An International Conference on

RAMAYANA:
REINTERPRETATION IN ASIA
17-18 July 2010

Ngee Ann Auditorium, Asian Civilisations Museum

Singapore
Abstracts

A TALE FOR ALL REGIONS, A TEXT FOR ALL SEASONS:

INTERPRETATION AND REINTERPRETATION OF
THE RAMAYANA IN SOUTHERN ASIA

Robert P. Goldman
University of California at Berkeley

Although it is little known in the West beyond a limited circle of scholars of South and
Southeast Asian Studies and the diverse migr communities from Southern Asia, it
can easily be argued that the Ramayanaviewed broadly as the sum of its innumerable
textual, artistic, and performative representationsis in many ways and for many
millions of people in dozens of countries the greatest story ever told.

Like a very few highly culturally influential texts of antiquity, such works as the Holy
Bible, the Holy Quran, and the corpora of Buddhist canonical works, the Ramayana has
transcended barriers of language, region, and culture to become central to the social,
political, and religious formations of a vast spectrum of nations and civilisations from
ancient times to the present day. Unlike those texts, howeverand in this it is virtually
uniqueit has ensconced itself at the heart of many different and even opposing
religious cultures, including Hinduism it all of its rich and complex diversity, Jainism,
Buddhism, Sikhism, Islam, and tribal religions across a vast and populous swathe of
territory extending from Iran in the west to Bali and the Philippines in the east and from
Tibet and Mongolia in the north to Sri Lanka in the south.

During a history that extends back more than two millennia, the central tale of the longsuffering, but unshakably righteous, Prince Rama and his faithful, though much abused,
wife Sita has been represented in an extraordinary variety of forms, in virtually all of the
languages and artistic idioms of South and Southeast Asia as monumental epics, poetic
and dramatic works, puraic narrative, religious tracts and sermons, temple sculpture,
court painting, folktales, dance forms, novels, cinema, and television serialisations to
name but a few.

It is the purpose of the present scholarly gathering to investigate and celebrate the
extraordinary longevity, diversity, and influence of this remarkable phenomenon we
know as the Ramayana. In my opening remarks I hope to highlight some of the salient
issues in its history and in the history of Ramayana scholarship and to offer some
suggestions as to why it has been able uniquely to transcend so many linguistic,
religious, and cultural boundaries to become one of the most defining and unifying
elements of the cultures of Southern Asia.

GODS, KINGS AND NARRATORS:

THE IMPACT OF RELIGION AND SOVEREIGNTY ON THE RAMAYANA TRADITION

John Brockington and Mary Brockington

University of Edinburgh and International Association of Sanskrit Studies, UK

The general outlines of the Rama story have remained largely unchanged since the
story was first told in India in about the 5th century BCEa heroic, steadfast warrior
prince must kill a wicked monster who has captured his wifealthough its popularity
ensured that it was retold with an ever-increasing number of narrative additions. As the
story rapidly became popular throughout India and beyond, especially in the whole of
southeast Asia, theological and cultural influences also affected its development. Many
Indian tellers made the story a religious epic, identifying Rama as an incarnation of
Vishnu and eventually as God; for others, Siva or even the Goddess play the more
important role. Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists all produced versions appropriate to their
own followers, while others retained the original view of Rama as human. In this paper
we try to identify the means by which the Rama story could be made acceptable to
people of such diverse faiths, and consider the effect on the established narrative of
later Muslim involvement.

