Preferred Citation: Blackburn, Stuart. Inside the Drama-House: Rama Stories and Shadow Puppets in South India. Berkeley, Calif:  University of California Press,  c1996 1996. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft5q2nb449/

Inside the Drama-House Rama Stories and Shadow Puppets in South India Stuart Blackburn UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford © 1996 The Regents of the University of California

Preferred Citation: Blackburn, Stuart. Inside the Drama-House: Rama Stories and Shadow Puppets in South India. Berkeley, Calif:  University of California Press,  c1996 1996. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft5q2nb449/

I know people say these stories are only imagination, but
I say they never deceive. They tell truths—one only has to
know what is story and what is true.
Natesan Pillai, in performance

Acknowledgments

In 1986 I received a grant from the Fulbright-Hayes Program and spent six months in Kerala, India, recording performances on audiocassette and interviewing puppeteers. Another six months of recording in 1989 completed my fieldwork, although brief trips in 1988 and 1990 enabled me to track down missing information. A generous grant from the Translation Program at the National Endowment for the Humanities supported the translation work and library research from 1986 to 1989. Preparation of the final manuscript was assisted by a grant from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where the maps were prepared. For the support of these organizations I am grateful.

Some material in this book has appeared in another form in Heroic Process: Form, Function and Fantasy in Folk Epic , ed. Bo Almqvist et al. (Glendale Press, 1987), in Gender, Genre and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions , ed. A. Appadurai et al. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), and in Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia , ed. Paula Richman (University of California Press, 1991). I thank the publishers for permission to use this material in a revised form.

During the long years of working on this book, I benefited from the insights and encouragement of many friends and colleagues. In particular, David Shulman and Kirin Narayan carefully read drafts of this book and offered numerous, detailed suggestions for its improvement; Kausalya Hart also patiently answered questions about thorny passages in Kampan. Many, many people helped me during my work in Kerala.

Among the local scholars who assisted me, I owe special thanks to A. K. Nambiar for leading me through difficult passages in Malayalam and to M. G. Sashibooshan for guiding me to isolated Rama temples in Palghat District. Among the puppeteers, I especially want to thank Natesan Pillai, Annamalai Pulavar, Krishnan Kutty Pulavar, and the brothers Gangakaran and Prabakaran; to dozens of others who allowed me to tape-record their performances and pester them about their puppets, families, and texts, I am also grateful. To those puppeteers and to their Rama story inside the drama-house this book is dedicated.

Berkeley and London, 1994

A Note on Transliteration

Transliterations of words from Indian languages, primarily Tamil and Malayalam, follow scholarly conventions for those languages. Indic terms familiar to English readers appear in their Anglicized form (such as dharma, karma). Place names (Palghat) and names of some persons (Krishnan Kutty) appear without diacritical marks. Names of some story characters appear in an approximate phonetic rendering of the puppeteers' speech ("Jambuvan" instead of "Campavan," for example).

Map 1.
India: Region of the Kerala shadow puppet play

Map 2.
Sites of the shadow puppet play in Kerala

Chapter 1
An Absent Audience

This book describes the performance of a medieval text as shadow puppet play in a small corner of south India. The text is the Kamparamayanam , a Rama story composed in Tamil by Kampan, at the Chola court of Tanjore, probably in the twelfth century.^[1] The puppet play is today performed in the Palghat region of Kerala primarily by Tamil-speaking puppeteers in temple festivals dedicated to the goddess Bhagavati. The recontextualization of this epic text, eight centuries after its composition, into a new medium, in a rural, ritual setting and a new linguistic context, is the central theme of this book. Although I will emphasize the Kerala puppeteers' particular telling of the Rama story, especially through translations of their performances, I will also take up the wider issues of audience interaction, the interpretive role of oral commentary, and the intertextuality of Rama stories. In this initial chapter, I begin with audiences and then provide an introduction to Kampan's Rama story in Kerala. Imagine that (a medieval) Shakespeare was thought to exist only in libraries, until a performance tradition with local commentary was discovered somewhere in Wales; then add that the players perform for an absent audience; and you have the Kerala shadow puppet play.

Even if it had no relation to the medieval Tamil epic, the Kerala tradition is important because Indian shadow puppetry is little known both inside and outside the subcontinent. Like Buddhism, the art was thought to have vanished from its Indian birthplace as it migrated and flourished elsewhere in Asia. But Indologists debated whether references in old Sanskrit texts proved the existence of an ancient shadow

puppet play; if such a tradition had existed, where was it now?^[2] The answer came in 1935 when a German scholar saw a performance in Karnataka and, in an uncanny coincidence, an American journalist stumbled on another in Kerala. The vanishing act had been an illusion, and we know that Indian shadow puppetry is performed in Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh, and until recently, in Maharashtra and Orissa. The Kerala tradition was known to the outside world only by a handful of essays until 1986, when Dr. F. Seltmann published his excellent monograph.

Known as tol pava kuttu ("leather puppet play"), the shadow puppet theater in Kerala is never performed for one night, or for anything less than eight nights in succession. Night after night, for ten or twenty or even sixty consecutive nights, two or three men sit inside a small building and manipulate painted, perforated leather puppets, throwing shadows on a white cloth screen, chanting Kampan's verses and explicating them in a rambling commentary that is generated both by convention and the predilections of individual puppeteers. How these various pieces of the tradition—shadow puppetry, epic story, commentary, and festival—come together in this performance of a Tamil text in Kerala took me many years to understand, for the Rama story is multiple, the Kampan text vast, and the series of overnight performances monumental. Any single book intending to cover all these topics fully would fail (a translation of the performance sequence itself would exceed a thousand printed pages). The puppeteers claim it takes ten years to acquire the knowledge necessary for a skillful performance, warning that attempting to explain a verse "without first studying the old books is like a man trying to bind a wild elephant with a wet lotus stalk."^[3] A few lotus stalks have surely slithered through my hands in the past decade, but I believe that enough of the elephant has been bound for me to write this book about a text and its new audiences.

Nothing, however, had prepared me for my first full shadow-puppet-play performance, in January 1984, and had someone told me that I would spend the next ten years attempting to understand it, I might not have made the trip. As I hurried along narrow, dark roads toward the village of Suhavaram in central Kerala in a taxi with five puppeteers who were to perform there that night, my thoughts ran on a single track—"How much sleep will I lose? When will I return in the morning? I said I'd be back around midnight, but they've now told me that it will be daybreak before we even leave this place I've yet to see." The puppeteers were asleep in the rumbling auto—Krishnan Kutty, the senior puppe-

teer; his two sons, aged sixteen and eighteen; and two assistants, Sankara Nayar and Narayana Nayar.

I met Krishnan Kutty in 1978 when I wandered into a large auditorium in Bangalore, the computer capital of modern India, during a national festival of shadow puppetry; I was supposed to be attending a Fulbright Conference for grantees, but shadow puppets seemed more interesting. Stumbling onto his spirited performance in that artificial setting, I was intrigued, for it seemed that the story had something to do with Rama—in Tamil, in Kerala. Tamil I knew, from my first trip to India in 1970-72 as a Peace Corps volunteer (when I had to learn the language well enough to speak it faster than my friends spoke English), from later research trips, and from graduate school at Berkeley. Kerala, too, was familiar to me since I had done field work on its border with Tamil Nadu for an earlier book, but the Malayali temple festivals, food, and language were unfamiliar. Of the Rama story, I knew only the barest outline—his exile, the loss of his wife, her recapture from Ravana in Lanka, and something about Hanuman, the monkey who aided Rama. More than this, all those other names and episodes, which everyone else seemed to know, blurred into a jumble of sounds and kinship relations. But shadow puppetry in Kerala—wasn't that the premier performing art of Java and Bali? This intrigued me, so I scribbled down a few notes and returned to the Fulbright meeting, full of questions that I failed to pursue until, six years later, my wife and I visited her son, who was training as a Kathakali dancer in central Kerala. Michael casually mentioned that some puppeteers lived nearby; the next day I found Krishnan Kutty's home, and he immediately invited me to the performance that very night at Suhavaram.

The taxi, puppeteers still snoring, reached Suhavaram about ten o'clock. Suhavaram is a small village of Tiyar agricultural workers and a few Nambutiri Brahmins in the far western reaches of the puppet-play region, on the banks of the Ponani River, not far from the town of the same name, where the river flows into the Arabian Sea. When we arrived, it was pitch-dark and chilly, but the large area in front of the temple was buzzing with activity, hissing with bright kerosene lamps, and booming with loud temple music. Climbing out of the taxi, I was drawn to a performance of Ottan Tullal, in which a dancer recites mythic stories in Malayalam, but my companions showed no interest: "Sure, have a look," they said begrudgingly and then lifted the huge woven basket containing their puppets from the trunk of the taxi and lugged it toward the drama-house (kuttu matam ).

Standing off to the side, at an angle to the Bhagavati temple, the small drama-house did not catch my attention at first; from a distance, anyone might mistake its red-tiled roof, wooden rafters, and whitewashed walls for a modest home or shop. Only the long, open front, where the white cloth screen hangs down at night, marks this oblong structure as a stage for the shadow puppet play. Raised on a platform and reached by a few steps, its three walls stand six feet high at the perimeter and fifteen feet high in the center where the rafters peak. Platform, steps, walls, and floor are all made of hard-baked mud covered with lime paste and sometimes decorated with red vertical stripes, like a Visnu temple. In front, the screen hangs down to the floor, which extends a few feet beyond the screen. Puppets appear on the screen only during the annual festival, which is held sometime between January. and May, but the drama-house is seldom idle even when no performances are held—in the months of summer rain, in the autumn, and in the brief winter. With the cloth screen rolled up, a bamboo wicker screen wedged in front to keep out birds, and the puppet-play paraphernalia stored in the dry. rafters above, the drama-house becomes a place where men gather to smoke and talk and sleep. A few drama-houses serve as public libraries during the off-season.

That night at Suhavaram, I watched from outside the drama-house as Krishnan Kutty and his assistants stepped up inside the small building. One of his sons sat off to the side of the stage with a tiny kerosene lamp and a battered school notebook while a steady trickle of people approached, gave their names, mentioned problems they wished to have alleviated, and pledged donations (invariably one rupee each), which information the young many duly entered in neat writing in the notebook. Later, sometime during the performance, the puppeteers would interrupt their narration to read every one of those names and sing a verse for each one-rupee patron, invoking the blessings of goddess Bhagavati and Sri Rama on their behalf.^[4] That night the book held over one hundred names (one person may enter many names), and several hundred is not unusual; once, on the night of Indrajit's death, which signals the fall of Lanka, I saw a book with more than three thousand names.

About 11:00 P.M. , when the Ottan Tullal performance was completed and most of the crowd had gone home to sleep, preparations for the puppet play began in earnest. Krishnan Kutty, the pulavar (poet-scholar), was summoned to the temple, where the oracle-priest (velic-

cappatu ) offered him a new white cloth and two brass vessels of raw rice; wearing only his clean white vesti^[5] and a towel across his shoulders, the senior puppeteer walked three times around these gifts, picked them up, and returned to the drama-house, where the cloth (ayya putavai ) was fastened to the roof with rope, rolled down, and secured to the floor of the drama-house with heavy stones while the vessels were set in place for the Ganesa puja to follow. Inside the now fully enclosed and windowless drama-house, I felt claustrophobic (my thoughts raced back to the baseball dugouts and underground forts I had inhabited as a boy). Awkwardly stepping over and around the five puppeteers, I found a corner from which to watch them prepare the "stage." They lowered a long plank of jackwood from the rafters, positioned it to hang by ropes very close to the cloth screen, and placed on it twenty-one half-shells of coconut; then they filled the shells with coconut oil and slipped in wicks, which they had just made by rolling bits of cotton thread into thin strips. At first the coconut-shell lamps remained unlit while experienced hands swiftly selected the Ganesa puppet and a pair of Brahmin puppets from among dozens lying tangled in the enormous woven basket. Narayana Nayar fastened these puppets onto the screen with thick thorns and chuckled while I fumbled around trying to hang my microphone from the rafters so that it dangled directly in front of the wooden bench on which the puppeteers would sit during performance. When the puppets that would appear later that opening night—Rama, Laksmana, Sita, Surpanakha, a few nameless demons—were extracted from the basket and stacked to one side, everything was ready. A tray of glasses was poked through a corner of the cloth screen and passed around; slowly we sipped the milky, sweet tea, until, without warning, the puppeteers lay down on mats and fell asleep. I looked around the dark drama-house, realizing that, over the course of the weeks that the puppeteers perform, this would be their nighttime home and, if their village is farther than an hour's bus ride from the festival, their home during the day as well. This small space, soon to be alive with lights and puppets and epic events, is the world of the Kerala puppeteers.

From inside, the puppeteers look out on an open area and, off to one side, the Bhagavati temple, whose separation from the drama-house is more than physical. Although the puppet play is performed as a ritual for the goddess in her festival, it is kept at a distance, like the secular dramas performed on a wooden stage erected in another corner of the open

space; events of higher ritual status, however, such as Kathakali, Ottan Tullal, or Cakkyar Kuthu, are performed inside the temple compound. The puppet play is also slighted in billing, for it begins only after the other performances (modern dramas as well as classical arts) have been completed, often at midnight or one o'clock in the morning. Watching from their perch on the stage, the puppeteers comment on these rival performances with jealous contempt—"They pander to the public, they require no intellect"—but no one inside the drama-house would complain if the puppet performance also commanded thousands of spectators. Kathakali, whose elaborately costumed dancers are fast becoming an internationally recognized icon of Indian culture, receives most of the puppeteers' scorn: "Stamp your feet—bham! wham!—and you're off to Paris!" In truth, the numerous trips made by Kathakali troupes to culture festivals all over the world have wounded the puppeteers' pride, for only one puppet troupe has ever traveled beyond Kerala. The drama-houses, permanent yet separate, stand as a monument to the ambivalent status of the puppet play, of Kampan's courtly text in a Kerala village festival.

That first night at Suhavaram I did not feel at home in that dark, cramped space, where everyone but me was asleep. "When will the performance begin?" I wanted to know. Frustrated, and with little else to do, I double-checked my batteries and wrote more "context" notes in my black binder. Then, suddenly, everyone stirred, awakened by the cenda drums played in a procession advancing from the temple. Leading this nightly assemblage of musicians, temple-lamp bearer, officials, and patrons, the oracle-priest marched with measured steps that shook the bells on his ankles, on his belt, and on his curved sword held high above his head. His bright red skirt and ice-white hair shining in the kerosene lamps held high by servants, he became possessed by Bhagavati, but his prophetic shrieks were barely audible over the big-barrel drums booming behind him. Three times the procession wheeled in a great circle in front of the drama-house, and then the oracle-priest halted, executed a short, jerky dance, and spoke for the goddess to the small crowd gathered for this minor manifestation of divinity. Still shaking and uttering cries, he showered them with rice and shouted a blessing for tonight's sponsors and anyone who came forth with a problem.^[6] Peering out from under the white cloth screen, we watched him make a final offering of rice to Krishnan Kutty, who then received the heavy brass temple lamp (tukku vilakku ) and ducked back under the screen. When that lamp was hung inside the drama-house to mark the ritual transfer from temple to

puppet play, the procession dispersed, leaving only the sponsors and a few hangers-on.

Inside the drama-house, Krishnan Kutty conducted a small puja for the Ganesa puppet pinned on the screen. Placing the rice, flowers, incense, and a coconut on a banana leaf on the floor, he quickly chanted a verse, lit the incense, and waved it around the static puppet while the other puppeteers prostrated themselves in front of it. Each man then touched the feet of the puppeteers senior to him, as a sign of respect, until, finally, Krishnan Kutty touched the Ganesa puppet.^[7] After a puppeteer unhooked the temple lamp and lit the cotton wicks in the shell-lamps, I saw the puppets clearly for the first time in their bold colors, casting filigree shadows on the screen.^[8] Now the performance began, as on every night, with a little uninspired drumming to which the puppeteers added a barely audible chant that gradually expanded into a series of devotional songs sung by the two Brahmin puppets flanking Ganesa on the cloth screen.^[9] These Brahmin puppets, the masters of ceremonies for this introduction ("Song of the Drama-House"), danced jerkily around the god and rang bells in imitation of the oracle-priest. Abruptly, one quoted a proverbial verse to the other:

"A great person should forgive
     the mistakes of little ones;
If he forgives not,
     he is no longer great."

"Right. And there are so many errors one can make in reciting these dense verses: errors in speaking, errors in meaning, errors in meter, errors in the story, and errors when reading and copying manuscripts."

"We ask that we be forgiven if we commit any of these mistakes."

"And now, Muttuppattar, let us begin our story."

"But first, there is a little delay."

"Delay? What for? Some scandal?"

"Hardly. The cause for the delay is us."

"Us?"

"Yes, we must thank the sponsors of tonight's performance for all the food they have given us."

"Ah, that's the puppeteer tradition—to acknowledge our patrons. As they say, 'Poets who get rice should give praise.'"

"Tonight we want to thank Kuncu Kuttan of Talaipurumpil since every year his family sponsors the first night of the puppet show."

"And again this year he sent a messenger to bring us here to Kunnumpuli Kavu. When our bus pulled up, he was there to greet us and then escort us to his home, where we ate a big breakfast and received every kind of honor. We slept on comfortable pillows, drank hot coffee and ate rice-cakes in the afternoon, and ate a huge meal this evening. Then he invited us to worship Bhagavati in the temple here. Afterwards, as we left for the drama-house, he supplied us with a large plate of betel nut and betel leaves."

"We ask that Bhagavati protect Kuncu Kuttan, his family and relations from every kind of disease and misfortune. By the power of Rama's name and Bhagavati's compassion, may his family prosper for a thousand years."

As the twenty-odd tiny flames rose and brightened, the drama-house emerged from its darkness and the performance took shape within. After an hour, the puppeteers sang the first narrative verse, followed by some commentary, then more verses and more commentary, hour after hour, while the handful of an audience fell asleep and the outside world receded into a black wall of night. Inside, however, in the now dimmer but steadier glow of the little lamps, the puppeteers continued to sing and chant in an uninterrupted stream of words until early morning. Precisely at five o'clock, just as the final devotional song was sung, the coconut shells (with the "meat" still inside) were brought to the lead puppeteer, who quickly apportioned them according to seniority—a stack of three or four for his assistants, two or three for the drummers, the rest for himself.^[10] Then the puppeteers stepped down from the drama-house and headed for home in the heatless air of early morning; and as we sat in the roadside tea stall waiting for a bus, I took stock of what I had witnessed. These five men, really three men and two teenagers, whom I barely knew and who appeared unremarkable in their slightly soiled vestis and rumpled shirts, had just completed an extraordinary exhibition of verbal art. Yet something was missing. Sipping the weak tea and looking around, I realized that they were alone—no one had congratulated them after they put down the puppets; no one had even greeted them. What had been invisible during the marathon inside

the drama-house was inescapable in the daylight outside: these men had performed for themselves.

Searching for an Audience

This realization was the starting point of my research on the puppet play—not the Rama story, not the puppets, not even Kampan's text, although it did intrigue me, but this curious aspect of the puppet-play performance, the absent audience, for which I was entirely unprepared. Performances had always fascinated me, even before I read what folklorists and anthropologists had to say about them. During my first stay in India (1970-72), I had delighted in the irreverent open-air dramas staged by the Tamil Rationalist movement, watched high-stakes kabadi games, observed my share of weddings and funerals, and stared at fire-walkers.^[11] Returning a few years later to document a Tamil tradition of ritual singing and spirit possession, I began to think and write about performance as a cultural category. That research became a book in which I proposed that oral performance be studied as a conjunction of text and event, but I completely overlooked the equally important aspect of audience.^[12]

We all know that tales require listeners, yet audiences seldom appear in folk narrative research, which has moved through a succession of emphases, from tales to tellers to tellings. Even in the study of oral performance, with its eye trained on the exchange between performers and listeners, the audience rarely appears as more than a passive receptor, or in Jakobson's famous words, "those to whom the message is addressed."^[13] As if pulled by the hereditary instinct of its literary origins, the mainstream study of oral performance has moved back toward textual structure, textual composition, and other elements that constitute a new textual orthodoxy, or what might be called an "oral literary formalism." Audience was never entirely neglected, of course, and new studies, in India and elsewhere, suggest that we might yet fulfill the promise of early performance studies and recognize audiences for who they are—critics, consumers, and coperformers of the event.^[14]

Fortified with this theoretical weaponry and zeal, I confidently took to the field in Kerala to study the shadow puppet play. Arriving that night in Suhavaram, my goals were unclear, but since the modern

anthropological study of performance practically began in India, with Milton Singer's observations of events in Madras, my ambitions were high. By morning, however, before I had had time even to listen to my tapes, I was wrestling with the problem of audience in an unforeseen form: there was none. In the months and years that followed, despite my hope that the Suhavaram debut in an isolated spot on a cold night might have been an aberration, audiences refused to emerge. Unlike other, proper performances, the Kerala puppet plays have no ordinary, audience. After the sponsoring family leaves (and they rarely stay after the first half hour of a performance, when their praises are sting), the large, open space in front of the puppet stage is virtually deserted. A few stragglers with nowhere else to sleep might camp outside the drama-house, and occasionally a handful of devotees or a rare connoisseur of the art might watch for a few hours and then go home, but no one stays awake and listens throughout the night.

At first, this absent audience troubled me simply because, as I now realize, I could not accept the plain fact that the shadow puppet plays are not public performances and that the puppeteers have no direct contact with the world on the other side. I chose to ignore this fact because it threatened to dismantle the conceptual model I had carried into the field—performance as an interactive event between tellers and listeners. I might have scrapped that assumption, except that I had no idea what would replace it. How could I analyze oral performance without an audience? The whole canon of performance studies—analyses of "verbal art," of tale-telling in Tuscany, of "talking sweet" in the West Indies—all turned on the role of the audience. My lodestone had always been Dell Hymes's definition of performance as an "event for which the doer assumes responsibility to be evaluated as a bearer of tradition," but I could see no such accountability in Kerala.^[15]

Groping for new ground, I wondered if these temple-sponsored performances were "rituals," not storytelling events, and therefore did not require audiences. This is partially true, as we shall see. One form of Balinese shadow puppets, for example, is performed as temple ritual without a human audience, but wayang lemah is a brief performance during the day, with neither screen nor light, and does not involve the complicated storytelling and explication of the Kerala puppeteers.^[16] Likewise, in Java "[t]he vast majority of dhalangs [head puppeteers] keep very few people watching beyond halfway through the performance," but only in Kerala do the puppeteers present a full narrative performance for a truly absent audience.^[17] It also occurred to me that

the medium of shadow puppetry, with its ventriloquism, shadows, and invisible performers, so completely severed the link with an audience that these plays were not performances at all. This, too, is only a partial explanation because other studies demonstrate that shadow puppet plays in India and southeast Asia entertain large audiences.^[18] Whatever explanatory escape hatch I sought, the nagging question remained: Where was that indispensable interaction between performers and audience in the listener-less puppet plays of Kerala?^[19]

The absent audience sidetracked my original research goals in yet another way. Folklorists and anthropologists are interested in how performance constructs and reflects cultural meaning, and I set out to discover what the Kerala puppet play would reveal about the lived-in world around it. Drawing again on my earlier fieldwork, I assumed that the behavior of performers with their audience held as much explanatory, power as does behavior in other normative, public events, such as marriages or soccer matches. This idea became fixed when I read Ward Keeler's book, Javanese Shadow, Plays, Javanese Selves , in which he describes puppet plays in Java as a "series of relationships that can be compared with other (i.e., social and political) relations."^[20] Keeler convincingly argues that the puppet-play performances in lava are iconic with other local arenas of authority, that the interaction between the dhalang and his audience and patrons is analogous to that between other senior males (fathers, kings, ritual specialists) and their dependents. Like those powerful men, the dhalang is a "dissembled center" who seeks to resolve the paradox of having power and wanting to be seen not to exercise it; fascinated by the shadows and the dhalang's perceived power, audiences wish to limit his power and, at the same time, to ignore it in order to maintain self-control. Given the popularity of the Rama story, I anticipated that a study of the puppet play in Kerala would yield a rich harvest of similar insights.

The need for a different analytic model became unavoidable when I understood the full distance between the Kerala puppeteers and any potential audience. Performers are separated from audiences in all forms of puppetry, but especially in shadow puppet performances, which begin, not when the curtain comes up, but when it goes down! Among the shadow puppeteers of India, moreover, none are as isolated as those in Kerala. Only there, for instance, is the stage a permanent building; elsewhere it is a temporary shed erected for the night. This is an important point, for the men in the kuttu matam are not just invisible but are effectively cut off from any contact on the other side of the white

cloth screen. Rereading Keeler's book more carefully, I found that in the Javanese shadow puppet play the puppeteer is seen; he is, in fact, on view, for although by convention invited guests may sit on the shadow side of the screen, most people: "preferred to watch the puppet side, so that they could see the dhalang."^[21] In this respect, the Javanese performance exemplifies what Don Handelman calls a "mirror event," which displays public behavior (as a pageant or march) without the intention (as in rites of reversal) to alter it.^[22] Shadow puppet performance in Kerala, however, is not susceptible to this kind of sociological approach, and especially not to its visual metaphors. Eventually, I learned to think about the puppet play as verbal and interior, as a series of conversations within the drama-house. This is not to say that the tol pava kuttu is completely divorced from society—one of the main arguments in this book is that the Rama story told by the puppeteers is shaped by a local worldview. In the absence of visible interaction between performers and audience, however, to read performance as social behavior would be misleading.

Having reoriented my perspective to look inward, I then realized on my second field trip that the term "absent audience" is not entirely accurate either. Goddess Bhagavati, as host of the temple, is considered the ritual audience for performance (as in the legend of the puppet play's origin). Likewise, village committees, even if not physically present during performance, do monitor its quality in order to make decisions about whom to invite to sing at next year's festival. Nightly sponsors, whom the puppeteers salute as in the exchange translated above, are also important to please. These audiences do assess, at least obliquely, the puppeteers' display of competence, but a more immediate, interactive audience continued to elude me until I turned my full attention away from public patronage to the puppeteers inside the drama-house. On the morning after that first performance, while waiting for a bus at the tea stall, I understood that they perform for themselves, and after sitting in the small space night after night, I discovered that they create their own listeners within their telling of the Rama story. These experiences led me to the audience that I had originally set out to find—though in an unexpected place—inside performance.

This publicly absent, internalized audience of the Kerala puppet play sheds new light on oral performance in India. A convenient counterpart to this south Indian recitation of a medieval Tamil Ramayana, for example, is the north Indian recitation of a sixteenth-century Ramayana, the Ramcaritmanas by Tulsidas. This influential Hindi text is performed

in several genres, of which the most spectacular is the Ram Lila drama, although the most comparable to the puppet play is known as katha .^[23] Like the puppet play in Kerala, katha is performed by male professional singers (vyas) who present the most important Rama text of their region, a bhakti Ramayana, in a combination of memorized verses and oral commentary. But the differences are also striking. First, unlike the Hindi recitation, the Kerala puppet play is rooted and continues to be transmitted in villages and small towns where it is performed and supported by non-Brahmins. Second, the Kerala performances move further from the source text than do the Hindi performances and even contradict Kampan in key episodes, as chapters 4 and 5 will illustrate. The critical difference, however, lies in the interaction between performer and audience. Many readers will have seen Ram Lila performances, especially the burning of Ravana's towering effigy, which draw hundreds of thousands of onlookers, and even the katha recitations of Tulsidas' epic poem by Brahmin expounders command large gatherings:

Ramayan expounders ... frequently pause to solicit affirmation and approbation.... Almost invariably a vyas [expounder] ... cultivates a special rapport with an appreciative and responsive individual in the audience. An expounder will often single out such listeners for special attention, developing a dialogue with them by glances and gestures and making them surrogates for the wider audience. This kind of behavior ... reflects the interactive milieu essential to good performance in the Indian context and is also a reminder of the archaic sense of katha as "conversation." (Lutgendorf 1991: 188-89)

This "interactive milieu," absent in Kerala, is characteristic of one kind of oral performance in India. Ram Lila, katha , and similar performances, particularly of epics, represent this type of performance, which is male, public, and professional. These performances attract both local and scholarly attention because they are important public displays of cultural knowledge and susceptible to the analytic models of visual behavior that I rejected as inappropriate for the puppet play. A second major type of performance in India, by contrast, is private (or semiprivate), non- (or semi-) professional, and largely female. Typically, in this kind of event, women tell tales and sing songs, usually in or around the home, often with little distinction between performer and audience. An example would be the women's group singing of the Rama story in Chattisgargh, as described by Joyce Flueckiger: in neighborhoods and temples, older women gather, sometimes with a literate leader, and sing verses from Tulsidas, but this time with a woman's slant, which intro-

duces female characters (a wife for Guha the boatman, for example) not found in the Hindi text.^[24] Similarly, in a Telugu tradition reported by V. Narayana Rao, Rama's sister, Santa, is prominent and Sita is tricked into drawing Ravana's big toe that later springs to life.^[25] Public yet intimate, the Kerala puppet play combines elements of both the smaller, domestic events of women and the larger, open performances of men. Amid the scholarly debate on public and private spheres in Indian culture, the anomalous puppet play cautions that public performance is not always a behavioral display and may include the in-group communication of a domestic event.

