reunite Rama and Sita. Though many incidents look the same as they do in Valmiki, many things look different as well. For instance, as in the South Indian folk Ramayanas (as also in some Jaina, Bengali, and Kashmiri ones), the banishment of Sita is given a dramatic new rationale. The daughter of Surpanakha (the demoness whom Rama and Laksmana had mutilated years earlier in the forest) is waiting in the wings to take revenge on Sita, whom she views as finally responsible for her mother’s disfigurement. She comes to Ayodhya, enters Sita’s service as a maid, and induces her to draw a picture of Ravana. The drawing is rendered indelible (in some tellings, it comes to life in her bedroom) and forces itself on Rama’s attention. In a jealous rage, he orders Sita killed. The compassionate Laksmana leaves her alive in the forest, though, and brings back the heart of a deer as witness to the execution.
The reunion between Rama and Sita is also different. When Rama finds out she is still alive, he recalls Sita to his palace by sending her word that he is dead. She rushes to see him but flies into a rage when she finds she has been tricked. So, in a fit of helpless anger, she calls upon Mother Earth to take her. Hanuman is sent to subterranean regions to bring her back, but she refuses to return. It takes the power of Siva to reunite them.
Again as in the Jaina instances and the South Indian folk poems, the account of Sita’s birth is different from that given in Va1miki. When Dasaratha performs his sacrifice, he receives a rice ball, not the rice porridge (payasa ) mentioned in Valmiki. A crow steals some of the rice and takes it to Ravana’s wife, who eats it and gives birth to Sita. A prophecy that his daughter will cause his death makes Ravana throw Sita into the sea, where the sea goddess protects her and takes her to Janaka.
Furthermore, though Rama is an incarnation of Visnu, in Thailand he is subordinate to Siva. By and large he is seen as a human hero, and the Ramakirti is not regarded as a religious work or even as an exemplary work on which men and women may pattern themselves. The Thais enjoy most the sections about the abduction of Sita and the war. Partings and reunions, which are the heart of the Hindu Ramayanas , are not as important as the excitement and the details of war, the techniques, the fabulous weapons. The Yuddhakanda or the War Book is more elaborate than in any other telling, whereas it is of minor importance in the Kannada folk telling. Desai says this Thai emphasis on war is significant: early Thai history is full of wars; their concern was survival. The focus in the Ramakien is not on family values and spirituality. Thai audiences are more fond of Hanuman than of Rama.
― 39 ―
Neither celibate nor devout, as in the Hindu Ramayanas , here Hanuman is quite a ladies’ man, who doesn’t at all mind looking into the bedrooms of Lanka and doesn’t consider seeing another man’s sleeping wife anything immoral, as Valmiki’s or Kampan’s Hanuman does.
Ravana too is different here. The Ramakirti admires Ravana’s resourcefulness and learning; his abduction of Sita is seen as an act of love and is viewed with sympathy. The Thais are moved by Ravana’s sacrifice of family, kingdom, and life itself for the sake of a woman. His dying words later provide the theme of a famous love poem of the nineteenth century, an inscription of a Wat of Bangkok.[19] Unlike Valmiki’s characters, the Thai ones are a fallible, human mixture of good and evil. The fall of Ravana here makes one sad. It is not an occasion for unambiguous rejoicing, as it is in Valmiki.
Patterns of Difference
Thus, not only do we have one story told by Valmiki in Sanskrit, we have a variety of Rama tales told by others, with radical differences among them. Let me outline a few of the differences we have not yet encountered. For instance, in Sanskrit and in the other Indian languages, there are two endings to the story. One ends with the return of Rama and Sita to Ayodhya, their capital, to be crowned king and queen of the ideal kingdom. In another ending, often considered a later addition in Valmiki and in Kampan, Rama hears Sita slandered as a woman who lived in Ravana’s grove, and in the name of his reputation as a king (we would call it credibility, I suppose) he banishes her to the forest, where she gives birth to twins. They grow up in Valmiki’s hermitage, learn the Ramayana as well as the arts of war from him, win a war over Rama’s army, and in a poignant scene sing the Ramayana to their own father when he doesn’t quite know who they are. Each of these two endings gives the whole work a different cast. The first one celebrates the return of the royal exiles and rounds out the tale with reunion, coronation, and peace. In the second one, their happiness is brief, and they arc separated again, making separation of loved ones (vipralambha ) the central mood of the whole work. It can even be called tragic, for Sita finally cannot bear it any more and enters a fissure in the earth, the mother from whom she had originally come—as we saw earlier, her name means “furrow,” which is where she was originally found by Janaka. It also enacts, in the rise of Sita from the furrow and her return to the earth, a shadow of a Proserpine-like myth, a vegetation cycle: Sita is like the seed and Rama with his cloud-dark body the rain; Ravana in the South is the Pluto-like abductor into dark regions (the south is the abode of death); Sita reappears in purity and glory for a brief period before she returns again to the earth. Such a myth, while it should not be blatantly pressed into some rigid allegory, resonates in the shadows of the tale in many details. Note the many references to fertility and rain, Rama’s
― 40 ―
opposition to Siva-like ascetic figures (made explicit by Kampan in tile Ahalya story), his ancestor bringing the rivet Ganges into the plains of the kingdom to water and revive the ashes of the dead. Relevant also is the story of .Rsyasrnga, the sexually naive ascetic who is seduced by the beauty of a woman and thereby brings rain to Lomapada’s kingdom, and who later officiates at the ritual which fills Dasaratha’s queens’ wombs with children. Such a mythic groundswell also makes us hear other tones in the continual references to nature, the potent presence of birds and animals as the devoted friends of Rama in his search for his Sita. Birds and monkeys are a real presence and a poetic necessity in the Valmiki Ramayana , as much as they are excrescences in the Jaina view. With each ending, different effects of the story are highlighted, and the whole telling alters its poetic stance.
One could say similar things about the different beginnings. Valmiki opens with a frame story about Valmiki himself. He sees a hunter aim an arrow and kill one of a happy pair of lovebirds. The female circles its dead mate and cries over it. The scene so moves the poet and sage Valmiki that he curses the hunter. A moment later, he realizes that his curse has taken the form of a line of verse—in a famous play on words, the rhythm of his grief (soka ) has given rise to a metrical form (sloka ). He decides to write the whole epic of Rama’s adventures in that meter. This incident becomes, in later poetics, the parable of all poetic utterance: out of the stress of natural feeling (bhava ), an artistic form has to be found or fashioned, a form which will generalize and capture the essence (rasa ) of that feeling. This incident at the beginning of Valmiki gives the work an aesthetic self-awareness. One may go further: the incident of the death of a bird and the separation of loved ones becomes a leitmotif for this telling of the Rama story. One notes a certain rhythmic recurrence of an animal killed at many of the critical moments: when Dasaratha shoots an arrow to kill what he thinks is an elephant but instead kills a young ascetic filling his pitcher with water (making noises like an elephant drinking at a water hole), he earns a curse that later leads to the exile of Rama and the separation of father and son. When Rama pursues a magical golden deer (really a demon in disguise) and kills it, with its last breath it calls out to Laksmana in Rama’s voice, which in turn leads to his leaving Sita unprotected; this allows Ravana to abduct Sita. Even as Ravana carries her off, he is opposed by an ancient bird which he slays with his sword. Furthermore, the death of the bird, in the opening section, and the cry of the surviving mate set the tone for the many separations throughout the work, of brother and brother, mothers and fathers and sons, wives and husbands.
Thus the opening sections of each major work set into motion the harmonics of the whole poem, presaging themes and a pattern of images. Kampan’s Tamil text begins very differently. One can convey it best by citing a few stanzas.
― 41 ―
The River
The cloud, wearing white
on white like Siva,
making beautiful the sky
on his way from the sea
grew dark
as the face of the Lord
who wears with pride
on his right the Goddess
of the scented breasts.
2
Mistaking the Himalayan dawn
for a range of gold,
the clouds let down chains
and chains of gleaming rain.
They pour like a generous giver
giving all he has,
remembering and reckoning
all he has.
15
It floods, it runs over
its continents like the fame
of a great king, upright,
infallible, reigning by the Laws
under cool royal umbrellas.
16
Concubines caressing
their lovers’ hair, their lovers’
bodies, their lovers’ limbs,
take away whole hills
of wealth yet keep little
in their spendthrift hands
as they move on: so too
the waters flow from the peaks
to the valleys,
beginning high and reaching low.
17
The flood carrying all before it
like merchants, caravans
loaded with gold, pearls,
peacock feathers and rows
of white tusk and fragrant woods.
18
Bending to a curve, the river,
surface colored by petals,
gold yellow pollen, honey,
the ochre flow of elephant lust,
looked much like a rainbow.
19
― 42 ―
Ravaging hillsides, uprooting trees,
covered with fallen leaves all over,
the waters came,
like a monkey clan
facing restless seas
looking for a bridge.
20
Thick-faced proud elephants
ranged with foaming cavalier horses
filling the air with the noise of war,
raising banners,
the flood rushes
as for a battle with the sea.
22
Stream of numberless kings
in the line of the Sun,
continuous in virtue:
the river branches into deltas,
mother’s milk to all lives
on the salt sea-surrounded land.
23
Scattering a robber camp on the hills
with a rain of arrows,
the sacred women beating their bellies
and gathering bow and arrow as they run,
the waters assault villages
like the armies of a king.
25
Stealing milk and buttermilk,
guzzling on warm ghee and butter
straight from the pots on the ropes,
leaning the marutam tree on the kuruntam
carrying away the clothes and bracelets
of goatherd girls at water games,
like Krsna dancing
on the spotted snake,
the waters are naughty.
26
Turning forest into slope,
field into wilderness,
seashore into fertile land,
changing boundaries,
exchanging landscapes,
the reckless waters
roared on like the pasts
that hurry close on the heels
of lives.
28
― 43 ―
Born of Himalayan stone
and mingling with the seas,
it spreads, ceaselessly various,
one and many at once,
like that Original
even the measureless Vedas
cannot measure with words.
30
Through pollen-dripping groves,
clumps of champak,
lotus pools,
water places with new sands,
flowering fields cross-fenced
with creepers,
like a life filling
and emptying
a variety of bodies,
the river flows on.[20]
31
This passage is unique to Kampan; it is not found in Valmiki. It describes the waters as they are gathered by clouds from the seas and come down in rain and flow as floods of the Sarayu river down to Ayodhya, the capital of Rama’s kingdom. Through it, Kampan introduces all his themes and emphases, even his characters, his concern with fertility themes (implicit in Valmiki), the whole dynasty of Rama’s ancestors, and his vision of bhakti through the Ramayana .
Note the variety of themes introduced through the similes and allusions, each aspect of the water symbolizing an aspect of the Ramayana story itself and representing a portion of the Ramayana universe (for example, monkeys), picking up as it goes along characteristic Tamil traditions not to be found anywhere else, like the five landscapes of classical Tamil poetry. The emphasis on water itself, the source of life and fertility, is also an explicit part of the Tamil literary tradition. The Kural —the so-called Bible of the Tamils, a didactic work on the ends and means of the good life—opens with a passage on God and follows it up immediately with a great ode in celebration of the rains (Tirukkural 2).
Another point of difference among Ramayanas is the intensity of focus on a major character. Valmiki focuses on Rama and his history in his opening sections; Vimalasuri’s Jaina Ramayana and the Thai epic focus not on Rama but on the genealogy and adventures of Ravana; the Kannada village telling focuses on Sita, her birth, her wedding, her trials. Some later extensions like the Adbhuta Ramayana and the Tamil story of Satakanthavana even give Sita a heroic character: when the ten-headed Ravana is killed, another appears with a hundred heads; Rama cannot handle this new menace, so it is Sita
― 44 ―
who goes to war and slays the new demon.[21] The Santals, a tribe known for their extensive oral traditions, even conceive of Sita as unfaithful—to the shock and horror of any Hindu bred on Valmiki or Kampan, she is seduced both by Ravana and by Laksmana. In Southeast Asian texts, as we saw earlier, Hanuman is not the celibate devotee with a monkey face but a ladies’ man who figures in many love episodes. In Kampan and Tulsi, Rama is a god; in the Jaina texts, he is only an evolved Jaina man who is in his last birth and so does not even kill Ravana. In the latter, Ravana is a noble hero fated by his karma to fall for Sita and bring death upon himself, while he is in other texts an overweening demon. Thus in the conception of every major character there are radical differences, so different indeed that one conception is quite abhorrent to those who hold another. We may add to these many more: elaborations on the reason why Sita is banished, the miraculous creation of Sita’s second son, and the final reunion of Rama and Sita. Every one of these occurs in more than one text, in more than one textual community (Hindu, Jaina, or Buddhist), in more than one region.