RAMAYANA IN SOUTHEAST ASIAN ORAL AND LITERARY TRADITION

Singaravelu Sachithanantham
University of Malaya, Malaysia

Southeast Asian oral tradition of the Ramayana is to be found in (a) the repertoire of
leather-puppet shadow-play (e.g. the Wayang kulit purwa of Jawa, Indonesia, the
Wayang kulit, also known as Wayang Siam, of Malaysia, and the Nang of Cambodia
and Thailand; (b) dance-dramas, performed to the accompaniment of recital of songs
and music (e.g. the Wayang wong of Java and the Khon of Cambodia and Thailand); (c)
the tales of professional storyteller [penglipur lara] in Malaysia; (d) the Bas-reliefsculptures of temples (e.g. Candi Loro Jonggrang of Prambanan in central Java, Candi
Panataran in east Java, Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom of Cambodia, and Wat Pho of
Bangkok, Thailand), and (e) the mural paintings (e.g. in the Emerald-Buddha temple of
Bangkok). Southeast Asian shadow-plays and dance-dramas usually depict selected
(popular) episodes of the Rama story. There are several shadow-play versions because
each dalang (puppeteer) has his own version.

The chief characteristics of the oral tradition include localisation of physical and cultural
(including religious) environment and characterisation. The oral tradition of the Rama
story has been holding a powerful sway as the mass-media of culture among the people
of Southeast Asia for a long period of time thereby keeping their cultures alive even
though a majority of the population might not have been wholly literate. The Islamic
religious elements in Malay oral tradition and the Buddhist elements in the Myanmar,
Khmer and Thai oral traditions of the Rama story are indicative of the continued
relevance and popularity of the Rama story even after the adoption of new religious
faiths.

Most of the literary versions of the Rama story in Southeast Asia (with the exception of
the Old-Javanese Ramayana-Kakawin of 900 CE) came into being only after the 13th or

14th century CE. Although the authors of the Southeast Asian literary versions are
known to have adopted some central aspects of the story from the Indian versions (e.g.
Valmiki-Ramayana in Sanskrit and Kambaramayanam in Tamil), however the Southeast
Asian literary versions have their own distinctive features in respect of various episodes,
portrayal of chief characters, their name-forms, etc., and generally they have greater
affinity to each other than to the Indian versions. While a large number of episodes and
motifs of the Indian versions are missing in the Southeast Asian versions, they are
however replaced by numerous innovative episodes and motifs of their own. A notable
example of such an innovation is the birth-story of Hanuman: The rather intimate
relation between Sri Rama and Hanuman and the figurative manner in which Hanuman
addresses Sita Dewi as mother in the Indian versions have been transformed into one
of blood-relationship of a dear son to his beloved parents in the Southeast Asian
versions.

While some of the Southeast Asian literary versions (e.g. Myanmar, Khmer and Lao
versions) have adopted the Buddhist story of Rama portraying Sri Rama as the
bodhisattva, or the Buddha-to-be, a recension of the Malay Hikayat Sri Rama depicts
Rawanas tale as unfolding (even before the story of Rama) during the time of Prophet
Adam; according to the Malay recension, Allah Subhanahu wa taala sends down
Prophet Adam to meet Rawana at the time of his ascetic practices and convey to him
the boon of sovereignty over the four realms of the sky, the netherworld, the sea and
the earth; and Sri Ramas father, King Dasaratha, is also said to be the great grandson
of Prophet Adam.

Several literary versions of Southeast Asia depict Sita Dewi as one, who is born first of
Rawanas consort and later becomes an adoptive daughter of another king or hermit.
They also portray Sri Rama and his faithful consort Sita Dewi as the role models of the
traditional society: Though they go through a life of great suffering and grief, they firmly
hold on to the traditional ideals and values without any regard for personal self-interest.

CANDRAVATIS RAMAYANA: AN EPIC TALE OF SITA'S SUFFERING

Mandakranta Bose
University of British Columbia, Canada

When the 16th century Bengali poet Candravati rewrote the Ramayana, she presented
it neither as a battle story nor as a celebration of masculine heroism. The central figure
is not the warrior king. Its domain is not the public world. It is the story of a womans
betrayal reflected in other womens lives and thereby universalised. It turns from battles
to their victims, and it looks inward into the turmoil of private lives. While she accepts
the divinity of the main players, it is not the grand doings of divine personages that
Candravati relates but the sufferings of mortals. Above all, she tells the story from Sitas
point of view and in her voice, lamenting her undeserved suffering as common to
womens lot in this world. This view of womens destiny she further reinforces by
drawing parallels to other womens lives, notably Ravanas queen Mandodaris. Though
Candravati does not tell the story as a challenge to the established order, she leaves it
as a requiem for womankind, thereby redefining the very idea of epic struggle. Still sung
by women, the story lives on also in the painted scrolls from Bengal that will accompany
this presentation.