The puppet play's internal dialogue leads to two final observations on audiences and performances in India. First, the puppet play resembles traditional Indian texts composed as conversations to be overheard by the reader, and Rama stories provide prime examples. Tulsidas's text and the Sanskrit Adhyatma Ramayana and Tattvasamgraharamayana , for instance, are all narrated by Siva to Parvati, not to mention Valmiki's text, in which Narada recounts Rama's history. to the poet. Likewise, two popular folk Ramayanas in Tamil (Catakantaravanan Katai and Mayiliravanan Katai ) are told by Narada to another sage, Gautama. Within these dialogic frames, textualized audiences are created whenever a character summarizes the plot to another character, as when Rama tells his story to Hanuman, who then narrates Sugriva's story to Rama, and so forth. Remembering these examples, I understood why listening to performances inside the drama-house sometimes felt more like reading a book than seeing a live performance. On the other hand, the persistence of the dialogic frame in literary forms of the Rama story might be further evidence of its oral origin and transmission. In either case, we are reminded that all texts, written or spoken, have audiences who play a part in the storytelling.

Equally important, an internal audience need not be passive in performance and is capable of playing the creative role of ordinary listeners. This aspect of the internal audience in oral narrative performance is explored, although in different terms, by John Miles Foley in his recent book on Serbo-Croatian epics.^[26] Drawing on reader reception theory, Foley introduces the notion of "traditional referentiality" in order to show that this epic tradition is sustained and recreated by the ability of audience members to understand the extratextual associations in performances. In fact, this is how the famous oral formulaic technique of composition works: when the guslar (singer) sings a line with a conventional allusion to the hero Marko, for instance, audience members

(Foley argues) recall other attributes and exploits of Marko, thereby filling in the story. Performances of the Rama story in India assume a similar knowledge and stimulate a similar internal (and often external) participation on the part of audiences; writing on the Ram Lila in north India, Anuradha Kapur put it succinctly: "The ability to see a performance is as culturally bound as the performance itself."^[27] I hope to show that something like a shared referentiality exists among the puppeteers in Kerala and that it is essential to telling their Rama story in the drama-house.

Patronage

Although an absent audience might suggest that the puppet play lacks popular support, its patronage system is firmly rooted in local society. The puppeteers earn money from two sources. The first (described above) is the one-rupee gift, given prior to performance, that earns a blessing from Bhagavati during a natakam performed in the middle of the night. An unpredictable amount determined by individual needs, whims, and factors beyond the control of the temple, it can reach several hundred, and sometimes several thousand, rupees that are then divided, usually half-and-half, between the troupe and the temple.^[28] Whatever the puppeteers earn from these one-rupee donations is "extra" money, however, because they are also paid for their labor through a second patronage system, which is administered by the temple. Between 1984 and 1989, my notes record that expenses for a night's performance ranged from 350 to 500 rupees. Of this total, each of the two or three puppeteers received anywhere from thirty to fifty rupees, and the accompanying drummers considerably less; remaining funds purchased ingredients for temple puja , food for the performers, eleven coconuts for the twenty-one shells, and the nearly one gallon of coconut oil necessary to keep the wicks burning all night. These expenses for a night's performance are often borne by a family, and sponsorship is so popular that families take out subscriptions long before the temple festival begins, even booking certain nights years in advance. If, for example, a child was cured of malaria after her family sponsored the night when Kumbhakarna is killed, that family might pledge to underwrite the performance of that episode every year for ten years. In return for this patronage, during the "Song of the Drama-House" (mata

cintu ) the puppeteers praise the family (dutifully waiting outside to hear these words) in the mock-serious tones of the passage quoted earlier. They describe in detail the gracious hospitality and sumptuous meals they enjoyed in the family's home (instead of the local tea shop where, in fact, they ate very plain food at the sponsor's expense) and then ask Bhagavati to shower the family with blessings.

If not a family, an entire village (desam ) or an organization (police group, school) might pay the few hundred rupees necessary to sponsor a performance.^[29] At Palappuram, for instance (see chapter 8), seven of the seventeen nights are supported by villages lying within a few miles of the drama-house. During the weeks before the festival, each of these villages is scoured by enthusiastic young men brandishing ticket books at tea shops and bus stops in an attempt to waylay potential contributors. A considerably larger amount (approximately ten thousand to twelve thousand rupees) is also collected from families in each village in order to pay for a procession from the local temple to the temple at Palappuram on the last day of the festival. No other day matches this finale for pageantry, exhilaration, and sheer fun; after an elaborate puja in the local temple, several elephants, musical ensembles, and hundreds of people carrying embroidered cloth parasols and an enormous papier-mâchß horse advance in procession from each of the satellite villages toward the Palappuram temple. When the seven village processions converge on the temple grounds in the evening, the horse effigies are carried back and forth in mock battles before a massive crowd. And that night, with a large pool of potential donors milling around on the temple grounds, the puppeteers perform the final episode of the puppet play, the coronation of Rama.

At some sites the puppet play is also indirectly supported by temple patronage in the form of donations of paddy from landowners, some of whom hold temple lands on lease. Some weeks before the festival, a large brass vessel, a para , is sent around to each wealthy household to be filled with about five kilograms of rice as an offering to Bhagavati. From the tons of paddy thus collected and deposited at the temple, the temple musicians, oracle-priest, and lampbearer each receive a fixed amount (nearly three hundred kilograms in 1986) as annual payment for services; the rice given by the oracle to the lead puppeteer on the first night of performance also comes from this store. Since the 1970s, however, when Kerala's Communist (CPI) government redistributed the lands of large landowners and temple estates to the tenants, this source of patronage for the puppet play has dwindled. In areas where land had

belonged mainly to these estates, temple festivals and puppet plays have ceased after generations of performance, and to a puppeteer who performs at only five or ten temples annually, the loss of one site delivers a hard financial blow. On the other hand, where smaller family and village patronage had supported performances, the puppet play has not suffered badly from this transfer of land ownership. During five years of research, I observed isolated signs of growth: puppeteers began to perform at four more temples and for more nights at two others.

As a field researcher, I, too, was both patron and audience, although I pretended that this was not so. Other ethnographies of performance in South Asia had demonstrated the interpretive rewards of a self-reflexive perspective, especially Kirin Narayan's study of a swami's tales in India^[30] and Margaret Mills' analysis of tales in Afghanistan,^[31] but I preferred to consider myself absent from the performances I recorded. If sessions with the swami and the Afghan tellers were private, almost personal, and open-ended, shadow puppet plays in Kerala, I convinced myself, were different because they are more impersonal and formal. In fact, I chose to study this tradition in the first place because I wished to document an "authentic" performance event that reflected local culture unaffected by foreigners. If the previous sentence reads like a primer from the pre-postmodern age of enthnographic innocence, I did believe that my pretended non-presence would enhance the credibility of the event and, hence, my account of it. Retrograde thinking dies hard, and I am not yet convinced that the new convention of honest presence avoids any more deception than does the old fiction of feigned absence. But I now realize that my naive concept of authenticity was a shield behind which I could retreat into the role of detached observer and avoid the awkward duties of patron with its messy money transactions.

Without a large public audience on the other side, however, the shield hid little. Sitting on the mats night after night inside the drama-house with the puppeteers, I was often sleepy and sometimes bored but could not avoid becoming part of their internal audience. Still, I tried hard to escape the role of host. My rule in previous research projects had been to pay performers only if I had asked them to perform (the "induced performance"); recording a public, scheduled performance, in my code, required permission of performers and organizers but no payment. During my first extended trip to Kerala, in fact, I did not pay performers, with the result, I believe, that one particular troupe became uncooperative and eventually prevented me from recording an important episode at a major temple site; others, apparently, did not consider

lack of payment a breach of any kind. A small number of scholars who preceded me in working with the puppeteers had certainly raised expectations for hefty payments. According to the sketchy details given by the puppeteers, a French woman once showed up with a video team, requested a special performance (outside the drama-house), and handed over thousands of rupees before leaving the following day. Other foreigners who stayed for a few weeks also paid handsome sums for puppets. I could not compete with that procedure, although on my second trip I mended fences with the uncooperative group and began to pay a small amount (Rs 50-100) to all performers whom I taped inside the drama-house. In the end, of course, my presence did affect what was said, but only (as far as I can detect) on occasion. A humorous aside about patrons who do not pay performers before they sing, for example, was a veiled criticism of me, anti one puppeteer prematurely inserted the story of how Kampan composed his epic, explaining later: "I don't usually tell the story here, but I thought you would like to hear it tonight."

All this does not mean that I did not form personal relationships with the puppeteers, but I did attempt to downplay them during performances. Most people viewed my work with the half-bothered, half-fascinated eye cocked toward the inexplicable mannerisms of foreigners. My ability to speak Tamil, the mother tongue of most of the puppeteers, went some distance toward making friends, although only Natesan Pillai seemed to understand what I was doing and why. Other puppeteers were mildly pleased at my presence in the drama-house, though rarely impressed, and often nonplussed; most slept while I worked. My presence did not greatly affect performance, but it affected me, my experience of the puppet play, and the way I have written this book.

This Book

Following this initial chapter and its discussion of audience, the next chapter introduces the Kampan text and places it within the history, of Palghat and the shadow puppet play. The puppet play's accommodation of Kampan's devotional Hinduism with folk Hinduism is introduced in chapter 3 and illustrated by the two subsequent chapters. Chapter 4 describes the highly controversial meeting between

Surpanakha and Rama on the banks of the Godavari River and analyzes the significance of an added episode in which Laksmana kills Surpanakha's son. Chapter 5 discusses the puppeteers' treatment of another contentious episode, Vali's death, especially Rama's unusual admission of wrongdoing. This first half of the book demonstrates the general point that the puppet play complicates Kampan's text, placing the moral relations between Rama and his enemies on a new footing, without a substantial revision of its content.

The analysis in the second half of the book (chapters 6-8) shifts from narrative content to the puppeteers' commentary and conversations. My argument in these chapters will be that these techniques enable the puppeteers to gain control over Kampan's text in performance. Chapter 6 describes the oral commentary, which spins auxiliary stories and quotations around the text in order to place it within a wider frame of reference: Kampan's individual verses, I will suggest, become stepping stones to that wider world of Rama stories, from which his text derives. Chapter 7 details the conversations in performance and argues that this dialogism further weakens the poet's voice and permits the puppeteers to tell a Rama story in their own terms. The final chapter brings together the earlier analysis of narrative with the later analysis of conversation in a discussion of countervailing voices that challenge the bhakti ideals of Kampan's text: specifically, I discuss Sita's anger and Jambuvan's cynicism as expressions of the puppet play's skepticism toward the bhakti text's attempts at restoration, especially Rama's coronation.

Beginning with chapter 3, these points are made with reference to performances in translation, which represent the puppeteers' Rama story as I recorded it inside the drama-house. I have worked directly from cassette recordings and not from an intermediary transcription because I believe that by continually rehearing (as opposed to rereading) a performance, one maintains close contact with the original voice; the puppeteers' voice, of course, cannot be fully captured in English, and others must judge the success of my efforts. Certainly any reader familiar with the Rama tale will soon realize that the translations in this book do not tell the whole story; no single Rama story does, but I have made decisions that severely abbreviate the plot of the puppet play. First, I decided not to include the entire series of overnight performances of more than one hundred hours and instead chose the most dramatic nights of performance: Rama's meeting with Surpanakha (chapter 4); Rama's killing of Vali (chapter 5); Ravana's first defeat (chapter 6); the

death of Indrajit (chapter 7); Ravana's death and Rama's coronation (chapter 8). Second, although each night of performance is preceded by the same introduction ("The Song of the Drama-House"), it is translated only once, in chapter 3. Third, I begin the puppeteers' narration of the story with the Surpanakha episode (chapter 4) in the middle of the Forest Book because this is the point from which the puppeteers usually begin their story, and for good reason as we shall see. As a result, large portions of the subsequent books are omitted, although much of the long and important War Book is presented.

Omissions and abridgements have also been made within these selected performances. I have at times abbreviated the rambling and ponderous verbal marathon of the commentary (and indicated these omissions in notes), although I have retained some repetitions and digressions because they take the reader inside the experience of the puppet play. I have also omitted verse lines regularly repeated during the commentary as a mnemonic device, and I have summarized transitions between scenes, just as the puppeteers do in their prose summary (avatarikai ), by placing them within brackets. Nor have I translated all the verses sung in performance. Because my aim is to analyze the puppet play as an adaptation of Kampan's Ramayana, most folk verses are translated, whereas Kampan's verses are translated only when they are necessary for a comprehension of the commentary. Omitting the Kampan verses does not seriously affect an understanding of the story, however, because their content is recounted in the commentary, which carries the narrative burden in the puppet play. Finally, I sometimes use English terms for certain Indic words ("old legends" for purana ; "old books" for sastra , and so forth) because those original words, even when "translated" in a glossary, remain lifeless. "Demon," admittedly, is not a happy choice for raksasa , but it is an advance over its predecessor, "ogre," and I have provided a gloss in a footnote at its first usage. Although something is lost by each of these decisions, I have come to accept that something greater will be gained if they enable readers to enjoy the Rama story as told by the puppeteers in Kerala.

What we read in this book, then, is not the entire series of twenty or thirty nights of performance, whose length, repetitions, and sometimes uninspired commentary were never intended to be read, let alone printed in English. We read instead a selection of performances, whose narrative and interpretive innovations teach us that text and audience are never quite what or where we think they are. These are the lessons learned after that first night at Suhavaram undid my original research

plans. An absent audience meant that I could not investigate performance as cultural behavior, and so I reset my sights within the drama-house, where I discovered that the Kampan text was less important than the puppeteers' oral commentary. From this vantage point, I also saw that the puppeteers tell their own Rama story, faithful to Kampan's yet slanted to a local morality, and that they tell it to themselves.

Chapter 2
Rama Stories and Puppet Plays

There are many Ramayanas—three hundred in one reckoning, though three thousand is more likely. However many, these multiple tellings are not an illustration of "The One and the Many," that shopworn slogan for Hinduism, because there is no single source. Although Valmiki's Sanskrit poem is often regarded as the original Ramayana, and although it is an early and influential text, it is more a cultural measuring stick than the origin of these many Rama stories. Regional patterns and popular scenes exist, but there is no the Ramayana, not even a standard text with numerous "versions," only a true ocean of stories in which Rama marries Sita, chases the golden deer, conquers Ravana, regains his wife, and ascends the throne in Ayodhya. These events are sung and danced, printed in comic books and paraded on television, performed with shadow puppets and told in the nearly fifty thousand lines of Kampan as well as the three words of a Telugu proverb: "Built [the causeway], beat [Ravana], brought [Sita]."^[1] Each of these tellings is partial, incomplete, and any assumption that a particular motif, say Rama's killing of Ravana, is indispensable to the plot is probably wrong; Jain texts, for instance, prefer that Laksmana, not the evolved soul Rama, incur the sin of violently killing Ravana. We are beginning to chart these many Ramayanas and their narrative variations, but their transmission and reception are more difficult to record. However, as the notion of a unitary text, tidily authored and passively received, gives way to the recognition of a historicized and composite telling, these processes of borrowing and accommodation become both more visible and more instructive.

The Rama story itself was not the starting point of my interest, as I said earlier, partly because I knew so little of it, and I remember how my ignorance shocked Krishnan Kutty. One night, as he was pinning puppets on the screen, I asked him who they were. Glancing at me for a moment, he pointed to them one by one: "Ganesa, patta pava [Brahmin narrators], Rama, Laksmana, and Surpanakha." "Sur ..." I stumbled, and he shot back, "Surpanakha! Ravana's sister." I didn't know the sister but I did know Ravana from my first stay in India, near Madurai, Tamil Nadu. In those days, I often went with my friends, faithful members of the local Rationalist League, to see the outdoor dramas staged by the anti-Brahmin movement; and when Ravana, the majestic and wronged Dravidian hero, defeated whiny Rama from the north, the crowds cheered. Crude propaganda, perhaps, but far more compelling than the insipid "Marriage of Rama and Sita" that graced school plays and greeting cards. Still, the propaganda passed me by, and I thought of the Ramayana as flowery Sanskrit literature, a litany of one-dimensional role models, whereas I was looking for gritty, subversive, oral stuff, preferably in low-caste villages.

After watching Surpanakha meet Rama that night in Suhavaram, however, I began to study the story and to appreciate its complexity. I read it first in English translations and then in Kampan's Tamil, although not all of the twelve thousand verses (but then very few people read all of Kampan). I also learned something from the reactions of young students to whom I taught R. K. Narayan's abridged translation of Kampan in a high school in San Francisco. Its lovable fantasy never failed: "Ten heads!" fourteen-year-old Kate shouted and screwed up her lips in agony when she read about Ravana. "What headaches he must have!" Those anti-Brahmin dramas I had seen would have touched a cord in these comfortable American kids, one of whom wrote: "Is Rama really a god? He was unfaithful, stupid, and lacked common sense. Why do Hindus worship him?" Weeks after we had finished the book, I overheard a student summarize the story to a visitor: "Well, Sita marries Rama, but she gets captured and then drops her jewelry so that Rama can find her, and ... he did." That was her telling, and it taught me as forcefully as any published writing that there really is no the Ramayana.

When I returned to Kerala in 1986, and again in 1989, to work extensively with the puppeteers, I knew most of the episodes fairly well, and I had my favorites. The first book, the Birth Book, recounting Rama's birth and marriage to Sita, was not among them, but the palace intrigues of Rama's exile in the second book, the Ayodhya Book, fas-

cinated me. Aged Dasaratha, king of Ayodhya, finally begets sons—Rama by Kausalya, Bharata by Kaikeyi, Laksmana. and Satrughna by Sumitra—and then sets in motion the coronation of Rama, his oldest and best-loved son. The plot begins when a servant stirs up trouble. Long ago Dasaratha had been saved by his young wife Kaikeyi and offered her two boons, but the promises lay unused until Rama is about to ascend the throne. At this point, Kaikeyi's servant convinces her that if Rama becomes king, she will become an ex-queen of an ex-king and a maidservant to Rama's mother while her own son, Bharata, will be banished by Rama. Gullible Kaikeyi forces Dasaratha to grant her two wishes: she demands that he exile Rama and place Bharata on the throne. Dasaratha is stricken speechless, but righteous Rama leaves for fourteen years in the forest with Laksmana and Sita, thereby upholding his father's word to Kaikeyi; Dasaratha cannot bear to lose his son and dies. "(Rama faces a dilemma," one boy said in my high-school class. "He can either keep his father's word or keep him alive.") Still no other outcome seems possible since Dasaratha had been cursed to die grieving the loss of his son because he had accidentally killed another man's son. Besides, in order to gain permission to marry Kaikeyi, Dasaratha promised her father that her son would inherit the throne.

So Rama, Laksmana, and Sita leave Ayodhya and enter the forest, where their adventures with sages and demons constitute the third book, the Forest Book. The interminable names, relations, and auxiliary stories in this section made little sense until I began to watch the puppeteers at work and learned to track the psychological and moral conflicts of this book, which set the direction for the remainder of the epic. It all begins with Surpanakha, sister of Ravana, who attempts to seduce Rama on a riverbank (the scene I saw at Suhavaram); Rama rejects her, Laksmana disfigures her, and she runs to Ravana, who falls in love with Sita after listening to his bleeding sister's account of Rama's wife. Ravana's plan to capture Sita is brilliant: his uncle assumes the form of a golden deer which Sita insists Rama catch for her; after Rama chases the deer, the uncle, in an imitation of Rama's voice, calls out to Laksmana for help; when Laksmana reluctantly leaves Sita all alone, Ravana approaches disguised as a Brahmin and takes her away to his palace in Lanka. Mistaken identifications, suspicions, love, and poor judgement have thus cost Rama his wife and name. Because Rama's meeting with Surpanakha is pivotal to the plot, because it is an extremely controversial episode, and because it is the starting point of the puppet play, we, too, begin the story with that encounter (in chapter 4).

Events from the abduction of Sita up to the battle with Ravana fill the fourth and fifth books (the Kiskindha Book and the Beautiful Book) and introduce the third group of characters in the epic, the monkeys. Here we meet Vali and his brother, Sugriva, and his son, Angada, and the loyal Hanuman: Rama befriends Hanuman and Sugriva and then kills Vali, who entrusts Angada to him. Following Vali's death, Sugriva and Hanuman assemble a huge army of monkeys and bears, led by old Jambuvan, and set out to find Sita. They've almost given up, when the dying eagle, Sampati, tells them that Ravana took her to Lanka, and it is left to Hanuman to leap across the ocean to the island kingdom. (I remembered this part well because a friend once pointed to a sharp cone of rock at the tail end of the Western Ghats, a few miles from the sea near Nagercoil, and said, "That's Mahendra-giri where Hanuman leapt to Lanka.") Discovering Sita, captive but unharmed, Hanuman returns with the good news to Rama, who orders the monkeys and bears to build a causeway to Lanka. Most of this middle section of the epic, from Vali's death to Hanuman's discovery of Sita, is omitted in my translations which skip to the beginning of the War Book.

The War Book is the sixth and last book in Kampan and the puppet play and is the puppeteers' favorite. Rama's army has laid siege to Ravana's fort and the demon-king convenes a war council, where we watch his brothers and ministers argue military and moral alternatives. Ravana's younger brother, Vibhisana, dares to oppose his plan to fight Rama, is dismissed, and joins Rama, although we are left to wonder about the loyalty, of one who has turned against his own brother. Giant Kumbhakarna, the older brother, also has reservations about Ravana's actions but will not desert him in this hour of need. Finally, after Ravana rejects the proposal of peace brought to him by Angada, the long War Book unfolds in a series of battles between Rama's army and Ravana's inexhaustible horde of warriors. In the first battle, Rama defeats Ravana but allows him to return to his palace in humiliation. When mighty Kumbhakarna and then Atikayan, Ravana's son, are killed, Lanka seems doomed until the most powerful of Ravana's sons, Indrajit, enters the field of battle. Master of maya , Indrajit twice uses magic weapons to defeat Rama, and twice Rama is revived: once, when Visnu's eagle-mount, Garuda, destroys the snake-weapon; and again, when Rama and his army lie unconscious on the field and Hanuman undertakes his famous mission to the Medicine Mountain, obtains herbs, and revives the fallen soldiers. Laksmana. finally kills Indrajit, but only because Vibhisana divulges a secret. Now, without sons and brothers, only

Ravana remains until Rama, also relying on secret advice, kills him. Soon Vibhisana is crowned king of Lanka, Rama is reunited with Sita, and they return to Ayodhya for his delayed coronation, which is the closing scene of Kampan's text, the puppet play, and this book.

Kampan's Ramayana

If this is only an outline of the Rama story and if there are many Ramayanas, what kind of Rama story do the puppeteers in Kerala tell? Since my book is a long answer to that question, I here provide a general historical background for its three related elements: Kampan's Ramayana, the Palghat region as context, and the puppet-play tradition. As to the first, I begin with a short passage from the introduction ("Song of the Drama-House") because it contains the puppet play's own view of its history. One of the Brahmin puppets speaks to the other:

"Still, even assisted by all the gods we know, singing the Rama story is an extraordinary task. There are the 100,000 verses of the Campu Ramayana , the 60,000 of the Mahanataka , the 24,000 of Valmiki, and the 12,026 from Kampan, of which we use approximately 1,200. To complete these long hours of singing, we need extra determination."

"Definitely!"

"But we also need the blessings of our gurus and our patrons.

There's a saying for that: 'Like a woodcock trying to imitate a peacock's dance.'"

"Yes, learning these Kampan verses is like a foolish woodcock imitating a lovely, dark peacock. A peacock dances almost without knowing it—whirling and whirling—but when the woodcock watches and tries to dance, well ... it has no crown and no fan of feathers. It might be a 'dance,' but no one would mistake it for anything a peacock does. Kampan's verses have a peacock's beauty—a crown and a fan—but we ... we are unlettered woodcocks."

This internal list of textual sources for the puppet play is revealing rather than definitive. The Campu Ramayana is probably the

fifthteenth-century, heavily Sanskritized, Malayalam text attributed to Punam; the Mahanataka is an earlier, elusive Sanskrit text, thought by some to be a libretto for a shadow puppet play, a hypothesis confirmed by the fact that the puppet play and that text share episodes not commonly found in Rama literature.^[2] Valmiki is invoked (though not as a single source), and in a few details, the Kerala tradition follows his Sanskrit Rama story more closely than it does Kampan.^[3] Not mentioned in this list are the early bhakti (alvar ) poems and the Tamil Kantapuranam , to which Kampan owes a heavy debt as well. The many, many other sources of the puppeteers' Rama story—unrecorded texts, songs, proverbs, quotations—may never be identified (unless a motif index of Rama literature is published), although I did find two north Indian instances of the curious conversation between Rama's two arms when he draws back his bow to kill Ravana.^[4] For the present, it is enough to say that the puppeteers' Rama story is hybrid, constructed out of bits of Sanskrit, Tamil, and Malayalam literary traditions, folk Ramayanas, songs, tales, and oral traditions as yet unrecorded.

From this medley of sources, the puppet play does draw heavily on the Rama story composed in Tamil by Kampan, probably in the twelfth century A.D. This is significant because the Kamparamayanam is considered one of the great achievements in twenty centuries of Tamil literature; received wisdom that "while the Tamil have gone on attempting Mahabharatas , no man has dared to attempt the Ramayana after Kampan" is only a slight hyperbole.^[5] As the first full-blown bhakti Ramayana, which influenced other Rama stories not only in India but also in Southeast Asia, Kampan's epic was known outside the Tamil context as well.^[6] If the guslar singers in the Balkans have preserved a technique of oral composition, the puppeteers in Kerala have orally transmitted an important text of Indian literature.

But Kampan's composition is more than a text. It is an epic, a genre with a notorious tendency to turn up when linguistic or ethnic groups seek to establish a nation, extend political power, or recover a lost heroic past, as in Persia following Islamic conquest, the Balkans following Turkish rule, Scotland in the late eighteenth century, Finland in the early nineteenth, and so on. To this list, we may add the Tamil country in the twelfth century, when Kampan composed his poem during the reign of the largest and most powerful Tamil kingdom, the imperial Cholas. Under the umbrella of that expanding empire, which claimed victories from the Ganga to Sumatra, Rama shrines were built, extensive sets of Ramayana reliefs were carved along the base of several temples,

and temples supported recitations of the Rama story.^[7] Chola monarchs also bore Rama's name in their imperial titles, and apparently one raja perceived parallels between his conquest and Rama's when he erected icons to the epic hero to celebrate a victory over the Sinhala kings of Lanka.^[8] One temple inscription goes so far as to suggest the story of Rama (specifically, his pursuit of the golden deer) as an origin myth for the Cholas, which was a solar dynasty like Rama's.^[9] During this medieval period, then, Rama stood as a paradigm of political power and a model of kingship (and not, a point to which I return shortly, an object of devotion). Still, what is an empire, a Golden Age, without an epic? So a Chola king, as the puppeteers tell it, commissioned Kampan, and his rival, Ottakkuttan, to compose a "Ramayana in the southern tongue."