Now, is there a common core to the Rama stories, except the most skeletal set of relations like that of Rama, his brother, his wife, and the antagonist Ravana who abducts her? Are the stories bound together only by certain family resemblances, as Wittgenstein might say ? Or is it like Aristotle’s jack knife? When the philosopher asked an old carpenter how long he had had his knife, the latter said, “Oh, I’ve had it for thirty years. I’ve changed the blade a few times and the handle a few times, but it’s the same knife.” Some shadow of a relational structure claims the name of Ramayana for all these tellings, but on closer look one is not necessarily all that like another. Like a collection of people with the same proper name, they make a class in name alone.
Thoughts on Translation
That may be too extreme a way of putting it. Let me back up and say it differently, in a way that covers more adequately the differences between the texts and their relations to each other, for they are related. One might think of them as a series of translations clustering around one or another in a family of texts: a number of them cluster around Valmiki, another set around the Jaina Vimalasuri, and so on.
Or these translation-relations between texts could be thought of in Peircean terms, at least in three ways.
Where Text I and Text 2 have a geometrical resemblance to each other, as one triangle to another (whatever the angles, sizes, or colors of the lines), we call such a relation iconic .[22] In the West, we generally expect translations to be “faithful,” i.e. iconic. Thus, when Chapman translates Homer, he not only preserves basic textual features such as characters, imagery, and order of incidents , but tries to reproduce a hexameter and retain the same number
― 45 ―
of lines as in the original Greek—only the language is English and the idiom Elizabethan. When Kampan retells Valmiki’s Ramayana in Tamil, he is largely faithful in keeping to the order and sequence of episodes, the structural relations between the characters of father, son, brothers, wives, friends, and enemies. But the iconicity is limited to such structural relations. His work is much longer than Valmiki’s, for example, and it is composed in more than twenty different kinds of Tamil meters, while Valmiki’s is mostly in the sloka meter.
Very often, although Text 2 stands in an iconic relationship to Text ! in terms of basic elements such as plot, it is filled with local detail, folklore, poetic traditions, imagery, and so forth—as in Kampan’s telling or that of the Bengali Krttivasa. In the Bengali Ramayana , Rama’s wedding is very much a Bengali wedding, with Bengali customs and Bengali cuisine.[23] We may call such a text indexical : the text is embedded in a locale, a context, refers to it, even signifies it, and would not make much sense without it. Here, one may say, the Ramayana is not merely a set of individual texts, but a genre with a variety of instances.
Now and then, as we have seen, Text 2 uses the plot and characters and names of Text 1 minimally and uses them to say entirely new things, often in an effort to subvert the predecessor by producing a countertext. We may call such a translation symbolic . The word translation itself here acquires a somewhat mathematical sense, of mapping a structure of relations onto another plane or another symbolic system. When this happens, the Rama story has become almost a second language of the whole culture area, a shared core of names, characters, incidents, and motifs, with a narrative language in which Text 1 can say one thing and Text 2 something else, even the exact opposite. Valmiki’s Hindu and Vimalasuri’s Jaina texts in India—or the Thai Ramakirti in Southeast Asia—are such symbolic translations of each other.
One must not forget that to some extent all translations, even the so-called faithful iconic ones, inevitably have all three kinds of elements. When Goldman and his group of scholars produce a modern translation of Valmiki’s Ramayana , they are iconic in the transliteration of Sanskrit names, the number and sequence of verses, the order of the episodes, and so forth.[24] But they are also indexical, in that the translation is in English idiom and comes equipped with introductions and explanatory footnotes, which inevitably contain twentieth-century attitudes and misprisions; and symbolic, in that they cannot avoid conveying through this translation modern understandings proper to their reading of the text. But the proportions between the three kinds of relations differ vastly between Kampan and Goldman. And we accordingly read them for different reasons and with different aesthetic expectations. We read the scholarly modern English translation largely to gain a sense of the original Valmiki, and we consider it successful to the extent that it resembles the original. We read Kampan to read Kampan, and we judge him on his own terms—not by his resemblance to Valmiki but, if any-
― 46 ―
thing, by the extent that he differs from Valmiki. In the one, we rejoice in the similarity; in the other, we cherish and savor the differences.
One may go further and say that the cultural area in which Ramayanas are endemic has a pool of signifiers (like a gene pool), signifiers that include plots, characters, names, geography, incidents, and relationships. Oral, written, and performance traditions, phrases, proverbs, and even sneers carry allusions to the Rama story. When someone is carrying on, you say, “What’s this Ramayana now? Enough.” In Tamil, a narrow room is called a kiskindha ; a proverb about a dim-witted person says, “After hearing the Ramayana all night, he asks how Rama is related to Sita”; in a Bengali arithmetic textbook, children are asked to figure the dimensions of what is left of a wall that Hanuman built, after he has broken down part of it in mischief. And to these must be added marriage songs, narrative poems, place legends, temple myths, paintings, sculpture, and the many performing arts.
These various texts not only relate to prior texts directly, to borrow or refute, but they relate to each other through this common code or common pool. Every author, if one may hazard a metaphor, dips into it and brings out a unique crystallization, a new text with a unique texture and a fresh context. The great texts rework the small ones, for “lions are made of sheep,” as Valery said. And sheep are made of lions, too: a folk legend says that Hanuman wrote the original Ramayana on a mountaintop, after the great war, and scattered the manuscript; it was many times larger than what we have now. Valmiki is said to have captured only a fragment of it.[25] In this sense, no text is original, yet no telling is a mere retelling—and the story has no closure, although it may be enclosed in a text. In India and in Southeast Asia, no one ever reads the Ramayana or the Mahabharata for the first time. The stories are there, “always already.”
What Happens When You Listen
This essay opened with a folktale about the many Ramayanas . Before we close, it may be appropriate to tell another tale about Hanuman and Rama’s ring.[26] But this story is about the power of the Ramayana , about what happens when you really listen to this potent story. Even a fool cannot resist it; he is entranced and caught up in the action. The listener can no longer bear to be a bystander but feels compelled to enter the world of the epic: the line between fiction and reality is erased.
A villager who had no sense of culture and no interest in it was married to a woman who was very cultured. She tried various ways to cultivate his taste for the higher things in life but he just wasn’t interested.
One day a great reciter of that grand epic the Ramayana came to the village. Every evening he would sing, recite, and explain the verses of the epic. The whole village went to this one-man performance as if it were a rare feast.
― 47 ―
The woman who was married to the uncultured dolt tried to interest him in the performance. She nagged him and nagged him, trying to force him to go and listen. This time, he grumbled as usual but decided to humor her. So he went in the evening and sat at the back. It was an all-night performance, and he just couldn’t keep awake. He slept through the night. Early in the morning, when a canto had ended and the reciter sang the closing verses for the day, sweets were distributed according to custom. Someone put some sweets into the mouth of the sleeping man. He woke up soon after and went home. His wife was delighted that her husband had stayed through the night and asked him eagerly how he enjoyed the Ramayana . He said, “It was very sweet.” The wife was happy to hear it.
The next day too his wife insisted on his listening to the epic. So he went to the enclosure where the reciter was performing, sat against a wall, and before long fell fast asleep. The place was crowded and a young boy sat on his shoulder, made himself comfortable, and listened open-mouthed to the fascinating story. In the morning, when the night’s portion of the story came to an end, everyone got up and so did the husband. The boy had left earlier, but the man felt aches and pains from the weight he had borne all night. When he went home and his wife asked him eagerly how it was, he said, “It got heavier and heavier by morning.” The wife said, “That’s the way the story is.” She was happy that her husband was at last beginning to feel the emotions and the greatness of the epic.
On the third day, he sat at the edge of the crowd and was so sleepy that he lay down on the floor and even snored. Early in the morning, a dog came that way and pissed into his mouth a little before he woke up and went home. When his wife asked him how it was, he moved his mouth this way and that, made a face and said, “Terrible. It was so salty.” His wife knew something was wrong. She asked him what exactly was happening and didn’t let up till he finally told her how he had been sleeping through the performance every night.
On the fourth day, his wife went with him, sat him down in the very first row, and told him sternly that he should keep awake no matter what might happen. So he sat dutifully in the front row and began to listen. Very soon, he was caught up in the adventures and the characters of the great epic story. On that day, the reciter was enchanting the audience with a description of how Hanuman the monkey had to leap across the ocean to take Rama’s signet ring to Sita. When Hanuman was leaping across the ocean, the signet ring slipped from his hand and fell into the ocean. Hanuman didn’t know what to do. He had to get the ring back quickly and take it to Sita in the demon’s kingdom. While he was wringing his hands, the husband who was listening with rapt attention in the first row said, “Hanuman, don’t worry. I’ll get it for you.” Then he jumped up and dived into the ocean, found the ring in the ocean floor, brought it back, and gave it to Hanuman.
Everyone was astonished. They thought this man was someone special,
― 48 ―
really blessed by Rama and Hanuman. Ever since, he has been respected in the village as a wise elder, and he has also behaved like one. That’s what happens when you really listen to a story, especially to the Ramayana .
“After reading books like Ashok Banker’s Ramayana…such hooliganism in the name of religion…is unacceptable…”
I liked the following blogpost about the ABVP’s disruption of Delhi University over the inclusion of an essay by the late A.K. Ramanujan from the book So Many Ramayanas. You can find a link to the complete text of the book itself here. What I liked about the post below is her balanced approach to the political protest–hooliganism, as she quite correctly calls it–and the fact that she refers to my own Ramayana series as an example of newfound tolerance towards such literary interpretations. I was also pleased to see that at least three of the five books on her Shelfari shelf in the sidebar of her blog were books that I also enjoyed hugely: The Barn Owl’s Caper, Beloved Witch, and The Hungry Tide. –AKB
Posted by a blogger from Delhi, India, on her blog Luna Noctiluca.
Political Furor disrupts DU
Having grown up listening to thousands of folklores on Indian mythology, the recent violent uproar of ABVP(Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad) against A.K Ramanujan’s essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation�, which was one of the recommended reading for a course on Ancient Indian Culture in the BA (Honours) programme, shocked the students of Delhi University. After reading books like Ashok Banker’s “Ramayana� (the much lauded series which is also being produced as a cinema) which lends the whole concept a “Lord of The Rings� touch, such hooliganism in the name of religion which compromises with intellectual freedom is unacceptable for the DU students.
On the 26th of February this year, ABVP (the student wing of RSS) activists ransacked the University History department and manhandled the Head of the Department Prof. Saiyid Zaheer Husain Jafri. Ramanujan-a widely acclaimed scholar with impeccable academic credentials- had intended in his essay to explain how the Ramayana is interpreted in various ways across India. This however did not suit certain right wing individuals who claim the final authority on Ramayana- namely RSS or their juvenile counterpart-ABVP. They interpreted it to be an essay which is “malicious, capricious, fallacious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.� What angered the DU students was the mortifying manner in which it was handled. Around 100 people-who were NOT DU students-gathered outside the School of Social Sciences building, led by the former vice president of the DU Student Union Vikas Dahiya. They had, in a move which is very fishy, informed the media about their delegation and had started vandalizing the department the moment the media arrived there instead of having a proper dialogue. The DU History students, joined by other student union parties, staged a counter rally showing their disapproval for one of the most fascist organizations of India.
