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As any myth does, the Ramayana too has grown through additions and changes, and its trajectory through Indian history is of particular interest to the historian. While carrying out a historical analysis of a myth one does not ask whether the events narrated in it happened or not. The question is: Who invented the myth and why? How has the consciousness of the past been captured and given form through the narrative? Romila Thapar examines the Valmiki Ramayana at various times in Indian history and, through an exploration of the Buddhist and Jaina variants of the Rama story, shows how they establish changes in authorship, language, audience and ideology. Kumbhakarna battling monkeys and bears, mural in a chhatri, nineteenth century (?) Parashramapura, Shekhawati, Rajasthan. Photograph courtesy Gulammohammed Sheikh.
32 ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 1 Iremember some years ago how people in every locality of a city such as Delhi would gather to watch the Ramlila being performed. (This was before the television serial version killed such performances.) The Kumaonis, the Garhwalis, the Jats, all had their separate Ramlilas. They would ad lib the verses and bring in a lot of fascinating contemporary comment. I would make it a point of going there simply to listen to the commentary and literally hear, from year to year, the story unfold in its own way. The creation of an epic is generally part of the oral tradition. At the root of the epic is a collection of fragmented stories recited by bards and poets. One of the ways in which epics are composed is by picking up narrative fragments and stringing them together resulting in a long story with little episodes coming in from here and there. This is very clearly demonstrated in the Mahabharata where there is what is called the ‘boxing in’ of stories: X is telling a story to Y and Y says, “Oh, this is exactly as it was in the case of Z,” and X asks, “What was that?” and so the story of Z is brought in. And in the story of Z, someone is reminded about the story of A, which is then brought in. And so box after box slides into the original story. Since the oral traditions on which the ancient epics are based are no longer with us, we historians have to rely on contemporary studies of oral history, where history can in some cases be reconstructed from such traditions using a specialised methodology. One can make out indications of how oral composers compose a story, the techniques and formulaic portions they use, how they construct the story in particular ways using recurring metaphors that have a certain meaning, and so on. This methodology can be applied more successfully to medieval Indian epics because they are relatively recent and there are still people and families that recite them and claim to know how the composition came about. But even if one applies these methods to, for example, the Mahabharata, the elements of the oral tradition come through and one can spot the points in time when something that was oral was taken over and converted into a literary form. A historical analysis of myth does not mean asking whether the events narrated in it happened or not, but instead asking who is inventing that
Page 2 and 3: Contents EDITORIAL 3 READING VISUAL
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Page 10 and 11: The divine messenger (Agnipurusha)
Page 12 and 13: they sit in mournful contemplation
Page 14 and 15: upon a blue-gold sky. Or elsewhere
Page 16 and 17: his daughter in marriage. Dasharath
Page 18 and 19: Reading Visuals - Gulammohammed She
Page 20 and 21: It is difficult to summarise the na
Page 22 and 23: There are numerous other sights tha
Page 24 and 25: produces a rare form of intimate ye
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Page 31: Myth Retold: Variants of the Story
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Wayang Kulit - Eddin Khoo Ravana or
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closest to the audience is the most
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Wayang Kulit during the 1970s, 1980
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Wayang Kulit - Eddin Khoo Winged in
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the aim was to ‘museumise’ this
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