The Chola period notwithstanding, Kampan never served the Tamil language more valiantly than during the twentieth century. Nineteenth-century editions of the Kamparamayanam proclaim his poetic genius, but the boom in Kampan scholarship came in the early decades of the twentieth century when south Indians set out to claim a new identity.^[10] Left out of the neo-Hindu movements in the north, which pursued a return to "pure" Sanskrit texts, and reeling from the Christian reforms in the south, which rejected Hinduism and its "devil worship," non-Brahmin Tamils, especially high-caste landowners and merchants, sought an identity that was Hindu but not Aryan.^[11] In Kampan, many found what they needed: a Dravidian Valmiki and an epic in the ancestral tongue of the land.^[12] This promotion of Kampan was the culmination of a series of Tamil self-discoveries from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth. In 1856 came the definitive proclamation of Dravidian as a separate family of languages (they had been known as "Deccan vernaculars"), followed a few decades later by the recovery of ancient Tamil literature (the Sangam poems). Then, in the 1920s, excavations in the Indus Valley revealed an ancient civilization that predated the Aryans and, many concluded, was Dravidian.^[13] The final touch on this new portrait of Tamil antiquity was Kampan's Ramayana, the ancient tale told in "the southern tongue." For the advocates of a Tamil-speaking state in the soon-to-be-independent India, here was the necessary link between land and language.^[14]

Kampan nonetheless presented a dilemma for the Dravidian movement because, although a great Tamil poet, he was a purveyor of the discredited Rama story. Condemning the Rama story as an immoral Aryan tale that introduced caste and other evils into a Dravidian eden,

many politicians and intellectuals sought other texts in which to ground the new Tamil self-image. The earlier the better, and so popular candidates for "pure" Tamil unpolluted by northern beliefs were the San-gam poems, the moral maxims of the Tirukkural (C. 500 A.D.), and the Saiva bhakti poems (600-900 A.D. ), although some preferred the mystic verses of a nineteenth-century reformer, Ramalinga Swami. By championing these Tamil texts and castigating Valmiki's by name, much of the Dravidianist attack on the Rama story circumvented the problematic Kampan text; even the defiant, flamboyant E. V. Ramaswami Naicker (1879-1973), who publicly beat Rama's picture with his leather sandals, reserved his ire for the deluded Tamil Brahmins who translated Valmiki's text into Tamil because they exalted the Sanskrit text over Kampan's.^[15] Likewise, M. S. Purnalingam Pillai (1866-1947), a founding father of the Dravidian movement, critic of the Rama story as Aryan propaganda, and author of Ravana, Great King of Lanka , drew a protective circle around Kampan's poem: the story may be derived from Sanskrit, he conceded, but its "morality" is Tamil, as evidenced by Ravana's "no-touch" abduction of Sita that preserved her chastity and his chivalry.^[16]

To the virulent anti-Brahmin wing of the Tamil movement, however, a Rama story was a Rama story, and Kampan could not be spared, especially since, as they pointed out, his plot differs little from Valmiki's.^[17] One writer, for instance, took Kampan to task for following Aryan models in his hyperbolic description of Rama's arrow which "pierced the chest of Thadakai and in its flight and speed passed through a mountain, a tree and finally even the very earth!"^[18] Later ideological descendants of the pure Tamil movement, such as C. N. Annaturai, criticized Kampan for an unseemly mixture of erotic and religious sentiments.^[19] But these writers were a minority whom other scholars directly challenged. When E. V. Ramaswami Naicker burned copies of the Ramayana, a poet responded with this verse: "Palm-leaf will burn, paper will burn, but a poem written from the heart, and chanted day and night, will it burn in fire?"^[20]

What Kampan originally composed almost a thousand years ago in the Chola court at Tanjore will never be known because the extant Kamparamayanam is a composite text reconstructed from dozens of variant palm-leaf manuscripts, themselves the result of borrowings, interpolations, and inspirations from other Rama texts, both folk and classical, primarily in Tamil and Sanskrit, including Valmiki and its southern recensions. This is not to diminish the genius of Kampan's

poem or the considerable scholarship that produced its critical edition but to acknowledge that notions of a solitary author and unitary text owe more to a need for order and a respect for individual creativity than to history. Regarding the transmission of Kampan's poem, we know very little except that it changed as a result of both oral recitation at temples and manuscript emendation at Vaisnava centers: two eleventh-century Chola inscriptions and one thirteenth-century Pandiya inscription record endowments for the study of a Ramayana (whether Kampan or Va1miki is unclear), while a fourteenth-century Kannada inscription mentions the reciter of a "Kamba Ramayana."^[21] The earliest known manuscript of the Kamparamayanam is dated 1578, after which the poem is thought to have been heavily influenced by Velli Tampiran, a Saiva scholar from the Tanjore region, who added his own verses, now referred to as "Velli-verses."^[22] Even more decisive steps were taken in the mid-eighteenth century in Alvar Tirunakari, a Vaisnava center in the southern Tamil country, where a Tiruvenkatam Tacar worked from various manuscripts to compile an authoritative version that later formed the basis of the first (partial) printing in 1843 and subsequent modern editions.^[23] A full edition appeared in 1914, although debates about authenticity and interpolations continued in Tamil scholarly circles even as the authoritative editions were issued in subsequent decades.^[24] The four major editions available today range from ten thousand to twelve thousand verses, a measure of the text's uncertain history.^[25] But the final irony in the political career of the Kamparamayanam must be the large statue of the poet standing with other cultural heroes on the seafront near the University of Madras, while his poem, the pride of Tamil literature, is recited by unknown puppeteers in Kerala.

Palghat and the Puppet Play

How and when the Kamparamayanam entered Kerala and the puppet play is also unknown. Neither the text nor the puppet play appears in records left by the early Portuguese and Dutch, or later English merchants who built factories and competed for the spice trade on the Kerala coast; even the usually zealous Christian missionaries entered this interior tract only in the nineteenth century, after British military rule had been established. Still, and although clues picked up

along the years do not yet form a conclusive answer, enough is known to suggest what happened to Kampan's text in Palghat.

Tracing this transmission of Kampan into Kerala will take us through mountain passes and along trade routes, so I begin with geography. To cross from the Tamil country into Kerala, one must traverse the Western Ghats, a mountain range that runs down the spine of southern India and whose peaks reach well over eight thousand feet (see maps, pages xv and xvi). Pilgrims and local people are known to climb over the low hills, but most travelers enter Kerala through two mountain passes, the Shencottah Gap in the south and the Palghat Gap in the central range. Coming through the Palghat Gap by train or bus or car, one is struck by the abrupt shift from the rocky, cotton-growing soil on the Tamil side to the soft patchwork of rice fields on the Kerala side. This is the Palghat region, a broad fertile plain watered by heavy monsoon rains and several rivers, where two crops a year are frequent and three are not uncommon. Monsoon months are muggy and muddy, but there is palpable relief from the dry and dusty days on the other side of the mountains, a contrast that may have prompted a nineteenth-century British official to describe the Palghat region as the "most beautiful that I have ever seen."^[26] Here, and only here, in this green swath of central Kerala through which the Bharatapuzha River flows—an area fifty miles from mountains to sea and about half that distance from north to south—the shadow puppet play is performed.

Fertile Palghat is a hinterland wedged between the Malayali kingdoms to the west and the Tamil kingdoms to the east, which explains much of its history and culture.^[27] Although an outlying district of the ancient Cera kingdom, and later a minor principality of Venganadu, Palghat's natural riches and location attracted the evil eye of its powerful neighbors. Lying on the main trade route through the mountains, Palghat links the weaving centers in the Tamil country to the west-coast ports of Cochin, Ponani, and Calicut, and to Persia and the Arab world. Vying to control this valuable trade, the Zamorin of Calicut, the Raja of Cochin, and the Tamil Kongu kings turned Palghat into a battlefield in the medieval period. The Tamils invaded but never annexed Palghat, and political control swung back and forth between Calicut and the Cochin, eventually cutting the region in half: lands south of the Bharatapuzha River, containing the most productive rice fields and prosperous weaving centers, were ceded to Cochin and ruled by the Nambiti kings from a small palace in Kollengode;^[28] lands north of the river, including those belonging to the rajas (Achans) of Palghat, re-

mained attached to Calicut. Whatever independence these two ruling houses of the region managed to achieve was not long-lived. As the power of the Zamorin grew throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Palghat rajas courted favor with Cochin as a counterweight. South of the river, the Nambitis adopted the same strategy whenever threatened by Cochin and stood in alliance with the Zamorin. This cat-and-mouse game continued until the invasions from Mysore in the mid-eighteenth century pushed Palghat into one of the infamous stories of the British conquest of south India: the war against the Muslim rulers of Mysore—Hyder Ali and his son, Tipu Sultan.

Fearing such an invasion from Mysore, the Zamorin of Calicut occupied Palghat in 1746, but his forces were soon overrun by Hyder Ali, to whom the Palghat rajas had appealed for aid. In order to protect the valuable spice trade that traveled from the Kerala coast through the Palghat Gap to his landlocked capital at Seringapattinam, Hyder fortified Palghat town by building a massive stone garrison there in 1765. Commanding a plateau and surrounded by a deep moat, this imposing fortress became an obsession for British forces seeking to oust the Mysoreans; eventually, Colonel Fullarton led the victorious assault in 1783 (taking time to marvel that Palghat "is a fertile and extensive district and the adjacent forest abound in the finest Teek [sic] in India").^[29] When Tipu Sultan was eventually driven back to Mysore in 1792, Palghat came under British rule administered from Bombay; and after Tipu was finally defeated in 1799, the line that had been drawn in the medieval period reappeared: lands north of the Bharatapuzha River, including Palghat town but excluding Chittur, became part of British-ruled Malabar; those south of the river, plus Chittur, were retained by the princely state of Cochin-Travancore. Finally, in 1956, for the first time in a thousand years, a united Palghat emerged as a district in the newly created state of Kerala. Today the Achan Rajas of Palghat retain their title and royal accessories, but little else;^[30] during the annual coronation of the Raja, in 1989, I noticed that caparisoned elephants outnumbered spectators.

Politically divided, Palghat is culturally hybrid as well, and to some, it is a no-man's land—unorthodox, even dangerous. Suspicions of caste impurity are not an uncommon theme in India, but they cut deeply into the legends of both local royal houses. The Kollengode Nambitis, who ruled the southern Palghat region, are said to be descendants of a Brahmin mysteriously brought up as a blacksmith, while tales of pollution among the ruling family of Palghat appear in history books to

explain why Tamil Brahmins (Pattars) and not Malayali Brahmins (Nambudiris) dominate the region.^[31] The following version, told to me by an elderly Tamil Brahmin man in Palghat, is representative:

Sometime in the 1500s when Palghat was a small principality under the Cochin Raja, only Nambudiris [Kerala Brahmins] lived here. Then a young prince of the Palghat ruling family, I think he was named Sekhari Varma, fell in love with a tribal girl. The Cochin Raja opposed this marriage, but the prince refused to budge and married the girl. Suddenly all the Nambudiris left and the prince sent to Tamil Nadu for Brahmins to conduct temple rites. These Pattars [Tamil Brahmins] had been coming to an annual Vedic scholars convention at Tirunavaya [near Pattambi] and so they knew the area. So they decided to settle in Palghat. Then the tribal queen turned all the Bhagavatis into tribal goddesses—Emur Bhagavati, Min Bhagavati, Manapully Bhagavati. The Pattars came from Tanjore, Madurai, and Kancipuram, and even now you can see this history in the names of their agraharams [settlements], for instance Cokanathapuram, after Siva's name at Madurai.^[32]

Another legend traces the marginality of Palghat to confusion of a different category: the first ruler was a Tamil, a Pandiya king named Subangi, who was actually a woman disguised as a man.^[33] This stigma of crossed categories attaches even to Tamil Brahmins in Palghat, whose local name (pattar ) is almost a synonym for miscegenation. Palghat's hybrid culture is evident today in the several castes who are both Tamil and Malayalam, worshiping at Bhagavati temples while wearing clothes (vesti ) and jewelry (double nose pin) the Tamil way and speaking Tamil words with Malayalam forms and sounds.

Languages are also intermingled in borderland Palghat and its pup-per play. Tamil was the literary language of the west coast until perhaps the thirteenth or fourteenth century, when Malayalam began to emerge as a separate literature, in part as a consequence of Sanskrit influence. Predictably, Rama texts illustrate this mottled linguistic history in Kerala. Although the first Rama text on the west coast was probably the Sanskrit Ascaryacudamani , the more popular Ramayanas (Ramacaritam and Rama Katha Pattu ), which date from around 1400 A.D., ., are an admixture of Tamil meters and usage with Malayalam vocabulary; the narrative in both these texts, however, follows Valmiki.^[34] Sanskrit eventually allied with Malayalam to form another hybrid (mani-pravalam ) that eclipsed the Tamil stream of literature and produced the most famous Kerala Ramayana, that by Eluttaccan, about 1600 A.D. (Some puppeteers claim that Malayalam is derived from Sanskrit and argued

fiercely with me on this point in the drama-house.) Beneath this literary surface, Tamil and some kind of Tamil-Malayalam patois continued to be spoken in border areas, such as Palghat, where contact with the language on the other side of the mountains remained unbroken or was renewed by migration. By the early twentieth century, census reports show about one-third of the people of the Palghat region spoke Tamil as their mother tongue.^[35] Nowhere is this polyglot more audible than in the drama-houses, where Tamils and Malayalis chant verses in literary Tamil and comment upon them in a Tamil-Malayalam patois (plus an occasional Sanskrit sloka ) for their Malayalam-speaking patrons.^[36] Small wonder, then, that local people say the puppeteers speak cetti basai , a mildly derisive term for "trader speech."

The term is not wholly inaccurate, either, since the Tamil-speaking puppeteers belong to the same groups of merchants, traders, and weavers (Mutaliyar, Chettiyar, Mannatiyar) who for centuries traveled to Kerala through the Palghat Gap, along the trade route linking Tamil commercial centers with the west-coast ports.^[37] Upon entering Kerala, these merchants reached the town of Palghat, whence goods were transported down the Bharatapuzha River to Ponani and then by sea to Cochin or by an overland route northwest to the port of Calicut. Modern performance sites form a string of dots along these routes, from the Tamil centers to Palghat town, along the Bharatapuzha River, and along the road to Calicut. This trading must have been ongoing for centuries, but inscriptions show an increase around 1500, after a major Tamil temple was built at Kalpathy, near Palghat.^[38] One family of puppeteers claimed that their ancestors migrated from Madurai "three hundred years ago," and another dated their migration from Pollachi about 1650. Whenever they came, they brought with them rice, textiles, jewelry, chilies, and, I believe, Kampan's text.

One reason to believe that Kampan's text was brought to Kerala by these Tamil weavers and merchants is their historical relationship with the Rama cult in the region and with Kampan scholarship generally. One might assume, for instance, that Kampan manuscripts were brought into Palghat by Tamil Brahmins, who also began to settle there around 1500, but preservation and recitation of the Kamparamayanam is not and has never been a brahminical tradition.^[39] Beginning with Kampan himself, who was born in a caste of temple servants and musicians, and extending to the editors and commentators of his text, non-Brahmins have dominated the field. I was struck by the fact that Brahmins are insignificant in the shadow puppet play and that the few

local Rama temples in their control have no connection to Kampan's epic;^[40] Tamil Brahmins in Palghat, for example, celebrate Rama's birthday in association with Valmiki's Sanskrit epic or Eluttaccan's Malayalam text but not Kampan's. On the other hand, several small Rama shrines in the countryside are visited by Tamil merchants traveling from Madurai via Pollachi and Palghat to Calicut along the old trade routes. I heard one legend explaining that a rice merchant dedicated a statue to Rama on the spot where he recovered a cartload of lost merchandise, a spot that now has a stone temple with an image of Rama and Laksmana and a shrine to Hanuman.

Mutaliyars, in particular, have played a prominent role in Kampan legend and scholarship.^[41] According to most accounts, both Kampan's patron, Cataiyappan, and Kampan's rival, Ottakkuttan, were Mutaliyars, as were most scholars who are acknowledged to have transmitted the Kamparamayanam .^[42] We know that the commentary to both the first (partial) printing of Kampan, in 1843, and the first full edition, in 1914, were edited by Mutaliyars. And they are the leading puppeteers in Kerala today.^[43]

If Tamil weavers and traders brought Kampan's text to Kerala and now perform as puppeteers, what about the art of shadow puppetry in Kerala, the third side of this historical triangle? Temple records indicate that in the early twentieth century the tradition was well established and spreading, new drama-houses built, and many puppeteers employed.^[44] However, the only pre-twentieth-century evidence I located is the inclusion of "leather puppet play" in a list of performing arts and amuse-merits in a mid-eighteenth-century poem by Kuncan Nambiyar, who was born and lived for some time in a village on the Bharatapuzha River where puppeteers still perform.^[45] More clues, but only a few more, are provided from epigraphical and literary sources for the other traditions of shadow puppetry in India, especially in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu.^[46] Dating from the sixth century onward, the Tamil references are both the earliest and the most intriguing since the Kerala tradition is largely Tamil in textual origin; yet one wonders about the reliability of this literary evidence because it is so sparse, often ambiguous, and lacks corroboration from inscriptions. My own conclusion is that the modern shadow puppet plays in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu developed only in the seventeenth century and derive from southern Maharashtra.

I make the case for Maratha derivation by culling information from several publications, especially Victor Mair's study of visual storytelling

traditions in India (and elsewhere in Asia).^[47] Mair demonstrates that painted scrolls, pictures, hand puppets, leather puppets, and other media are related and often used in a single performance. Other writers suggest that these arts of visual narration followed a southerly path of migration—from Rajasthan, into the Maratha country, across the Deccan, and into the Tamil country.^[48] The itinerant performers of southern Maharashtra and the northern Deccan, for example, who performed with both painted pictures and leather puppets, trace their origins to Rajasthan and Gujarat, where painted-scroll and various (but not leather) puppet traditions have been documented.^[49] Families of these Marathi-speaking picturemen probably migrated south with the Maratha armies moving across the Deccan in the 1600s, which would explain why the shadow puppets in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh resemble the folk (Paithan) paintings and storytelling pictures in Maharashtra. Eventually, the Maratha armies entered the Tamil country in the late seventeenth century and established their court at Tanjore, where the modern Tamil shadow puppet play almost certainly evolved and where, much earlier, Kampan lived. As Jonathan GoldbergBelle has shown, the Maratha court at Tanjore influenced several performing arts, such as Yaksagana, which in turn influenced the life-size leather-puppet tradition (dodda togalu gombeyata ) of the northern Deccan and the storytelling art of Harikatha.^[50] The most conclusive evidence of a trans-Deccan migration of shadow puppetry to south India, however, is that puppeteers in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh speak Marathi as their mother tongue.

The puppeteers in Kerala, however, do not speak Marathi, and the tol pava kuttu appears to be a distant cousin of these other traditions. Still, despite its geographical cul-de-sac, the Kerala tradition cannot have been entirely uninfluenced by the others; the secret of Ravana's death, for example, the pot of ambrosia hidden in his chest, is a motif found both in Kerala and in many southern tellings of the Rama story. In nearly every performative aspect, however, the contemporary Kerala tradition differs from the Maratha-influenced puppet plays. First, puppeteers in the other south Indian traditions are itinerant or semi-itinerant and perform as families, including the women, whereas in Kerala puppeteers live permanently in villages or towns and perform in exclusively male troupes. Second, puppets in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu are translucent, but in Kerala (as in Orissa and most of Southeast Asia), they are opaque and perforated so that they cast shadows in black-and-white filigree silhouettes. Third, the puppets

in Kerala are considerably smaller than those in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka (but larger than those in Orissa and similar to those in Tamil Nadu). Fourth, although performances in other states have all but lost their ritual role, in Kerala they remain part of a temple festival and do not include the scatological scenes so prominent elsewhere. Fifth, as already mentioned, only in Kerala are performances held not in a temporary shed but in a permanent building (kuttu matam ) built solely for the puppet play.^[51] Finally, and more than any other factor, language separates the Kerala puppet play from the other Indian traditions; if elsewhere the puppeteers speak Marathi as their mother tongue, in Kerala they speak Tamil (or Malayalam).

Drawing all this evidence together, I believe that Marathi-speaking puppeteers came to Tanjore in the late seventeenth century, where they passed the art of shadow puppetry to Tamils, who then carried it into Kerala, where Kuncan Nambiyar described the puppet play around 1750 and where the Kampan text had already been brought by Tamil traders.

Puppet Play and Kampan: Overview

I close this chapter with four important points about the puppeteers' adaptation of Kampan's epic in order to set the stage for reading the first translation in the next chapter. First, although this book highlights folk adaptations, I wish to stress that the senior puppeteers know the Kampan text intimately. flaky doubt on that score vanished during my early work with Krishnan Kutty: when I asked about the date of Kampan's epic, he answered by going into his house and returning with a battered edition of the text in which he quickly found and read the one verse containing that information.^[52] Not all puppeteers possess printed editions of Kampan, and palm-leaf manuscripts are now rare, so most rely on painstakingly handwritten verses in flimsy notebooks that are copied again and again and handed down from teacher (pulavar ) to student. These handwritten texts are especially valuable because they contain the actual verses sung by the puppeteers and marginal notes about emphasis and explication. Through long hours of practice these verses are memorized, and the first word of each verse is written down in tiny, cramped letters on a piece of cardboard, which beginners take into the drama-house for prompting. This memorization probably

accounts for the standardization among the several troupes of puppeteers who perform at different sites but, with only minor variation, sing the same verses with the same words in the same sequence.^[53]

A second point is that the puppeteers do not memorize or sing all of the ten thousand to twelve thousand verses in Kampan. In fact, they never sing more than two thousand, and that many only in the few temples where they perform the entire story, beginning with the birth of Rama. More commonly, they sing about twelve hundred verses when they begin their story at Rama's meeting with Surpanakha, or about eight hundred when they begin with the War Book.

Third, the puppeteers chant most of Kampan's verses verbatim with their printed sources. Comparing my recordings with the printed editions, I found that 70 percent of the sung verses match the printed verses word for word or varied by no more than two words; another 10 percent varied by no more than one line (of the four-line verse). The remaining 20 percent of the sting verses had no basis in any of the major editions of Kampan's poem, not even among the so-called dubious verses.^[54] Parallels are known for very few of these verses, and I assume that most derive either from a textual source, unknown or excised in the editing process of the early twentieth century, or from an unrecorded oral telling.^[55] I call these verses "folk verses," not because their language is less sophisticated than Kampan's (though that is often true) but because they are not accepted in the official editions of Kampan yet are sung in the puppet play, especially in controversial episodes.

A final observation is that, after the initial selection of some two thousand verses, the basic principle of adaptation in the puppet play is additive; that is, the puppeteers insert words, lines, characters, and episodes, all of which amplify rather than replace Kampan's epic. This principle of accommodation is the main theme in the first half of this book. The next chapter, for example, analyzes the "Song of the Drama-House," which first reveals the tension between the theology. of Kampan's text and the folk religion that predates it.

Chapter 3
Ambivalent Accommodations: Bhakti and Folk Hinduism

Desired wealth, wisdom, fame, and
Laksmi's blessing, she of the sweet lotus who leads the way to liberation—
These are granted to those who sing of Rama's strong shoulders
When he destroyed the raksasa armies and wore the vakai victory flower on his bow.

This folk verse, sung at the outset of every performance, is the signature of the puppet play and the motif of this chapter. I will return to it in more detail later, but for now notice that Rama is described as a warrior with his bow and not as a god or an avatar and that Laksmi, not Rama, leads one to liberation. This is a good starting point for an analysis of accommodation in the puppet play: a Rama story is not the same as Rama worship.

Without this distinction, history presents a paradox: although the Rama story appeared in Tamil poetry centuries before Kampan lived, Rama bhakti never took root in the folk religion of south India.^[1] References to episodes of the Rama story are scattered throughout classical Tamil poetry (100 A.D.-300 A.D. ); the notion of the Rama-avatar appears in the Cilappatikaram (C. 600 A.D.); and Rama bhakti is heard in the songs of the Alvars (600-900 A.D. ). Kampan soon followed, but the pervasive and powerful Rama bhakti in north India, evident in the popular theater of Ram Lila and recitations of Ramcaritmanas , has no equivalent in the south. As one general example, if the Dasara festival in north India and the Deccan usually celebrates Rama's conquest of Ravana, in Tamil Nadu and Kerala it typically commemorates the God-

dess's killing of Mahisa/Daruka.^[2] As I write this sentence, Hindus are again converging on the disputed mosque/temple site at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh (with certain loss of life), a controversy very unlikely in the far south, where Hindus also battle for religious causes but not for Rama temples (which are hard to find). On the other hand, the quest of the exiled prince to rescue his abducted bride from the demon-king, the dilemmas of fraternal loyalties, and the terrible war against Lanka have been popular in south India at least since the earliest Tamil poems. In short, I agree with the Princeton translators of the Valmiki text that the avatar concept in the Rama story "cannot be the principal reason for its early spread and popularity."^[3]

Not until the Chola period, in fact, nearly a thousand years after Rama episodes first appeared in Tamil literature, do images of Rama appear with any frequency in Tamil art.^[4] Even so, the extent and religious content of this Rama cult, supposedly rising like a tidal wave during the Chola period, has been exaggerated. For example, the medieval images of Rama are far less common than contemporaneous images of Siva. Similarly, it is well known that six Chola temples have sets of Ramayana reliefs, but it is less well known that those temples are not Rama temples; they are Siva temples.^[5] Regarding the Rama story, as stated in the previous chapter, the entire corpus of south Indian inscriptions contains only four references to any Ramayana recitation, and the extensive Chola records contain not a single mention of the Kamparamayanam .^[6] It is also important to note that, almost without exception before and during the Chola period, Rama appears as a human figure with two arms and a bow, as in the verse above;^[7] in Kampan, too, the most common epithet for Rama is not "god" but "hero."^[8] All this evidence confirms an emerging consensus that in pre-modern times, Rama in story and stone was primarily a model for kingship, not an object of worship. Although the Rama avatar did not much affect folk religion in south India, which is rooted in the worship of Siva, the Goddess, and deified heroes, the Rama story proved irrepressible and here and there achieved reconciliation with local religion, for instance, in the puppet play performed in central Kerala.

Accommodations appear first, and frequently, in the "Song of the Drama-House." More than any other segment in the long series of performances, this introduction is a creation of the puppet play; a song or two are borrowed from Kampan, but everything else—the use of Brahmin narrators (patta pava ), homage to past puppeteers, history of

the performance text, expression of gratitude to the sponsor, invocations to local deities, and (absent on this first night) summary of the previous night's action—are local innovations that give the first glimpse of how the puppet play has adapted Kampan's medieval epic to the drama-house. When the lamps are lit inside the drama-house and the two Brahmin puppets dance jerkily around the Ganesa puppet in the center of the white cloth screen, the puppeteers sing songs to Visnu-Rama, Sarasvati, Murukan, and various goddesses, culminating with a verse to the presiding Bhagavati of the village. Then they launch into salutations and interpretations, as in the following segment of an introduction performed in Kunnumpuli:

"We pray to Kunnumpuli Kavu Bhagavati, to Chatran Kavu Bhagavati, to Kundalcheri Amman, to Valliya Kavu Amman, to Maceru Kavu Bhagavati, to all the Bhagavatis we know and do not know, we call on them all.

"Now let us praise our gurus, whom we honor not as Brahmins or Sudras but as pulavars , as poets and scholars. We praise those poets who sang in pure Tamil, those puppeteers who preceded us. We praise Sanku Pulavar, Meynanam Pulavar, Tamil Pulavar, and all their gurus—be they Sudras or Brahmins—we sing of them all. We sing of Cinna Tampi Pulavar,^[9] who mastered the Vedas and puranas , of Cuntarar and Appar,^[10] who sang the purest Tamil and corrected errors and taught songs by word of mouth from generation to generation."

"We bow at the feet of our own gurus, who taught us the eighteen puranas , the fifty-one letters,^[11] the sixty-four sciences and arts, and this learned Ramayana of Kampan. We bow to those who taught us to sing and to sing correctly this story, in sweet Tamil. We bow our heads to Krishnan Navalar, Cankai Pulavar, Laksmana Pulavar,^[12] Ceruti Pulavar, Chandrasekhara Nayar, Narayana Nayar, Ramaswami Pulavar, Velayutha Pulavar, Gopalan Nayar, Kuncu Nayar.^[13] Praise be to all the gurus, to those we know and those we do not know."

"Look, rajas mounted on elephants are arriving for the performance.

"Kings born in the line of the Guruvayur Raja, of Raghu, of Marttanda, and of Harishchandra, the great donor."^[14]

"They have all come, from the north, the south, the east, and the west. The fifty-six rajas have arrived with their ministers, priests, and poets."

"No matter what story we might tell, no matter what knowledge we might possess, we are but small children playing at the feet of great men learned in the old texts, and so we ask their blessings and those of the gods:^[15]

We praise you, Sarasvati, bright shining jewel,
Dispensing boons to singers and musicians,
And to your supplicants,
     who surround you with flowers and dance to your name;
The poet's four gifts you grant to us:
     sweet voice and wise wit, correct words and creativity.^[16]
Radiant Sarasvati wearing white sari and pearls!
     Sarasvati on a white lotus,
Be the lamp that burns
     in the temple of our hearts."

"We praise the great sages of the past—Vyasa, who arranged the Vedas, Kalaikottu Muni, and Agastya, who recited the Vedas, who traveled to the eight directions with his wife, Lopamudra, and who conferred boons on llama and knowledge on us all."

"Now we honor Rama's name:

Desired wealth, wisdom, fame, and
Laksmi's blessings, she of the sweet lotus who leads the way to
     liberation—
These are granted to those who sing of Rama's strong shoulders
When he destroyed the raksasa armies and wore the vakai victory
     flower on his bow."

"Those who tell of Rama's strong arms and his annihilation of the demons—oh, they will gain their every desire. To say 'the raksasa armies were destroyed,' we must understand that the discus-bearing bowman, Rama, strtung his hard bow, fitted many arrows, and poured them down like a torrential rain on Ravana and his raksasas , all those cruel beings and all their armies. To those who sing of Rama's magnanimous victory, of his strong shoulders, of the compassion of this All-Knowing God, and to those who hear it sung, to them all wishes will be granted. As the verse says ... [first line of verse repeated ]."^[17]

"But what does this verse mean?"

"Everyone in this world, from the tiniest insect to the biggest raja, cries out for wealth: 'I want this, and I want that.' But more important than wealth is what we call kalvi-celvam , or 'wealth of learning.' Here 'learning' refers to intelligence, knowledge, the power to understand, and 'wealth' means enjoying family, wife, children, home, good food. Without these two gifts, which encompass all others, life is not worth living. Now if you want to gain this wealth of learning and enjoy the sixteen rewards it brings, listen ... [second line sung ].