The Student Political parties of DU which suddenly come alive during the election period of the academic year are only known to participate cursorily in the movements which the students of the university organize. For example, the protest against the mass molestation of women. And now to top that, these parties are engaging in controversies which strait jacket academic research and scholarly pursuits. Most of the members of these parties do not care one hoot for the welfare of the students or the university but are primarily engaged in promoting their own political careers. Some of these members are involved in fake marksheet scams to procure admissions in bachelor courses of the university so that they can contest for the elections again and again. These members are shamelessly ignorant of most of the facts around them, as one of the ABVP spokespersons displayed when he demanded to meet A.K Ramanujan to abuse him, oblivious of the fact that Mr. Ramanujan has passed away 15 years ago.
Hindu College student Priyanka Singh says, ‘ABVP is unjustified in exploiting religion to gain political mileage’ and this is a sentiment which is shared by hundreds of DU students. Political parties therefore are eyed with suspicion in Delhi University. The attitude of indifference towards these parties is born out of such meaningless controversies. Hence, political parties in the university are nothing but a waste of time, space and huge amounts of funds every year which could otherwise be used for research and development in various fields which is much required in the university. A country which is based on secular democracy should not face such religious crises in the 20th century. And as members of young India, DU students have decided to take up various issues which the political parties manage to either ignore or end up making a spectacle of.
Found in translation
Moved to sidebar.
“something truly genuine, wonderful and…so related to the very basic Indian element within you…”
Posted by Amar Ghaisas on his blog Free Rein of Impulse.
Ahh .. never thought I would be able to post this so soon .. after some dedicated reading for good 4-5 (may be even 6) months .. after office .. on weekends.. at odd times even through the nights … after spending a good share of hard-earned money on something totally as worth as this …. I have completed reading six volumes of Ashok K. Banker’s Ramayana retelling .. and have come to love it! I just finished the sixth and last book few minutes back and rushed here just to type these few lines .. this is not as much an interesting post for you as important a note it is for me and I wanted to mark it well … because of the sheer volume of text that AKB’s Ramayana spans, you almost long to see yourself through to the last page .. not because of compulsion, because of excitement and joy and pure wonder of reading something truly genuine, wonderful and something so related to the very basic indian element within you .. it calls out to you and you helplessly follow it till the end … truly, it has given me great satisfaction today ..
I will keep writing more about Rama, AKB’s Rama, my Rama, the Ramayana and the AKB’s Ramayana through a series (I hope) of following posts .. but I wanted to make sure that I put this one first … so …
For some of you who are even little interested in finding out about AKB and his Ramayana retelling, please click on the above mentioned link …. even better … do read the books .. DO NOT MISS OUT ON THIS ONE … one of the best read that you can lay hands on .. ever …
Jai Shri Ram !!
Random Quote
Apropos of nothing at all, except maybe my inherent guilt at not being as productive as I would like to be (which is a constant and ongoing condition similar to but not as publicly embarrassing as gastritis), this quote from the ever-effervescent Groucho Marx:
“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
I like a banana too, every morning at 5 a.m. before I start writing.
Perhaps that makes me a fruit fly.
I have been pretty buzzzzy lately.
An Epic Indian at The British Library–tickets now available
The information below is taken from The British Library website.
Ramayana Events – September 2008
Confessions of an Epic Indian
Ashok Banker
Monday 1 September 2008
Ashok Banker is one of the most acclaimed names in contemporary Indian literature; reworking the myths and legends of India into a genre best described as Epic Indian fiction. His internationally acclaimed and bestselling Ramayana series which began with Prince of Ayodhya (2003) is a spectacular re-telling of the ancient Sanskrit epic that blends vivid action with beautifully imagined characters, sensitivity and intense drama.
His other work extends to a major three-film adaptation of the books, an animated feature film, a comic book adaptation, and numerous other film, television, graphic novel, documentary, online, and book projects all drawing from the rich vein of Indian culture, in particular the Ramayana. In his first-ever appearance outside India, the author reads from, discusses and presents exclusive glimpses of his work on the Ramayana for various media.
Event time: 18.30 – 20.00
Location: Conference Centre, British Library
Price: £6 (£4 concessions)
Signed copies…sold out! But keep ordering, more on the way.
Well, I’m overwhelmed.
Just two days since I started accepting orders for signed copies, and in less than 48 hours readers have ordered a total of 61 copies of my books!
I don’t even have that many at hand. I had about 15 copies in all, three sets of the hardcover omnibuses, one full set of the six paperbacks.
And I see that there are two new orders in my Inbox even as I write this post.
So I’m going to have to order more copies from my publishers. Which will arrive in three or four days. While I process the orders I already have in hand.
How do I feel about this deluge?
Well, happy, I guess!
It’s nice to know there are so many of you who have already read the books and are still willing to pay thousands–in some cases, over Rs 10,000/- for courier charges and additional copies of the same books!
So this is just to say thank you.
It’s always nice to know you’re loved. But it’s even nicer to know that someone out there is willing to put their money where their mouth is–or, in this case, where their heart is.
Right back at ya!
Hidden messages…
I found this article in Wall Street Journal fascinating.
It’s about a very successful American TV writer-producer who posts elaborate messages about his personal and professional life in the title card at the end of each episode of one of his hit television shows.
You know, those title cards that tell you the show you just watched was produced by So-and-So Productions.
The cards contain about 100 to 200 words each and are often reflective of the events of the very day on which they were written–most network shows in the US are sent for telecast within days or hours of telecast, not unlike shows in India–and will often reveal intensely personal problems, including last-minute jitters before a wedding and conflicts with network television executives.
The cards flash too briefly to read in detail when aired on TV, but when the episodes are viewed on DVD or after downloading (many US television episodes are made available for downloading these days–I watch almost all my TV shows this way now, since most of them aren’t aired here in India and I can’t wait for the DVD to come out months later), the screen can be paused and they can be read at leisure.
I like this story for the subversive way in which a very public medium is used to get across very personal messages.
Like a message in a bottle written in secret code.
Or a SETI transmission to the stars entirely in whale song.
Or ‘easter eggs’ on internet websites.
Or anagrams, acrostics and personal autobiographical messages and secrets concealed in my Ramayana books.
All of which have, in fact, been done before, among many other ways of communicating secretly in public media.
And no, I won’t tell you where and how to find the anagrams, acrostics and personal autobiographical messages and secrets concealed in my Ramayana books.
They wouldn’t be secret otherwise.
Now, listen to Ashok Banker’s Ramayana Series!
The first test recording of my own narration of a sample chapter from Prince of Ayodhya is up right here, right now.
It is a test recording, and very rough and full of flaws, so please be patient, listen through to the end (it’s about 12 minutes, 35 seconds) and do remember to visit the Readerswrite Page to post your comments and feedback when you’re done listening.
PS: Make sure you listen to the end, because that’s the best part–the Ravana part! With music and sound effects!
Click here to listen to the test recording of Chapter 1 of Prince of Ayodhya.
Or right-click the link and download it to your comp to listen.
Signed copies of my books available! Order now.
I’m finally ready to start offering signed copies of my books.
This is on a limited, experimental basis, so I’ll have only a few copies on hand at any given time, procured from my publishers here, Penguin India.
Orders will be on a cover price + courier cost basis. I’m not seeking to make any real profit, nor can I offer alternate means of shipping.
For overseas orders, there may be a small surcharge, but it will still work out cheaper than buying the former UK or US editions in a bookstore in America or the UK.
For Indian readers, it will mean paying the cover price of the book, plus courier costs at actuals to your location.
All copies will be personally inscribed to yourself or to anyone of your choice: gift orders are welcome, although I can’t offer gift wrapping just yet. All copies will be signed by me.
For those of you who are relatively new to my work, I don’t do readings or signings or book launches anymore, and have only done very few in the past, none for the past three years.
This offer by me, after numerous personal requests from readers around the world, is my way of making up for it.
It’s also my way of helping get my books to readers around the world who are having difficulty getting the correct author-approved Indian editions.
To place your request, please visit the Readerswrite Page.
Was Rama born on 10th January 5114 B.C.? The stars say yes!
This is a short but incisive blog post. The point it makes is simple yet stunning, as my headline above summarizes.
It’s always refreshing to find simple, honest pieces like this on the internet, dealing with actual facts and research, and drawing conclusions from rational argument and informed research, rather than the usual rabid flame wars that usually rage on such topics on the net. I picked it up wholesale from this blog by Gurudev.
I strongly recommend you visit the original blog as it has further links to articles and a book substantiating the claims.
–AKB
Birth date of Rama
September 16, 2007 — Gurudev
While the government of India and Archaeological Society of India (ASI) are blabbering left and right about Rama, Ramsethu and Ramayana without doing any proper research on the subject, and without even knowing any ABCD of Indian history, here is a simple yet powerful research done on the subject.
Based on the astronomical dating of the events described in the original ancient Valmiki Ramayana and using modern software to date the planetary positions, Pushkar Bhatnagar of the Indian Revenue Service has accurately dated the events in Ramayana.
As per this research the birth date of Rama is on January 10, 5114 BC !
Dates of the historical events were mentioned in the texts by the ancient Indian authors via the method of astronomical dating where the planetary and stellar positions on the day(night!) of the event were mentioned. This ensures that even after millenia one can get back to the actual date on which the event occurred, because when we have multiple events mentioned in a historical text with astronomical dating, its almost impossible to get more than one date for the collection of all these events! At the same time astronomical dating also validates the event itself because for multiple events to be accurately specified a person had to be either present on those days to record the event, (The other alternative being if the text is a myth, then the author has to take all the pain in this world to calculate the stellar and planetary positions for the events of the dates mentioned in his work, which is possible only by modern software Also, why on earth would a myth need real dates unless and until there is some conspiracy for the future! )
The method of astronomical dating has another scientific advantage. No need of a calendar like Gregorian or Caesarian or whatever. If tomorrow say few thousand years deep in the future, if some other system of calendar is used, then what is the proof that how long back or when exactly had I written this article? 2007 indicates nothing unless and until one actually knows the Gregorian calendar! Astronomical dating on the other hand has no such problems!
Read the interview and the article here. To find archaeological evidences of over 7000 years old history, one needs to dig at least 60 meters deep at the historical sites, and our ASI has not gone beyond 5 meters at the Ayodhya site!!
Also do not miss this wonderful informative article on the found and lost proofs at Ayodhya
The Research work could be purchased here.
Whether sweet or sour, History should only be read as it is, it should not be written to match our taste.
History should only be read, not written
“The book has to call out…”
I found this blog post interesting for its mention of books “calling” out to readers.
I personally believe this is true, and that some deep instinct guides some of us to pick out certain books over others–I’m not talking about a supernatural ‘force’, mind you! Merely an intuition based on our present state of mind, past experience, various factors too complex to explain, but if you’ve ever experienced this kind of ‘calling’, you can’t deny its existence. Some of the best books I’ve ever read, I discovered this way. It’s the reason why I avoid bestsellers like the plague–even literary novels that are allegedly great literature but happen to be the hottest selling titles of the moment–and ignore the herd instinct that drives people to read books by ‘brand name’ authors, no matter how good those authors may be. If and when I do read the occasional such book, it’s usually years after its flash of fame and only if it ‘calls’ out to me; in short, I place instinct and personal judgement over media hype and critical acclaim always.
There’s also an old and powerful belief that the Ramayana ‘calls’ out to certain readers, and repels others. And that the epic mirrors your own state of mind at the time you read it, which is why some people are shocked when they reread the epic years later and find it evokes totally different reactions from the previous time. Like any great and ancient work, it becomes a slate on which we write our own interpretation, imposing it over all previous interpretations (but often merely repeating them) in a constant palimpsestic process that continues over generations and eons.
Those are some of my thoughts on reading this simple but charming blog post…
Originally posted by a reader named Nix from Mumbai on a blog alp-viram.
‘Books padha karo, it’s a very good habit’…I’m sure every one of us has heard this phrase thrust in our faces (maybe in varied languages) hundreds of times. I’m not going to deny or try to contradict the truth in that. But yes, I am going to try to bring to light the fact that it’s easier said than done (among other random comments I’m going to make).
