Questioning Ramayanas

Questioning Ramayanas PDF

Author: Paula Richman

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 9780520220744

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A wide-ranging examination of the many different versions of India's greatest epic, the Ramayana, focusing on versions that subvert the dominant readings of the work.

Many Ramayanas

Many Ramayanas PDF

Author: Paula Richman

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-09-01

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 052091175X

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Throughout Indian history, many authors and performers have produced, and many patrons have supported, diverse tellings of the story of the exiled prince Rama, who rescues his abducted wife by battling the demon king who has imprisoned her. The contributors to this volume focus on these "many" Ramayanas. While most scholars continue to rely on Valmiki's Sanskrit Ramayana as the authoritative version of the tale, the contributors to this volume do not. Their essays demonstrate the multivocal nature of the Ramayana by highlighting its variations according to historical period, political context, regional literary tradition, religious affiliation, intended audience, and genre. Socially marginal groups in Indian society—Telugu women, for example, or Untouchables from Madhya Pradesh—have recast the Rama story to reflect their own views of the world, while in other hands the epic has become the basis for teachings about spiritual liberation or the demand for political separatism. Historians of religion, scholars of South Asia, folklorists, cultural anthropologists—all will find here refreshing perspectives on this tale.

The Ramayana Revisited

The Ramayana Revisited PDF

Author: Mandakranta Bose

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2004-09-30

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 0195168321

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14 leading 'Ramayana' scholars examine the epic in its myriad contexts throughout South and Southeast Asia. They explore the role the narrative plays in societies as varied as India Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia. The essays also expand the understanding of the 'text' to include non-verbal renditions of the epic.

Many Ramayanas

Many Ramayanas PDF

Author: Paula Richman

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1991-08-29

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0520075897

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Throughout Indian history, many authors and performers have produced, and many patrons have supported, diverse tellings of the story of the exiled prince Rama, who rescues his abducted wife by battling the demon king who has imprisoned her. The contributors to this volume focus on these "many" Ramayanas. While most scholars continue to rely on Valmiki's Sanskrit Ramayana as the authoritative version of the tale, the contributors to this volume do not. Their essays demonstrate the multivocal nature of the Ramayana by highlighting its variations according to historical period, political context, regional literary tradition, religious affiliation, intended audience, and genre. Socially marginal groups in Indian society—Telugu women, for example, or Untouchables from Madhya Pradesh—have recast the Rama story to reflect their own views of the world, while in other hands the epic has become the basis for teachings about spiritual liberation or the demand for political separatism. Historians of religion, scholars of South Asia, folklorists, cultural anthropologists—all will find here refreshing perspectives on this tale.

Comics and Sacred Texts

Comics and Sacred Texts PDF

Author: Assaf Gamzou

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1496819241

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Contributions by Ofra Amihay, Madeline Backus, Samantha Baskind, Elizabeth Rae Coody, Scott S. Elliott, Assaf Gamzou, Susan Handelman, Leah Hochman, Leonard V. Kaplan, Ken Koltun-Fromm, Shiamin Kwa, Samantha Langsdale, A. David Lewis, Karline McLain, Ranen Omer-Sherman, Joshua Plencner, and Jeffrey L. Richey Comics and Sacred Texts explores how comics and notions of the sacred interweave new modes of seeing and understanding the sacral. Comics and graphic narratives help readers see religion in the everyday and in depictions of God, in transfigured, heroic selves as much as in the lives of saints and the meters of holy languages. Coeditors Assaf Gamzou and Ken Koltun-Fromm reveal the graphic character of sacred narratives, imagining new vistas for both comics and religious texts. In both visual and linguistic forms, graphic narratives reveal representational strategies to encounter the sacred in all its ambivalence. Through close readings and critical inquiry, these essays contemplate the intersections between religion and comics in ways that critically expand our ability to think about religious landscapes, rhetorical practices, pictorial representation, and the everyday experiences of the uncanny. Organized into four sections—Seeing the Sacred in Comics; Reimagining Sacred Texts through Comics; Transfigured Comic Selves, Monsters, and the Body; and The Everyday Sacred in Comics—the essays explore comics and graphic novels ranging from Craig Thompson’s Habibi and Marvel’s X-Men and Captain America to graphic adaptions of religious texts such as 1 Samuel and the Gospel of Mark. Comics and Sacred Texts shows how claims to the sacred are nourished and concealed in comic narratives. Covering many religions, not only Christianity and Judaism, this rare volume contests the profane/sacred divide and establishes the import of comics and graphic narratives in disclosing the presence of the sacred in everyday human experience.