"Here the verse speaks of 'liberation' [vitu ], which means freedom, yet the question arises: Freedom from what? What to embrace? What of the four great aims in life? What of dharma [aram ], wealth [porul ], pleasure [inpam ], and liberation [vitu ]? Aram is dharma, everyone knows that. But what is dharma? To whom should you do dharma? And to whom should you refuse it? Without studying the old books, one cannot hope to understand these subtleties. Most of us think that dharma brings religious merit—that's the popular idea—but the sages say that dharma can also produce suffering. There's a story my teacher told:

Once a man wanted to practice dharma. Now at that time, money was divided into quarter annas, half annas, and whole annas. Our friend saw a diseased man and thought, 'Right, I'll do a quarter-anna dharma to him.' And so he took out the little coin and gave it to him. The second man then took the money and thought, 'If I take this penny and buy some line and a hook, I can fish. And if I can catch a lot of fish, I might become rich!' This is just what he did. He caught lots of fish, sold them, and became a rich man. When karma led him to the end of his life, he was brought to Yama (you know, the same person who tried to catch Markandeya and failed); and then it was time for Cittiraputra to work. He's the accountant who keeps that enormous ledger in which everyone's deeds are recorded; he knows just what each person did on every day and whether they should go to heaven or hell. When Cittiraputra finished tiffs rich man's accounts, he turned to Yama and said, 'This fellow has killed thousands of lives, thousands of fish, and must go to such and such hell so that he will experience there the same pain he gave to those fish.'

But Yama thought this over. 'There are three kinds of sins: of the mind, of speech, and of the body. Yet this man has committed none of these. No, the person who gave him that quarter-anna is the cause of this suffering.' Then he spoke to his henchmen: 'Send this man to heaven and bring the other man here.' Now, when Yama's assistants brought the first man to the realm of the dead, he felt confident

about his next life because he had practiced dharma in mind, speech, and body. But there's something he had forgotten, that proverb: 'Give alms according to the recipient, give brides according to the horoscope book.'^[18] And so he was sent to hell.

"When you do dharma, you must think of the person who receives it. What will he do with it? Will he use it wisely? Or waste it? We should do dharma where it produces good because otherwise dharma causes suffering.

"That's aram , the first of the four goals. The second is porul —wealth, money, cash. It's certainly true that you can do nothing without it and there's that verse: 'A poor man is a nuisance to everyone, to his children, his father, his wife, even to the gods.' So we need money, but you must earn it without harming others—that's the main point—you can't just see a rich fellow and decide to kill him and take his money. The old books do not condone that kind of money—they call it 'money gained by taking life.' Money must not mean suffering. That's the point.

"Now the third goal is inpam , pleasure, of which there are two kinds: minor and major pleasure. The minor pleasures are growing up, arranging a marriage with a good family, going with your relatives to the bride's house, performing the rite to finalize the marriage contract [pouring water over hands], raising a family, settling into a home, and enjoying married life.

"Of course, it's not quite that simple. Again, there's a saying, 'True happiness occurs when two lovers are united in thought and mutual support.'^[19] It wont work if the husband is a good man and the wife is a stupid woman, or if the wife is a good woman and the husband is a rotten man, for they must learn to pull through life together, especially when times are tough. If troubles arise, you can't just sink into despair and sigh, 'Well, it's my karma; nothing for me to do.' No! You've got to be even-minded and keep going and help your partner. Or suppose you come into a lot of money, it's stupid to go and spend it on this and that. You should realize that your turn has come and again be even-minded. Spend it to enjoy your life.

"After you have known dharma, wealth, and pleasure, life falls away by itself! That's the last goal—release [vitu ]—and it comes unbidden, you can never measure it. But knowing all this requires wisdom, gained by studying the sastras and by singing and hearing of Rama's strong arms. Without study, you won't know a thing about dharma

or pleasure or about the 'wealth of learning' or about the blessings of lotus Laksmi, in the verse I just sang."

Ambivalent Accommodations

I chose to quote this segment of the "Song of the Drama-House" because it includes not only the signature verse and its interpretation but also homage to the past. In the previous chapter I quoted a verse in which the puppet play claims mixed textual parentage, and here, the puppeteers acknowledge those who came before, the pulavars (poet-scholars), who "taught [them] to sing, and to sing correctly this story in sweet Tamil." Saluting this long list of predecessors, including their fathers and grandfathers, their teachers and their fathers' and grandfathers' teachers, the puppeteers reach back to the origin of the puppet play when the Kampan text was first adapted to the drama-house. Such genealogies are part of every puppeteer's knowledge, as I quickly learned when, in response to a casual question, one man rattled off a list of fifty-five names stretching over seven generations. Most puppeteers know fifteen or twenty names, covering three or four generations, but all know the name of the legendary first puppeteer. With that man's story, the puppet play constructs its own past and reveals the ambivalence with which these folk-scholars regard high-caste patronage.

That legendary first puppeteer is "Cinna Tampi Pulavar, who mastered the Vedas and Puranas." A group of Tamil Chettiyars based in a village near Palghat claims eight generations of descent from Cinna Tampi, placing him in the late 1700s (a claim not inconsistent with the history proposed in the previous chapter). When I interviewed the last surviving puppeteer of this lineage in 1986, he was eighty-four and frail, lying in a sickbed and hardly able to raise his head to hear what was said. Yet, at my question about Cinna Tampi, he suddenly sat up and clearly sang three verses—one celebrating Kampan as a saint (alvar ) and two praising Cinna Tampi's poems, which "melt the heart so that even the deaf hear."^[20] These verses, he explained, were once sung in the "Song of the Drama-House" but had long been forgotten. Cinna Tampi, the old man continued, came from a village near Pollachi in Tamil Nadu and settled outside Palghat, "Right here, in this village." He was a dull student who wandered from school and one day stuck his head inside

a temple hall where he heard the Valmiki Ramayana recited by Brahmins—"by those Aiyars [Tamil Brahmins] over there in Ramanathapuram," the old man shouted, pointing toward the next settlement. Knowing he was a Chettiyar, a non-Brahmin, the Aiyars mocked Cinna Tampi and drove him away. His anger blazed until he undertook a pilgrimage to a famous temple (Mukampika) near Udipi in coastal Karnataka where he gained wisdom from the Goddess that enabled him to write the Kamparamayanam as shadow puppet play. At this point in the old man's narration, another member of the family interrupted and said that Cinna Tampi received this wisdom from the wind that blew Vedic chants as he passed Brahmins on the road; that was also true, confirmed the storyteller. Returning to Palghat, Cinna Tampi began to perform the Rama story with shadow puppets, and as long as he lived (the old man completed his story with a soft smile), Cinna Tampi refused Brahmins entrance to the drama-house.

By its own account, then, the shadow puppet play was born of anger, humiliation, and caste prejudice. But the self-image is doubled, a combination of folk and high-status identity: Does Cinna Tampi's inspiration, and the tradition itself, derive from a popular goddess or from the Vedic winds? When I asked the old puppeteer to clarify this, he explained Cinna Tampi's relation to the Brahmins by likening him to the sage Narada, who was homeless and hungry before the gods adopted him as one of their own. "Cinna Tampi," he said, "was like an adopted child or a servant to the Brahmins." Not born of Brahmins, the legendary puppeteer is adopted by Brahmins, but one wonders who adopted whom. In the previous chapter, I said that Brahmins in Palghat have little if any connection to either the Kamparamayanam or the Rama cult in the area, and I can add here that few (if any) Brahmins ever patronized or performed the puppet play in Kerala.^[21] Nevertheless, and although Cinna Tampi excluded them from his drama-house, the puppeteers are reluctant to exclude Brahmins entirely from their history of the puppet play. They honor their gurus "not as Brahmins or as Sudras," but whenever I asked about high castes, they found a way to assure me that "at one time" Brahmins were patrons and famous puppeteers. "Many were Aiyars," they insisted, and when I pointed out that "Aiyar" is a title and that even Cinna Tampi, whom they identify as a Chettiyar, is often given that title, they rejected that example as atypical.

Vedic winds blow in performance, too. If not as patrons or performers, Brahmins do appear as puppets, the patta pava ([Tamil] Brahmin puppets), who sing the "Song of the Drama-House." As the first pup-

pets on the screen every night, flanking Ganesa in the center, they establish a brahminical frame for the puppet play; as one young puppeteer explained, "We use the Brahmin puppets because the play is really spoken by them; we are their mouthpiece." This pair of Brahmin narrators, an innovation by the Kerala puppeteers without counterpart in Kampan or the other shadow puppet plays in India, is ironic since they have been given names (Muttu-pattar, Gangaiyati-pattar) identifying them with the Tamil Brahmins who, the puppeteers believe, humiliated Cinna Tampi long ago. Even as puppets, however, the Brahmin presence is unconvincing; they may confer legitimacy on performances, yet more than any other character on the screen they are stock figures that are manipulated to effect. For the whole of the "Song of the Drama-House" they dance and sing, but after the final verse of the introduction, they are removed from the screen and never appear in the Rama story itself. Such vacillating attitudes toward high castes, evident in both the Cinna Tampi story and the role of the Brahmin puppets, arise from an ambiguity that defines the Kerala tradition on all sides: the drama-house separated from the temple yet linked to it by a ritual transfer of lamplight, the "trader-language" of the plays, a Tamil courtly epic performed in a rural Kerala festival, and the ambivalent cultural identity of the Palghat region as a whole.

But this uncertain social status may derive from yet another source—from legends about Kampan and his text, told both in printed sources and by the puppeteers.^[22] More than one Kampan emerges from these stories. There is the poet-saint (alvar ) who sings his poem at Srirangam and receives the blessings of Sri Vaisnava orthodoxy. But there is also the folk poet, a clever man of words and quite different from the figure favored by theologians and politicians; one wonders, in fact, who would marry their daughter to this poet who was continually poor, often deceptive, frequented courtesans, and slept a lot. This folk Kampan has humble origins, as the etymologies for his name emphasize: he is a foundling discovered at the base of a post (kampam ); or he is abandoned by his widowed (sometimes adultress) mother and lives a lowly life as a cowherd boy with a staff (kampu ). He avoids school and takes up with an unmarried woman whom he met in a Saiva monastery. Later, however, he finds his patron, Cataiyappan, and rises to court poet.

This legendary Kampan is more complex than a humble youth, however. On the one hand, he is a poet of the common man. In one story, an illiterate woodcutter, who fancies himself a poet, saunters into the assembly of poets and scholars at the Chola court. When he recites his

coarse lines, the pompous poets scorn his presumptions until Kampan laughs at their own pretensions by ingeniously breaking up the woodcutter's words to reveal a polished poem. In another story, wandering penniless after one of his many exiles from the Chola court, Kampan meets a woman whose house wall will not stand; each time it is built, a raksasa tears it down. After listening to her story, the poet grabs a shovel, builds the wall, and then sings a verse that scares off the demon; when the woman asks who is he, Kampan simply says, "A coolie. Give me my pay," and leaves.

More than simply a do-gooder, this Kampan is also a clever poet-jester who plays tricks on everyone. A sample of his verbal powers is found in a long story that begins after his abandonment and discovery by his patron. Once in Cataiyappan's care, little Kampan is sent by his schoolmaster to watch over a field of millet, but he falls asleep in a Kali temple and awakes to see a large horse destroying the precious grain. When his attempts to drive off the horse fail, leaving him to face a beating from the teacher, Kali appears and supplies him with a special verse, which he duly sings, killing the horse. But then the teacher arrives on the scene and threatens to beat Kampan because the dead horse belongs to a rich man who will beat the teacher. Clever little Kampan then modifies the verse that killed the horse (substituting mila kontu va [arise and come] for mala kontu po [go and die]) and everything is put right. Just as his youthful songs frighten demons and revive a dead horse, his later Ramayana verses resuscitate a boy lying dead from a snakebite.

Always the artful dodger, Kampan constantly uses his verbal chicanery to weave in and out of courtly intrigues. A favorite at court, he is often exiled by an insulted king only to be coaxed back because the raja misses his sweet poetry. On one occasion, he storms out of the Chola raja's court and takes himself to Kerala, where he enters the Cera court in the guise of a cook, Kampan's cook, as he explains. Under this cloak, he presumes to explain the meaning of the Rama story to the king and his court, but the jealous court poets plot to discredit him by claiming that he is a low-caste barber, even hiring a barber to feign kinship with the upstart outsider. Kampan is equal to their tricks, however, and swiftly produces a priceless gold anklet, which, he explains, is one of a pair divided between him and his barber "brother." When this barber is unable to produce the missing anklet, his alleged kinship with Kampan is exposed as false and he is forced to name the plotters, who are punished by the king.

The consummate display of Kampan's linguistic deceptions must be the even longer story, told both in the printed sources and the drama-house, of how he came to compose his Ramayana.^[23] Briefly, when Kampan and Ottakkuttan are summoned by the Chola raja and ordered to compose a "Ramayana in the southern tongue," they set to work. Ottakkuttan, at least, diligently writes day and night, while Kampan sleeps and visits courtesans. Called to court to give a progress report on their Ramayanas, Ottakkuttan sings the story from Rama's birth to the building of the causeway to Lanka; Kampan then claims that he, too, has composed that much plus one more verse, which he recites for the raja. Listening to Kampan's extemporized verse and knowing well that his rival has done absolutely no work, Ottakkuttan questions the use of a particular word, tumi (water drops). Quickened by this challenge, Kampan wastes no time in asserting the correctness of his diction, and once again, turns to Kali; with the goddess's help, his critics overhear an ordinary woman speaking the disputed word, which proves that Kampan's verse is valid. None of this would have been necessary, however, if Kampan, the imperial poet, had not told a lie.

Several parallels between this folk Kampan and the legendary first puppeteer, Cinna Tampi, are identifiable. Most accounts agree, for instance, that Kampan, like Cinna Tampi, was not a Brahmin; he was instead an Uvaccan, a temple servant who rang a bell in Kali's temple. Still, both biographies contain the ambiguous relationship with Brahmins that I discussed above with reference to the puppet play generally. One legend claims a Brahmin birth for Kampan, who was abandoned by his mother after she was driven out of their village and then raised by an Uvaccan; in one version of this story, his mother is a Brahmin adultress.^[24] We might remember that Cinna Tampi, too, in the old man's second version, was adopted by Brahmins.^[25] At the same time, medieval poet and first puppeteer alike faced opposition from Brahmins and both composed a llama story in Tamil to replace Valmiki's in Sanskrit. Caught between Brahminical and Tamil traditions, both men trod a thin line between high-status patronage and popular appeal, especially to the Goddess, and this mutual connection to the Goddess is perhaps the most important continuity between the Kampan legends and the puppet play.

A humble poet of the people, a word wizard, the legendary Kampan is also a devotee of Kali. Not Rama, and not Visnu, it is the Goddess who appears everywhere in these legends, rescuing the lying poet or the sleepy boy from his self-created problems. She inspires his poetic gifts,

saves him from social humiliation, and even holds a torch above his head so that he is able to compose his lines at night.^[26] Goddess Bhagavati is also the source of Cinna Tampi's creativity (although Vedic winds do blow), and it is she, and Siva her consort, who dominate performances of his Rama story in the drama-house. Rama's birth is sung in a series of devotional verses at the end of this first night's performance, but the presiding deity is the Goddess. The final song of the introduction, for instance, is addressed not to Rama or Visnu, as one might expect for a telling of their story, but to the local goddess:

Bhagavati of Kunnumpuli Kavu
     dancing wildly with Siva
Protect us as we sing Rama's story.

No wonder that the puppet play is locally known as "a drama for Bhagavati."^[27]

The prominence of the Goddess and Siva in the puppet play exposes the thin layer of Rama bhakti in south India. In popular culture, Rama himself is a bhakta of Siva; in major texts of the Rama story, including Kampan and the puppet play, the Visnu-avatar installs and worships a Siva lingam at the most famous pilgrimage site in south India, the Siva temple at Ramesvaram (Rama's Lord).^[28] Here Rama worships Siva, while according to the legend of the puppet play's origin, Kampan is Siva:

The goddess who guarded the gates to Brahma's treasury grew proud and was cursed to serve as guard to Ravana's treasury in the demon city of Lanka. For thousands of years she guarded Ravana's wealth until Rama and his monkey armies attacked the city. When Hanuman attempted to enter and she blocked his path, the monkey slapped her with his tail, and she immediately gained moksa . But in Siva's heaven, she complained: "For years and years I have suffered under Ravana and now, just as he is to be killed by Rama, I am here and cannot see this special event." Siva then gave her a boon: "You shall be born on earth as Bhagavati and I will be born as the poet Kampan; I will write the story of Ravana's death and you may watch it every year in your temple."^[29]

In summary, both the Chola poet and the first puppeteer were buffeted back and forth between popular appeal and high-status patronage; both sought legitimacy from Brahmins yet drew inspiration from the Goddess. These parallels between the legendary Kampan and the legendary Cinna Tampi shrink the historical and spatial separation between

the medieval poem and its performance in Kerala. They suggest, too, that the recontextualization of Kampan in Kerala is not as one-dimensional as I had first imagined; although performing the epic in the Bhagavati festival alters its bhakti orientation, the puppet play also returns this Rama story to the folk culture from which it arose. The ambivalent status and self-image of the puppet play is a legacy of Kampan and the Kamparamayanam itself.

Return, however, is not a reversal, and consistent with its additive principle of adaptation, the puppet play accommodates rather than eliminates the bhakti ideals of Kampan's poem. For a clear example of this reconciliation, I return to the signature verse:

Desired wealth, wisdom, fame, and
Laksmi's blessing, she of the sweet lotus who leads the way to
     liberation,
These are granted to those who sing of Rama's strong shoulders
When he destroyed the raksasa armies and wore the vhkai victory
     flower on his bow.

A convention in traditional Indian literature, and known in Tamil as "benefit of the text" (nu-l payan ), this is the first verse learned by puppeteers; it is inscribed at the head of the palm-leaf and handwritten manuscripts used by them, and sometimes at the head of each narrative section (patalam ) in those manuscripts, and it is the initial verse in many folk Ramayanas in Tamil. In performance, when the lead puppeteer intones its initial line, all his assistants stop whatever they are doing (pouring oil in the lamps, for example) and sing this verse in unison. Finally, and unlike any other verse sung in the "Song of the Drama-House," it always receives a commentary, often an extensive commentary, whose quality is a measure of a puppeteer's talent. Why has the puppet play selected this verse, considered spurious by several Kampan scholars, as its epigraph?^[30] Probably for the same reason that others have disregarded the opinion of the authoritative editions and included it in their versions of the Kamparamayanam —it announces the fruits of devotion, binding performance to the religious belief system, without which there is no puppet play. Notice, however, recalling the distinction made at the outset of this chapter, that the recitation of the Rama story , and not the worship of Rama, earns rewards.

An accommodation of bhakti themes with a folk worldview is more apparent in the puppeteers' commentary on this verse. Whereas the

puppeteers' recitation of the verse follows Kampan verbatim, their explication reveals an ethos very different from that of the printed commentaries. Those commentaries explain the verse as a description of a series of rewards and pleasures that culminate in final liberation (moksa ); the most traditional of the commentaries, for example, forces the four rewards of the verse (desired wealth, wisdom, fame, and liberation) into an uneasy correspondence with the Four Goals (purusartha ) of classical Hinduism and concludes by declaring that Visnu's compassion will lift erring humans from their misery to final liberation.^[31] The puppeteers' commentary, by contrast, mentions the Four Goals, but only as a loose framework within which to offer more practical advice: both husband and wife must "pull the chariot" of marriage; faced with adversity, one should not "sink into despair and sigh, 'Well, it's my karma.'" Karma, moksa , and other abstractions are not the operative concepts in this tradition or in much of Tamil folklore.^[32] In their commentary on this verse, for example, the puppeteers dutifully list moksa as one of the Four Goals and they mention it in closing, but they otherwise ignore this distant reward. Similarly, "spiritual wisdom" (jnana ), although explicitly listed in the verse and discussed in the printed commentaries, is mentioned only once by the puppeteers.

What is emphasized in the puppet play is not mentioned in the verse and receives little attention in the printed commentaries: proper conduct in this world, dharma or aram . The puppeteers consistently pursue practical matters by construing the initial phrase "desired wealth" (natiya porul ) to mean "intelligence" and the "wealth of learning" (kalvi celvam ) to mean family comforts, and by concluding with a concrete commendation of learning. The heart of their explication, however, is an ironic lesson on dharma, an instructive tale about the well-intentioned gift of a quarter-anna to a man who buys a fishhook and becomes rich. Giving and taking, the puppeteers warn us, may have unforeseen effects, as intimated by a proverb they quote: "Give alms according to the recipient, give brides according to the horoscope."^[33] Spiritual liberation is not rejected as a final goal, but the puppeteers' wary outlook recommends, for the time being, attention to worldly knowledge, the skillful handling of human relations, and the wise exchange of money and brides.^[34] In the end, the puppeteers tell us, spiritual liberation depends on giving a quarter-anna to the right person.

This key verse and its interpretation illustrate the puppet play's reconciliation between the two great streams of Hinduism: bhakti, or devotionalism, and folk religion. Bhakti and folk Hinduism are not

singular; each contains various strains. Emotional bhakti, for example, shares behavioral features with folk religion, such as an intense, personal communication with gods and goddesses, including ecstatic song and possession.^[35] Practices may thus converge, but theologies diverge, especially in scholastic bhakti, whose goals of perfection and isolation conflict with the ideals of balance and relation in folk Hinduism.

The bhakti movement, originating around 500 A.D. ). in the Tamil country, introduced a radical soteriology based on the avatar not only as a personal god but also as a new kind of ethics, a flawless grace, which cuts the knots of karma and allows, even favors, the salvation of sinners and demons. An older worldview, in both Vedic ritual and folk Hinduism, is centered on a balance of forces—human and divine, gods and demons, lust and asceticism. Demons (raksasas ) are none other than the older, darker cousins of the gods, with whom they form an intimate opposition; Ravana and his family are descendants of Brahma and are considered Brahmins, so much so that Rama must expiate himself after killing Ravana. Bhakti disrupted this prior balance, in which, as Wendy Doniger put it, "demons are purposely left unredeemed, demonic, to maintain a force of evil and distinguish them from gods."^[36] In other words, Rama's mission to eradicate the demons from "the root up" thrust a moral purity into the struggle between gods and demons; an opposition once polarized and symmetrical became ethicized and asymmetrical. To be sure, Kampan's Rama is more than a mere salvific tool, just as Valmiki's hero is more than a man, and Kampan's poem probes the psychological dilemma of a fully "divine man," for instance, when Rama forgets his mission and must be reminded by the gods.^[37] It is also true that the Kamparamayanam contains elements of a pre-bhakti, heroic worldview from early Tamil literature.^[38] In the end, however, Kampan's Rama remains superior to animals and demons and humans because, wittingly or not, he is the vehicle of their salvation.

The particular strand of bhakti that influenced Kampan's epic is Sri Vaisnavism, a brahminical synthesis of "qualified non-dualism" and popular Visnu worship that developed in the Tamil country in the medieval period. Central to Sri Vaisnava theology are the concepts of arul (grace), prapatti (surrender to god), and the avatar. The Tenkalai, or "southern branch," of this movement is especially important because it appears to have preserved Kampan's poem in manuscript form at Alvar Tirunakari, a famous matt near Tirunelveli, in the southern Tamil country. For this Southern School, god's grace is loving, capricious, unmerited, and the devotee must surrender to it unconditionally, like a kitten

clinging to its mother. But both grace and surrender are realized only through the avatar, god's manifestation on earth, who is beyond earthly codes of justice and who offers salvation to anyone, human, beast, or demon who worships him. Enshrined in its title, Iramavataram (The Avatar of Rama), the Rama-avatar is the conceptual center of Kampan's poem. George Hart put it this way: "Kampan makes his idea of dharma totally dependent on Rama-Visnu. It is through the agency of Rama that dharma is established and maintained, and it has no meaning without the worship of Visnu."^[39] Although the eleventh- and twelfth-century founders of Sri Vaisnavism made little reference to the Rama story, later commentators and teachers, especially in the Southern School, placed great emphasis on Tamil devotional literature, such as early Vaisnava poetry and Kampan's praise poem to Rama.^[40] In time, Kampan's masterpiece was recognized as scripture, and its poet was elevated to the status of a poet-saint (alvar ).

This bhakti theology did not survive the text's journey through the mountains into Kerala, however. Cut off from the courts and monasteries that had supported it in the Tamil country, the Kamparamayanam underwent considerable change when it entered hinterland Palghat. This famous Rama text is sung as ritual, but it is sung at temples where Rama is not worshiped, a fact that would be astounding unless we remember the distinction between Rama story and Rama worship. In rural Kerala, Kampan's text did not find a Hinduism of grace and surrender to the avatar but a religion of balance and revenge and powerful forces, including the deified dead.^[41] Nevertheless, because the accommodation achieved in the puppet play is additive, the joys of total surrender to god are not excluded from the puppet play.^[42] Indeed, precisely because the puppet play is caught between these conflicting demands, between the isolated perfection of the avatar and the moral balance of folk Hinduism, the puppeteers tell a Rama story more complicated than either a bhakti or a folk text alone could produce. One complexity, and the topic of the following two chapters, is that the puppet play blurs the moral boundaries between the avatar and his adversaries.

Plate 1.
Natesan Pillai, senior puppeteer, at home in
1989; see his performance in chapter 6.

Plate 2
The drama-house at in 1989, where "Killing Vali"
(chapter 5) was performed.

Plate 3.
Inside the drama-house with Krishnan Kutty and his troupe per
forming the Surpanakha episode (see chapter 4), 1986, Cherpalachery.

Plate 4.
Laksmana (r.) and Surpanakha (1.) face each other just before the
young price mutilates her, 1986, Cherpalachery.

Plate 5.
Rama, Laksmana, and Sita (from left to right) march toward the
Godavari River, 1986, Cherpalachery.

Plate 6.
Krishnan Kutty's youngest son holds up a sol-
dier in Ravana's army from the puppet basket, 1986,
Cherpalachery.

Chapter 4
The Death of Sambukumaran: Kama and Its Defense

Complications in the puppet play cluster around the controversies in the epic. These are the moral pressure points in the story that generate many versions in Kerala and elsewhere told this way and that in an attempt to resolve, avoid, or explain away questions that are probably insoluble but which reveal the distinctive mark of any particular telling. Three such flashpoints stand out across the spectrum of Rama stories, including the puppet play: (1) Rama's meeting with Surpanakha; (2) his killing of Vali; and (3) his rejection of Sita. Leaving Vali for the next chapter and Sita for the final one, in this chapter I examine the puppeteers' treatment of Rama's fateful encounter with Ravana's sister, Surpanakha, the scene which baffled me that first night in Suhavaram. This meeting on the banks of the Godavari River is the traditional starting point for epic narration in the puppet play, and it is a curious choice. In order to begin at that point, the puppet play must leap over nearly a third of Kampan's text, including what we thought were indispensable events, such as Rama's birth, his initiation with Visvamitra, his marriage to Sita, and his departure from Ayodhya. Landing on the banks of the Godavari River is not entirely haphazard, however, since the puppet play's opening scene subtly recalls the fertility and harmony in Kampan's opening description of the Sarayu River flowing by Ayodhya. Still, in the forest, perfection is not what it seems; barely thirty minutes into performance, the puppeteers veer off into an episode not told in Kampan, the death of Surpanakha's son, Sambukumaran, which fixes this Rama story on a new moral axis.^[1]

The translation below covers the second night of performance: Rama is already in exile and the events from his birth to his departure from Ayodhya with Sita and Laksmana have been quickly summarized on the previous night. Soon llama will meet Surpanakha, but the performance opens with a famous Kampan verse in which Rama, speaking to Laksmana, likens the Godavari River to poetry.

The Death of Sambukumaran

"Look, brother, here is the Godavari,
     lying as a necklace on the world
Nourishing the rich soil
     rushing over waterfalls
Flowing through the five regions
     in clear, cool streams,
Like a good poet's verse.^[2]

"Look, Laksmana, look at this wonderful river, which we have reached after taking delicate Sita over these rough jungle paths, through thickets of thorns, through ominous forests, past dangers and animals, unknown and hidden from us on our long journey.^[3] And, finally, look at this river, the lovely Godavari! It must be the Godavari because the poets say that of all the rivers on this earth the Godavari is the most beautiful, even more beautiful than the Ganga. Now, in this verse, the word puvi refers to the Earth Goddess, who wears the river like an ornament, but the river is more than just a sparkling jewel. Like two hands cradling the land, its banks support pious Brahmins who recite the Ramayana , the Mahabharata , the Bhagavata Purana , and other sacred books that tell us when to marry, how to live the four stages of life, when and where to travel at auspicious moments, how to perform dharma and sacrifices with the correct mantras and oblations. And that is how the Godavari feeds this special place of five landscapes, called 'Panca-vati.'^[4]

"The poet says that the Godavari lies like a necklace on the earth, but the river also flows, it moves, like a poem. The word 'verse' in these lines refers to the poetry in Valmiki's epic, those lines so dense with meanings that you need one commentary to find the literal meaning of his words and another to tell you their hidden meaning.

The Godavari, you see, resembles poetry because it, too, has sound and beauty and motion.

