EpicCulture:ManyVersions,ManyHeroes

When epics are subject to Marxist,Freudian or Structural analyses, when theyare examined in the light of history,archaeology and carbon-dating, they arepejoratively called myths. But for largeparts of Indian society, as Ashis Nandypoints out, the epics provide a means ofconstructing the past outside history, a pastthat is as open as the future. In the epicworld, heroes and heroines host elementsof their anti-selves within them, and theseinternal inconsistencies give room formyriad variations. In an epic culture,plurality is built in, says Nandy, and thevarious versions serve as vehicles ofculture-specific world-views and thoughts.

Ashis Nandy

Parashurama challenges Rama to stretch Vishnu’s bow,ascribed to Lahru of Chamba, c. 1750-75, courtesyBhuri Singh Museum, Chamba. Photograph courtesy Gulammohammed Sheikh.

Wayang Kulit: Where RavanaDances in the Shadows

The Ramayana in the north-eastern state ofKelantan in Malaysia is not a hegemonic textbut a generic story that encapsulates thesensibilities of the community. Rooted in theoral tradition, the Wayang Kulit is theshadow-puppetry form of the Ramayana.Free-flowing, eccentric and heavilyimprovised, it is dependent on theimagination of the dalang or puppeteer whocreates branch stories from the original trunk.Eddin Khoo situates this performing art formwithin the ‘bastardised’ pluralistic culture ofthe Malay Peninsula, a culture that variouspolitical forces have been attempting tocensor, ‘museumise’, and even deny.

Eddin Khoo

All photographs courtesy PUSAKA.

The shaman, Che Mohd Zailani, performs anincantation at the end of the Berjamu (Feedingof the Spirits) ritual conducted every year forthe dalang in the Wayang Kulit Siam traditionof Kelantan.

The wonderful thing about a text is that it assumes different meanings at differentstages of one’s life, says C.S. Lakshmi as she describes her personal encounterswith the Ramayana: listening as a child to her mother’s story of Rama’s birth whilegetting an oil massage, attending grand public narrations by eminent exponentsof the epic, watching popular film versions, and finally approaching the text asa lover of Tamil, as a reader and as an author. Each of her experiences hascreated its own images, memories and meanings, just as it has allowed formultiple interpretations and retellings. What we can discern from this epic text,says Lakshmi, is that a text, like everything else, can be seen from multiplepositions of age, gender, language and perspective.

Imagining Rama: FromGrandma’s Tales toMultiple Texts

C.S. Lakshmi