Have you heard of the Ramayana in which tribal deities take Rama to task for abandoning a pregnant Sita? This is part of the Adiya Ramayana, from the Adiya tribe from Thrissilery, Wayanad district in Kerala. In fact, the story here is totally at variance with the epic that most people are familiar with.
Or the version from the Chetti community of Muthanga, which offers a unique take on the birth of Sita’s children? The story goes that Sita gives birth to only one child. One day, she leaves the child with sage Valmiki so that she can go to the river. She takes the baby when she comes back but the sage doesn’t notice. When he realises the infant is missing, the horrified sage creates a replica from a blade of kusa grass. The story ends with Sita accepting the second child too.
Rich with experience
These stories and more are part of Azeez Tharuvana’s Living Ramayanas. “These diverse texts are rich with the elements of human experience, social verities and the lives and cultures of the people among whom they are born,” writes the author.
In the first part of the book, translated from Malayalam by Obed Ebenezer S., the author recounts the stories and the various places in Kerala associated with the epic. He then embarks on an exploration of how these tales came into existence and the reasons for their survival. One, he points out, is that Wayanad developed a culture of its own due to its geography. Second, many communities migrated and settled here at different times bringing with them their own legends and myths, which they then sited in this area. He also discusses the possibility of oral transmission and the stories being transplanted to the location of the hearers.
Tharuvana also draws the reader’s attention to the epic, as told across Asia. Indonesia, for example, has many variants such as the Hikayat Seri Rama, the Sri Rama Pathayani Ramayanam, Ramakelinga apart from episodes that show up in folklore. He draws the reader’s attention to certain similarities with the Adiya Ramayana.
In Thailand, the Ramakein sets the epic in that country and the characters are Thai. Tharuvana meticulously details the differences with the Valmiki Ramayana. In the Malaysian telling, it is Sita who offers a crucial clue on how to kill Ravana. The secret is conveyed to Rama by Hanuman.
The Tibetan telling offers another variation to the vanavas (exile) episode. Sita is Ravana’s daughter, abandoned because astrologers predict she will cause her father’s downfall. Thrown into the sea, she reaches Indian shores and is brought up by peasants. Meanwhile, Dasaratha is in a dilemma about which of his sons should succeed him. Rama convinces him to crown Lakshmana as king and sets off to meditate in the forest. He meets the peasants, who convince him to marry Sita.
A Mappila take
Tharuvana then runs through the epic as told by different Adivasi communities across India and also the Mappila Ramayana, a lyrical text from the Mappila Muslim community of the Malabar region in northern Kerala. The chapter titled ‘The Many Versions and Variations of the Ramayana’ makes for interesting reading, delineating as it does how the epic differs in its telling across the country and also focuses more on Sita than on Rama. Tharuvana highlights the point that this is as much Sita’s story as Rama’s.
The simple and straightforward writing, without any jargon or mystification, makes the book eminently accessible for a lay reader.
What one takes away from this book is the fact that “the Ramayana is... a living text that accommodates many different and diverse voices...” each with “its own perspective, validity, narrative significance and own ideology.” Something to think about in today’s world.
Living Ramayanas: Exploring the Plurality of the Epic in Wayanad and the World; Azeez Tharuvana, Eka (Westland), ₹499.
krithika.r@thehindu.co.in