"Do you know what is truly special about this river? When one newly arrives at a location, one must build a house, which requires consulting the house-sastras for selecting a site, finding trees, bringing wood, conducting a sacrifice and then a puja . Most places have one or two flowering trees, but look around—there are flowers everywhere. And look at these forests—the very banks of the Godavari are hands that hold up forests and offer these flowers at our feet. Tell me, Laksmana, have you ever seen anything so wonderful?

See the trees rising high
     sandalwood and eaglewood, silk-cotton and pepper trees;
See them rising high above us
     along the river banks;
These forests are full of demons,
     but we will perform tapas here.

"Laksmana, there are five kinds of trees here, just as there are five types of landscape. We know that the forests are infested with demons who steal, kill, drink, lie, and abuse Brahmins—the five heinous crimes—but don't worry, little brother. It is for that very, reason that we must perform religious austerities [tapas ] here. That's our purpose on earth—to root out evil and protect the good—isn't it? We'll fight anyone who opposes dharma.

"But what actually is dharma? They say it's the earthly embodiment of an unreachable god who stands in front shielding us, like a fence protecting a field. Dharma stands on four feet—truth, charity, meditation, and dharma itself—in the form of a cow, and it stands on two feet in the form of a Brahmin. Dharma has been attacked by demons since the beginning of time, especially here in Pancavati, so we must stay and destroy them. But, first, we must build a hut to sleep in. Go into the forest, Laksmana, and cut down trees."

[Laksmana  replies :]

"Merciful Lord who upholds Brahma's many worlds,
Great Lord who snapped Siva's bow,
Watch my hands work quickly for the hut will be built
Not by me, but by your own tapas .

"Rama, you support all these worlds created by Brahma, and you cracked that boss, at Janaka's palace. How can what I do be anything

but your work? [Moves to extreme right hand of screen ] Let's see, what tree shall I cut down?

Bears and tigers are everywhere they say;
Oh, I hear a lion! Better hide and shoot;
But, look, that's no lion—
Only cuckoo birds chattering away!

"Well, I shot the arrow anyway and drove away those dangerous birds. [Sambukumaran puppet placed in tree .]^[5] Now, look, somehow a sword came into my hand, and it's perfect for cutting down trees. [He swings the sword against the tree in which Sambukumaran has been placed. ]

Alone in this forest
     with a sword from the gods;
I strike this tree
     and a body falls in a river of blood;
What evil this act will bring
I do not know.

"I wished only to build a hut and now I have killed! I don't understand, but I fear evil consequences. One thing is certain: I cannot use this blood-stained tree."

[Moving to another part of the forest, Laksmana cuts down other trees, sinks them into the ground, lashes thick branches on them, and builds the forest but. Laksmana moves back to Sita and Rama, who speaks :]

"Laksmana, is the hut ready?"

"Yes, but something terrible happened ...

I cut down a demon when I cut down a tree,
Why I cannot say—who knows what the gods do?
But the hut is complete for you and Sita to enter,
As I guard the south protecting you from evil.

"Rama, what does this demon's death mean? Something is very, wrong. But for now please enjoy the safety of this hut and rest assured that I will protect you both."

"Sita, let us enter the hut." [All three puppets move toward the but .]

"Oh, Rama, look. The hut is perfect. Laksmana is a genius.

Like the great Vedas which drive out confusion,
Like the pure Milk Ocean surrounding Visnu's island,

My brother has built a shelter
As perfect as the Ganga itself!"^[6]

"Sita, this hut is incomparable, unparalleled, unprecedented! To what can I compare it? One may say that it resembles the Vedas: once the demons had shrouded the whole world in illusion, so the gods went to Visnu, who told them to churn the Milk Ocean. Then—to make a long story short—when they churned, the Vedas emerged and the illusion was dispelled. What other images of perfection match this hut? The Milk Ocean is one, for Vaikunta lies like a jewel in the very center of its 3,200,000 leagues. White, pure white! In ancient times that island was called 'heaven-seen,' but our human mouths have turned those words to 'haven-scene.'^[7] This simple hut is also equal to the Ganga, the most wonderful river on earth. In fact ...

Lightning-thin girl, from heavy-forested Mithila,
My brother has built a hut that is flawless
And incomparable,
Like your flower feet.^[8]

"So much can be said of Mithila—its fabulous palaces and rich temples—but it's all said by you, Sita, by your beauty. 'Light-ning' is the right word for you since your body is a lustrous streak of light; your feet are as soft as water lilies and the red lotus flowers of Laksmi's throne. You possess every beauty that Laksmi does, but Laksmana's actions surpass all beauty. Does anyone compare to him? Here, in this remote forest, he builds us a shelter like a palace!"

[Sita and Rama enter hut, while Laksmana stands as guardian outside; Surpanakha enters from the left and speaks in a gruff voice :]

"Hey, what's this I smell? Human flesh is it? Brahma may create them, but these humans really smell! Haven't eaten any flesh since yesterday—I'm famished. Gobble them up in a second when I find these stinking humans, but first I better look for my son, Sambukumaran, who went to do tapas weeks ago and hasn't returned. Maybe he's won a boon from Siva by now. [Moves toward center of screen ] "This looks tike the tree he did tapas in. Yes, this is it, but ... some branches are broken ... and ... over there ... there's a body. Oh, no! My son, my poor son, Sambukumaran!

Is cruel death your reward for long tapas to the gods?
Wearing fresh flowers you came and you wear them now

Riding to Siva's heaven in death's golden bier;
I've lost you forever, my son, Sambukumaran.

"It can't ... I ... but it is you, Sambukumaran, though it cannot be so. You came here to win liberation, yet you gained death. Is this everyone's fate who worships Siva? Or just yours? And where are you now? Somewhere on the journey to Siva's heaven. Ah, who can say?

Covered with turmeric and ash, I prayed for a son at Lord Siva's feet;
Now your golden body lies in bloody pieces at my feet;
Who did this, Sambukumaran?
Who makes me collapse in grief?

"I chanted and meditated on Siva's name for months, and finally you were born. But can this—can your death be Siva's boon? Did my tapas win your death?

Yes, your killers are gone but not escaped;
It might be Indra, or Brahma on his lotus,
Or even Visnu with sweet basil leaves—
No matter who he is, I will follow his trail,
And drag him to Lanka surrounded by dark seas.

"Hah, let them try to escape! They can jump off the earth and I'll follow. Revenge will be mine. Even if Laksmi's Lord, Narayana, did this evil deed, he will not escape. Doesn't matter if it's that flower-god, Brahma, creator of the eighty thousand lakhs of beings in our worlds. Killer of my son, whoever you are, I will find you and imprison you in Lanka, and no one ever escapes from the hands of my brother Ravana. [Moves toward the river ]

"I'll eat anyone who comes my way, child-killer or not. Huh, can't see much from here. Better climb a tree and look around. Ah, yes, that's better. [Rama leaves Sita and approaches the river to bathe .] Hmm ... who's that over there by the river? A man, I think, and a nice-looking one, too!

Is that Kama visiting this earth with his love-bow?^[09]
Or Indra, king of gods? or some earthly raja?
Could he be Laksmi's consort, Visnu? Siva glistening with garlands?
Surya in his circling chariot?
     Who, O heart, who is this man?

"Who is this beautiful creature? Must be a god come to this sun-measured earth! You see, the sun does circle the earth—it rises in the east at Mt. Manasottara, continues south to Mt. Dharma Raja in the first quarter of the cycle, and enters the waxing half of the cycle at

midday. From there it enters the northern path to Mt. Meru, bringing night in the third quarter of the cycle, and finally comes around again to Mt. Manasottara at dawn. This is Surya Deva, the Sun, by whose power it is possible to discriminate between night and day on earth.^[10]

"On earth, however, Kama is supreme, for he makes love possible with his sugarcane bow and flower-arrows. Perhaps that is he, standing there by the river, in human form. If not, he might be the great lover, Indra, the most beautiful of gods; or he might be a mere earthly king come to the Godavari on a pleasure hunt. Or is he Laksmi's lover, that dark-skinned Visnu? Or Chandra, god of the smooth moon? Or fiery Surya, who drives his shining chariot through the sky? Whoever he is, he is beautiful beyond words.

"But no, he bears no marks of those gods—not Brahma's brass pot, not Visnu's discus, conch, club, or lotus, not Kama's sugar-bow. What he carries, I see, is a hunting bow and a tiger skin, as if he's an ascetic! Oh, I can't bear this any longer; I've got to go closer and see him. [Mores toward Rama, who remains motionless by the river ]

"Huh! This demon form is a disgrace! What would he think if he saw me like this? I've got to change into a beautiful woman—then I'll catch him for sure. Yes, I'll use that boon given to me years ago when I did tapas to Laksmi and she appeared before me and said, 'Whenever you wish to change your appearance, chant this mantra.' [As Surpanakha chants the Laksmi mantra, a new, (Mohini) puppet appears and the old puppet is removed .] There, that's much better!"

[Rama ] "Who's coming toward the river bank. Well, well, who is this lovely creature? No woman on earth or in the netherworld is her equal. Not Menaki, not Urvasi, not Tilottoma, who dance in the heavens, none of them possesses this woman's beauty. Nowhere among the eighty thousand lakhs of beings in these worlds have I seen any woman so beautiful as she! No thing, no person, no other object in this universe, is as lovely! I must talk with her. [Rama moves toward Surpanakha .]

"May I ask your name, faultless beauty? You come just as I am finishing my holy bath, which makes me wonder: Did goddess Laksmi herself step off her red lotus throne and take form here on earth? But, then, what have I done to deserve this honor? Certainly my acts of dharma would not bring me such good fortune. There's so much

I want to ask you. Who are you? Where are you from? Speak to me, lovely peacock!"

"Handsome one, my family line begins with Brahma, who rests on a lotus of a thousand petals. Tradition says he had ten daughters but only one son, born of his infinite wisdom, and he was Pulastiyan, who had a son named Vicaravasu, whose daughter I am."^[11]

"But what is your name?"

"My father, Vicaravasu, married four women and his last wife, Kekaci, bore me and gave me the name Kamavalli.^[12] But listen: I have two brothers. The older, Kubera, is strong as a mountain; that god riding on the powerful bull, that powerful Siva, gave him boons for his tapas , and now he rules Alakapuri. But my other brother, the younger one, Ravana, is even more powerful.^[13]

"Let me tell you a story. This world has eight directions: east, southeast, south, southwest, and so on to the northeast. Each is guarded by an elephant: Airavata, Pundarikam, Vamana, Kumutam, Ancanam, Putkakam, Savapavam, and ... the others.^[14] Each direction also has a special snake, like Adisesa, and a special god. This wide world, held up by those elephants and snakes, was the object of my brother's ambitions, and so he marched in every direction and conquered every raja until he came to those eight elephants and threatened them: 'Fight me or step aside!' But the animals did not move, and among themselves they thought, 'Instead of attacking one by one, better to fight him as a group of eight with our thirty-two tusks.' Charging hard, they pierced my brother's chest with their tusks, but he didn't show the tiniest scratch. Calmly, he drew his sword and proceeded to lop off the tusks, still stuck in his chest, and then cried out, 'Is that it? Have you no more strength?' The elephants were silent, and he ordered them back to their stations. That's my younger brother, that's Ravana

"Not only that. Once this little brother challenged Lord Siva. It's a very long story, but I'll just say that in the end he shook mighty Mt. Kailasa and ruled over the earth, heavens, and netherworlds, and was given the title 'King whose crown bows to no one.'^[15] His name is Ravana and I am his sister, Kamavalli."

"You say that your older brother received boons from Siva and that your younger brother defeated the cosmic elephants and conquered the Three Worlds. But, then, where is your wealth? Your jewelry? Your silk dresses? Your armies? If your family is so exalted, why are you left alone in this forest?"

"Of course, of course. If a woman walks alone, some man will ask why and she must explain! Frankly, since you are probably a god, you ought to know these things anyway. I think you ask just to get an answer from me.

"And since you are so anxious to know, I will give you an answer. It's kama , 'desire,' the first and worst of the thirteen dispositions that make up our bodies.^[16] Desire, lust, is what it is, and it comes from that basic disposition called 'energy,' [rajas ]. As the Bhagavad Gita says, 'Greed, lust, cruelty, fraud, cowardice, and desire all spring from "energy".' Call it kama , call it lust, call it what you like—my heart is bursting with it! Before I ached with one question: 'Where? Where is he?' Then I saw you and thought you might satisfy my desires. Of course, women of high rank do not understand their kama , and even if they did, they would not express it openly like this. I am only telling you, Rama, because the pain is too great!

"And this kama is eating me alive, destroying me life and limb, consuming my life force [uyir ] inside. That force when heated by the fires of kama swirls around and rises straight to the head and sometimes kills. My pain is great, Rama, and if you don't do something, I will die, right here, in front of you!

"But don't think I am blameworthy. No, this is the work of god Kama, whose five arrows are five flowers: the red lotus, the mango, the asoka, the jasmine, and the lily.^[17] Each flower-arrow has a different quality and causes a different condition when it hits; those effects are part of a long, magnificent story, but for now I'll just say that the worst is the red lotus arrow. When it strikes, whatever is in the heart grows and grows, like a lotus stalk, until it bursts your brain! I'm sure Kama has hit me with that red lotus arrow because my kama is rising, higher and higher ... and now you have come. Please help me, make love to me, marry me!"

[Rama ] "Shamelessly you roll your blazing red eyes at me! No decency, no pride! What kind of a woman would speak to me like this?"

"What you say may be true, sir. But remember that I have not come here of my own free will. No, Kama's arrows have driven me. Understand, too, that this lust is not mine; it belongs to nature. You must know that proverb: 'Kama is the source of the whole world; it's impartial.' Realize that this energy, this passion, is everywhere, in every one of us, in every kind of being. If a man desires a woman and wants to marry her, that's kama —it's a neutral force. Like the proverb says,

'Kama is blind.'^[18] But it takes intelligence and maturity to know how to act on kama , and when. If it is not satisfied, it brings great pain, even death. Sure, the sastras say that we must avoid this disease of kama , but it's not that simple. Our bodies are a balance of three dispositions—purity, energy, darkness—and kama is part of energy. Get rid of kama and you lose the balance. Of course, when kama swirls around inside in hot gusts of wind it is dangerous, but it's not my doing, and you must do something to save me!"

"But ... but I cannot possibly marry you! No matter what you say, you are a demon and I am a human. A demon-human marriage is not permitted, and that's the end of it."

"Yes, that's true. Whenever the serious business of marriage arises, questions of compatibility must be considered. As you probably know, there are ten primary ways in which the partners should be compatible, and the most important of these is disposition. If the boy and girl don't match in that, then they shouldn't marry even if the other areas are compatible. But if the two are matched in disposition, then all other issues are inconsequential. Remember, too, that there is more than one kind of marriage, eight to be exact. The first seven—Brahmin, divine, demon, human, and so on—are traditional marriages, but the eighth, Gandharva marriage, is entirely different. According to the sastras , it's for a couple matched only in disposition, when questions of caste, money, and status do not apply. If two people are joined in love, that's enough. And you don't need to run away either, you can marry right then and there."

"But it's not proper."

"And don't think that this Gandharva marriage is just my idea. No, the Vedas have described it, in much detail, as you probably know. Besides, if you agree to this marriage, don't worry about getting permission from anyone else because my brothers will be pleased to know that their sister found such an eligible man. Rama, they'll treat you like a brother-in-law and offer gifts to satisfy all that you desire—you'll rule the Three Worlds—that's the life I am offering you. How can you say no?"

"Yes, the law books do accept that kind of marriage, but I am already married. Besides, you're a fraud. You're not a human. You're a demon in disguise. And what do I want with the pleasures you offer. My home is Ayodhya, a heaven on earth, where Laksmi resides. I didn't leave it and come to the forest to enjoy demon pleasures with you. Go!"

"Rama, how can I leave you? Please, you must relieve this kama pain. Do not torment me."

[Realizing that Rama has not returned, Sita approaches the river. Seeing Sita, Surpanakha cries out :]

"Rama, watch out! There's a dangerous woman behind you! She's a sorceress, who'll bewitch you. Wrapped in the veil of illusion, she's maya herself. I can see right through her—she's one of those thieving demons and nothing more. Look, her every movement betrays her inferior birth. Tell her to leave, and then take care of me."

[Rama ] "I finally understand your hidden intentions. They say, 'The face mirrors the mind,' and now I see your thoughts in your words.^[19] Listen, why not approach my brother? He might accept you."^[20]

[Sita ] "Don't speak to her like that. It might seem like play, but we'll suffer later for your cruel humor. Besides, Laksmana will be angry if he finds out. Let's go back to the ashram."^[21]

[Rama and Sita leave Surpanakba, who speaks to herself :]

"So, that woman tells him to go and he goes. Her black hair is beautiful and her body shines like gold—no wonder he follows her. Obviously, I'll have to destroy her first; and Rama mentioned a brother ... well, let that be for now, evening is coming and tomorrow is another day. But where to lie down for the night? These little jasmine flowers will make a nice, soft bed. There we are ... but oh, this kama pains me even at night. Ah, here comes the full moon rising in the sky, yet even its cool beams drive into me like iron spears!

Waxing moon, I'll make a curry of you and then eat Rama, too;
But no, the mountain wind like harsh Death's spear
Enters my seething breast.
And now I will sleep.

"Moon God! Yours is no easy task for your beams must cool the earth scorched hot by the thousand-rayed sun, but even now, in the last and coolest hour of night, you burn me more than the noontime sun. I can't stand the pain! I'll ... I'll rip you from the sky, cook you up like a curry and devour you! Then I'll grab that troublesome, lovemaker Kama and eat him, too.

"What's this? Ah, that cool southern breeze, which cures disease when it touches the body.^[22] The winds that blow into our body have no precise names, only the directions from which they come, like 'east wind,' 'south wind,' and so forth. Very few people understand

the nature of these winds, although the sastras tell us that winds from the east, south, and north can cause illness, whereas this southern wind—it brings health.

"Why the southern breeze? Well, it originates from Mt. Potikai in the south, where Agastya, the great Siddha adept lives with his wife in the full grace of Siva. From the edge of his ashram the wind blows, descends into the hot, barren plains where it begins to heat up, then drops into deep pools of water and runs through the stalks of red lotus deep in the muddy bottom. Absorbing the lotus fragrance, the southern wind blows on, mixing with jasmine and lilies until it becomes as pure and clear as a mind that has seen into the inner meaning of an esoteric text. For this reason, the southern wind will cure diseases for which there is no cure.

"Of course, there's a special time when all of us can be cured, during the last seven days of Panguni and first fifteen days of Cittirai, during the Fire Asterism, when the sun burns with intense heat and Murukan resides on his mountain at Palani. Anyone who journeys to Palani at this time will gain his blessings. Of course, you will receive Murukan's blessings anytime you worship him, but if you go during the Fire Asterism and stand on top of Palani mountain, the southern wind will cure the most incurable disease.

"Bah, what good is this southern wind to me? It's blowing right now as I lie beneath this full moon, yet the to moon's rays burn like a blast from a blacksmith's forge, like hot spears thrust into my chest! And what's this I'm sitting on? Burns like cinders, but they are soft flower petals. Damn them! I'll rip them up, everywhere, in every corner of this forest, and destroy the whole place. What's that? That noise? Oh, the love call of the red-headed nightingales. They are inseparable lovebirds, they say. If the male leaves to get food, he returns immediately when she calls him in their bird language. But if he doesn't, then she dies on the spot. But me? Their love song only makes me wince in pain."

[Indra appears above and speaks :]

"Gods, hear what happened on the following morning when Surpanakha returned to Rama's ashram. Rama put Laksmana in charge of Sita and went off to bathe, but when Surpanakha tried to grab Sita, Laksmana caught her and almost killed her. What an auspicious moment it was! The day that Surpanakha's breasts, ear, and nose were cut off was the day that Ravana's crown began to fall. Never-

theless, we must consider the background—this didn't simply 'happen.' When Ravana conquered his brother Kubera, took his nine treasures, including his flower-chariot, and went on a victory march which took him to Kailasa, that was the beginning of his end, but Laksmana's mutilation of his sister was the next step toward that final moment when his jeweled crown would fall."

Kama and Its Defense

Reluctantly, I interrupt Indra's lecture on the force of fate, which lasts for more than an hour, so that we may consider the Sambukumaran episode as an early and clear indication of how the puppet tradition recontextualizes Kampan's bhakti poem. Rama's meeting with Surpanakha, into which this folk episode is inserted, is an explosive mixture of eroticism, mutilation, and deception that has stimulated multiple revisions in Rama literature.^[23] Compared to his Valmiki model, for example, Kampan complicated and amplified this encounter between Rama and demon by softening the figure of Surpanakha, and the Kerala puppet play moves further, much further, in the same direction. Adding the Sambukumaran episode, in fact, does nothing less than shift the fulcrum of the epic plot, the conflict between ascetic avatar and demonic kama . When Laksmana kills Surpanakha's son, the bhakti mission falters, and when Rama and Surpanakha meet shortly thereafter, its assumption of a moral separation between divine Rama and lustful demons crumbles.

Despite this radical effect, the Sambukumaran episode cannot be considered apocryphal (a concept inappropriate for a composite text such as the Rama story) because it is found in a broad band of Rama stories: the puppet plays of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala; the chitrakathi tradition of southern Maharashtra; literary Ramayanas in Sanskrit, Prakrit (Jaina texts), Assamese, Telugu, Kannada, Thai, and Malay; an Oriya Mahabharata ; and surely other unreported texts, both folk and literary.^[24] In these versions, Surpanakha's son is known variously as Sambuka, Japasura, Darasinga, Vikkirasingan, Kumbhakash, Jambukumara, Sunkumara, Kulaivalarakkan, and Chakrabhubala, but we will call the boy "Sambukumaran," after the Kerala puppet play. The episode begins after Rama, Laksmana, and Sita have reached Pancavati and Rama sends Laksmana to build a hut. Its core event is Laksmana's accidental killing of Sambukumaran with a sword that has miraculously

fallen into his (Laksmana's) hands while Sambukumaran is engaged in religious austerities (tapas ), although in some versions Sambukumaran dies from Laksmana's errant arrow aimed at a rhinoceros.^[25]

To this core, several texts prefix another episode that provides motivation for Sambukumaran's tapas : Surpanakha's husband has been killed by Ravana during his victory march; Sambukumaran then enters meditation in order to win a sword with which to avenge his father's death, but the weapon ends up in Laksmana's hands. Among the numerous variations of this prefixed episode, my favorite is a folk story that traces the family tensions in Lanka back to Ravana's wife's (Mandodari's) refusal to give meat to her sister-in-law, Surpanakha; things heat up when Surpanakha's husband temporarily swallows Ravana, who later induces his sister to kill her husband in return for his promise that her son, Sambukumaran, will inherit the throne of Lanka. Surpanakha does her part, but when Ravana reneges on his, she plots to kill her brother and sends Sambukumaran into the forest to perform austerities in order to gain a sword fit for the task.^[26] Some combination of these two events (the death of Surpanakha's husband and the death of her son) is told in many south Indian Rama texts. The Kerala puppeteers sing only of Sambukumaran's death, but they do refer to his father's death in oral commentary, as do the Tamil Uttara Kanda (attributed to Ottakkuttan) and Valmiki's Uttara Kanda.^[27] Kampan mentions neither death.

For these reasons, rather than saying that the Sambukumaran episode is "inserted" into Kampan's epic, it might be more accurate to say that Kampan omits it. This perspective allows us to view the episode within the broader framework of Rama-story literature, which the puppet play borrows and reworks; certainly the death of a demon-boy engaged in tapas is not unique to the Sambukumaran episode. I am thinking here of the controversial killing of Sambuka, as told in Valmiki, the Tamil Uttara Kanda, and elsewhere: when Rama learns that a Sudra is engaged in tapas in a tree, a violation of dharma that has caused the death of a young Brahmin boy, he kills the Sudra with a sword, gains a boon, and revives the Brahmin; later texts identify the Sudra victim as Sambuka. Initially I dismissed any connection between the Sambuka and the Sambukumaran stories because the shared motifs of tapas , tree, and death by sword are commonplace in Hindu mythology; even the similarity in the victims' names proves little since Surpanakha's son has many names. Motives are also dissimilar: Rama kills Sambuka in order to maintain proper dharma, whereas Laksmana kills Sambukumaran unintentionally.^[28]

After reading more versions of these stories, however, I believe that they are multiforms generated by a pattern with three elements: killing, innocent victim, and grief. By substitutions in these elements, a telling of one story can easily metamorphose into another. First, as frequently occurs in Rama literature, Laksmana takes Rama's place, here as the killer of the Sudra.^[29] Second, the Sudra is conflated with Sambukumaran; in one text, for example, Sambuka is cursed to be a tree and is released when Rama cuts down the tree.^[30] Third, the role of mother grieving for her dead son, the Brahmin wife in the Sambuka story, is assumed by Surpanakha in the Sambukumaran story. These three changes produce role reversals—innocent victim (Sambuka) becomes sympathetic hero (Sambukumaran/Surpanakha); hero (Rama/Laksmana) becomes villain—just as we have in the puppet play, perhaps as an attempt to redress Sambuka's unjust death.

These speculations aside, the killing of Sambukumaran in Kerala commands our attention because, as the opening episode in the puppeteers' narrative, it frames their telling of Rama's story. Rama has met and killed demons in the forest before, in the Birth Book and earlier in the Forest Book, but here at Pancavati he faces his adversary in the more intimate and pleasing shape of Ravana's sister, Surpanakha. Although it appears to be accidental, their meeting is the pivot of the epic plot and joins the two halves—the events in Ayodhya and those in Lanka—which may have circulated as two separate tales.^[31] No matter how the epic is told, later action is invariably a consequence of this early encounter: because Rama rejects Surpanakha, she tries to harm Sita, for which Laksmana mutilates her, which causes her to seek revenge by inciting Ravana's love for Sita whom he abducts, which leads Rama and his armies to Lanka, where he kills Ravana. Or, as the puppeteers' Indra (following Kampan) says above, when Laksmana cut off Surpanakha's nose and breasts, Ravana's ten heads began to fall. Within this causal chain of events generated by the meeting at Pancavati, the moral positions of Kampan's Rama and Surpanakha are uncomplicated. We may sympathize with Surpanakha and believe her punishment was severe—she was, after all, smitten by love—but Kampan reminds us that she is evil, "a congenital disease about to strike its victim."^[32] Besides, Rama showed restraint and followed dharma in not killing the demon-woman, who might have killed or injured Sita. Mutilating poor Surpanakha was unfortunate, but eradicating demons is Rama's mission.

In folk tellings of the Rama story, however, Surpanakha acquires other emotions and motives. In one text reported by a missionary in Kerala, for example, she spies Rama only after all exhaustive search through the

Three Worlds to locate a suitable husband, during which each of the major gods is interviewed and rejected—even Visnu is too "dark."^[33] Only Rama, it seems, will do. The puppet play also supplies Surpanakha (and later her brother) with another motive when it positions Sambukumaran's death at the beginning of the epic plot. Retaliation drives Surpanakha to "get even" in many folk tellings of the Rama story, especially by instigating rumors in Ayodhya about Sita's infidelity, but even then her earlier behavior at Pancavati remains little more than lust. In the puppet play, on the other hand, she enters the story looking to avenge her sows death. That event scrambles the roles that Rama and Surpanakha play in the epic and entangles them in a more complex net of motives: after the death of Sambukumaran, the puppet play seeks not simply victory over the demons but also revenge against Rama.^[34]

This shift in moral logic occurs very quickly in the puppet play. Although the opening scene at Pancavati presents an earthly realm that matches Rama's righteousness, the third verse sung in performance reveals danger at its edge in the form of the demons whom Rama must destroy. Hardly a half hour of narration has passed and already the puppet play has lined up the opposing forces in the central conflict of the epic—divine perfection threatened by demonic evil. To this point, the third verse, the puppet play follows Kampan, yet these battle lines are drawn so abruptly and unambiguously that one suspects they have been set up only in order to be tested by the subsequent string of thirteen folk verses which comprise the Sambukumaran episode.

Cracks in the smooth surface of the avatar mission first appear when the intrepid Laksmana, sent into the forest by Rama, mistakes a cuckoo's chatter for wild animal noises and runs for cover. His next miscalculation, killing the pious Sambukumaran, is not so humorous since it sets in motion the sequence of events leading to Sita's capture and near death. Fearful of the consequences of his terrible act, Laksmana nevertheless returns to Rama and builds the hut, which prompts Rama to exclaim:

Like the great Vedas
     which drive out confusion
Like the pure Milk Ocean
     surrounding Visnu's island
My brother has built a shelter
     as perfect as the Ganga itself.^[35]

Despite the repeated metaphors of purity in this Kampan verse, which recall the perfection at Pancavati in the initial verses, we know that the

hut is stained with Sambukumaran's blood. And with it, the very purpose of the avatar mission has been subverted—evil is let loose in the forest by those sent to remove it.