I do believe that a lot depends on the childhood phase of our lives. You can’t expect someone who has never read any book other than what the curriculum prescribes to suddenly grab a book and become an ardent reader. It takes grooming, developing taste, identifying the genre that you enjoy the most, etc etc. It should not be a one day, one week, one month or a year stint; you have to keep at it. You have to, like I mentioned earlier develop the habit, groom yourself.
From what I have noticed, I believe there are 3 kinds of readers. First, those who enjoy reading in their free time. Then there are those who I like to call ‘compulsive readers’. These are the ones who HAVE TO read everyday. They take special efforts to find time to read something or the other. They are the ones that are truly very passionate. There are also those readers who read only the ‘best sellers’ or maybe just one series or author. Well I didn’t find them worthy enough to dedicate a category to them. There is also another kind of readers, but frankly I haven’t come across many who belong ‘purely’ to this category. These are the ones that randomly walk into a bookstore, look around the store, spend over a couple of hours looking for a book, not knowing what they’re looking for, and might even walk out of the store without picking up anything. They can’t read any book, unless that book ‘calls out’ to them. Its not that they have to find the book interesting…no no no…the book has to call out to them, the reader has to identify a bond with the book. They can’t read a book even if a hundred people tell them that a certain book is worth a read unless they identify the bond.
I know most of you are going to think ‘what nonsense’ or ‘its just an excuse to not read’…but those who have felt this bond, those who have experienced this feeling will know what I’m talking about.
In any case, I strongly believe reading should be developed as a habit. And I don’t mean comics or magazines. I mean reading ‘sound literary substance’. Maybe it is because I am very passionate about languages, be it English or Hindi. While we’re at the topic of books, and reading ‘sound literary’ books…I would like to recommend ‘the Ramayana’ series by Ashok Banker and if any of you fancy a good Hindi read, there is a collection of short storied callled ‘gadhyanjali’ (yes, all you ICSE students…our old text book). Happy reading!!!
Lights, camera, paneer…
This is an article about Abhimanyu Singh, my friend, neighbour, and producer of Maha Yoddha Rama which as you already know is the in-production animation film written by me. It appeared today in Business Standard. After the interview, I got to eat the paneer dish mentioned and it’s as yummy as it sounds!
Lights, camera, paneer
FOODIE
Abhilasha Ojha / New Delhi May 11, 2008
By the time we meet him it’s already 8.30 pm and Abhimanyu Singh, CEO of Contiloe Films, despite his hectic schedule, is excited to show us his culinary skills. “I enjoy cooking, and though I keep long working hours, I cook at least one dish every Sunday,” he says.
In his kitchen, everything has been neatly kept and cut to perfection. There are tomatoes, slit green chillies, paneer cut into neat cubes, and freshly chopped green coriander. “What I’m preparing for you is a dish that my bua (aunt) taught me,” Singh tells us, explaining that he got involved in cooking when he joined St Stephen’s College in Delhi.
The recipe is that of paneer prepared in thick tomato gravy, a favourite with his family and a classic north Indian recipe. He likes the dish to ooze with Indian spices, including cumin seeds and heeng (asafoetida) besides garam masala (which is optional). The flavour of tomato, he says, especially when coated on the paneer cubes, is delightful and every bite is delicious.
What’s interesting is the manner in which Singh sprinkles his conversations with food references and peppers it with references to Contiloe, his entertainment production company. Despite being a foodie (he digs Thai, Chinese, Italian, European and Spanish cuisine), eventually he comes home to cook and eat Indian food.
“It’s similar to what we do at Contiloe; eventually producing Indian content,” he laughs, while cumin seeds splutter in a pan of hot oil. The company, he says, adding a generous quantity of red chilli powder, has existed for more than a decade and has not just survived but also stayed away from the grind of saas-bahu sagas.
Early next year, Contiloe will bring its most ambitious project, India’s first complete 3D animation film Mahayodha Ram, to the screens. Besides, there’s Maruti Mera Dost, a film targeting the kids segment, which will release in September 2008.
The banner has already had a decent run with its shows like Great Indian Comedy, Comedy Ka King Kaun and Shhh Koi Hai, the latter running for the past eight years. “Our project, Kashmir, on Star Plus, in fact had the biggest ensemble cast ever seen on Indian television, including actors like Gul Panag.”
The company, confirms Singh, is now developing its own scripts and is working closely with writers like Ashok Banker (for Mahayodha Ram). In addition, the company has also tied up with Pixion for developing another animation film. For television content, Contiloe is already developing three more shows.
As Singh coats the paneer cubes perfectly with the rich tomato gravy, he tells us about the company’s plans to get into merchandising and gaming activities aggressively. In addition, he’s opening an animation facility in Orissa, for which the government has already granted him space in an SEZ in Pipli.
And as Singh garnishes his creation with fresh coriander leaves, it’s not just for effect. It lends taste, colour and vibrancy to the entire preparation. It’s how he’s prepared Contiloe, which is all set to get not just bigger but better.
FAVOURITE RECIPE
PANEER IN TOMATO GRAVY
3 cups fresh tomato purée
500 gms paneer, cubed
2 tsp jeera powder
½ tsp heeng
A pinch of haldi
3-4 green chillies, slit
A bunch of fresh coriander leaves, chopped finely
3-4 tbsp oil
Salt to taste
Heat oil in a pan. Once hot, add cumin seeds. Then add heeng, haldi, green chillies, red chilli powder and mix well for a minute. Add tomato purée, stir and add salt. Cover for three to five minutes, stirring occasionally.
Once the tomato purée is reduced and oil separates from it, add paneer cubes and coat them well with the gravy. Stir carefully for a minute or two and turn off gas. Garnish with fresh coriander leaves. Serve hot with roti.
“I have always believed that this epic symbolizes the battle waged in our minds…”
A layperson’s overview of the Ramayana (not a review of my books, although the person has read and liked them, which is nice). I decided to feature it here because I found it simple and unassuming. Posted by Inder from Chennai on his blog jack of all…master of none.
The Ramayana is an Indian epic that is supposed to have been written more than 2000 years ago, by the sage Valmiki. Although it has existed for so many millennia, it still enthralls millions around the world just as it did during the time of its conception. I am no expert in the Ramayana, the limited knowledge I have about it comes from the Ramayana that was broadcast in doordarshan in 80s, the children’s version written by Rajaji and the Ashok Banker series (this one is really amazing!). The Ramayana is supposed to give every reader a different account about life, to some it is the story of the ‘ideal man’, to some it is a story about overcoming obstacles in life, to some it is the symbolic reunion of the soul with god…it all depends on how you interpret the story and the stories within the story. I have always believed that this epic symbolizes the battle that is waged in our minds, in order to facilitate the reunion of the jivathma (soul) with the paramathma (god). I have found numerous instances in the epic, especially in the sundarakand and yudhkand, which allegorically asserts this. There are numerous books that explain this particular aspect in detail; I just intend to state the same here, with a little addition of my own.
The characters:
Ram: He is the personification of all the good qualities in a human being. His qualities as a good son, a faithful husband, a just king and a true friend are some of his characteristics as the ideal man. Symbolically he represents the paramathma, being the incarnation of lord Vishnu.
Sita: She is again the ideal woman, and possesses the characteristics that are to be expected from a good wife and daughter. Her character may seem a little alien to today’s culture, and emulating her may seem ridiculous to most women but that’s only because there aren’t many Rams these days J. She is mostly dismissed as being too submissive and timid but she must be given credit for the iron will that she possessed to shun every move made by Ravan, to force her into submission, it was in fact Sita who weakened him mentally and spiritually by not succumbing to his power. Symbolically she represents the jivathma, which is yearning to unite with the paramathma (Ram).
Hanuman: My favourite character from the Ramayan, he is the incarnation of lord Shiva, and the son of the wind god, a celibate, and the greatest devotee of lord Ram. He is most instrumental in uniting Ram with Sita, so much so that even today separated couples are asked to read the sundarakand (a part of the Ramayan named after lord Hanuman) to be reunited. He symbolizes the unwavering devotion towards god that a spiritual seeker must possess and is the personification of bhakthi, strength, courage, knowledge and humility.
Ravana: The demon king of lanka, a very great devotee of lord Shiva (it is ironic that his downfall was hastened by an incarnation of Shiva), his rule extended to the three worlds and even managed to bring under his control the navagrahas. He was very well versed in the arts and scriptures, and was a master of the ‘rudra veena’ but his greatest flaw was his ego and was often depicted with ten heads (probably an indicative that he had an ego ten times that of a normal person?). His character symbolizes the ego that entraps the soul, and needs to be destroyed for the soul to be united with god.
Kumbakarna: He is Ravana’s brother and is granted to boon to be able to sleep for 6 months of the year and stay awake the other 6 months to eat (or something to that effect). He symbolizes the lethargy that arises from too much sleep and food, inflaming in us the qualities of rajas and thamas, preventing us from being able to worship god with a clear mind.
Indrajith: His name literally means ‘he who conquered Indra’, Indra is the lord of the devas and by winning the battle against him, Indrajith had lain claim on swargaloka and all its treasures. Indr in Sanskrit also means ‘the senses’ so in effect his name implies that he controls the senses (in a detrimental way of course). He proved to be a very difficult opponent in the war, and even managed to fell a large part of Ram’s army along with Lakshman (who were later revived by the famous sanjivni herb brought by Hanuman). Indrajith symbolizes the Maya that enshrouds us all, and technically the effects of Maya are felt by the senses (hence the name). The whole concept of Maya is created in our minds, by our ego, it leads you to believe that every thing you see, touch, feel, hear, taste is real, which further strengthens the symbolism since Indrajith is the first born son of Ravana.
In addition to this there are numerous other characters whose purpose I have not been able to understand, especially Lakshman Ram’s younger brother and Vibeeshan Ravana’s younger brother. Lakshman is the only character in the epic who sticks by Ram from the beginning to the end. Vibeeshan is the devotee of lord Ram who changes sides from his brother’s to join Ram when his pleas to avoid this war falls on deaf ears, he proves to be very useful in the war since he is aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy. If any of you know what these two symbolize do enlighten me. Getting on with our story….
The Golden Deer
The outraged Soorpanakha, Ravan’s younger sister, rushes to Lanka after her advances towards Ram and Lakshman result in her nose and ears being chopped off. Fully aware of her brothers love for all things beautiful she sings praises of Sita’s beauty, and at once overcome by lust Ravana speeds to the Dandaka forest where he uses the guise of the golden deer to lure Ram away from Sita before abducting her. It is at this point where Sita is separated from Ram and the foundation for the Ramayana war is laid. The three of them until then manage to lead a fairly contented life in the jungle, happy for each others company and things would have gone fine with Ram ascending his throne after the exile, had it not been for the golden deer. The golden deer that symbolizes material wealth and desires, manages to arouse in Sita, long forgotten passions and the need to posses this beautiful creature. Thereupon she pleads Ram to capture it for her, who taken aback by this request from a wife who has never asked him anything, happily complies. The deer like all desires, gives a good chase, and finally struck by Rams arrow morphs into its demonic form. This does remind one of our never ending chase behind not one, but many golden deers, every desire that we nurture and work hard to attain loses its ‘attractiveness’ once attained. This story goes to say that God has always been with us, it is only we who lose him in the race to gain material wealth, and fulfill our inner desires.
Hanuman burns Lanka
After Sita is abducted, the search for her takes Ram and his army to tip of the Indian peninsula, where they are affronted by the mighty ocean, and in order to ascertain if Sita is indeed held captive on its other shore, Hanuman is singled out to cross its waters to find her. Once in Lanka Hanuman is thrilled by the wealth and abundance of the island, but remains unperturbed by its temptations. His search brings him to Mandodari (Ravan’s wife) asleep in Ravan’s bed, and mistaking her for Sita is at once utterly disgusted. But he soon comes to his senses and further on he finds Sita imprisoned in the Ashok vatika. After pacifying Sita who is terribly grief stricken, he proceeds to Ravan’s court where he is bound and his tail is set on fire, and Hanuman leaps from building to building until the entire island is ablaze, much to the dismay of Ravan. This episode termed the sundarkand is one of the most read chapters of the Ramayana, it relates symbolically to the power of bhakthi and perseverance. Had Sita succumbed to Ravana’s threats or to his power, Hanuman would have returned to Ram and the coupled would never have been united. It was Sita’s single-minded devotion towards Ram that encouraged Hanuman to destroy the island, and weaken the will of the demon king.
