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ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine, Volume 6, Number 1
change in narrative has to do with a
local situation or custom. In this
manner the story gets appropriated by
a local community. The Ramlilas
performed by various local
communities were merely continuing a
tradition going back many centuries.
The Germ of a Conflict?
But to return to the three variants that
I have discussed, I am puzzled by the
changes in each. Among other things,
they seem to involve the politics of
early clans, which may be a possible
reason for the elaboration of the ramakatha
into the Valmiki Ramayana and
the counter epic, the Paumachariya. A
statement is made—and this is where
my speculation comes in—in the
Ramayana, more or less as an aside,
and briefly in the Mahabharata, as
also in the Puranas, that certain clans
descended from Yadu and coming
largely from western India, attacked
Ayodhya at some point and devastated
it. These clans were the Haihayas, the
Talajanghas who were referred to as
rakshasas very often, and also the
Chedis. The Chedis had a very high
status since their much revered
ancestor Uparichara, had been given
an aerial chariot by Indra himself, and
was therefore referred to as
Akashamargi, the traveller in the sky.
Sagara, in the Ikshvaku line, an
ancestor of Rama, sought revenge for
this attack. He fought the Chedis and
the Haihaya clans and drove them
back to the region of Mahishmati—
now known as a famous archaeological
site south of Ujjain on the river
Narmada.
Could this have been the germ of the
epic conflict: the two major clans
confronting each other, the Ikshvakus
of whom Rama is a descendent, and
the Chedis? Was Ravana linked to the
Chedis? The Ikshvakus are very
familiar to us from the lineage of
Rama, what was later called the
Suryavamsha. The Chedis and the
Haihayas were then assigned to the
other lineage called the
Chandravamsha. Both lineages were
named after the major planets, the sun
and the moon, and were thus both
antagonistic and complementary.
The Chedis are a very important clan
in the Buddhist texts—I mentioned
the reference to 60,000 Chedi rajas.
The Paumachariya tells us that Ravana
was of the Meghavahana line and
opposed to the Ikshvakus. Given all
this information we could ask, not
necessarily if the attack on Ayodhya
and the retaliation actually happened,
but more simply whether there is
historical reference to the