Moral distinctions between Rama and the demons continue to narrow when Surpanakha appears on the cloth screen. Whereas in Kampan she enters the epic "inflamed with desire, the instrument of a cruel fate,"^[36] in Kerala she is the victim of a cruel fate and cries out over the dead body of her son:

Is cruel death your reward, for long tapas to the gods?
Wearing fresh flowers you came, and you wear them now
Riding to Siva's heaven in death's golden bier;
I've lost you forever, my son, Sambukumaran.
Covered with turmeric and ash, I prayed for a son at Siva's feet;
Now your golden body lies in little pieces at my feet;
Who did this, Sambukumaran?
     Who makes me collapse in grief?

At the emotional center of the folk episode, these verses are sung like Tamil funeral songs (oppari ): the puppeteer's voice cracks with pain and rises, halts, and falls spasmodically. This outcry against a breakdown in religious logic (Why death for "long tapas to the gods"?) signals the role reversal mentioned above and expresses the folk demand for moral balance. Surpanakha's appeal for justice to an uncaring god is angry and mocking (and addressed to Siva not Visnu), but she is sympathetic, a mother who has lost her son, a woman who has been wronged, in short, another of the well-loved, pious demons in Hindu mythology.^[37] Hungry to gobble up the human meat she smells ("Brahma may create them, but these humans really stink!"), Ravana's sister is no angel, but neither is she an embodiment of evil and lust. Like her son and her brother, Surpanakha is a devotee of Siva.

Ethical barriers between demon and avatar, so hurriedly erected in the opening scene of the puppet play, are breached again when Rama first speaks to Surpanakha. Although Rama's speech closes the folk episode and returns the puppet play to Kampan's verses, the puppeteers continue to depart from the bhakti epic by altering verses and adding commentary. The angry Surpanakha is suddenly transformed when she spies Rama on the river bank, but first she must change her outer form to match this new emotion; her oversized arms and squat legs, missile-like breasts and bumpy nose clearly will not do, so she clants Laksmi's mantra and her demon puppet is replaced by a beautiful human puppet.

Both puppet play and epic text compare Surpanakha to Laksmi (one of the many misidentifications that reveal truths in this scene), but in the drama-house, Rama's speech rings with an excitement not found in Kampan's restrained verses: "Well! Well!," he cries, "Who is this lovely creature?" Although his first words to her, in the following verse, differ only slightly from his words in the printed text, they alter his meaning entirely. Kampan's verse turns on the incompatibility between Rama as "source of the Vedas" (veta mutal ) and Surpanakha as a "silly, young woman" (petai ); one printed commentary points out that she is a "silly, young woman" precisely because she is ignorant of Rama as the "source of the Vedas."^[38] In the puppet play, however, this defining distance between speakers is reduced when the puppeteers omit veta mutal and alter petai to an endearment by adding "peacock" ("lovely peacock!"). With these minor changes in the verse, llama now speaks to Surpanakha as a man infatuated by a woman's beauty.^[39]

The impropriety of union between omniscient god and deluded demon, the crux of Kampan's scene, is again undercut in a later verse, this time by the alteration of a single letter.^[40] Arguing with Surpanakha that humans cannot marry demons Rama is forced to suppress a laugh at her stupidity (her petai ) because, as the printed commentary explains, "loud laughter would not be appropriate to his excellence [ menmai ]." When the puppeteers chant the same verse, however, Rama's "laughter" (nakai ) becomes Surpanakha's "beauty" (vakai ), so that the verse is stood on its head: Rama does not laugh at Surpanakha; her beauty pulls at his heart. The difference between the two verses is this:

In Kampan's poem, the silly (again, petai ) demoness may deserve Rama's secret mockery, but in the drama-house, Rama is far too infatuated with her to laugh. When Rama does reject Surpanakha's offer of marriage, we hear no derision in his words for he must suppress not his contempt but his desire for her. For her part, Surpanakha is not unaware of Rama's attraction to her. Consider her tart reply (in the commentary) to Rama's sarcastic question about her lack of an escort in the forest:

"Frankly, since you are probably a god, you ought to know these things anyway. I think you ask just to get an answer from me." After accusing Rama of attempting to chat her up, a somewhat disingenuous claim since she was love-struck at first sight, Surpanakha does offer an explanation for her behavior: it is kama , or sexual desire.

In Kampan, her defense of kama is confined to one, moving verse ("It may not be proper for women of high rank to speak when kama afflicts them, but what I feel is killing me. I have no one; what can I do? Please protect me from this work of god kama").^[42] Her apology, in effect, is a confession that enables Rama to see through her disguise and denounce her as "base" and "shameless." At one point, Surpanakha attempts to convince Rama that, even though she was born a demon, she has renounced evil and embraced the way of dharma, but when Rama is unconvinced and does not speak, she again plays the silly (petai ) lover and imagines his silence as a sign of his desire for her. Kampan's Surpanakha, in sum, is a fool whose words and actions reveal what they are intended to conceal. In the puppet play, by contrast, she does not resort to wheedling deceit or pretence of virtue. After declaring her lust for Rama (in the Kampan verse quoted above), Surpanakha launches into a robust defense: "realize that this energy, this passion, [kama ] is everywhere, in every one of us, in every kind of being." Love and lust are natural and necessary, she instructs Rama, and should not, and probably can not, be eliminated.

Surpanakha's impassioned defense of kama as universal and morally neutral is an explicit challenge to the theology of many devotional texts. To Kampan's Rama, kama is the lustful appetite that threatens his ascetic mission, but to the puppeteers' Surpanakha, kama ("Call it kama , call it lust, call it what you like") is blind to distinctions and afflicts demon and avatar alike. Her mistaken identification of Rama as Kama (the god of love) thus contains a disturbing truth.

In this opening scene, then, in Rama's confrontation with kama , the puppet play enacts its interpretation of the core conflict in the Rama story. Lurking like a dark shadow at the edge of perfection in Pancavati, Surpanakha's love for Rama is mirrored in (and causes) Ravana's love for Sita, and both are outbreaks of the demonic force that Rama must defeat. This is the true war in bhakti Ramayanas—a story of the good prince exiled to the forest where his asceticism is tested and his battles with lustful, violent women (and men) are moral victories.^[43] Temptation of the ascetic is an old theme in Hindu mythology, which bhakti rewrote. Whereas in the early myths the sage is seduced and his loss of spiritual power produces a more balanced distribution of forces, in

Kampan and other bhakti Ramayanas, the ascetic avatar must retain power in order to save those who would seduce or conquer him. Countering this claim that isolation produces moral power, the puppet play, like the early myths, exposes false ascetics and their inherently unstable seclusion. Rama's war on kama and Surpanakha's defense of it exemplify the distance between the bhakti ideal of isolated perfection and the folk ideal of balanced relations.

Balance is the goal in many folk Ramayanas and in Tamil folklore, generally. For instance, Yama, the king of the dead and final arbitrator of future lives, is known as the Balancer (caman ) because he metes out punishments to those who cheat servants, mistreat women, or underpay tale-tellers; should he falter and favor the guilty, a huge mountain dangling by a hair in the sky will fall and crush him. Lack of impartiality also plagues husbands, such as the polygamous Murukan, who is disqualified from arbitrating a dispute, and the moon, who is cursed to lose his power because he fails to treat his (thirty-two) wives equally. But balance is more than a metaphor in the huge ledger that Yama's accountant, Cittiraputra, pores over to determine what fate awaits each person at death, and even bodily health, the puppeteers instruct us, depends upon the correct ratio of inhalations to exhalations. Proper balance is thus required for cosmic order, social justice, and individual longevity.

In her defiant assertion that kama is not unique to demons, Surpanakha speaks in this idiom of equilibrium, the language of other folk texts in which Sita harbors desire for her ten-headed captor, Laksmana covets Sita, and Surpanakha, in her next birth, marries Laksmana.^[44] If, as Bob Goldman has suggested, the demons represent dark forces exiled from Rama, the puppet play seeks to restore a prior balance.^[45] Recoiling from this mixture of categories, bhakti theology maintains the separation of Rama-Visnu, an insularity which in many Rama texts explains why the avatar descended in the first place.^[46] The story goes that the earth has sunk under the weight of the demons' evil, a manifestation of a moral imbalance that must be rectified, and the problem grows worse when it turns out that all the great gods—Indra, Siva, Brahma—are ineligible for the task because each is somehow associated with the demons. Finally, Visnu is pressed into service since he alone is untainted by that association. But when Visnu truly descends and appears on the white cloth screen in Kerala, his isolation is short-lived because the puppet play knows more than the bhakti text can afford to admit. Kama is blind, Surpanakha said.

Chapter 5
Killing Vali: Rama's Confession

As Rama moves further into the forest, his encounter at Pancavati is succeeded by a more dangerous entanglement with the natural world, an alliance with monkeys that leads the avatar to kill their king, Vali. The killing of Vali is perhaps the most contested episode in the whole of Ramayana literature, for to the violence of the Surpanakha episode it adds dilemmas of loyalty to friends, to brothers, and to god. Once again Rama battles against passion, this time in the form of male aggression, lust, and competition, and once again the ascetic prince will conquer and reform this dangerous animality. Although the puppeteers alter Kampan's Viii episode less extensively than they do his Surpanakha episode—no new characters or events are added—they nevertheless continue to undermine the bhakti text by narrowing the ethical distance between the avatar and his adversaries. Looking at the arrow in his chest, Vali condemns Rama in many texts (including Kampan), but the puppet play takes a crucial second step and forces the man-god to admit his error and ask forgiveness from his victim. In telling this story of Vali's death, the puppet play once again tempers a theology of separation with a moral reciprocity.

Skipping to the Vali story, we leap over large portions of the plot (the second half of the Forest Book and the first section of the Kiskindha Book). But this is also the emphasis of the puppet play, which races through these intervening events with an uninspired commentary; and many of those events are covered here by a prose summary with which the puppeteers introduce the performance translated in this chapter.^[1] Yet, this is a special night, and when the puppeteers approach the death

of Vali, the pace slows, special pujas are conducted, and the barrel-shaped cenda drums resound across the temple grounds.^[2]

The performance of the Vail episode translated in this chapter was sung in 1989 by (appropriately enough) two brothers; they belong to the Mannatiyar caste and represent a Malayalam branch of the puppet-play tradition in Palghat. In the western reaches of the tradition, where Tamil is less well understood, Malayalis are the primary puppeteers, memorize Kampan's verses from a Malayalam translation, and use mostly Malayalam in their commentary; in Palghat, however, the brothers appear to be the only Malayali performing troupe.^[5] When I visited their ancestral house, a spacious but dilapidated building surrounding an inner courtyard, the older brother took me into a dusty room, empty except for a large wooden chest. He explained that he and his brother had learned the two-thousand-odd verses of the puppet play and some of its commentary (especially the piramanam quotations) from their father and their grandfather, who wrote out the verses in notebooks, in Malayalam, which the brothers memorized by reciting hour after hour. Opening the heavy lid of the chest, he pulled out those battered and torn notebooks, scraps of palm-leaf manuscripts, and books that they use for reference, including the Kanta Puranam, Visarasagaram (a compendium of advice), and Nannul (an old Tamil treatise on gram-marl all in Malayalam. Their father became ill and stopped performing in 1967, passing on his set of five performance sites to his sons. One site is Mannur, the location of the performance translated below, where the brothers sing the Rama story for sixty consecutive nights.

Mannur is distinctive also for its two-storied drama-house, the brothers' home during their two-month stint. They sleep inside and leave only to go to the bathroom or to eat at the tea stall erected for their benefit at the side of the drama-house. High off the ground, with no electricity and thus no microphone, they are cut off from the outside world during those sixty performances, which attract virtually no viewers and are little known outside the village. When I first recorded them in 1986, the brothers were reserved, almost uninterested in the recordings, but their precise, measured style of delivery intrigued me, so I returned three years later determined to record more. I knew that they would be singing at the big drama-house during the Malayalam month of Kumbham (mid-February to mid-March), and I checked my earlier field notes to anticipate the night when they would sing the Vali episode. I arranged for a taxi from Palghat and waited for nightfall. Riding in the taxi as it rumbled over country roads toward the temple, I began

to reflect: "It's been three years since I've seen them, and I'm coming (as always) unannounced." Remembering that there was no electricity at this drama-house, I had brought extra batteries for my tape recorder, and that made me feel more confident. Still, personal pride, money haggling, reluctant temple officials, virtually anything, can and sometimes had prevented me from recording in the past. I was expectant but anxious.

After an hour, the car turned onto an unlit road then onto a narrow, rocky lane and soon bumped to a halt in front of the temple at about ten o'clock. Having determined that I could return to Palghat by bus the next morning, I paid the driver and watched the taxi disappear. It was dark and absolutely deserted, but I shouldered my recording equipment, climbed up the ladder of the drama-house, and peeked under the white cloth screen. In the dim light of a single kerosene lamp, I could make out their faces, which had not changed—a good sign, it seemed. Grinning hopefully, I greeted them and took a few steps forward, but no glimmer of recognition registered on their faces. Moving toward them in the near darkness, I spoke again, reminding them of the nights we had spent together in this same drama-house three years ago. They squinted at me impassively, and I began to panic: "They don't remember me; they won't let me record. But it's dark," I reassured myself, "and they can't see well. Besides they didn't show much enthusiasm on the first trip either." Sitting down on the mat opposite them, I repeated my name and rehearsed our past association, but still nothing moved in their faces. Then, I understood—of course they don't recognize me—my thick moustache and long hair of three years ago are gone! Confidence restored, I went on to chat with them about puppet plays and tonight's performance, which turned out, miracle of miracles, to be the Vali episode. But suddenly, just when I thought I had established rapport and started to unpack my recording equipment, they stood up and my heart sunk ("They're not going to cooperate after all; a wasted trip!") until I realized that they were responding to the cenda music outside.^[4] The procession from the temple had arrived; soon the lamps were lit and the performance began.

Inside the drama-house, the brothers took their usual positions: the large, chunky younger man sat bolt upright on the wooden bench, while the older man, very lean and bony, preferred the mats. In a corner, two musicians slept. An assistant, a slightly stunted man of undetermined age, acted as a support for both brothers, supplying the necessary "ahhhh" when they paused for breath during the commentary, tending

the flames in the coconut shells, and, most important, fetching tea and cigarettes. As on other nights I had spent in this special drama-house, the brothers delivered a sparse exegesis of the verses, quite unlike the digressive, tale-telling commentaries of most puppeteers. After jointly reciting the four-line verse, one brother repeated the first line and the other explicated it; each of the three remaining lines they treated in the same manner, after which they chanted a new verse and began the pattern again. At all times, whether singing verses or declaiming commentary, their speech remained unpunctuated by any modulation of voice or shift of register, while their phrases issued forth like hard, solid blocks on a verbal assembly line. But what they lacked in texture, they made up for in concentration and precision. Throughout this long night of the Vali episode, their smooth brown faces seldom moved and their eyes rarely opened, although occasionally they tightened their lips or squinted hard as if to gain control over a line or an idea. I remember very clearly their hands, thumb pressed to forefinger, inscribing word-images in the lamp-lit shadows.

The translation begins at the end of the "Song of the Drama-House" with the prose summary, which makes a transition from the previous night's performance.

Killing Vali

"Where were we, Muttuppattar, in the story from last night?"

"Oh, great events, great events, Gangaiyati."

"Go on, tell us."

"Still searching for Sita, who had been carried off to Lanka by the ten-headed Ravana, Rama and Laksmana were befriended by Hanuman, who introduced them to Sugriva. Sugriva then told them he was hiding from his brother, Vali, and asked for their assistance in regaining his kingdom; Rama pledged his aid and demonstrated his strength by shooting an arrow through seven trees. Later as Sugriva, Hanuman, Rama, and Laksmana approached Kiskindha, Tara warned her husband, Vali, that trouble was near, and when Sugriva challenged Vali to fight, Tara tried to stop him, saying that Sugriva was not alone and had the support of Rama. But Vali declared her fears mistaken since Rama, the embodiment of dharma itself, would never

intervene in the affairs of brothers; then, calling on Rama's very name, Vali fought Sugriva. As they fought, Rama was unable to distinguish one monkey from the other and told Sugriva to wear a scarf around his neck. Again the monkey brothers battled, and this time, hiding behind a banyan tree, Rama shot an arrow that pierced Vali's chest and knocked him to the ground. Confused, Vali looked at the arrow and spoke."

"Whose arrow is this? Whose could it be? Narayana's? No, he would never use deception to attack an enemy. Could it be Siva's arrow? It doesn't look like a trident, and besides he wouldn't shoot his own devotee. Maybe it's Indra's weapon, but he's my father and no father shoots his own son. It might be Murukan's spear, but he has nothing against me. Then, whose is it? [ Vali rips the arrow from his chest and inspects it. ]

"Two letters I see: ra and ma. Rama! Can his arrow be the mantra of my death? Rama, come closer to me. [Rama puppet stands over fallen Vali. ] You who support these many worlds with your compassion, you who are soft as a lotus, why did you shoot this arrow at me? There must be some reason, but I have never done anything against you. You are learned in the dharma of bowmanship, and this is not the first time you have used a bow, for you are the son of Dasaratha. Them why did you attack without cause? Explain."

"The dharma of bowmanship, proper conduct, morality and such are matters unknown to you, animal. First, one must know brahman and that understanding is beyond you."

"Rama, what you say may very well apply to the demons, especially to the one who ran off with your wife. But we are monkeys. Don't confuse the two categories."

"Such disrespect is not proper, monkey! After all, I know that story about you—when you hurled the dead water buffalo Dundhubi into the sage's ashram. Like Ravana, you have harassed Brahmins and so, like Ravana, you are my foe. Thus, I had every right to—"

"No. You erred by shooting an arrow at an innocent monkey. It was not me, but Ravana—that demon-raja luxuriating in his palace, in his countless halls of silver and gold and emerald, in his spacious rooms with high windows and ceilings and delicately carved pavilions—it was Ravana who abducted Sita. This arrow belongs in his chest, not mine! Not only that, but you hid behind a tree and shot at me, like

some low-caste hunter! From behind a tree! What courage! Tell me, Rama, is your bow so weak that you must resort to deception?"

"Listen, monkey, I acted to protect dharma. I lost my kingdom and my wife; and so when Sugriva told me he had lost them, too, I pledged to protect him. I had to fight you as I must fight all enemies of dharma."

"And who are you to speak to me of dharma? Your act is a black mark on the solar dynasty. A dark, dark stain, Rama. Even the clear moon has a blemish in the center—everyone can see that—but you were born into the dynasty of the sun, that flawless sphere circling around Mr. Meru, Mr. Kailasa, Vaikunta, Brahma's heaven, around the fifty million yojanas of the earth's circumference in a chariot ninety million yojanas wide and fifty-one million yojanas long. And, now, that perfect orb has been scarred by your arrow!"

"You speak wondrous words, Vali, but you understand nothing of dharma. Besides, what of your own actions in the past?

You told your brother to rule the kingdom
Until you killed Mayavi and he waited for you;
Yet in hot anger you returned, seized his wife and the throne!
Tell me, Vali, what wrong had he done to you?

"When you failed to return from the cave where you battled Mayavi, Sugriva was saddened by your apparent death. Others tried to console him and urged him to accept the throne, which he did; and when you returned, victorious over Mayavi, Sugriva fell at your feet and begged for forgiveness, but he received god's grace, not yours. Instead you drove him away, took his wealth and wife, showing neither wisdom nor generosity, yet you presume to advise me on my conduct."

"Rama, you simply don't understand us ...

No marriage by those ancient customs
None of that righteous conduct of kings
Guides us who follow where our emotions lead,
Oh, Rama, whose weapon drips with ghee and flesh.^[5]

"I see your point, Rama—you shot at me because I took my brother's wife—but that reasoning only shows your ignorance. Sugriva may have said that I committed wrongs against him and his wife, but among us monkeys there is no 'marriage' and no rule that we must 'marry' the women we sleep with. You are a human, a warrior, so

you marry one woman, only one, whereas we wander in the forest looking for food, and if we want to, we have sex. That's all. What is right for you is not necessarily right for us."

"Vali, dharma means—"

"Can't you see, Rama, that there's no wrong in what I did? We monkeys are another, a lower type of being. Actually, I didn't sleep with Sugriva's wife because she's my sister; but even if I had, there would be no wrong in it. Judge your own, not us, Rama.

Do our women have crescent-moon foreheads,
Or possess grace and chastity, like yours?
Is it wrong to make love deep in the forest as we hunt for fruit?
Tell me, Protector of the Right Way, what is right for us?^[6]

"Rama, your women regard chastity as a virtue, while that just isn't so for us, even among royalty. Your people follow marriage rules, consult horoscopes and so forth, but we monkeys don't do anything like that. We make love when we feel like it—that's the essence of what I'm saying: we are different. Besides, as Visnu, you should show compassion."

"Maybe all you say is true, Vali, but you are not an ordinary monkey. A devotee of Siva and son of Indra, you ought to follow the path of dharma, yet what you did with Sugriva and his kingdom does not befit a person of your noble background. And remember, even animals may win liberation. There's the story of the elephant Gajendra who won moksa, so your 'animal defense' is not valid."^[7]

"I'm not an elephant."

"Birds, too, may attain moksa. When Sita was carried off by Ravana, the eagle Jatayu heard her cries and knocked off Ravana's crown but lost his life because he told the truth while Ravana lied about the location of his life force.^[8] In the end, however, he won liberation."^[9]

"No matter what you say, Rama, I did absolutely nothing to justify your cruel act."

"Listen, Vali. Most important is knowing what is right and what is wrong, truth and untruth. Many beings in these worlds have this knowledge, and not all of them are humans; some are animals. And one more thing—evil may come from the gods, so don't think of yourself as an 'animal.' The law of karma is the same no matter what your birth: animal, Brahmin, Ksatriya, Vaisya, or Sudra. Good acts cause good, evil acts cause evil; and taking Sugriva's wife produced

evil. Think before you act, especially in fights between brothers, and especially when women are involved—that's the most dangerous issue of all. That is the reason for your death, not my arrow."

"Yes, but now explain your barbarous act, Rama. You speak of many things, of fight and wrong, that a Brahmin who does wrong is no better than an animal and that a righteous animal is equal to a Brahmin. Consider, then, your own actions. Born a prince, you were educated and became a wise person, a yogi; yet after studying all those sastras, you hid behind a tree and killed me, like an ill-bred hunter shooting a bird. Why did you do it? Answer me!"

[ Laksmana moves in front of Rama and faces Vali. ]

"I'll answer that, Vali. Rama hid to prevent you from seeking refuge with him. When Sugriva fell at Rama's feet and asked for protection, our lord pledged to kill anyone who was Sugriva's enemy. If he had faced you directly, you also might have asked for refuge and then what could he do? He couldn't refuse you, but neither could he renege on his pledge to Sugriva. Listen, Vali, this is not the time to argue. It's the time of your death, time to worship Rama."

"Rama, your brother has shown me the way. You are the Lord of Dharma, while I ... I'm an imperfect being, a monkey, who has spoken thoughtlessly. Now I ask for a boon: liberate me from this body. I realize that this life is full of sorrow from the moment a child is conceived, from the second the seed enters the egg and becomes an embryo; then it grows and grows, suffering all the time, until the last month comes and it is separated from its mother's body. What pain when the cord is cut! Who can comfort the baby? And we go on living, dying, born again to live and die, endlessly. Karma causes all this, and karma is caused by good and evil acts, and those acts are caused by mental impressions, and they are caused by desires, which come from ignorance, ignorance of you, the eternal cause, the imperishable essence of the universe."

"Vali, I forgive your monkey words and grant you moksa, now, at your hour of death."

"Rama, you are this, you are that, you are everything."

"Vali, ask for another boon."

"Whatever wrong Sugriva might commit, do not attack him. I drank sweet flower wine and lost my head, but if Sugriva gets drunk and

commits a misdeed, do not shoot at him for he cannot bear your strength. Your arrow would destroy him immediately; that is certain."

"Vali, I will honor your wishes and never turn against Sugriva."

"One thing more, Rama. The coming battle with the demons ... ah, how I could bind Ravana with my tail! Yes, hold him and cut off his ten heads with my own hands! But why speak of what I cannot do? I yield. Listen. Let Hanuman be my surrogate in the war against Lanka; let him be an arrow in your hand. And treat Sugriva as a brother; rely on him as you rely on Laksmana. With these two at your side, you will never falter. Never. You will cross the sea and you will kill Ravana."

"Vali, you speak kind words."

"Sugriva, my brother, listen to me. You know that we monkeys are apt to drink and act stupidly, not knowing right from wrong. Reform yourself and others and follow Rama. Do not think he is a man, he is not. He is an avatar, he is Visnu. If you ignore this fact and get lost in drink, everything will go wrong."

"I will follow him, Vali."

"Rama, send for my son, Angada."

[Angada approaches his dying father and speaks :]

"You lie dying, struck by Rama's arrow, but what harm have you ever done to anyone, at any time, anywhere in this wide world? Neither by thought nor by deed have you wronged another, yet I see in your face that Yama is here to drag your body away. But who is here to drive off Yama? I see no one."

"Do not grieve at my death, Son, since birth and death run in endless cycles for everyone. Know only that Rama is the highest existence; no thing is beyond him. Consider him your savior, not your enemy; if he is attacked by Ravana, you must shine as a jewel in his defense."

"Hard as it will be, Father, I will treat your killer as you command."^[10]

"Rama, look after my son, Angada. This is my last request—no longer son of Vali, he is son of Rama!"^[11]

"I will, Vali, and as I listen to your words, I realize how wise you

are. Now you must forgive me. You did nothing against me, absolutely nothing! My action was senseless.

I have wronged you, mighty Vali!
By the power of my tapas I restore your life;
You and your brother again shall rule
Kiskindha kingdom and its citizens."^[12]

"Rama, I appreciate your words, but realize that 'although you may revive my life and my kingdom, you cannot revive my name.

Lord of the Five Elements, listen to me.
Shall the tongues that sang of 'Inimitable Va1i' speak of 'Wounded
     Vali'?
I may escape your arrow and live but
I'll not escape cruel darts of speech.

Death I may avoid but not its undying stain.
Listen to me, Eternal Rama.
     ruling this earth for thousands of years,
I bow at your feet and plead:
     take back your arrow and give me moksa"

"Granted, Vali^[13] ."

Rama's Confession

After Vali is cremated, Sugriva crowned, and plans laid for recovering Sita when the rains cease, the epic and the puppet play move on. Notwithstanding this textual resolution of the Vali episode, the moral questions raised by Rama's action have never been put to rest and continue to provoke scholarly debate and public comment to the present day. For instance, one day several years ago in Madurai, I picked up a Tamil newspaper and read a letter to the editor titled "Rama Vindicated," which argued that the god-man had every right to slay the monkey king. It is true that the princes of Ayodhya commit other acts of questionable virtue—Laksmana kills Sambukumaran and (with Ra consent) mutilates Surpanakha, and after their long delayed reunion, Rama cruelly rejects Sita—but those actions are either inadvertent, not fatal, or cancelled by a change of heart. Rama's attack on Vali, on the other hand, is intentional, lethal, and unmitigated by misgiving. However, if "the Devil can quote scripture," the excesses of the avatar

are also convertible to theological currency, and many bhakti texts and their commentators argue that, since Rama transcends human understanding, the very injustice of his act is its justification.

In the Valmiki text and other Ramayanas in which Rama is not deified, murder committed by the ideal man was difficult enough to justify, but humans are fallible, especially in observing the niceties of dharma during battle (as the Mahabharata so amply attests). One re-tension of Valmiki's text, for example, puts forth the minimal defense that, as a warrior, Rama had every right to hunt animals and to shoot them, in the back.^[14] Later Ramayanas, however, faced a more intractable contradiction: How could Visnu's avatar as the embodiment of dharma violate dharma? That question has generated an astonishing array of explanations, rationalizations, obfuscations, and ingenious dharmic disputations. So impenetrable did this ethical dilemma become that some Jain texts preferred to avoid the problem altogether: either Laksmana (not Rama) kills Vali, or Vali is removed from the action altogether and another monkey is killed.^[15] More conventional responses in bhakti texts (including the Kamparamayanam ) are that Rama is obligated to honor his pledge to Sugriva, that Vali deserves to die because he acted reprehensibly toward Sugriva and his wife, and that death by Rama's arrow ensures moksa anyway.