Bridge Across the Ocean
Having confirmed Sita’s imprisonment Ram prays to Varuna the sea-god to allow them to pass, but Varuna refuses to go against the laws of nature but agrees to hold afloat every rock that has Ram’s name inscribed on it. The bridge is built and the army crosses the ocean to rescue Sita. The ocean represents the sexual energy inherent in us all, the first and most difficult obstacle that needs to be overcome in our spiritual journey. This ocean cannot be removed or be drained at an instant the only way through it, is to convert the sexual energy into spiritual energy. This is symbolized by the rocks, which would sink normally, floating by the power of Ram’s name. Its worthy to note than the entire army had trouble crossing the ocean, but for Hanuman – the celibate, it was only a single leap that was required.
War
The war begins on the shores of Lanka; there are a number of valiant warriors on either sides resulting in a heavy casualties. This war between Ram and Ravan is on a different level the war between the ego and God, just as the ego fully aware of its impermanence and it’s inferiority to God’s power it refuses to vanquish its stubborn hold over the soul, Ravan refuses to let go of Sita, even after he is advised to do so by his own family and subjects.
Kumbakarna
After losing a considerable part of his army, Ravan decides to arouse his brother Kumbakarna to wage war against Ram. Kumbakarna though against this idea, agrees for the sake of his elder brother and fights bravely till his death by the hands of Lakshman. This significant victory for Ram symbolizes the overcoming of lethargy and gluttony that impedes spiritual growth in an individual.
Indrajith
After Kumbakarna Ram and his army are faced with the difficult task of fighting Indrajith -a mayavi and an expert black magician. He manages to overwhelm the army with his magic, and hurts Lakshman with his magical arrows. Following this he beheads Sita in front of Ram’s eyes, and Ram breaks down thinking that all is lost. Vibeeshan later confirms it to be an illusion and Ram fights with added vigor and kills Indrajith. This is the victory over maya, the illusion that entraps every one of us and never allows to unite with God.
Ravana
Ram finally comes face to face with Ravan, although he is aided by the devas and gods in this war, Ram finds it very difficult to kill Ravan. Every time he chops of Ravan’s head a new one springs in its place, this fierce combat his ended when Ram finally takes aim at Ravan’s belly and finally manages to vanquish the demon. The terrible war between Ram and Ravan symbolizes the difficulty in overcoming the ego, and its allies, and once overcome the unison with god becomes undeniable.
Agni Pariksha
The last event in the Ramayana before Ram is crowned king, is the agni pariksha, in which Sita is finally rescued from Lanka, but is asked to enter a pyre to prove her chastity. I really don’t know what this signifies, and is a much-debated topic of the Ramayana. There are even some explanations about Agni replacing the ‘maya’ Sita with the real one, but it sounds really lame, and was probably added only to thwart any attempts to sully Ram’s character for not trusting his wife. So if anyone can throw some light on this please do so.
The Arrogance of Orientalism
The following post was mailed to the Epic India group in response to Meenakshi Srinivasan (Blokesablogin)’s provocative and brilliant series of articles on the question of Hindu identity (scroll down to read the articles). Thanks to fellow Epic Indian Sundar Balasubramaniam for the excellent post that follows, including the links and quotation from Lord Macaulay that reveals the naked arrogance of the Orientalists who wrote virtually all the modern history of the sub-continent and perpetrated their biased views upon generations:
It never struck me before so sharply that how deep the colonization had an
effect upon our country until now.
It lead me on to bump into these links:
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2007/02/04/stories/2007020400030300.htm
http://www.geocities.com/bororissa/mac.html
An excerpt from Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education:
*I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic.–But I have done what I
could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who support the Oriental plan of education.
**
**It will hardly be disputed, I suppose, that the department of literature in which the Eastern writers stand highest is poetry. And I certainly never met with any Orientalist who ventured to maintain that the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations. But when we pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded, and general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral philosophy, the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same.*
After reading this, I would like to simply add a note:
As I quoted in my review of Ashok’s Ramayana series, the Vedas are without
beginning and without end. Just as the law of gravitation existed before its
discovery, and would exist if all humanity forgot it, so is it with the
spiritual truths.
-Sundar
Hindu. Who? Part 1 – Guest Essay by Blokesablogin
Posted by Blokesablogin (a.k.a. Meenakshi Srinivasan) on Desicritics
Religious conversions make interesting news and the secular media in India and the world-wide media interested in India enjoy this topic the most. When I was growing up in India, studying in English medium schools, my world view was different from the worldview I was exposed to, through the learning of Tamizh and Samskritam.
It was later, when I did my Masters in French Literature, that it finally dawned on me how our worldview is determined to a large extent by the very language we speak. The great linguist of our times, Chomsky makes this the very basis of his linguistical theory. We perceive this world through the lens of our language. The classic example given is the number of words in the Icelandic tongue to denote snow and ice while in Tamizh, we have one common word that means all kinds of precipitation, forms of water from snow to mist!
I revisited the languages I was forced to learn at school (Tamizh, Hindi, Samskritam) with the above information and went back to read some books written on the subject of Ancient India and Hinduism in English, Tamizh and Samskritam. What I learned was astounding.
In Samskritam, the Prathama Purusha (or primary person) is actually what we call the Third Person in English. The Madhyama Purusha (or middle person) is the Second Person and Uttama Purusha (Elevated person) is the First Person in English. I remember my Samskritam teacher telling us why this order was thus: She said that when we first observe the world, we see “The Other” first and ourselves last. It takes much courage to see ourselves and therefore needs maturity. Hence Uttama for the English’s First Person. Therein lies one of the clues towards what happened with 200 plus years of English language learning in India.
I then went back a little further to see what resulted with the Islamic invasions of India from the 10th century CE. What impact did Farsi and Arabic have on Indian languages and Indian texts? Many scholarly texts in Samskritam come to light from this period in, of all places, Kashmir. From the touch and feel of these detailed treaties on Agama shastra (dealing with details on rituals) and Tantra (Mysticism) it made me wonder again. Some of the lyrical ballads and romantic stories of kings (like Lalitaaditya) belong to this period. Kamban retells the Ramayana in Tamizh around the same time. Nambi Aandar Nambi consolidates the Saivite verses of Appar, Sundarar, Sambandar and Manikkavasagar. A few Charyapadas, poetic verses in a precursor language of Bengali, Assamese and Oriya belonging to this time have been found in a Nepali Museum. Kannada offers a rich range of works that include poetry and treaties. Nanayya, honored as the Aadi Kavi (First Poet) in Telugu, begins to retell the Mahabharatha in this period. What about the rest of India? Where are the texts in other languages?
Two centuries later, we see Amir Khusro, a feted poet with the Khilji patronage. He certainly appears to have assimilated the Vedic principle of “Who am I?” and proceeds to nourish the philosophy of the Sufi. This is the golden Bhakti Period of India. Sant Dnyaneshwar writes a 9000 verse Dnyaneshwari, a commentary on The Bhagavat Gita. From Kabir, Namdev to Mirabai, Soordas and Tulsidas, this period is rife with new materials in many languages across the sub continent.
Prior to the advent of Islam was the widespread acceptance and practice of Buddhism and Jainism across the sub continent including the highly endemic South. Researching literary texts, yet another problem surfaces. Timelines.
Prior to the British and their Gregorian calendar, the Mohammedan calendar was accepted throughout the Muslim ruled parts of the sub continent. However, earlier biographies of saints, kings and scholars are placed in time by the ancient vedic calendar of Yuga count. Every dynasty and saint is being squeezed into a post Christian era time frame and that does not make any sense in the development of language, philosophy, culture and dynasty as we see it in an integrated fashion.
According to Vaishnava tradition, Aandal, the author of the Thiruppavai is said to have been born on Kali Yuga year 98, Adi (Ashata month, July-August), Shukla Chathurthi, Tuesday under the Puram star in SRIVILLPUTHUR in the Pandiya dynasty but according to modern historians, it is “sometime” in the 8th century. Likewise, with the date of Adi Shankara. According to Shankara Maths (Dwaraka, Puri and Kanchi) he was born at Kaladi on the fifth day (Panchami) of the bright fortnight (Shuklapaksha) of the Vaisaka month (April-May) of the cyclic year Nandana – Kali 2593 corresponding to 509 B.C. while modern historians believe his time to be “mid-late” 8th Century CE.
Thus, we are left with a fuzzy “idea” of a timeline that does not fit in many dynasties and names. It appears as though some of these kings ruled for a few years and yet, we have “foreign” eyewitness accounts that say that they witnessed benign rule and that people were happy and prosperous. This makes absolutely no sense. People were writing on rocks and copperplates. There was no fax and email. In such a world, how can we assimilate changed rulership so quickly and be prosperous? It took three centuries to get a Telugu translation of the Mahabharatha with three poets working on it with royal patronage! And we speak of saints and rulers zipping through time according to “modern historians”. I am yet to know who these “modern historians” are, by name!
Let us go back to the Jain and Buddhist texts now to see where the dichotomy was with this “ghost” religion called Hinduism. Of the 24 Thirthankaras enumerated, the 1st, Adinath or Rishabha finds mention in the Bhagavatham as an Avatar of the Lord and according to Jain traditions, is said to have brought agriculture to his people. In the Bhagavatham, Balarama with his plough is said to have introduced agriculture to his people. Either way, there is no timeline to even take a guess as to when this Thirthankara lived. Here again the timeline problem. (If “modern historians” worked with the premise that the Hindu calendar had some veracity, many a timelines and dynasties and human history can be brought to light. The field of anthropology will be of greater help than archeology for this effort.)
While the reading of the Jain texts clearly shows us the greatness of the path of austerity, nowhere is there a “hatred” for Hinduism (no evidence of this word in any form in any Jain, Buddhist or “Hindu” texts themselves) or “Sanathan Dharma”. Some social and religious practices that arise over a period of time have been denounced, as they should be in all free societies. Seers and saints have consistently pointed out the divergence of common man from the righteous path and the methodology used to bring them back have been varied. So again, where is all this pro “Hindu” and anti “Hindu” talk coming from?
Personally, I think this is the greatest myth perpetrated by the British in the English media by forms of books and erudite, research papers that finds continuance to this day. It is a lot easier to fight battles against “ghosts” as these are based on fear and imagination than actualities. The sad part is nobody knows what anyone is fighting for or against anymore! Thiruvalluvar says in one of his Thirukkurals, “Yepporul yaar yaar vaai ketpinum Apporul meiporul kaanbadarivu”: The wise have the ability to discern the Truth from all its many apparitions.
More on Hindu. Who? in Part 2
PS: Couldn’t find a single book, written by an Indian author (many by Western authors available. I wonder how the Jews will respond to a Hindu writing canonical treaties on The Kabalah or The Torah, let alone a Muslim or Christian letting an Infidel or Kafir on commenting on the Koran or Bible) on Amazon that had a picture of the cover. Reason: All were published in India by non-Western publishing houses. This can be taken up as a project with partnerships with the Adyar Library, Asiatic Society Library and others.
Blokes aka Meenakshi enjoys writing along with being a mom, a school teacher, a musician and an Art of Living teacher (of meditation and breathing)
Hindu. Who? Part 2 – Guest Essay by Blokesablogin
Part 2 of the series by Blokesablogin (a.k.a. Meenakshi Srinivasan) posted on Desicritics
The Vedas are said to be Shruti, that which was heard. These were Aprusheya texts meaning that they were not written by any human author. These were revelations that were “heard” and passed on orally from one human to another. Therefore, these verses are of natural origins. I had my own doubts (but willing to accept them as good text) on this score until my recent Vision Quest in the Canyonlands of Utah. My personal revelations and listening to Peter Calhone made me revise my ideas about the veracity of the Vedas.