VISUALISING AND PERFORMING KINGSHIP:

THE RAMAYANA MURALS AT MATTANCHERI PALACE, KERALA, SOUTH INDIA

Mary Beth Heston

College of Charleston, USA

The epic of Rama, one of the oldest stories known to South Asia, has been told since
the first millennium BCE in Sanskrit and in multiple regional languages, verse,
performance, and song, as well as in visual form, including sculpture, painting, cinema
and even comic books and animation, both in South and Southeast Asia. Across time
and great distances, the story has remained fresh, contemporary, and relevant, by
being adapted to the time and place of its rendering.

This project, focused on the mid 16th century palace at Mattancheri, in the former
kingdom of Kochi in southwestern coastal India, examines a cycle of mural paintings
that depict the Ramayana. The epic is rendered in a series of seven compositions in a
room designated as the Kings Chamber, which opens onto the Coronation Hall of the
Palace; related in a richly detailed continuous narrative, the epic follows different paths
in different compositions.

At one point the tale is interrupted by two large

compositions depicting images of the deity Krishna. The murals lack inscriptions or any
clear evidence as to the date of their execution, and scholars have attributed dates
ranging from the mid 16th to the mid 18th century. While I once argued for an early date
for the paintings, my recent research on these murals leads me to believe that they are
more likely to be 18th century. My argument draws on both stylistic analysis and on
considering the possible function of these paintings within contemporary courtly culture
of the Kerala region of south India.

Although there are over sixty sites in Kerala with surviving mural paintings, only a
handful can be dated by inscription. Among these is one site with paintings that are
particularly close in style to these Ramayana murals, with a date corresponding to 1731

CE. Furthermore, I see many elements of the paintings as closely related to

conventions of local performance traditions that flourished in the 18th century. The best
known of these, Kathakali (story play), is a highly stylised dance-drama characterised
by vigorous choreography and shaped by aesthetic codes of classical drama. Kathakali
originated with scripts based on the Ramayana and stories of Krishna, which are
likewise the focus of the murals. It is a performance form that emphasises battle, war,
and combat as the enactment of kingly virtue and duty as they were historically
constructed in the region; I see these same elements emphasised in both the imagery
and style of these murals. That is, I contend that the Mattancheri Ramayana murals in
the kings chamber leading to the palace Coronation Hall functioned in conjunction with
Kathakali performance at the court to delineate and demonstrate notions of kingship as
they were enacted in the courtly culture of the region. By drawing on similar visual and
aesthetic conventions, the murals and the paintings visualised and performed these
conceptions, reinforcing an understanding of royal authority specific to 18th century
Kerala.

THE LEGEND OF RAMA AT BAPHUON AND ANGKOR WAT TEMPLES

Rachel Loizeau
Independent scholar, France
The Veal Kantel inscription (7th century CE) mentioning the daily recitation of the
Ramayana and a statue of Rama from the Phnom Da group (circa 7th century CE)
indicate the popularity of the Epic in the ancient Khmer kingdom though the sculptural
carvings are few before the narrative development of iconographic program of the
Baphuon temple dedicated to Siva. The Ramayana is depicted along with the
Mahabharata, the Krishna lila, puranic stories and secular themes. The artist did not
choose the expanded mode of continuous narration despite the panels horizontal
format and the large space devoted to the ornamentation. Nevertheless, it seems that
the story of Rama as it is depicted on the walls of the main entrances of the second
level of the pyramidal temple follows a chronological progression from the east to the
north where the story ends with the battle of Rama and Ravana. A century later, the
Ramayana, along with the Krishna lila and puranic myths, are abundantly depicted at
Angkor Wat temple, a rare monument dedicated to Vishnu. New episodes of the Rama
legend are introduced such as the fight of Valin and Mayavin, the defection of
Vibhishana, the attack of Kabandha or the ordeal of Sita. These themes are commonly
illustrated in many temples built during this period, but at Angkor Wat the emphasis is
on the Epics main battles which are depicted in large compositions according to the
importance given to the martial themes in the monuments iconographic program.