But why did Rama hide when he shot the arrow? To this nagging question, answers tend to be pragmatic: Rama hid because Vali had a boon that any enemy who faced him would forfeit half his power;^[16] or he hid because (as Laksmana argues in Kampan and the puppet play) if he had faced Vali directly, the monkey-king would have asked for his protection, and compassionate Rama would surely have granted it, thus preventing him from fulfilling his promise to Sugriva. The contrivance of this excuse has not escaped even Kampan enthusiasts, one of whom conscientiously noted that the poet put "this irrelevant explanation" in the mouth of Laksmana and thus "preserved the glory of Rama."^[17] More ingenious than Laksmana's solution to the "Va1i problem" was one suggested to me by a puppeteer: if Rama had not killed him, Vali would have forced Ravana to release Sita, rendering Rama redundant and robbing Bhagavati of the spectacle of Ravana's death. In most bhakti texts, however, the decisive argument is the theological one, advanced in Kampan and elsewhere: that Rama breaks moral laws because he is beyond them and that questioning his actions, as Vali does, only demonstrates limited understanding and imperfect piety.^[18]

Such explanations and circumventions have not satisfied everyone, and condemnations of Rama's action match the justifications in variety if not ingenuity. Severe censure is frequently leveled at the hypocrisy of Rama, as god or man, who preaches one thing (dharma) yet practices another (violence); indeed, one of Vali's early denunciations of Rama sets a high standard: "I hold you to be naught else than a scoundrel covered by (the cloak of) virtue and I consider you like a well covered with grass, sin dressed in the garments of the righteous, like a fire covered by ashes."^[19] Other texts deride Rama as an abject failure, a puny man who lost his kingdom, then his wife, chased after a false deer, and only regained Sita when some monkeys and bears aided his cause. Failed Rama has proved embarrassing not only to recent Hindu nationalist campaigns that prefer to promote the victorious bowman but also to nineteenth-century intellectuals who sought an antidote to British imperialism: many ignored effeminate Rama and turned to martial Ravana.^[20] Nothing, however, matches the ferocity of the anti-Rama campaign unleashed in the twentieth century by the Dravidian movement in the Tamil country, as noted earlier. Predictably, E. V. Ramaswami Naicker, the movement's colorful founder and (despite his name) lifelong critic of the Rama story, aimed his most vehement attacks at Rama's killing of Vali; why do Brahmins (to him, north Indians), he asked, hold up a murderer as a role model?^[21] Even a temperate scholar like Achyuta Menon, writing in the 1940s, was moved to liken Rama's act to the barbarous events then unfolding in Europe.^[22]

Vali's death provokes outrage in the puppet play, too, but the Kerala folk tradition occupies a special place in the gallery of Rama literature: not content with condemnation, it forces Rama to make a startling admission of guilt. As we follow the twists and turns of the debate between Rama and Vali, I wish to emphasize not only this confession but also the method of the puppet play's radical solution to the Vali question; exemplifying the additive principle described in chapter 3, it adds little "new" content to Kampan and relies primarily on the commentary to express the rising anger of the monkey-king.

When Vali first demands to know why Rama shot an arrow at someone who has done him no wrong, Rama counters that an animal cannot understand dharma and that Vali himself has violated dharma (hurling a dead buffalo into a Brahmin ash ram and taking Sugriva's wife). Vali suddenly interrupts Rama in mid-sentence (creating a tension not possible in writing) and rebukes him as someone who "hid behind a tree and shot at [him], like some low-caste hunter." Rama then claims he

was bound by his prior pledge to Sugriva, but Vali turns Rama's earlier relativist argument (that animals occupy a different moral plane) against him: "What is right for you [Rama] is not necessarily right for us." At this point, a folk verse is chanted, not to advance a new accusation but to sharpen the anger in Vali's voice; below we can compare that folk verse with its Kampan counterpart (sung earlier):

Kampan
No marriage by those ancient customs,
None of that righteous conduct of kings
Guides us who follow where our emotions lead,
Oh, Rama, whose weapon drips with ghee and flesh.^[23]

Puppet Play
Do our women have crescent-moon foreheads
Or possess grace and chastity, like yours?
Is it wrong to make love deep in the deep forest as we hunt for fruit?
Tell me, Protector of the "Right Way," what is right for us?

Although Vali makes essentially the same point in both verses—that monkeys are less constrained than humans—his conciliatory voice in the Kampan verse bears little resemblance to the sarcastic, almost insulting tone of the folk verse.

Having lost the relativist argument, Rama changes tack and argues the universalist position that Va1i should understand dharma and that animals (such as the elephant Gajendra) are capable of liberation if they surrender to god. Rama relentlessly pursues his theme of salvation, and Va1i maintains its irrelevance to monkeys and turns the argument against him once again: if bhakti is universal and dissolves all categories (human, animal), then Rama, too, must be judged by standards of mercy and compassion. In the end, Viii mocks him: "You speak of many things, of fight and wrong .... Consider, then, your own actions... after studying all those sastras, you hid behind a tree and killed me, like an ill-bred hunter shooting a bird. Why did you do it? Answer me!" When Rama is silenced by the sheer logic of Vali's arguments, Laksmana steps forward to explain that his brother hid in order that Viii would not be able to ask him for refuge, which Rama, as the compassionate god, would not refuse.^[24] Abruptly and inexplicably, in light of his vehement attacks, Viii undergoes a change of heart, announces his acceptance of Rama as the highest god, and places his son, Angada, in Rama's care.

Up to this point in the Viii episode, the puppet play faithfully reproduces the events and arguments in the Kampan text, but the cumulative

force of Va1i's attacks on Rama in the puppet play cannot be erased by his sudden conversion. Nor does he acquit the avatar. A departure from Kampan is inevitable, and it comes when, after accepting Angada from Vali, Rama admits his guilt and asks forgiveness from his victim. In this radical turn from the Kampan text, the shadow puppet play subverts the religious lesson of the Vali episode, and it does so with a single folk verse. Kampan's episode teaches the lesson of Job, for Va1i questions but eventually acknowledges Rama's identity as the supreme god; his conversion is a function of his comprehension of Rama's unconditional love. However unconvincing and abrupt his conversion may appear, from the bhakti perspective that is just the point: only by accepting Rama's seemingly irrational and unjust action does the devotee break through petty categories and earthly existence to acquire a new vision of god. In the puppet play, on the other hand, it is Rama who acquires a new understanding when Va1i's magnanimous gesture, entrusting his son to the person who wrongly slew him, moves the god-man to recognize his own meanness. Again, and with only minimal narrative changes, the puppet play has reversed Kampan and established a new moral relationship between Rama and his enemy: the avatar is taught compassion by a monkey.

This drive for ethical balance in the puppet play advances still further when, in a bid for full restitution, Rama offers to restore Vali's life. A similar offer is proffered in Tulsidas's Hindi text, where Va1i rejects it on the theological basis that the body is meaningless, thereby showing himself to be a worthy recipient of Rama's teachings.^[25] In Kerala, however, Va1i's refusal is based on the pre-bhakti Tamil notion that death is dishonorable and that rebirth gill not remove the "stain" of his death; speaking very much like a warrior in ancient Tamil war poetry, Vali proudly refuses the gift of life: "Shall the tongues that sang of 'Inimitable Vali" speak of 'Wounded Vali"?"^[26] Although this older attitude toward death disallows a bhakti resurrection in this life, it sanctions reparation in the next life, when victims of unjust and violent deaths exact revenge, and so Va1i is reborn as the hunter who shoots the fatal arrow into Krsna's foot.^[27] This is another example of the accommodation between bhakti and folk ideals achieved by the puppet play: Vali accepts Rama as god, but his unjust death must be avenged; Surpanakha is punished, but retribution must be sought for her son's death. This pursuit of a moral balance pervades the puppet play and surfaces later in the Viii episode when Rama lectures Sugriva on kingship; the verses in

Kampan address abstract notions of dharma, whereas the folk verse sung by the puppeteers has this to say:

A raja who punishes not those who deserve
And punishes those who deserve not—
That raja will suffer on this earth
And be judged by the great judge, Yama!

Rama's admission of guilt is absent in the Kamparamayanam, yet so powerful is the drive for moral restitution that certain Tamil scholars have read it back into Kampan's poem. T. K. Chidambaram Mudaliar, one of the great Kampan scholars of the twentieth century, reconstructed what he thought was the "original" text before sectarian interpolations had buried it. Apparently without any direct knowledge of the puppet play, he inferred that the unexpurgated text included Rama's admission of guilt and that later Vaisnava redactors removed it to fit their conception of Visnu-Rama as faultless and divine. Another scholar, M. Arunachalam, has adduced the puppet play as evidence that this reading is correct: "We have a corroboration of T. K. C.'s reconstruction in a puppet-shadow play of Kerala ..."^[28] According to Arunachalam, then, the puppet play is a return to Kampan, not a reversal of it. Motives of these scholars who seek to insert Rama's admission into an "original" text, however, are difficult to differentiate from those of scholars who, they allege, expunged it: if the early editors sought to remove any stain from Rama's glory (a true god does not err), the later ones wish to restore his lost honor (a great hero admits his mistakes).^[29] The correct text is a scholar's fool's gold.

Although retellings of the Rama story encompass nearly every imaginable reversal and subversion, Rama's confession appears to be rare: my search turned up examples only in the eclectic Mahanataka, in an eighteenth-century Bengali text, and in two Tamil folk texts.^[30] Even the legends of Kampan in Tamil do not countenance this controversial admission; the Vinotaracamancari, for instance, presents a condensed version of the exchange between Rama and Vali, including most of the accusations made by Vali in the puppet play, but not Rama's admission of guilt.^[31] We also know that Kampan's text as presently compiled, and probably from as far back as the sixteenth century, has been transmitted without it. Rama's confession in the puppet play must therefore be accounted as a radical departure from a text that the puppeteers otherwise follow either verbatim or in large measure. This fundamental

ethical, but minor narrative, shift produces a pattern that underlies the puppet play: a breakdown in moral logic—Surpanakha mutilated, Vali murdered—prompts the puppet play to seek compensation by enlarging the victims and deflating Rama. Whereas a bhakti text might react to these controversies by further separating the avatar from his enemies, thereby justifying their punishment or death, the puppet play moves in the opposite direction and closes the gap between them and Rama. Considering the historical argument that Rama was first a human hero later lifted into identity with Visnu, we might be tempted to interpret the puppet play as a return to Rama as ideal man, but this would distort the adaptation of Kampan's epic in Kerala. Rama's confession is not so much an exposure of clay feet as an accommodation between the claims of perfection in the bhakti text and the demand for balance in folk Hinduism.

Chapter 6
Ravana's First Defeat: The Puppeteers' Oral Commentary

The narrative changes described in the two preceding chapters are not the only means by which the Kerala shadow puppet play adapts the Kamparamayanam in performance; the alterations to the Surpanakha and Vali episodes are not insignificant, but taken as a whole the effect of such changes on the story told in the puppet play is limited. Instead the puppeteers press their interpretation of the Rama story more forcefully and persistently through an oral commentary, which is the special provenance of the puppeteers—their own world of scholarship and storytelling that stretches beyond the received text and into the wider Rama story tradition. As an explanation of Kampan's verses, the commentary may appear to be a textual appendage, but my intention in this and succeeding chapters is to demonstrate that the commentary is the dominant voice in performance. While reading the translation below, the reader may want to keep in mind this distinction between verses and oral commentary in preparation for the discussion that follows.

This chapter leads us into the War Book, which we will follow until its final episodes of Rama's victory over Ravana and his coronation in Ayodhya. Once again, in skipping from Vali's death to the War Book, much has been omitted—the last section of the Kiskindha Book and the whole of the Beautiful Book. Despite these omissions, the War Book is our proper focus because it is the heart of the puppet play. At most temples, in fact, the War Book is the Rama story. Having summarized the preceding five books on the first night, the puppeteers begin their narration of the epic on the second night with either the episode of "Ravana's War Council" (as in the performance translated here) or

"Building the Bridge" and then sing the War Book for the remaining nights of the festival.

The Kerala shadow puppet play is not alone in this preference for the War Book; many Rama texts, both folk and literary, give disproportionate emphasis and space to its events, sometimes omitting everything but the final book.^[1] For instance, the battles between Rama and Ravana comprise nearly the whole of the earliest Ramayana in Kerala, the Ramacaritam, and half of the original Kathakali plays on the Rama story?^[2] Kampan did not slight the War Book either. Vai. Mu. Kopalakirusnamacariyar, perhaps the most learned of Kampan's editors, pointed out that his War Book possesses more poetic density and thematic complexity than his other five books combined. It stands on its own merits as a great work of literature, he wrote, because from it we learn the epic's essential teachings—Lord Rama's saving grace, the establishment of dharma on earth, proper conduct in human affairs—all revealed as "clearly as a nelli fruit in our hand."^[3] Certainly the War Book is the longest book in any edition of Kampan, and, if textual variation is any indication of frequency of performance, it has been told more often than any other portion of the epic: the percentage of variant verses and suspected interpolations (mikai patal ) in the War Book is twice that in the Birth Book and nearly four times that in any other book. For example, several manuscripts of Kampan's text contain two (brief) episodes usually considered interpolations: "The Revival of Vacantan" (Vacantan Uyir Varu Patalam or Iyama Patalam) and "The Puja" (Pucai Patalam).^[4] It is significant that both episodes arc included in the puppet play (see chapter 8) because this anticipates the arguments developed later in this chapter: that the puppeteers' telling of the War Book belongs to a long history of elaboration of this popular section of the epic, and that the entire puppet play emerges from a narrative and commentarial tradition broader than the Kamparamayanam.

I understood none of this popularity and significance of the War Book when I began to study performances in Kerala. Its prominence first startled and then disappointed me. What had happened to the intricacies of the early books that (by reading) I had learned to love? How could the puppeteers bury those subtle dharmic dilemmas underneath the rubble of interminable battles and mysterious weapons that pile up in the War Book? For their part, the puppeteers were baffled by my preference for the Ayodhya Book, in which, as one man pointed out, "Ravana does not even appear, while the War Book has everything: love, death, humor, and grief, especially grief." A few nights in the drama-

house taught me that the episodes in the War Book are inseparable from those in the earlier books. And this led me to realize that my conception of the epic as a sequence of narrative events was fundamentally at odds with the epic as performed in the puppet play: in the drama-house, the Rama story in Kampan's verses is subordinate to the commentary, through which the puppeteers are capable, at any point, of telling the entire epic or retelling, and complicating, any single event in it. In brief, the puppeteers tell their Rama story as much by spinning their commentary as by singing Kampan's verses.

The performance translated in this chapter was recorded from the drama-house where Cinna Tampi, the legendary composer of the puppet-play text, is said to have performed. In his time, the drama-house and its temple stood in the center of a village that today is a prosperous suburb separated from the concrete buildings of Palghat city by a small strip of rice field.^[5] Beside an enormous banyan tree, this famous drama-house appears unremarkable, and no outsider passing by would suspect that it was other than an old building or know that behind it live several families of Chettiyars who claim descent from the famous Cinna Tampi. These families are no longer active performers, and the local temple committee hires an outside troupe to perform, but they retain the privilege of lighting the lamps inside the drama-house before each performance.^[6] In recent years, the lamps have been lit by the local schoolmaster, whose house was easy to identify by the tumble of red bougainvillaea along the front gate and by the large, framed photograph hanging above the front door. Each time I entered his house, I saw in that photograph his father, a puppeteer in Cinna Tampi's line, holding a palm-leaf manuscript in one hand and a vina in the other, like Sarasvati, goddess of learning. His son carries on the family tradition of learning, but he appeared wistful when I asked if he had ever sung in the drama-house. Perhaps the historic role of this drama-house also explains why performances here occasionally draw connoisseurs. One local man, a rotund, cheery engineer who works in Madras, spent most of one night inside the drama-house, relishing the recitation and playing one of the drums during battle scenes. Another man, who would not identify himself, watched several nights from outside, alone, and when I asked him why he showed such persistent interest, his only words were: "The Ramayana is within you."

What follows is a performance sung in 1986 by three senior puppeteers, a measure of the importance of the drama-house, although nearly all the interesting commentary was produced by one man, the seventy-

year-old Natesan Pillai. He had been performing since 1935, when he was twenty, yet he does not consider himself a "full-time" puppeteer and makes more money as an accountant in the off-season; like his father and other puppeteers, he is also a vaittiyar, a specialist in medicine and astrology. Four years of study with a local vaittiyar introduced Natesan Pillai to these fields of knowledge, which eventually led him into the mysteries of an esoteric Tamil religious-philosophical system (Saiva Siddhanta), then to the Rama story, and finally to shadow puppetry, which he learned from a Malayali carpenter who also made leather puppets. Natesan Pillai once told me that a puppeteer must study Hindu mythology and philosophy for at least ten years in order to gain the knowledge necessary to explain the Rama story through oral commentary. When I asked how he was able to complete that task, he laughed and explained that as a young man he "absorbed" the Kanta Puranam during nightshifts in a lumber mill because his supervisor couldn't stay awake and left him to read that old text in the cool night air.^[7]

Despite his age, Natesan Pillai is a sturdy man with a broad face who perched cross-legged on the wooden bench in the drama-house. His stiff, white hair shining silver in the lamplight, he boomed out his commentary while rocking himself back and forth on the bench, one hand cupped to his ear like an Anglo-American ballad singer. And he is a superb storyteller; his characters laugh, they ponder, they agonize, and, what is all too rare, his monkeys sound like real monkeys. Whenever a story is told in the translation below, whether about the ill effects of rapid breathing while asleep or how Kampan composed his poem, the voice belongs to Natesan Pillai. Unfortunately, a stomach ailment has put an end to his fifty years of performing in the drama-house, and he was bedridden on my last visit in 1989. But he was happy because he had just purchased a black-and-white television set. I asked him about the Ramayana series that had enthralled viewers in India the year before and he replied, "Oh, the acting is very, good. Sita's perfect. The killing of Ravana was well done." When I disagreed, he seemed relieved and added, "You see, it's really not any particular Ramayana. They take whatever they like from wherever they like and fit it in. Not like our puppet play."

The translation below opens in Lanka after Hanuman has found Sita and returned to Rama, leaving the city in flames. First the puppeteers recount these events in prose summary and then begin their formal narration of the War Book at the point where Ravana convenes his council of ministers and Vibhisana instructs his brother concerning the

true cause of Lanka's destruction. Very quickly the action moves to the building of the bridge, after which Angada knocks off Ravana's crown, Ravana is humiliated by Rama in battle, and the demon-king seeks counsel from his uncle, Maliyavan.

Ravana's First Defeat

"Now, what happened last night, Muttuppattar?"

"Ah, that, the story. Eventually Hanuman found Sita in the Ashoka grove and urged her to return with him to Rama, but Sita refused—'Although you are certainly the person to take me back, I will leave Lanka only after I see Rama kill Ravana'—and gave Hanuman a jewel to show to Rama on his return. As Hanuman left, he fought and killed many demons, including Ravana's youngest son, Aksakumaran. Hanuman was brought to Ravana, who interrogated his prisoner, and when he learned that Rama had killed Vali, he asked:

"Vali dead? What power did Rama use to kill him? And if Rama killed Vali, why does his son, Angada, help Rama search for Sita?"

[Hanuman ] "When Viii was dying, he called Angada and told him to serve Rama as a son. He has obeyed his father's wishes."

"Then you serve a coward, who does the bidding of the man who killed his father. He should take revenge, and if he can't himself, he should get someone who can. This is a disgrace for your entire monkey race!"

"But Ravana—"

"Wait! Didn't you tell me that your king is Sugriva, the one who killed his own brother by deceit? Then ... you are the messenger of a traitor [Sugriva] and a coward [Angada]. Not only that—you have killed my own son, yet I have spared your life because you say you come as a messenger. Speak your messenger words and leave!"

[Brahmin narrator ] "And that's where we stopped, right?"

"No, no. Eventually Hanuman's tail was wrapped in an oily cloth and set afire, but he broke loose, used his fiery tail to burn Lanka, doused it in the ocean, returned to Rama, and issued his famous announcement: 'Sita I have seen.' That's where we stopped."

"Yes, and before we sing tonight we have a duty to perform."

"As is true every year, Laksmi Amma has sponsored this performance and supplied us with excellent food cooked by Appa Nayar. For them and their families, for generations to come, we call on Bhagavati to bless them with good fortune."

"Now, as Rama readied his armies, Ravana called his ministers to a war council in Lanka, and Vibhisana was the first to speak."

"When your palace and your city were set ablaze
By the chastity of the Earth Goddess, Sita,
Do you think it noble, my brother,
To say 'A monkey burned them'?^[8]

"Ravana, do you actually believe that a monkey burned Lanka? This magnificent city of ours—its towers and sculpted palaces—has been burned to the ground not by that silly animal but by the fire of chastity, the chastity of Rama's wife, Sita. I think you know the reason for all this destruction. Remember when you won weapons from Brahma and were called the 'Raja whose crown bows to no one'? On your victory march, surrounded by a host of horses, elephants, and soldiers, you circled the Three Worlds and defeated Indra, the Eight Cosmic Elephants, the fifty-six rajas, and then a curse befell you. Have you forgotten?"

"Curse? No, I remember—"

"While you enjoyed undisputed sway over the Three Worlds, your brother Kubera sent a message: 'Ravana, have you lost sight of your ancestry? We are the sons of Brahma! Stop this cruelty toward Brahmins, ascetics, and women.' But you unsheathed your sword and split the messenger in two, and as his spirit rose to the skies, it hovered above and called out, 'Hey, Ten Heads! You may have studied the Sama Veda, but you don't know the proverb: "Kill your mother, but never kill a messenger."^[9] For this, I curse you, your lineage, and your city of Lanka to be destroyed by a messenger? But this only inflamed your arrogance, so you sped your chariot toward Lanka to kill Kubera, when you saw Vedavati, daughter of a sage, deep in meditation. Overcome with desire, you stopped the chariot, climbed down, and touched her. Suddenly, she cried out: 'For this destruction of my purity, I will take birth as another woman and destroy you and all you own.' With that, Vedavati leapt into a fire and was reduced to ashes.

"You, however, simply continued on your way to Lanka, traveling at high speed, until your chariot smashed into a tall mountain. Perturbed, you climbed down and saw Nandi, Siva's bull, who laughed at you: 'Ravana, this is Mr. Kailasa and no one passes without first bowing down to Siva.' To which you responded: 'Listen here, Monkey Face, out of my way!' Yet, as you passed overhead, Nandi had the last word: 'For that insult, Ravana, you will be destroyed by a real monkey-face!'

"Later, Narada passed the spot where Vedavati had entered fire, scooped up her ashes and bones, stored them in his vina and walked on. Reaching the gates of Lanka, he learned that you had a fondness for the sankarabarana raga from the Sama Veda, so he played it every day on his vina. One evening, after singing, he left his vina outside your chamber door, and in the morning a baby girl was found next to the instrument. You asked your ministers who she was and they replied: 'Dispose of her. If you keep her, Lanka will be destroyed; if you kill her, the Three Worlds will be destroyed.' Their advice you honored and placed the little girl in a golden box, which was put out to sea and reached Mithila, where the childless raja Janaka was sprinkling water on the ground as part of a sacrifice and saw a long tunnel made by ants. Following it, he found the golden box and the little girl inside. In the earth displaced by the ants, he saw the Sanskrit letters S-i-t-a, so that became her name. Her chastity, nor that monkey, burned our beloved Lanka, Ravana."

"But if that is true, Vibhisana, why did the city not burn when Sita first came here nearly a year ago?"

"Sita is the sun, Hanuman is the mirror. Together they destroy."

[Angered by Vibhisana's disloyalty, Ravana orders his brother to leave Lanka. Vibhisana joins Rama's forces and together they reach the ocean that separates them from Lanka. On the shoreline Rama summons Varuna, god of the seas, by chanting his special mantra. Eventually Varuna appears and, although Rama needs immediate help in building the causeway to Lanka, launches into a long discourse on the nature of god and truth, which concludes thus: ]

"Something else, Rama. This verse refers to you as curuti murtti, the Truth of the Vedas, but Saiva Siddhanta takes the position that even the Vedas cannot explain truth.^[10] You see, in one section of the Vedas you repeatedly hear 'No, no.' Negation is truth. But the

counterargument is that god can be known, that at the very edge of ignorance is knowledge. Travel to the edge, repeating 'Not this. Not that,' and then you can reach knowledge. Even the word the Vedas use for the truth—anmai [negation]—is important. It refers to something distant because it begins with a. If a word begins with i, it refers to something close; if with u, to something in between. It's more complex than this, but just take it that the Vedas use a distant word [aumai ] for truth because it is beyond words. And you, Rama, you are that unknowable.

"Swami, this world is your plaything! In every era you assume forms to please us and to defeat our enemies. Master of Mystery, you once humbled mighty King Mahabali when you took birth as a dwarf Brahmin and approached Mahabali as he conducted a sacrifice. He offered you a boon, you asked for only three feet of land, and when he agreed, you expanded into Visnu's cosmic form, covering the earth with the first step, the heavens with the second, and with the third you pushed Mahabali into the underworld. Long ago, a king was cursed by Agastya to become an elephant, which—"

"I know that story, Varuna."

"Good. The cursed elephant was unable to find water, wandered everywhere, and finally fell into a pool near the Three Peak Mountain in the middle of the Milk Ocean. The myths say a sage once bathed in this pool—I know people say these stories are only imagination, but I say they never deceive. They tell truths—one only has to know what is story and what is true. In any case, while the sage was bathing, a Gandharva named Huhu flew overhead and decided to have some fun, so he left his heavenly form and became an alligator in the pool. He caught the sage in his coils and began to squeeze with all his might until the sage cursed him: 'You want to be an alligator? Fine. You are one, forever!' Into that same pool the raja-turned-elephant fell and had his legs caught by the alligator, but he called out to Visnu, who immediately left Vaikunta, sailed down on Garuda, and cut off the alligator's claws with his sharp-edged discus. And so the elephant, Gajendra, was granted the third state of liberation [carupam ]."

"Yes, yes, Varuna, but it is I who have come to ask you for help. The whole world laughs at me because Ravana stole my wife and holds her in Lanka. I must free her, yet I can do nothing unless I

cross this water, and if you, the King of the Seas, don't help, who will?"

"Forgive me, Rama, I knew nothing of your plight. You must free Sita since you, too, rule the waters, and that is why the verse calls you Sacred River.^[11] You know the story, so I'll make it brief. When you went to Mahabali as the Brahmin dwarf and took your three steps, the egg-like shell of the earth split and the Heavenly Ganga threatened to drown us all. We shook with fear until Siva agreed to break the force of the river with his long, thick hair. He did, and the water dribbled out into a stream at a place we now call Kumbakonam, where you reside in a little temple on the river bank. For this we call you Sacred River."

"That's a wonderful story, but I need a path to Lanka."

"Crossing this vast ocean is no easy task, Rama."

"Then—?"

"Build a causeway of stone—no, then all the fish would die, and I cannot allow that. Listen. Rip up the mountains, throw them into the sea, and I will carry them all on my head to save the fish. My head will bear those stones until you and the monkey army cross over to Lanka."

[As the monkeys set to work, Indra appears high on the cloth screen and addresses the other gods: ] ^[12]

"Look at that monkey Kumutan carrying those huge mountains! Nine of them, toward the sea ..."

Kumutan threw a mountain into the sea
Whose spinning, roaring waters [tumi ]
Reached the heavens where the gods danced
Thinking the ambrosia would rise again.^[13]

"This verse carries several meanings. It's said that it is the very first verse Kampan wrote and that he wrote it to make a point. It also contains the story of how that point was demonstrated to the court poets. A long history lies behind this simple verse, but we can begin with what we all know—that the earth was ruled by the Chola, Pandiya, and Cera rajas. The Chola rajas ruled Tanjore, and in their palace lived sixty-four learned men: thirty-two poets and thirty-two scholars. At that time, a great man named Cataiyappan also lived in Tanjore and had the reputation of helping everyone who brought

him their troubles. Because he offered his support so liberally, he was given the title Great Benefactor.

"Generous Cataiyappan was also a close friend of the raja and often visited his court, where one day he said, 'Raja, you have sixty-four poets and scholars in your court, but we have no Rama story in the southern language, no Ramayana in Tamil. Valmiki's story is written in the northern language with all those meanings condensed into one line—who can understand it? If it were in Tamil, all of us would follow and enjoy the benefits that come from hearing that great story. Summon your best poets—Ottakkuttan and Kampan—and command them to compose a Ramayana in the southern tongue.' So the raja called the poets and made the request, and they agreed.

"From that day, Ottakkuttan began to write. He finished the Bala, Ayodhya, Aranya, and Sundara Kandas, until he came to the beginning of the Yuddha Kanda, when Rama, Laksmana, and the monkey army travel for twelve days and reach the edge of the salt ocean.^[14] When Ottakkuttan told the raja he had completed all this, Kampan was embarrassed. 'I've not yet written a single verse,' he thought to himself. 'But if I admit that, the name of Kampan, praised everywhere as a great poet, will become inferior to that Ottakkuttan. Certainly there are books that admonish us not to tell lies, but there are others that say we may lie. How do we know when to lie and when not to? Well, if we do lie, the most important thing is that it should not cause any trouble or evil. If you lie in order to accomplish a good deed, it's not wrong; in fact, it ceases to be a lie and becomes the truth. The old books say you may tell not just one of those lies, but two or three, a hundred, even hundreds of them, and all at the same time. There's a verse:

To get a woman married or set a spy spying
To produce good or teach the Three Essences
To save an innocent man from certain death—
To these ends, a hundred lies may be told.

"'This is what Hindu philosophy teaches us. In order to get a woman married and give her a good life, you might have to tell more than one lie. Certainly you can't get anyone married today without telling several lies, right? To do some good or avoid evil, lies are also useful. Likewise, if someone tries to kill an innocent man, you may tell lies to save him.' Kampan thought about all this and convinced himself that the lie he was about to tell wouldn't have any

evil consequences. Then he looked at the Chola raja and declared, 'I have composed the story up to the point where Rama comes to the ocean, is unable to cross, does meditation, threatens to fire an arrow at Varuna, and waits for him. Varuna finally appears, places a garland on Rama, worships him, asks forgiveness, and then tells him that he may cross to Lanka by throwing rocks into the ocean. The last verse I've written is this:

Kumutan threw a mountain into the sea
Whose spinning, roaring waters [tumi ]
Reached the heavens where the gods danced
Thinking the ambrosia would rise again.'^[15]

"When Kampan told the raja that he had written this verse, he lied, and Ottakkuttan knew it because he had seen Kampan wandering about, not writing a single verse. Ottakkuttan also knew that the verse was ungrammatical and, hoping to expose him, issued a challenge: 'Kampan, your verse may sound nice, but look at the line about the gods dancing when the water [tumi ] reached the heavens. Does that word tumi have any grammatical basis? Does anyone use it in common speech?'