When HH Sri Chandrashekarendra Saraswati was asked, what the holy scripture of the Hindus was, he replied that there were 14 of them. He names the 4 Vedas (Rig, Yajur, Sama, Atharva), their 6 Angas (or limbs) and the 4 Upangas (secondary limbs). The list of the Angas sounds like a course in linguistics crossed with Statistics and Mathematics. They are Siksha, Vyakarana, Chandas, Nirukta, Jyotisha and Kalpa. The Upangas include Mimansa, Nyaya, Purana and Dharmashastra.
Each of the Vedas had the main part to them called the Samhita or “Anthology”. These were pure collections of the revelations, neatly organized (by Vyasa, it is said). Each of these Samhita came with their own “Guidebook”- a glossary, dictionary and User’s manual rolled into one. This was the Brahmana part of the Veda shaka (or branch). They dealt with the duties and actions to be performed by those who are involved in the myriad activities of life. Next came the Aranyaka. These dismiss the material aspects of the Brahmana as symbols to attain spiritual liberation that demands the dropping of the material plane. This part of the Vedas find great favor with the ascetic religions like Jainism and Buddhism. (This should clarify to “modern historians” that there was no hatred amidst these different religions. There was never an issue of aggrandisement of wealth and creation of religious empires that meant power, as we see in the history of the Catholic church and the Caliphat.)
The summary of all these different parts can be found in the “End of the Veda” or Vedanta. This section comprises of Upanishads. The Upanishads simply establish the role and relationship between humans and the world as we experience it through our senses and process through our other faculties such as mind, memory and intellect. Currently, the Vedantic tradition is finding favor with many as they are truly secular in nature. There are rare mentions of any particular God by name, even then as a reference rather than as adherence.
The above dichotomy within the Vedas were clearly defined as Karmakanda (Section on Action)and Gnyanakanda (Section on Knowledge). As long as humans believe this world to be true and believed they experienced hunger and had to feed their bodies, Karmakanda holds true. When hunger ceases to exist and the body loses its truth, then gnyanakanda becomes valid.
Thus, when the Vedas themselves have these paradoxes within, it amazes me to read in Indian history books that Jainism and Buddhism defined a new way to end the “atrocities” of brahmins, who were busily chopping off the heads of goats, horses and other “dumb” creatures under the guise of various sacrifices. This fallacy and several others continue to go unchallenged by any educated person. The reason is simple. Nobody has bothered to open an actual Vedic book to see what is inside. It is all second and third hand learnings through tertiary means. Even I am guilty of such a charge. Only recently, thanks to the internet, I found texts that were clearly enumerated and made my research far easier.
For centuries, there has been such a noise built up about the Vedic system of living and knowledge, that nobody is clear anymore. Even the avenues to access this knowledge is denied to us as we lose our linguistic skills. Thanks to the Kothari Commission, Samskritam was made compulsory in the school I studied in and learned enough to read a text today and comprehend something. It is sad that the new “International” schools that are cropping up across the country would rather offer French and German rather than Samskritam as a language option.
Sometimes a child stops me in the hallway of a US public school and asks me if I speak Hindu. I tell him that I neither speak Hindu nor Christian. I speak English, Hindi and a few other languages.
Blokes aka Meenakshi enjoys writing along with being a mom, a school teacher, a musician and an Art of Living teacher (of meditation and breathing)
Hindu. Who? Part 3 – Guest Essay by Blokesablogin
Part 3 of the series by Blokesablogin (a.k.a. Meenakshi Srinivasan) posted on Desicritics
Who, then, is a Hindu? According to dictionary.com here is the meaning. Note the year it comes into usage-1662
1662, from Pers. Hindu (adj. & noun) “Indian,” from Hind “India,” from Skt. sindhu “river,” specifically the Indus; hence “region of the Indus,” gradually extended across northern India. Hinduism, blanket term for “polytheism of India,” is from 1829.
This clarifies why I do not see the word Hindu in any form in any “Hindu”, Jain or Buddhist text. This is the reason why I shall refer to the pre 17th century texts as Indic texts. Strangely, the Sangam texts in Tamizh share a similar worldview with the Samskritam texts. Therefore, to limit the identity of the “Hindu” to Sindhu river is very narrow. The year 1829 is also significant. Earnest missionary activity in India begins around this time. Every district (county) has a missionary station (they are called Missionary Districts), busy converting the polytheistic pagans to monotheism. Within 6 years, Lord Macaulay introduces English in the place of Samskritam and Arabic, as the main medium of instruction for higher education.
“It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.” Excerpt from his Minute on Indian Education, 1835.
That was a pivotal point in the history of India. This was the time when the Afgan wars began against the British. It is amazing how the entire sub-continent shared a palpable connection. Missionaries begin work in the deep South and the equally monotheistic Afgans from the Northwestern Frontier Province fight back.
From the time of Chanakya, Gandhara (ancient name for Afghanistan), has resonated with the Indic world view as described in the Vedas. The roles of the brahmin (that Chanakya was, born to Jain parents) and the kshatriya king he served, were clearly demarcated. His treatise, the Arthashastra lucidly enumerates the types of governments found in his time. Prajathantra, or democracy, was one of them. Independent nation states called Ganarajya are also mentioned. He outlines the characteristics of a Rajarishi- an enlightened ruler, one who serves his kingdom with no personal gain. In the Mahabharatha, Bheeshma gives advice to Yudhishtra at the end of the Kurukshetra war. The only difference between the two sets of advice, Bheeshma’s was more on ruling well and none on strategies to destroy the enemy; Chanakya’s was to rule well, never putting one’s economy in jeopardy and to destroy the enemy without leaving a trace.
The overarching cultural ethos of this part of the world has seen too many years of spiritual inquiry. From Gandhara to the Ayayarwady valley (similar to the name Aayarpadi in Tamizh that denotes Gokul, home of baby Krishna) of Myanmar, one thought pervaded: Who are you? What is your truth in this world? What is your relationship with this universe? The lifestyle reflected these inquiries.
If the “Hindu” is to be known, the entire South East Asian region has to be researched- a tough job indeed. This could be a charter point for the SAARC countries to add to their list of things to do- help each other piece together their history, going past the veil introduced by the colonisers alongside creating a economic bloc.
Part 4 shall deal with the two main “issues” the “rest of the world” has with ‘Hinduism”: Caste system and Polytheism.
Blokes aka Meenakshi enjoys writing along with being a mom, a school teacher, a musician and an Art of Living teacher (of meditation and breathing)
Hindu. Who? Part 4 – Guest Essay by Blokesablogin
Part 4 of the series by Blokesablogin (a.k.a. Meenakshi Srinivasan) posted on Desicritics
The Caste System and Polytheism are the two main issues that are hard for non “Hindus” to assimilate and accept about “Hinduism”. If I were a non-”Hindu”, I would find it impossible to accept this nonsense too, especially the first one. Even the second one sounds permissable and sort of childish fantasy. After all, I would come from a background of “All men are created equal” and to find that a society actually divided itself up on “caste” lines and created inequalities is unsupportable to me.
What sounded most fallacious in this above scenario, that has been dinned into my head by my History books, the media, people in general was this: How come, the minds that came up with the concept of Zero and Algebra that always wanted to balance equations and inquire into life after death and keeping account of your actions (karma), could devise something as inequal as the caste system?
Back I went to the Vedas, my primary source. The first Suktam I looked into, the Purusha Suktam, describes the ‘Universal being”, the Purusha as one who has the brahmin for his head, kshatriya for his arms, vaishya for his thighs and shudra for his feet. Prior to this, I have heard these four words, brahmana, kshatriya, vaishya and shudra in the Phalashruti portions of smaller texts. The Phalashruthi is a concluding “epilogue” for most Indic texts that tells the reader what they will gain when they recite, chant or read a certain text. In each of those, these four varnas are mentioned and given a blessing each. For instance, in the Phalashruthi at the end of the Vishnu Sahasranama, the brahmin is blessed with the ultimate knowledge of the Vedas (Vedanta), the kshatriyas with victory, the vaishyas with wealth and the shudras with bliss. In the Bhagavat Gita, Krishna says to Arjuna that he created the four varnas.
I looked through my understanding of the word varna in the Samkritham medium versus the Anglican meaning. Varna means two things in Samskritham, one means color and the other, description. After all, color is also a way to describe a thing. The Hindi word varnan comes from the same root which means description. Therefore, it behooves us to look into what these four words “describe”. The English conveniently translated it as color, denoting skin tones and therefore the “whitest” of the lot were the brahmins, wheatish, kshatriyas (I don’t know how a warrior could be not tanned) to the darkest toned shudras. I think, the weaver in his dark loom room would have been the fairest of them all! When I met some weavers in kanchipuram, they indeed were very pale complexioned!
They describe four groups of people involved in the socio-economic parameters of making a living within a defined community. These four generic terms were overall categories that dealt with the primary four jobs of health and information sciences, administration/defense, finance/business/trade and farmers/artisans. They were not castes:
Caste: 1555, “a race of men,” from L. casto “chaste,” from castus “pure, cut off, separated,” pp. of carere “to be cut off from” (and related to castrate), from PIE base *kes- “to cut.”Application to Hindu social groups picked up in India 17c. from Port. casta “breed, race, caste,” earlier casta raca “unmixed race,” from the same L. word. As the Purusha description clarifies, there is no “cut offs”! Can you imagine a body without its head or without its arms or thighs or feet? Language again- how we see and interpret things.
When I taught a 6th grade class Ancient Indian Civilization (part of their 4 civilizations curriculum), I asked them their parent’s professions. We were able to put every profession under one of these taxons. We found Sportsperson a bit difficult to categorize- did they come under kshatriyas (as most of the sportspersons from those days were warriors) or if they did it for fun, like gymnasts, whether they would be categorized as artists, performers and defined as Shudras? All scientists, researchers, teachers, engineers, doctors and lawyers were classified as Brahmanas while retailers, bankers, financial analysts, business people were called Vaishyas, in our little exercise.
When something so ancient finds relevance even today, how can that be considered terrible and unacceptable? Of course, if I were to interpret this as the Caste System that makes one group boss over and exploit the other, yes, it is terrible indeed. Let us not forget the translators and the background they came from. Theirs was a feudal setup. They established a zamindari system to reflect that in their colony. They had to show that they were bringing in a better system and that was different. And they did, a different one for certain.
Centuries of collective living was shattered after the first Census of India (1860-71) where the different “castes” were enumerated. When we read History, there is comic relief too. When asked what “jati” (group) a certain person belonged to, answers were inconsistent. One would say it was male/ female! Yet another gave their family name, yet another their “gotra”, another their language, one, his village or town and one his profession. The census officials of that first census must have gone crazy! Had the British but asked what varna they belonged to, they would have categorized all of India under four parts, not thousands which continues to pose problems today, thanks to our divisive, caste-based politics that our politicians happily inherited and continue.
To me, the purpose of Jati appears to be purely genetical. A few months ago, there was a huge bone marrow drive amongst the South Asian community to help an Indian man who was dying of cancer. He was a young man, newly married and everyone’s heart went out to him. When I was called by my friend to donate, I did. However, I asked what his “jati” was. She said, Tamil Iyengar. I asked for his “Gotram” and asked her to pass the info on to other Iyengars with the same Gotram. Within a few days a match was found within the same “jati”. This man’s own child may not be as fortunate to finding a genetic match as he has married an “out-of-jati” person and the genetic possibilities are endless in such hybrids. We lose our genetic pools with excessive hybridization. Personally, that is fine by me, some of the most beautiful roses are hybrids, but we have got to synthesize the marrow individually, not search for a donor.
The introduction of the zamindari system and an imbalanced distribution of resources, wealth and power had begun to cause rifts that had already started to break up society under the Islamic sultanates. There, flattery got people into elevated positions. Under the British, it was learning their language and being a good public servant.
In the old varna system complimented by the ashramas (periods in one’s life), the brahmins, who were the repository of all information and knowledge (head of the Purusha, the thinker, le Penseur) were made to beg for their food and daily needs. They were not allowed to carry over even a day’s worth of essentials. They were taught and trained to live in trust of the Divine that would provide for them under all conditions.
