A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE SANSKRIT, TAMIL, THAI AND ...

SANSKHIT, TA\IIL, THAI AND MALAY VllHSIONS OF THE STORY OF RAMA 153
might already have been current in oral or popular traditions before
they had won their way into a literary version, though in modified
forms.
As for the second part of the problem, namely, the question of
adaptation or diffusion and the related process of acculturation, it
would be perhaps desirable to see first what a comparative study of
the four versions, the Ramayat}a of Vi.ilmiki, the Ramavataram
of Kamban, the Ramakian of King Rama I, and the Hikayat Seri Rama,
has to offer by way of material evidence relating to the various episodes,
incidents or motifs of the story. Before considering the data, a few
words may be said about the scheme of presentation of the comparison
and the textual sources utilized.
To accommodate the mass of material in reasonably condensed
form, the major episodes, incidents or motifs chosen for purposes of
comparison are made into summarised lists which are marked by the
letters of the Roman alphabet and arranged under brief descriptive
beadings. It must be noted that no attempt is made in this paper to
present all the episodes, incidents or motifs of each version concerned;
such a huge task will have to wait until there is compiled a comprehensive
and possibly comparative motif index of the various versions of
the Rama story, perhaps through the collaboration of several interested
workers in this field. For the purpose of facilitating quick comparison,
the lists of such episodes or motifs as are presented in this paper and
which would seem to vary from one version to another are arranged
under the subheading, DIVERGENCES; whereas the lists of mottjs
which agree between one version and the other are placed under the
subheading, PARALLELS. The DIVERGENCES between the RamayatJa
of Valmiki and the Ramiivataram of Kamban are summed up first.
This is followed by the list of DIVERGENCES between the Ramaya1Ja
of Valmiki and the Thai Ramakian on the one hand, and between the
Tamil version of Kamban and the Thai Ramakian on the other. The
final list of DIVERGENCES is ·of those between the Hikayat Seri Rama
and the other versions concerned. This is followed by the lists of
PARALLELS between the Tamil version and the Thai version and/or
the Malay version on the one band, and between the Thai version and
the Malay version on the other. The four versions concerned are to