RAMAYANA KU

Performers: Sardono W. Kusumo (Sardono Dance Theatre, Indonesia)

and Nimmy Raphel (Adishakti Theatre Laboratory, India)

Lighting designer: Iskandar K. Loedin (Sardono Dance Theatre, Indonesia)

Ramayana ku or My Ramayana is a self-expression by Sardono W.Kusumo based on

his training and experience in performing the three main characters of Ramayana:
Rama, Hanuman and Rawana.

As a dancer, Sardono was trained in the Solo Court dance style and had performed the
character Rama when he was fifteen to nineteen years old. At the age of fifteen to
nineteen, Sardono was trained to perform as Hanuman and he then performed the
character of Rawana since he was twenty years old.

The three-character dance style then become the prime source of how Sardono express
and interpreted in a freely style and more poetically the images derived from the
narrative of Ramayana.

Please note that Ramayana ku is a series of work in progress performed and developed
by Sardono W.Kusumo at the International Ramayana Festival at Adishakti Laboratory
for Theatre Art Research, Puducherry, India in May 2010.

WOMEN AT THE MARGINS: VALMIKI, WOMEN, AND RELIGIOUS ANXIETY

Sally J. Sutherland Goldman

University of California at Berkeley, USA

At the heart of Valmikis Ramayana, the Sundara Kanda, the hapless heroine, Sita, pale
and dejected, sits raptly meditating on her lord Rama in the midst of the Ashoka grove.
There, as the heroine awaits rescue and contemplates suicide, she is guarded and
tormented by hideous rakshasi (demoness). At this most poignant of junctures, the epic
introduces another figure, the goddess Nikumbhila. About this figure, Valmiki provides
little information. We are told, however, that this goddess delights in offerings of blood
and various human and animal body parts; and that sacrificial rites dedicated to her
appear to include such offerings. The rakshasa (demon) wardresses threaten Sita with
taunts that she would be among those offerings, that she would be, literally, sliced and
diced, and then eaten by those rakshasa women as part of their frenzied rites
dancing and making offerings to the goddess. The juxtaposition of the two: Sita
literally the feminine face of the aryan worldand Nikumbhilathe voracious goddess
of the rakshasa worldis not accidental, nor is this the first time, although clearly it is
the most dramatic, that Valmiki introduces his audience to horrific female goddess
figures or women participating in religious observances. This paper explores how
Valmiki constructs his female characters who are either practitioners of religious rites or
objects thereof to be markers of exogenous threats to his idealised aryan world and the
mechanisms employed for resolving the anxieties engendered by those threats. Special
attention will be placed on how Valmiki in particular creates and resolves these
anxieties through verbal images.

SITA SVAYAVARA IN POETRY AND IMAGES

Vidyut Aklujkar
University of British Columbia, Canada

The context of Sita svayamvara in Valmiki Ramayana (1. 65-6) has been represented
widely and continuously in words and images, lines and colour. King Janakas
bridegroom test of stringing the great bow of Shiva, attempted and failed by many but
fulfilled by only prince Dasharathi Rama, the offering of Sita to Rama by Janaka, and
the actual wedding, all these aspects get varied treatments in later literature and fine
arts. Volumes of poetry, both in verse and play, have been produced on the theme of
Sita svayamvara, both in Sanskrit and other regional languages of India. In Hindi, the
very first play acted on modern stage was entitled, "Janakimangala. Early Indian
Cinema also used the popular theme to create its version on the silver screen. Painters
and sculptors for centuries have found inspiration in depicting the incident of Stringing of
Shivas Bow. I propose to address and analyse some of the myriad representations of
the popular theme to bring out its appeal in poetry, and challenge in images. Although, I
will allude to a few noteworthy instances of the theme in performing arts, I shall mainly
deal with poetry and drama treatments of the theme in Sanskrit and other vernacular
languages of modern India, and with images in sculpture, murals and Indian painting.
While analysing the multiple reasons for the popularity of the theme, I shall argue that
apart from its universal appeal as a fairy tale-like union of two young minds, it is the
unique blend of the visual and aural drama inherent in the context that inspires poets
and painters alike and challenges them to seek novel expressions to bring it to life.