The kshatriya was given physical power (arms of the Purusha) but denied wealth. They were paid with public funds and considered the servants of the public. Their primary duty was to protect Dharma. We know what happens when a country or individual becomes powerful and wealthy. We have to but look at the state of lobbying and their impact on democracies today.
The Vaishya was denied power but kept the wealth of the nation (therefore the thighs, the fleshiest part of the human body) while the Shudras were the foundation on which the entire society rested (the feet of the Purusha). Everyone had to eat food grown by the farmer, wear clothes made by the weaver, use utensils made by the potter, live in homes built by the mason, use tools made by the blacksmith, starting with a simple nail and so on.
We forgot the most important group of people, the most newsworthy of our times, the most ill-treated- the dalits, the untouchables, the “Achut”, in Gandhi’s parlance, Harijans. Gosh, how many terms in how many years for the same group of people? They are not mentioned in this four varna list, then where do they fit into this neat picture?
Before we come to them, we need to understand the Dharma of each of the varnas. After all, we called this system, the Varnashrama Dharma. Dharma was a synthesized idea from nature where there were clear rhythms and patterns of seasons, life cycles, species interaction, ecological niches and interdependence. Humans picked that idea up and defined the role of each other in a social contract.
The four main varnas had clear agendas. Each had to upkeep their part of the contract to ensure social wellbeing and harmony. As mentioned earlier, they had to be the best in their professions and do a perfect job. It was no wonder that Indian goods have always found favor with all their importers from the times of Mesapotamia and Egypt. The best weaves, artifacts, produce came from this sub-continent where people gave of their best. A modern economist has pegged the average India’s share of world GDP at about 25% or so, just before the Portuguese sailed to town. today it is at a measley 3 or 4% (with 18% of the world’s population)
The clue to the “Achut” problem came to me on reading Chinua Achebe’s “When Things Fall Apart”. He writes about how their tribe would throw away improperly developed babies into the jungle that surrounded their vilage as they could not survive as hunters and had no time to take care of nature’s “freaks”. They would let nature take care of her “freaks”. The missionaries came and changed all that.
If I did not keep my part of the contract, I was thrown out of the community, excommunicated and became an “Achut”. I had to do prayaschit (penance) to regain my status in society and therefore had to do the “dirtiest” of jobs- handle dead bodies, clear away carcasses, dredge drains and carry out the garbage. And because I was in constant touch with decaying, dead matter, I was not allowed anywhere near a community water source, to prevent spread of disease. I was dependent on society to give me water for my sustenance. Londoners learned it the hard way after a severe outbreak of cholera in 1854, that disease could spread from infected water sources. If this was true in a temperate country, imagine the damage in a tropical land like India where bacteria can breed in seconds owing to warmer temperatures.
Like all systems, this system also had its downfall when it became too rigid and the “pure” began to cast stones at those who had “sinned”. Hence, the growth of religions such as Jainism and later Buddhism that were tolerant and willing to let bygones be bygones. In modern times that religion is Christianity. But then someone had to do the “dirty” job and nobody wanted it. (I wonder what would happen, as a social experiment, if all convicted people were made to handle trash.)
In the modern context, with improved sanitation and awareness, I am shocked at the inhuman treatment of certain groups of people on the basis of “caste”, as defined for us by another and followed through by us. It is time to unite ourselves as harmonious parts of a whole, that when synchronized well, will lead to socio-economic and spiritual success. And by “us” I do not mean only “Indians”, I mean all of humanity who has drawn so many lines between ourselves in the guise of regions, language, religion, economics, politics etc.
Yet another important part of Dharma is a term called “svadharma” ie the dharma that each individual feels innate within him/herself. It is the natural talent or leanings each one of us has. I may be born to a weaver, but I may want to sing. Only singing satisfies me. In such a case, I become a musician. I remember vaguely (cannot recall or get to the quote) about a vedic verse that speaks of a person saying how every person in the family is in a different profession.
Complementing the Varna were the Ashrama. These denoted the different phases in one’s life, very similar to the generic ones we have today. The first quarter of one’s life is dedicated to being a student. The Brahmachari is clearly defined as one whose sole purpose was to learn, without distractions. That is hard to imagine in this world of entertainment and distractions with ADD and ADHD. This was followed by Grihasta or the householder: Earning a living, based on your “svadharma” and contributing to society and family. Bring home the salary, pay bills and taxes (not much has changed, have they?!). You marry (please refer to my earlier post on the different types of marriages prescribed in the Indic texts), beget children, preferably pure breeds, not that half-breeds were rejected, just for genetic continuity. When you have gone through this phase for a while, the larger questions arise. What am I doing pushing papers or typing code all these years? Enter, Vanaprasta, or the forest dweller, who retires from active service. He is available for consultations, familial or professional, but he is in quest of that query introduced to him as a student, “Who are you?” Finally, one day even that pondering drops and he enters the final phase of Sanyasa whereupon he leaves behind everything, all his relationships, his interests.
It was not uncommon for people from the different varnas switch to other varnas during a certain ashrama. For instance, the story of Vishwamitra in the Ramayana illustrates how he, a Kshatriya, does severe penance to become a Brahmana and he does. Likewise, it was also common for a student not to enter the life of a householder and proceed to Sanyasa directly.
Polytheism: A student whom I was tutoring once asked me if I did not mind a personal question. I said to go ahead and ask. He said that a friend of his told him that Indians have many Gods, like 10 or so. I said that he was kidding, we had millions! Now that kid was really shocked. He asked, “How come?” I replied that it was each to his own. I illustrated the point by pointing to the pencil and saying if I were an artist and I needed the pecil to make sketches, I would honor it and pray to it like it were my god. for a cobbler, it would be his needle, for a cook his stove and so on. After he finished his assignment he pulled out a piece of paper and sketched something on it. He showed it to me and said, “Mrs. S, this is My God. Do you like Him? I am going to put it up in my room and feel safe.”
Even for the Muslim who shares the Vedic truth that there is no form for God (Aroopa- formless), he has a picture of the stone at Medina and points towards Mecca to do his prayers. As long as we are limited in our physical body that demands satisfaction of its senses, an “object” or symbol plays the role of an aid. In education we are well conversant with the use of learning aids in the classroom as per the requirement of the student and slowly they are taken away.
Apart from the psychological aspects of worship, the Vedic truth of Sarvam Brahmamayam, all this is infused with the same divinity, makes for a sacred life. It makes the living process honorable and divine. Such an individual cannot blow up another person or thing. He cannot imagine abusive behaviour or language. Global warming cannot be a reality if every plant and animal species and water, air, fire and earth are worshipped as sacred. How many of us are ready to close our eyes, sit in meditation and observe the thoughts that pass through our minds? Until such time, “idol” worship helps the mind’s wandering nature to rest focused. The nature of the eye is such that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, hence various forms, shapes, ideas are worshipped, not just one.
Blokes aka Meenakshi enjoys writing along with being a mom, a school teacher, a musician and an Art of Living teacher (of meditation and breathing)
Hindu. Who? Part 5 – Guest Essay by Blokesablogin
Part 5 of the series by Blokesablogin (a.k.a. Meenakshi Srinivasan) posted on Desicritics
The fireworks that the previous post generated was as wonderful as the Deepavali and July 4th skies put together! Getting back on the main thread: The Mirage that is India.
The Sanatana Dharma (the closest to a “religious” term found in the Vedic literature) or Universal/ timeless way of living, where the footprints of the human species is but light on this earth will continue to flourish as long as human beings exist on this planet as it has few prescriptions. I have always wondered why we get so stuck in our metaphors. If I lived in India and was conversant with the Banyan tree and the Mango, I will use them in my texts. If I lived in Arabia, I would use the Date Palm and Olive tree as my metaphors. Here, in California, had I come before the Spanish, I would have written about the Californian Oak and the California Buckeye! We get stuck on the imagery of the Mango vs. Olive that we forget what these texts truly convey. We fight that the mango is superior to the olive or vice versa. How childish! We forget that the Mango has its place and beauty and use just as the Olive.
Many an American has asked me how come there is so much wisdom from India? I tell them it is simply the geography! When we live in a tropical land where food is plenty (as it was before over-population and monoculture-growing one kind of crop vs several), there is no need to FIND food. It is just there for the taking- hanging low from a tree or hedge. This availability creates a sense of abundance mentality where there is no need to “store” or protect your “store”. That frees us to sit and reflect on how the mind works and what is the relationship between me and this world. However, when I come from a temperate land or an extremely hot clime (like the desert), survival is key. Finding food and storing it to tide us over harsh conditions is priority. I also need to protect it from being snatched away from me by force.
While researching the word Indica, I found the following information about a Greek, Arrian who was a historian after Alexander’s period. (Courtesy, Wikipedia) Until then I only knew about Megasthenes’ account in his Indica. (Today, the only Indica anyone knows is the Tata’s!)
“The southern Indians resemble the Ethiopians a good deal, and, are black of countenance, and their hair black also, only they are not as snub-nosed or so woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; but the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians in appearance.”
“No Indian ever went outside his own country on a warlike expedition, so righteous were they.”
“Indians do not put up memorials to the dead; but they regard their virtues as sufficient memorials for the departed, and the songs which they sing at their funerals.”
“This also is remarkable in India, that all Indians are free, and no Indian at all is a slave. In this the Indians agree with the Lacedaemonians. Yet the Lacedaemonians have Helots for slaves, who perform the duties of slaves; but the Indians have no slaves at all, much less is any Indian a slave.”
“The Indians generally are divided into seven castes, the wise men, farmers, herdsmen, artisans, soldiers and shopkeepers, overlookers, and government officials and ministers.”
“The Indians in shape are thin and tall and much lighter in movement than the rest of mankind.”
This is but a glimpse of what several other historians and biographers have written about their direct or indirect “observations” of this land. Until the turn of the previous century, my ancestors lived in villages in South India, on both sides of our family. All their experiences had poverty in common. They had no material goods to speak of. However, all their women and men were literate, could read and write in Tamizh and some in Telugu or Malayalam. All of them also knew Samskritham.
Apparently, even in the late 19th century, many of the village schools (in South India) had a brahmin teacher who would teach all his students some Samskritham along with Math, local language and basic Science. When I was conducting a teachers’ workshop in Thanjavur in 1999, I had many senior principals from Government schools participate. Some of them shared interesting anecdotes in small village schools where they had this extremely strict brahmin teacher in the earlier part of the 20th century. Evidently, the Madras presidency had a high rate of literacy even before Independence.
The very same workshop in Madhya Pradesh with government school teachers was very different. There, most of them were first generation learners themselves and they shared many interesting anecdotes about how they do house visits to get their students to school! Their commitment and enthusiasm towards learning was palpable. One of them wrote a poem that described what it felt like to be literate- he compared it to having got sight after being blind for long! In Rajasthan, the story was more to do with the merchants’ and farmers’ kids who went to school just to be done with it! Most of them already had a family business or agriculture or trade that they did not feel the need to learn English or Science!
I enquired from my grandfather (many years back) who else went to school with him, in the earlier part of the 20th century. He said ALL the village kids would go to the same school, which was upto 8th standard- girls and boys. After that, only those who could go to “town” could pursue their high school followed by a college degree if possible. Our former president Dr. Abdul Kalam shares similar stories in his autobiography.
All these above anecdotes show a wide range of life experiences from different parts of the country on the issue of primary education (just taking one parameter to make it simpler). So what is “Indian” about any of this? (A rant: Today, it is tragic that millions of children in the primary school age do not have access to literacy in our country as there is a paucity of teachers. India needs over a million teachers, to teach kids in the ratio of 1:100.)
The common element in all that we have seen in anything to do with “Hindu” or India is the fact that there IS NO COMMONALITY! It is as diverse as it can get. Diverse gods, diverse life experiences, diverse beliefs, diverse languages, diverse thinking… And we want to tame it into a mono-culture of something nobody is clear what it should be.