Valmiki's Ramayana

Valmiki's Ramayana PDF

Author:

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-04-20

Total Pages: 563

ISBN-13: 1538113694

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One of India’s greatest epics, the Ramayana pervades the country’s moral and cultural consciousness. For generations it has served as a bedtime story for Indian children, while at the same time engaging the interest of philosophers and theologians. Believed to have been composed by Valmiki sometime between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE, the Ramayana tells the tragic and magical story of Rama, the prince of Ayodhya, an incarnation of Lord Visnu, born to rid the earth of the terrible demon Ravana. An idealized heroic tale ending with the inevitable triumph of good over evil, the Ramayana is also an intensely personal story of family relationships, love and loss, duty and honor, of harem intrigue, petty jealousies, and destructive ambitions. All this played out in a universe populated by larger-than-life humans, gods and celestial beings, wondrous animals and terrifying demons. With her magnificent translation and superb introduction, Arshia Sattar has successfully bridged both time and space to bring this ancient classic to modern English readers.

World Literature and the Question of Genre in Colonial India

World Literature and the Question of Genre in Colonial India PDF

Author: Kedar Arun Kulkarni

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-05-30

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 9354356826

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World Literature and the Question of Genre in Colonial India describes the way Marathi literary culture, entrenched in performative modes of production and reception, saw the germination of a robust, script-centric dramatic culture owing to colonial networks of literary exchange and the newfound, wide availability of print technology. The author demonstrates the upheaval that literary culture underwent as a new class of literati emerged: anthologists, critics, theatre makers, publishers and translators. These people participated in global conversations that left their mark on theory in the early twentieth century. Reading through archives and ephemera, Kedar Arun Kulkarni illustrates how literary cultures in colonised locales converged with and participated fully in key defining moments of world literature, but also diverged from them to create, simultaneously, a unique literary modernity.

Śambūka and the Rāmāyaṇa Tradition

Śambūka and the Rāmāyaṇa Tradition PDF

Author: Aaron Sherraden

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2023-08-01

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1839984716

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According to Vālmīki’s Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa (early centuries CE), Śambūka was practicing severe acts of austerity to enter heaven. In engaging in these acts as a Śūdra, Śambūka was in violation of class- and caste-based societal norms prescribed exclusively by the ruling and religious elite. Rāma, the hero of the Rāmāyaṇa epic, is dispatched to kill Śambūka, whose transgression is said to be the cause of a young Brahmin’s death. The gods rejoice upon the Śūdra’s death and restore the life of the Brahmin. Subsequent Rāmāyaṇa poets almost instantly recognized this incident as a blemish on Rāma’s character and they began problematizing this earliest version of the story. They adjusted and updated the story to suit the expectations of their audiences. The works surveyed in this study include numerous works originating in Hindu, Jain, Dalit and non-Brahmin communities while spanning the period from Śambūka’s first appearance in the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa through to the present day. The book follows the Śambūka episode chronologically across its entire history—approximately two millennia—to illuminate the social, religious, legal, and artistic connections that span the entire range of the Rāmāyaṇa’s influence and its place throughout various phases of Indian history and social revolution.

Ramayana Theater in Contemporary Southeast Asia

Ramayana Theater in Contemporary Southeast Asia PDF

Author: Madoka Fukuoka

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2022-11-30

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1000589730

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The ancient Indian epic poem Ramayana has been disseminated throughout large tracts of Southeast Asia since the 9th century. Versions of the epic poem have come to adopt and reflect the unique characteristics of the countries and regions where it has gained cultural currency. The epic has been a source of popular themes in both traditional and contemporary art forms, including literature, performing arts, fine arts, and films. This book showcases Ramayana theater as a platform where the multiple meanings and senses of values are negotiated. It focuses on the relationships between the cultural representation and the various meanings of Ramayana theater, as well as other dramatic art forms. Focusing on the various contemporary contexts of art performances where the epic poem has been represented, the book also presents the ideologies and moral values contained in the theatrical forms of the epic poem. It discusses various performance contexts, such as diaspora communities, production of popular content culture, cultural diplomacy, designation as intangible cultural heritage, transmission, tourism, and the representation/exhibition of culture, as well as the performance in rituals. It also includes works of three contemporary and inspiring artists: cross-gender dancer Didik Nini Thowok, animator as well as puppeteer Nanang Ananto Wicaksono, and composer Ken Steven.