RAMAYANA IN SOUTHEAST ASIAN TRADITIONAL THEATRE PERFORMANCES

Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof
International Islamic University, Malaysia

The Ramayana is possibly the most popular single source for dramatic repertoire in
performances of traditional Southeast Asian theatre. Many versions of the epic seem to
have reached Southeast Asia from the Indian sub-continent. The connections between
these and their South Asian counterparts remain to be adequately established.

At the same time local factors have been responsible for certain significant innovations.
These include the reinterpretation of the Ramayana as a Buddhist jataka, the inclusion
of Islamic elements, geographical adjustments and localisation, the development of socalled branch stories of the epic as well as the combination of elements from the
Ramayana and the Mahabharata in the process of developing scripts (lakon) specifically
for performances.

This paper will examine some of these innovations as seen in the Ramayana and their
impact upon selected theatre genres in Southeast Asia.

INSPIRATION, IDEA AND INNOVATION: RAMAYANA AS CHINESE OPERA

Chua Soo Pong
Chinese Opera Institute, Singapore

The sounds of Gamelan, the dynamics of flying shadows and the smell of food had
awakened the creative sensibilities of a four year old boy in a temple in eastern Java.
Over the next few years, it became an annual ritual for the little boy to try understanding
the Ramayana bit by bit. When he was brought to a Teochew opera performance in a
temple off Thomson Road in Singapore in 1954, the sights and sounds of the
performance immediately connected him to the experience of watching Ramayana back
in Indonesia where he was born.

The inspiration to stage Ramayana as Teochew opera came when the boy attended the
performance of Liang Shan Bo and Zhu Ying Tai, also known as The Butterfly Lovers
as a dance drama in Bharatanatyam style. The idea materialised as a childrens play in
Mandarin for the Young Peoples Theatre Festival organised by the Ministry of
Community Development in 1988; written and directed by Dr. Chua Soo Pong in
Wayang Wong style, it was a success. This was the beginning of the revival of
Ramayana on the Singapore stage. In the following years, the Wayang Wong version
was invited to Japan, Hong Kong and New Zealand, where it was presented in English.

The Teochew opera version was premiered at the Goethe Institute in 1991. The
Teochew opera began with Queen Kekayi demanding to evict Prince Rama to the forest
of Dandakar and ends with the reunion of Prince Rama and Princess Sita, after the
defeat of Rawana. The Teochew opera versions success had led to the adaptation of
the script as Li Yuan opera (1996), Hokkien opera (1998) and Huang Mei opera (1999).
Each adaptation has its own specific features as the musical styles and performing
styles differ. In this paper, Dr. Chua discusses the creative process behind the operas
and their reception in different parts of the world.

CROSS CULTURAL CHOREOGRAPHY OF THE RAMAYANA IN SINGAPORE

Siri Rama
Independent scholar, Singapore

Indian classical dance is a product primarily of oral histories and is informed by written
histories, so present day modern/traditional collaborations challenge the cultural
background of an artiste.This paper highlights the contrasts and similarities in the
depictions of the epic Ramayana in the Indian classical dance traditions of Bharata
Natyam and Kuchipudi in India, and in the multicultural performances held in Singapore.
The paper has references to methods of depiction of the Ramayana story in traditional
styles, and the nuances in some of the different languages/lyrics used in dance, like
Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi and Marathi. This is the broad contextual framework in
which the paper explores the depiction of the Ramayana in a cross cultural collaboration
in Singapore. The Ramacharita Manasa written by Tulsidas, was choreographed and
presented by this author as a dance drama with Indian, Chinese Opera and Malay
artistes in Singapore in June, 2009. Cross cultural dialogues in dance raise various
questions of universalism or absolutismwhether cultural bodies can retain their own
identities, or do they traverse boundaries and attempt to be part of the universal.