The Congress believes in a secularism that continues the divide and rule philosophy of the British. The Hindutva group believes that it should be a ‘national, Hindu’ identity. The communists believe that it should be capitalism subsidized by the government, to have an economically equal nation (where some animals are more equal than others). The Karunanidhis and Mayawathis believe that every ‘caste’ (associated with them) documented in the Indian Gazette should be given security through reservation in education and jobs. All of them have a kernel of truth to them- unfortunately every one of them comes with certain limitations- None is willing to give up his perspective nor willing to foster harmony.
Earlier, people were fine with diversity and lived with it, secure in their own identity of what they chose to do and be. There was no threat to being “different”. Today, that freedom is threatened and the fear is acting out as anger, hatred and intolerance towards anyone who is “different” from ourselves. I do not wish to point fingers at the “greeks” or the “muslims” or the “christian missionaries” or even modern consumerism for causing this loss of freedom. It is plainly a deviation from the path of Dharma that has brought this moment upon us- as a civilization. When a potter was proud of his pots and the teacher proud of his student, there was no issues of personal freedom. When the potter felt exploited and/or lost his market and the teacher wanted to copyright his knowledge, that was when we lost our freedom.
These past few months, we subscribed to a Tamil channel owing to parent visits. The News was most illuminating on this score. People stopping trains, blocking roads, shouting slogans, breaking office furniture- all forms of protests for all kinds of issues. Most of these issues spoke of poor governance and absence of infrastructure. In some, it was plainly political: If my opposing party said up, to maintain opposition, I will say down.
Poor governance especially in a democracy manifests when the democratic process has not been followed through at every step. Basic citizenship skills which are primordial in a democracy are not taught at any school or home. I am reminded of the old story of the two monkeys and a cat (pick your own favorite or not-so-favorite animal or plant species). One monkey found a pancake when the other monkey spotted it. Both argue that it belonged to them. Along came a cat who was willing to moderate the case. He was willing to split the pancake into two equal halves and give one to each monkey. The monkeys agreed. The first split was unequal. So the cat said that he will eat the smaller piece and split the larger piece for the monkeys. This went on until the entire pancake was eaten by the cat. This story illustrates how the cat (the politician) is succeeding in keeping the monkeys (electorate) divided.
The above news stories are but the reactions of an electorate that is slowly awakening, thanks to mass media tools. Unfortunately, they do not have citizenship skills that can make them express their dissatisfaction in a more “educated” way. It goes back to the two main words- honor and respect. We need to nurture these two qualities in everyone and understand the simple social idea of being part of a whole; of an individual living in a society with a contract that needs to be honored where personal aggrandisement at the expense of another member of the same society is unjust.
This is not an issue of India, but of the world right now where there is intolerance breeding in the form of terrorism. Children who are naturally respectful, find this intolerance intolerable and we find many a youth taking drugs to numb it all or even commiting suicide. Depression of the mind is but a manifestation of this deep angst that has set in where the “other” becomes obscure. Reaching out, serving society is a proven antidote to end depression.
Recent archealogical discoveries of the Mehergarh (Saraswati) civilization have dug deep holes at the generally accepted idea of the “Aryan Invasion Theory” (called AIT for short by historians). Once the mythological stories of Agasthya and Rama are unravelled in their true timelines, the Vedic vision of a creation infused with divinity will be manifest. That should end the divide between the “Aryans and the Dravidians”. I am positive that proper scholarship should result in the deciphering of the Harappan Seals very soon.
Ishavasyam idam sarvam yat kinca jagatyam jagat,
Tena tyaktena bhunjitha ma grdhah kasya svit dhanam (First verse of Ishopanishad)
“How can we as humans insist upon ownership and therefore be greedy when all that is here, belongs to The X Factor (called Isha here) that permeates the entire universe?!
I think the world is ready to return to Dharma as we are getting weary of wars and terrorism. Our experiment as a species with consumerism and materialism couldn’t last even 150 years as we have begun to exhaust our natural resources (watch www.storyofstuff.com). The Vedas have been around in spite of constant persecution of those who knew it for millenia! This time around, the renewal in Dharma will come from the Global Warming issue where all of the world has to unite in balancing the environment.
Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanthi: There is but One Truth, the wise speak of it in many ways.
Blokes aka Meenakshi enjoys writing along with being a mom, a school teacher, a musician and an Art of Living teacher (of meditation and breathing)
Missing Indian History Books – Guest Essay by Blokesablogin
An Epilogue to the series by Blokesablogin (a.k.a. Meenakshi Srinivasan) posted on Desicritics
Researching the Hindu. Who? series, I linked on and on in this amazing thing called the internet when I hit upon an entire collection of Arun Shourie’s essays on the web. One of the comments on one of my posts asked who these “historians” were, by name. I did not have a clue (apart from Romila Thapar’s). Now I do, I also have an idea of how much they were paid to write books on Indian History that were never “submitted” for publication. We can conclude that they were never written. A small excerpt below:
Here, in the words of the ICHR (Indian Council of Historical Research), is a list of the period to be covered by the volume, the scholar to whom it was assigned, the money the scholar collected, the result :
1. Before 1857 : K. Rajayan : Rs 12000; Submitted but not traceable.
2. 1857-1885 : S. R. Mehrotra : Rs 12000; Not submitted.
3. 1885-1886 : Bipin Chandra : Rs 12000; Not submitted.
4. 1896-98 : Bipan Chandra : Not assigned.
5. 1899-1902 : B.L. Grover : Rs 12000; Submitted and published.
6. 1902-1903 : B.L. Grover : Not assigned.
7. 1903-1905 : B.L. Grover : Not assigned.
8. 1905-1907 : Sumit Sarkar : Rs 12000; Not submitted.
9. 1907-1909 : Sumit Sarkar : Rs 12000; Not submitted.
10. 1910-1915 : M.N. Das : Rs 12000; Not submitted.
11. 1915-1919 : T.K. Ravindran : Rs 12000; Not submitted.
12. 1919-1920 : V. N. Duty : Rs 12000; Submitted and published.
13. 1920-1922 : Sita Ram Singh : Rs 12000; Submitted, under production.
14. 1922-1924 : Sreekumaran Nair : Rs 12000; Submitted and published.
15. 1924-1926 : Amba Prasad : Rs 12000; Not submitted.
16. 1927-1929 : Bimal Prasad : Rs 12000; Not submitted.
17. 1930-1931 : Bimal Prasad : Rs 12000; Not submitted.
18. 1932-1934 : Bipan Chandra : Rs 12000; Not submitted.
19. 1934-1937 : Gopal Krishna : Rs 12000; Not submitted
Reading this article made me feel ill in the stomach. How can anyone do such a treacherous act towards their own country that paid them princely amounts in the 70′s when the Indian Rupee had more value? How could they compromise their academic integrity, hoping they will never be caught? How can they take credit for work that was not theirs? And worst of all, how can they have the temerity to tell the world that Indian History is but the arrival of a bunch of horse-riding nomads from Central Asia?
I wonder what other truths will be made public with the RTI (Right to Information) Act? I feel such a deep sense of betrayal, that I am unable to formulate my thoughts or even write in an objective manner. Please all of you read the article by Arun Shourie. The one good thing that Arun Shourie did not anticipate during his journalistic days was the power of the internet and the inverted structure of information dissemination! Power to the net, I say.
Footnote: While our friend Romila Thapar has cited 67 books (more than its share of Western authors) in her book (according to Amazon), her book has been cited in 133 books, mostly written by non-Sanskrit knowing “scholars” who rehash “non-Sanskrit” based “Brahman Orthodoxy” bashing by Romila Madam. She has not picked one book published by the Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan, one of the outstanding publishing houses of India which has faithfully kept the integrity of Indian texts in their original language, primarily Samskritham. All their authors are great scholars of repute in ancient Indic texts and literary traditions. I wonder just how much of Samskritham this lady knows. The drivel she writes in her book (read a few excerpts offered by Amazon), it is evident that she knows not what she writes. Pity the other “authors” quoting her.
Blokes aka Meenakshi enjoys writing along with being a mom, a school teacher, a musician and an Art of Living teacher (of meditation and breathing)
“I came across Book 3 before the other 2. The Bridge of Rama.”
Posted on her blog Trivial Pursuits by a reader named Vee from Bournemouth, UK
Perhaps it would help if I put a disclaimer on this post much like the ones that flash on screens right before soap-sagas. ‘The views expressed here are solely the author’s and do not reflect her religious or political inclinations. Any unflattering comments are meant to be exactly that.’
I love the Indian epics. The Ramayan and Mahabharat are, according to me, the master plans for all stories ever told, certainly those based in India. They have all the ingredients for a successful script – virtuous men and divine women, demons and vamps, vile enemies, enviable harmony disrupted by human errors leading to colossal damages, war, love, betrayal, fight for honour, and the quintessential triumph of good over evil. Now you know Ekta Kapoor has an ocean to dip into for ideas.
What’s more, they’re not just mere stories to most of us Indians. They imbibe lessons for living. Set ideals to aspire to. Give us Gods to pray to. And show how human weaknesses and our inability (or unwillingness) to conquer our own demons leads to our fall.
Having said that, getting a new interpretation of a story that seems as old as time is always a tempting proposition. So when I stumbled across Ashok Banker’s version of Ramayan as a five-book series at the library sometime back, I was quite thrilled. Being well-versed in the events of the story was a big plus, since I came across Book 3 before the other 2. The Bridge of Rama. It intrigued me enough to disregard a friend’s not-so-favourable opinion – I read page after page with avid interest, wanting to know which other event or character would come out in way I least expected. But there was something not-quite-right, and I wondered if I was just trying to find faults. In the end, it did what a good book series should probably do – made me want to read the next one.
I managed to get my hands on another one, the first of the series this time, but as I got it scanned for issue, I wondered if I was taking this book because it was a re-telling of one of my favourite childhood stories, or just because it was proving to be good reading. As I get deeper into the pages, I think the latter would be more applicable, if at all. I would hardly recommend this to someone who wanted to know the story for the epic that it is. I would not want them to imagine Lakshman and Shatrughan referring to each other as ‘Luck’ and ‘Shot’, for starters. Neither would I want to know about lustful thoughts that the septuagenarian King Dashratha was entertaining. If you’re looking for a story about magic, demons, royalty, skillful combat, some love and lots of lust, you’re in the right page, i mean place. As a well-paced, well-sketched story, there’s not much you can fault it for.
I would like to think of myself as a non-fanatic, tolerant of contradicting religious opinions and open to new ideas kind of person (don’t we all?). What I mean is, I would not kill for a once -was temple which then had a mosque, or pillage a treasure of ancient documents because it served as research to a work that I felt showed a past king in lesser light. In fact, I enjoy Rama being portrayed as a human and not a demi-god, or sharing the author’s imaginative re-constructions of the story (some of them make so much sense!). I don’t think it’s sacrilege to look at characters as familiar to you as your own family through a different looking-glass. But I do mind it being written in a language that could as easily be that in a Harry Potter, Bartimaeus (I adore this one too!) or yet another magical story set in an exotic land. I am not happy with run-of-the-mill vocabulary, and the predictable descriptions (Ravana, the Dark Lord? Echoing something called Harry Potter?) . I don’t personally associate good writing with fantabulous, check the dictionary kind of words. But for me, the profession of writing is something that comes with the power to bend words of common use, pepper them with some lovely a-word-a-day vocabulary, and bring them to life in a way hitherto unseen.
Perhaps it’s easy to pass judgment as a common, unqualified reader – one of many. This is not to take anything away from the sheer effort of putting together a story that is so much a part of a nation’s fabric, the research and the creativity of reading differently a story heard umpteen times on your grandmother’s lap.
It’s a tale I enjoyed, reminded me slightly of some others I had read in the way it was told, but left me wishing for the real thing. Then again, I might be in the minority. Don’t pull me up, I did put up a disclaimer!
SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis will be out next month (October). Written in a pacier style than my Ramayana Series, this short impactful book details the rise to power of the monstrous Kamsa and his brutal campaign to thwart the birth of the prophesied 8th Child. 