This

paper raises questions of inter-cultural interaction, and all the intersections which take
place in verbal and non- verbal spaces of dance. It also discusses issues of invisible
and unwritten boundaries by the artists, in the process of presenting a multi-cultural
performance of the Ramayana.

SHORT STORIES ABOUT SITA FROM MODERN SOUTH INDIA

Paula Richman
Oberlin College, USA

A striking literary phenomenon has been gradually gathering momentum over the last
one hundred years. Although the earliest rendition of the story of Rama and Sita dates
to before the common era, its incidents have inspired creative writers throughout the
twentieth, and into the 21st century. Some talented writers in the four major languages
of South India--Tamil, Kannda, Telugu, and Malayalam--have chosen to rewrite stories
from the Ramayana tradition.

Orthodox depictions of Sita focus upon her devotion to Rama and how her purity relates
to his reputation as a monarch but the modern South Indian writers whom I consider
here approach her actions from multiple perspectivesas a daughter of King Janaka, a
daughter-in-law in the palace, a mother of twins, and so forth. However they represent
Sita, modern writers depict her as a dynamic, rather than static, character.
Consequently, readers come to care about her dilemmas as they watch her thoughtfully
respond to, for example, the trials of captivity in Lanka or the burden of single
parenthood. These writers present Sita as a resourceful person who chooses to act in
various ways in light of the various contexts in which she finds herself at different
moments of her life.

INTERACTING WITH RAM

Sandria B. Freitag
North Carolina State University, USA

From the 1870s, the range of popular visual-culture images produced and consumed in
India grew exponentially, while viewers or consumers of those images learned new
skills of perception and developed new modes of interaction with the images. As a god
whose story enabled viewers to construct, debate, and talk about good rule as well as
the connections between identity and personal devotion (which, in turn, could lead to
mobilisation on behalf of good rule), Ram is an especially revealing focal point for
examining such changes over time. Working with textile labels, posters, and calendar
art, this paper explores changing reception practices over the 20th century along with
the Ram-story images that prompted such changes. In particular, we will extend an
anthropology of art approach to these materials, in order to emphasise the
performative aspect of interactions with images, keeping our focus firmly on how
meanings are built through doing by viewers/ consumers, rather than interpreting
meaning through the symbols and signification intended by producers. The actions of
the viewer/ consumer thus become central to understanding the meanings that inhere in
an image, where meanings change over time, shaped by context and iterative
interactions.

SHAPING SOUTHEAST ASIAS REGIONAL IDENTITY:

THE RAMAYANA AS AN IDEATIONAL FORCE?
Marshall Clark
Deakin University, Australia

Southeast Asian identity is thought to be far more elite-political than mass-cultural in

nature. Is this conventional wisdom true? In recent years, audio-visual flows of popular
culture across national borders have proliferated. Malaysia, for example, is flooded with
Indonesian music and films, while there are a number of Malaysian actors in the
Indonesian TV industry.

In terms of shared cultural trends, Muslim culture has a

growing presence in the soap operas, novels, pop music and cinema of both Indonesia
and Malaysia. In his film based on the Ramayana myth, Wayang (2008), Malaysian
director Hatta Azad Khan reflects on the Islamisation of Malaysian politics and society,
while Garin Nugrohos Ramayana -inspired film, Opera Jawa (2006), is a comment on
the politics of religion in Indonesia. These themes are associated in both countries with
the spread of Islamic ethics, the implementation of Islamic laws, and the associated
jockeying of Islamist groups for greater political leverage. This paper will use this
evidence to highlight and explore the intersection of culture, media and politics in
Southeast Asian regionalisma dynamic, participatory, on-the-ground process that
does not depend on what ASEAN diplomats say or do.