"Kampan had to stop and think because at that time the word tumi was not commonly used. Quickly he retorted, 'Is that it? Even if it were grammatical, that's not enough? It must be used by the common people?' Ottakkuttan continued, 'No one uses that word; if it were correct, people would speak it, but they don't. And if they did, you could prove it.' To which Kampan shot back, 'I will prove it. I'll prove it tomorrow.'

"Without taking any food, Kampan went straight to the temple of Ampikai [Kali] and called to her, 'Goddess, you have blessed me to be a poet in the raja's court, and he has ordered us to compose a Tamil Ramayana, and I have told a lie about a verse. Now the other poets have challenged me to prove that a certain word is used in common speech. Of course, if you don't want to help, it's no loss to me.' With this plea, he fell into a half sleep. Soon Ampikai appeared and spoke. 'Kampan, why worry like this? Tomorrow morning, before the night has gone, bring all the poets to the Shepherds Lane and I will show them that the word is used.' She vanished and Kampan slept.

"Early next morning, after completing his bath, Kampan went quickly to the raja who greeted him, 'Well, Kampan, can you prove

to us that tumi is grammatical?' 'I can,' he replied, 'but we must hurry now before the night is gone.' With the raja, Cataiyappan, Ottakkuttan, and the other poets following him, Kampan set off for the Shepherds Lane, where they saw two lines of houses, one on each side. Going down the lane, they looked into every house, but not a single door was open or a single lamp burning, until, at the very end of the lane, they saw light, in a tiny hut, where a woman and four children sat around a milk churn. As the woman churned, she turned to the nearest child and said, 'Stand back, don't let the tumi fall on you; watch out for the tumi.'

"The raja and the poets were astounded! Why, among all these houses, they wondered, why did this single house have a lamp? And who was that woman? They ran forward to look, but when they reached the house, there was no woman, no children, no lamp, not even a house—only a dark open space. They stopped for a moment, and then cried out, 'This is the work of Ampikai; it can be nothing else. If Kampan has her powers, how can we debate with him? What goddess or god can we summon to prove our point?' Convinced of Kampan's skill, they returned to the palace.

"Only at this point did Kampan begin to compose his epic. With the aid of learned Tamil scholars and Sanskrit pundits, he composed seven hundred verses every day between sunrise and sunset; every evening, he took his manuscript to Ampikai's temple and placed it beside her as he worshiped. After his prayers, when he took up the manuscript, all his errors were corrected. This is how Kampan composed his Ramayana in 12,026 verses and six books.

"Ottakkuttan was despondent. Seeing that Kampan had outwitted him in front of the raja and the assembly of poets, he decided to destroy all that he had written. One by one, he tore each palm leaf, from the Birth Book through the War Book, and threw them into the River Kaveri. Then, just as he was starting to tear up his Uttara Kanda, Kampan grabbed his hand and spoke: 'You have suffered; you wrote this Ramayana with great effort and skill. Why destroy it? Look, let the first six books go; we can't retrieve them. But save at least this last, the Uttara Kanda. Let us join it to my six books and then we shall have a complete Tamil Ramayana.' Only a great poet would say that. Kampan was willing to join his verses, with their hidden meanings, to another poet's verses. His only desire was that the

world should have a full telling of the Rama story in Tamil. And that is what we have.^[16]

"Next Kampan had to sing his poem in a debut. For that occasion, great scholars of many languages gather in an assembly, and the poet reads his new poem, explaining each verse, breaking up the words if necessary. He must be able to explain the grammar and meaning of any line or word disputed by the scholars. If he does so successfully, then the assembly will accept the composition and declare it worthy of public recitation. Kampan was ready for his debut, but the raja asked him something else: 'Where's your carru kavi [verse praising the poet]?' Today we pronounce it "certif-icate," but it's the same thing: proof that the poet is worthy. 'Kampan,' the raja continued, 'we need to see your certificate. Go to Chidambaram, to the court of the Three Thousand [Brahmins], to those scholars and poets and win their approval; then we will arrange for your debut recitation.'

"Kampan took his manuscript and left for the town of Chidambaram. Of course there were no motor vehicles then, so he walked for six days and finally reached the outskirts where he went to the first house and announced, 'I've composed a Ramayana; where do I go to sing it?' 'Sing it? Oh, next door.' But this was the answer he received from every house he visited, and soon it grew dark and he was hungry. Finally he saw an Ampikai temple and he laid down his burden at her feet: 'I've finished the Ramayana, but now I have to earn a certificate in order to be able to sing it. Can you help?' Ampikai, who was in deep meditation, shouted at him, 'Kampan, if you complain like this, no one will give you any title. If you want to earn it, go to the Three Thousand in a single house and begin to sing. That's all; I'll do the rest.'

"'I don't understand.'

"'Listen, tomorrow morning, bring your poem and come this way. In a house a child will be dying of a snakebite; the Three Thousand will be there, too. Enter and announce that you have come to earn a certificate for composing a Ramayana. They'll rebuke you: "This is no time to sing a Ramayana! A child is dying. Go away? Then you say, "Oh, a child? Let me see, please." They'll refuse, but you must keep on asking and finally someone will say, "Let him take a look. What's the harm?" Go slowly to the child's bed, find a comfortable seat, and take out your manuscript. Find the Snake-Snare [naka

pacam ] section and sing the ten verses in praise of the gods; if you sing them well, the snake that bit the child will come back, draw out its own poison, crawl away, and then die.^[17] The sleeping child will awake and sit up, fully alive! When they see this, the Three Thousand will grant you a certificate.'

"With these instructions, Ampikai disappeared. Kampan did as he was told, the snake came back, the child was saved, and the Three Thousand put their signatures on the certificate. Kampan then walked the six days back to Tanjore and gave the certificate to the raja. 'Not bad, not bad. But one cannot say that the Chidambaram Three Thousand are the only judges of poetry. Ampikavati, your son, for instance, is also an excellent poet. Get his approval, too.'

"'I will do that, raja,' Kampan said, thinking: 'My own son can't possibly refuse me a certificate.' He approached his son.

"'Welcome, Father, what brings you here?'

"'Nothing special. In order to have my debut, the raja says I must get a certificate from you.'

"Kampan's son, who was quite young and playful, said, 'I'll give you a certificate, but first you must tell me something special about your Ramayana.'

"Kampan had to think for a moment before he responded, 'I've composed four very special verses, just to please you; four miracles.'

"'Tell me the four miracles, Father, and you'll have your certificate.'

"'First, there is the case of Kalaikottu Muni. When Dasaratha learned that he must bring that sage to perform the sacrifice for a son, Vasistha told him the long story about how Kalaikottu Muni brought rain and ended a famine. Enticed by dancing girls, he entered the Anga country and soon all the clouds drew close together making the sky as dark as Siva's throat. Suddenly, after years and years of drought, the rain fell, "sala, sala, sala." Watching this miracle, everyone began to dance with joy. Here the special thing is that the sounds "sala, sala, sala," which refer to the rain, are play words with their own rhythm. A second miracle occurred when Rama shot his fire-arrow into the Heavenly Ganga, causing Brahma's water pot to boil over.' Then Kampan described a third and fourth miracle and received from his son this certificate: 'The Rama-Veda, sung and

praised by the greatest poets, has now been written by Kampan: thus I, Ampikavati, do declare.'^[18]

"When Kampan ran back to the raja and showed him the certificate, another condition emerged: 'Good. Now there is one more thing. In Tanjore there is a famous courtesan, who is also a respected poet. Get her approval.' When Kampan found her, she did what he asked and said, 'You needn't have come yourself. If you had sent a messenger, I would have given you the certificate.' When the raja saw her certificate, he finally agreed to hold the debut.

"What year was that? There's a verse ...

In Venneynallur, where Cataiyan lived,
In Cakattam eight hundred and seven, on Pankuni asterism
Before Lord Visnu at Srirangam
Kampan first sang his Rama story.^[19]

"Yes, it was Saka 807 when Kampan first sang his poem. The word cakattam here means the Saka Era. There are various ways of counting years, and I don't recall when that era began—you can look it up in different books—but it's approximately one hundred years after the Christian era. So Saka 807 is about 900 A.D. , and the Kampara-mayanam has been sung from that date—for the past eleven hundred years.^[20] This famous verse also refers to Cataiyan, or Cataiyappan Mutaliyar, Kampan's patron, and to Venneynallur, the tiny village where Kampan lived, and to Pankuni, a favorable lunar aster-ism when Kampan first sang his epic before a statue of Narayana as the Primal Source at Srirangam temple. To that temple, which was then in the Chola country, the poets were invited by the raja and there they heard Kampan sing his Ramayana for the very first time, from the very first verse to the very last. This is the history of Kampan's Rama story. I didn't have to recount it all, but Kampan's explanation of the word tumi led me to it.

"Tumi came in that verse about the water. When the gods felt the water splash up from the ocean, they gurgled happily: 'Remember that day when we put Mt. Mandara in the Milk Ocean and churned up the ambrosia? That was only a single pot of ambrosia, and these monkeys have thrown thousands of boulders into the sea, so imagine how much ambrosia will arise!' With that thought, the gods danced in ecstasy and sang 'Let Ravana and his demons shake with fear when they hear of Rama's bridge.'"

[Drums rumble and the scene shifts as Rama and his army cross the causeway and step onto the shore at Lanka, where Rama commands Nalan to build a fort. When Ravana summons his ministers for another war council, his uncle,Maliyavan, speaks first : ]^[21]

"Ravana, you are wise. Give up the folly of fighting against this Rama-Visnu."

"Me? Even if Siva took the form of a monkey and fought me, he would never win. He may have swallowed the poison from the Milk Ocean long ago, but no one swallows my arrows. Uncle, you say this Rama is an avatar of Visnu, but his divine chest will split when my missiles strike, and his little brother Laksmana doesn't scare me either. You are cautious only because you are frightened. You may leave now, and let me fight."

[When Maliyavan leaves, Ravana's generals stand forward and speak :]

"We should attack now. Rama has only foot soldiers; no chariots, elephants, or horses."

[Meanwhile, Rama calls Vibhisana to his side :]

"You have described Lanka to me, but I want to see it with my own eyes. Can we see it from here?"

[Vibhisana leads Rama to the summit of Suvela mountain and points south toward Ravana's palace. At that very moment, when Ravana stood in his northern tower, dressed for battle, Rama sees him and cries out, "He is as strong as Mt. Meru!" Later, Ravana looks down on Rama's army of monkeys and insults them. Furious, Sugriva flies up to the tower, dashes Ravana to the ground, grabs his crown, and escapes! Sugriva moved so quickly that Rama did not realize he had left his side, but when the monkey-king returns and places Ravana's crown at his feet, Rama smiles :]

"You are truly great, Sugriva."

"Swami, I am not unusual. Jatayu gave his life for you. What of Vali, who was stronger than I? And, there is Hanuman."

"What is this you have brought back to me?"

"Ask Vibhisana."

"Rama! It's Ravana's crown—not even the Three Great Gods could do this!"

[Rama decides to attack and sends Sugriva to collect food stores for the long siege. The monkeys gather around each of the four towers, ready

for battle, but Ravana fails to engage them. They wait, but still no Ravana, so Rama summons Vibhisana :]

"What shall we do, Vibhisana? Ravana has failed to appear yet another day. Maybe he fears the seventy thousand troops surrounding his palace. I want to discuss a plan with you because you are a great vallal, a benefactor."

"I am ready to listen, Swami."

"You are called 'benefactor' in this verse for a reason. The word refers only to people with a big heart who give gladly, not just to earn a name. Of the three ranks of benefactors, you are a First-Rank Benefactor. Explaining the traits of each would consume much time, but in brief they are these. If someone comes and asks for something, you must be able to ascertain why he came and what he's thinking. He might have any number of reasons for asking. Impossible to know, you say? But it is possible. As the Vedas declare, 'Look closely at his face and you see inside his mind; whether anger, sincerity, or deceit, you can see its outer sign in the face.' A First-Rank Benefactor can do this, but a Second-Rank Benefactor gets rid of petitions by simply giving to everyone, even when it's not appropriate. Suppose a person comes and asks for something, you might think: 'If I say no, he'll just come back again; or maybe he won't even leave now.' To avoid that problem, the man gives whatever is requested. The Third-Rank Benefactor takes the opposite attitude: 'Let them ask for anything; I give nothing.'"

"Your words are kind, Rama, but please tell me why you have called me."

"I have called you because devotees of the gods are greater than the gods and because you have a heart as pure as a Make. But, yes, I called you to ask advice about strategy. We have the palace under siege—no demon can get in or out—but how can we force Ravana to appear?"

"What is your plan, Rama?"

How can one measure your compassion, Vibhisana? We might as well ask, How much water is in the sea? Your love is as unknowable as Siva because when one learns the truth of Siva, there is no 'Siva.' The word siva, as we know, denotes auspiciousness [maitkalalaw ]; however, if Siva appears like us, with hands and feet, and labors through this world, can we say who he is or where he is? No. Siva

is not that kind of 'thing.' As a great poet wrote, 'He is without clan, without quality [guna ], without limit; he has family, house, and wife, but he is not those things.'^[22] We speak of eyes, nose, mouth, and through them we have sensations, but Siva cannot be known by them because he is not them. He is formless."^[23]

"Rama—"

"Although this is what our Hindu philosophers have discovered, this is not what we practice. People make images out of clay, bronze, copper, gold, wood, out of anything! Sun god, Moon god—whatever image arises in their head, they make into a god. This is the long train of tradition, and it continues today: some worship a stone, some worship a wood statue, and so forth. If Siva is not those forms, and he is not, why do people worship them? Because their ancestors did, and now there are books that justify that kind of worship, yet none of the sastras encourages the worship of an image. No. Siva is not found in an image of stone.^[24]

"I say this to you, Vibhisana, because you have placed god in the temple of your heart and chant his names there. And I say this in order to demonstrate my respect for you. You see, most people would counsel me this way: 'Why wait to attack that thief Ravana? Go, kill him now?"

"But, Rama, he is a thief, a bandit."

"Listen. My idea is to send a messenger who will deliver two messages: first, 'You stole Sita from Pancavati; release her immediately.' If Ravana relents, it won't be necessary to say the second thing; but if he refuses to release Sita, then the messenger must say, 'Dress for war with Rama!' Ravana will then be forced to choose between the two alternatives. Now, what do you say?"

"Rama, your plan is consistent with the practice of your ancestors and with the dharma of warriors. I have no objection."

"Laksmana, now I want your opinion. Shall I send a messenger to Ravana to ask if he is willing to release Sita?"

"What? Show civility to that enemy of dharma? Have you forgotten that he has imprisoned your wife?"

"That is true. Ravana has done evil, including eating people as meat. Such a person does not deserve the courtesy of a messenger, you say. However, you must remember that Ravana was born a demon and

that compassion is something a demon never has. Their hearts are hard rocks, not only our Ravana's but the hearts of other demon-rulers, too. Besides, it's a demon's dharma to be cruel, and we cannot censure Ravana for his actions. A verse by the ancient poetess Auvaiyar explains: 'A lily according to water; knowledge according to the book; character according to birth.' Just as the nature of a flower depends on the water in which it grows, a person's mind is influenced by what he reads, and a person's character is shaped by his background. A man born in the Brahmin caste will not have the intelligence of a man born in the Sudra caste; only if a Sudra woman eats pure foods, like ghee and curds, and meditates on god, will her foetus absorb those qualifies. Similarly, a person born in a Brahmin family will become wicked if the mother is a demon.^[25]

"That's what happened with Ravana. His father was Vicaravasu, but his mother was Kekaci whose evil character has been Ravana's from birth. He has not violated dharma and, therefore, I cannot accept your opinion that sending a messenger is in any way a violation of our dharma. Tell me, Laksmana, what undesirable consequences will arise from this plan, and I will change my mind."

"What of your promise to Vibhisana? When he came and asked for refuge, you accepted him with these words: 'Fear nothing. I will make you king of Lanka for as long as the world chants "Rama, Rama."' Now, if Ravana accepts your offer and releases Sita, how will you give his crown to Vibhisana? Remember also that in the forest you pledged to the sages that you would destroy Ravana. In view of these facts, I advise against sending a messenger."

"Laksmana, you are both wise and kind. However, I have not forgotten my promises to Vibhisana. a and to the sages, and neither will be compromised by sending a messenger. In the end, Lanka will be destroyed—that is certain—and sending a messenger before attacking is required by the law books composed by the greatest sages. If we simply ignore their laws and invent our own, that would be a violation of dharma. Laksmana, a wise man gauges the strength and intelligence of his enemy before battle. He calculates not only his personal qualities but those of his assistants also. Who are his brothers? His generals? And so on. If, on balance, the enemy is stronger, then he should not go to war—death will be the end. I might be a powerful man, but I must also practice patience; only then will my full strength be realized. Strength without patience is a burden, not an asset.

"Most importantly, victory depends on dharma. Any step away from dharma is a retreat from victory. There's the saying: 'Without dharma, even the gods cannot gain victory.' But what is dharma? It includes four things, four instruments of statecraft: conciliation, confrontation, generosity, and punishment. What is conciliation? If a person is brought to you for a first offense, sometimes you must say, 'Don't do it again.' This person may think he can get away with the same crime again, and why not?—the raja let him off once. If he is caught and brought before you again, you must censure him. Use confrontation—the second instrument of dharma—to change his mind, but still not punishment. Then, if the same man is brought before you a third time, you must say, 'You're free. Go away.' This is generosity, a gift. Only when the man returns for the fourth time should you punish him. If this advice is wise, how can we attack Ravana without first sending a messenger to sue for peace? "

Understand also that Ravana will never release Sita. If such were his character, he would not have abducted her in the first instance. Even if one of you rescued Sita and returned her to me, Ravana would not ask for forgiveness. If, somehow, he did, I would honor my pledge to Vibhisana and crown him king of Lanka, after which I would escort Ravana to Ayodhya and conduct his coronation there."

"Rama, I agree that this plan is consistent with your promise to Vibhisana, but the promise to the sages in the forest remains, does it not?"

"Yes, and it will stand forever. I promised the sages that I would protect their sacrifices. If Ravana releases Sita and bows at my feet and I make him king of Ayodhya, then he will not harm the sages. So, you see, Laksmana, my pledge to the sages also will not be compromised. Now, tell me again, do you retain an objection to sending a messenger?"

"No, you have convinced me."

[Laksmana is removed; Sugriva takes his place .]

"Sugriva, whom shall we send?"

"Once before when we required a messenger, we sent that black-faced Hanuman. Again if you send him, you will not err."

"True. Hanuman has been to Lanka and knows the city well; he would be successful in this mission. However, if Hanuman goes a second time, what will Ravana conclude? That he is the only true

warrior among our seventy thousand troops, and we cannot let Ravana think that he can win by defeating only me and Hanuman. No, we must frighten him by sending another warrior, and, Sugriva, there is none better than your own adopted son, Angada! Even if the demons attack, he has the strength to escape and return here unhurt. What do you say?"

"Your reasoning is correct. Call Angada."

[After receiving instruction from Rama, Angada leaps into Ravana's palace chanting Rama's name, which angers Ravana and prompts an argument between the monkey emissary and the demon-king. Angada, insulted that Ravana has not offered him a proper seat, coils his tail into a tall throne and sits upon it; Ravana speaks :]^[26]

"Who are you, monkey?"

"I am the messenger of Rama, whose armies are camped outside your gates and—"

"Forget about him. What is your name?"^[27]

"I am Vali's son, Angada."

"Vali's son? Son of my enemy's enemy? Why, you're almost family. No need to oppose me. Here, I'll give you a kingdom, many wives—"

"A kingdom received from you is a disgrace I will never suffer! I have already been promised a kingdom by Rama."

[At this, Ravana drew his sword and nearly cut him down, but his ministers held him back, pleading that Angada be allowed to speak. When Angada delivered Rama's message, Ravana ordered his guards to seize the impudent monkey, but Angada leapt high into Lanka's northern tower and called out, "Demons! You are doomed to die. Escape now before Rama's armies annihilate you." Then Angada leapt again, and landed at Rama's feet.

[The First Battle was imminent, for Rama, having heard what had happened, ordered his captains to advance. His armies formed outside the palace, the gates opened, and the demon armies moved against them. In the fierce fighting that ensued, Laksmana fell unconscious on the field, and Rama, riding Hanuman, came to his rescue. Eventually, when Rama and Ravana faced each other, Ravana fell and lost his crown. Not wishing to kill an opponent who had fallen, Rama declared, "Enough for today. Go home and return tomorrow'" As Ra-

vana dragged himself back to the palace, the gods, who had assembled above to witness the spectacle of war, spoke among themselves :]

Mighty chest that conquered Cosmic Elephants,
Shouldes that shook Kailasa, tongue that outsang Narada
Ten jeweled crowns, sword from Siva, and his bravery—
All these Ravana left on the battlefield and returned erupt-handed.^[28]

"Gods, look at what has happened on each."

"Yes, Maharaja Indra. Who is that down there?"

"It's Ravana, defeated in battle. After dismissing Angada, he dressed for bathe, thinking 'I'll never be defeated.' But he has been defeated, and that is remarkable."

"Why?"

"Long ago, Ravana sat on the shore of Kuntalam in fierce penance to Brahma and won invincibility in the Three Worlds. On his victory march, when he challenged the gods stationed at each of the eight directions, they all changed their forms and fled. Indra changed to a peacock, Varuna became a swan, Kubera a lizard, Yama a rook. Then, as if that were not enough, he battled with the Cosmic Elephants of the eight directions. Joining together, the elephants charged and planted their thirty-two tusks in Ravana's chest, but the Raja of Lanka felt nothing, unsheathed his sword, and cut them off, one by one. And today that mighty chest has been defeated by Rama!"

"How did it happen, Indra?"

"When Rama and Ns monkey armies attacked, Hanuman jumped ahead, scattered the demons, and advanced on Ravana. Ravana pounded Hanuman with his twenty fists, but Hanuman stood his ground; then he struck Ravana with his two fists and knocked him down.

"But Ravana lost more than a fist-duel. When Brahma gave him boons, Ravana received the power to defeat his brother, Kubera, and seize his kingdom of Lanka. Seated on the throne of that island, Ravana proceeded to harass Brahmins and sages, which caused Kubera to dispatch a messenger to censure his brother and warn him to follow the path of dharma. But Ravana, furious that Ns broker should seek to instruct him, took out his sword and killed the messenger. Then Ravana flew in his magic chariot to challenge Kubera and suddenly rammed into Mt. Kailasa, where Nandi commanded Ravana to

go around the mountain, but the demon responded by calling him a monkey-face, to which Nandi responded with a curse: 'You and your kingdom are doomed to be destroyed by a monkey-face?

"Ravana roared in anger, got down from the chariot, made his twenty hands into one, and ripped up the entire mountain. On top, Siva felt something shake, looked down, placed his big toe upon Ravana's head, and pinned him to the ground. Kailasa rocked back into place, driving the demon into the underworld. When the demon-raja did not return to Lanka, his lieutenants set out to search for him, and when they found their king trapped beneath Kailasa, they went to Siva and asked how he might be freed. Siva said that the Raja of Lanka should challenge him to a musical contest, so Ravana cut off one of his twenty hands and made of it a vina; his sinews became strings, and he began to sing from the Sama Veda. He sang and he sang, some say for a thousand years, until Siva was moved to release him, announcing, 'Because you are a raga-vannan [song-master], I name you Ravanan.' Ravana then asked for a boon of immortality, and Siva granted him three and one-half million lives, and a special sword. When the gods learned of these gifts, they were frightened because they realized that they would face Ravana's evil forever. To Narayana they pleaded, 'Siva has given all these lives to Ravana. Do something!'

"Visnu agreed and took the form of a Brahmin, placed a bush on his head, watered it with a cracked pot, and stood on the path where Ravana was returning from Siva. Amazed at the sight, Ravana cried out, 'Foolish Brahmin! What's that plant growing from your head? And why do you water it with a cracked pot?' Visnu [the Brahmin] replied: 'It's not me but you, Ravana, who are the fool! Who else would ask for three and a half million lives? One million, or two, or three, but three and a half? That's truly stupid.'"

"Puzzled, Ravana asked the Brahmin what he could do. 'Go back to Siva,' he was told, 'and say this: "Besides the three and a half million lives, give me another half."' Ravana thought he would get a half million more, but the word 'besides' (oliya ) also means 'cancel.' Thus, when Ravana went back to Siva, he said, 'Cancel the three and one-half million lives, and give me one-half.' And Siva did just that. He gave him half a life. And it is this Ravana, whose enormous shoulders once rocked Kailasa, who has now been defeated on the battlefield."^[29]

"Tell me exactly how those shoulders were defeated."

"Well, when they fought, Ravana hurt Laksmana badly; struck by the demon's spear, he fell to the ground, unconscious. Ravana came to his side and tried to lift him with his twenty arms but could not! The same shoulders that had once lifted Kailasa could not lift Laksmana's body!"

"What else?"

"I said that Ravana became famous for singing a tune from the Sama Veda, that he surpassed even Narada in singing that tune, but his tongue, too, was useless, defeated. What do I mean? Toward the end of this first battle, after Rama had destroyed Ravana's chariot, Rama spoke to him of dharma, but Ravana did not answer. He could not answer. He who had once outsung Narada had lost the power of speech!"

"Is that all he lost?"

"No. He had ten crowns, each made of precious jewels, but Rama knocked all ten to the ground! Even the sword given him by Siva was taken from his hand. The mighty demon-raja returned to his palace without his crowns, without his weapons, without his chariot, and without hope."

"When he retreated, how did Ravana feel?"

"Sad, very sad.

Like the moon swallowed by Rahu, like a frog swallowed by a snake,
Ravana writhed in pain, defeated by Rama's arrows;
Like crops withered by a cruel sun, like a deserted, penniless debtor,
The Raja of Lanka had lost all hope.

"The moon in this verse is the poisoned moon that Rahu swallows once a year causing an eclipse. But think how the moon feels—that's how Ravana felt. Like a frog caught halfway inside a snake, he couldn't move or say a word. His defeat by Rama also made him hopeless, like a man debt-ridden forever."

"I see, Indra. You mean that Ravana suffered like a debtor to Rama. Had he borrowed money from him?"

"Well ... he had taken Sita from him. If he had given her back, his debt would have been cleared, but he kept her in the Ashoka grove, and he suffered for it."

"What happened when he entered the palace?"

"His head hung so low that Ravana saw only the earth. Normally Ravana looked at the door guards, but that day he did not. Nor did he look at any part of the palace or at his children, lined up to welcome their father as they did whenever he returned victorious from battle. He didn't even look at the faces of the women who greeted him. Looking neither right nor left, he saw only the woman we call 'earth,' Bhumi. Devi. With his ten heads hanging down and his twenty eyes trailing along the floor, he entered his chambers."

"Why was Bhumi Devi the only woman he looked at?"

"Sita was born of the earth, so she is a sister of Bhumi Devi, and Ravana now realized that by stealing Sita he had brought the disgrace of defeat upon himself. Ashamed, he could not face his wives."

"But tell me exactly how Rama defeated Ravana."

"Ravana possessed extraordinary strength! He had defeated the once invincible gods, subdued the Three Worlds, and earned the title 'the raja whose crown bows to no one.' Nevertheless, with his hands hanging low, he entered the palace just as the sun set—"

"Did you say 'as the sun set'? Is there any special significance to that?"

"First realize that this twenty-armed Ravana was defeated by the two arms of Rama."

"The right and left arms of Sri Rama, right?"

"We'll get to his arms in a minute. You asked something about the setting sun?"^[30]

"Nothing really. Some might say that the setting sun was a symbol of Ravana's life. It's going down, I mean."

"No! No! Absolutely not! Understand that the demons have a habit: they fight only at night because you can't defeat them in the darkness. The point of this verse is that the initial battle took place during the day and not at night, and that's why Ravana lost. To say that Ravana's entering the palace when the sun set symbolizes the end of his life is sheer nonsense; it indicates the time of day and nothing more. Rama's hands are a different matter, and there's a verse about them: listen to what the left hand asked the right hand:^[31]

'O, right hand holding our vallal 's bow,
     do you fear to fight this Ravana?
Having fed us all these years,
     do you now draw back in fear?'

'No. I only whispered in Rama's ear:
     "Those ten dancing heads,
Shall we cut them off all at once—
     or sever them one by one?"'

"The important word here is the first: vallal or 'benefactor,' a generous person. Because Visnu offered Rama as his avatar, the poet has used this word in this spot, but what the verse actually describes is a conversation between Rama's two hands in the heat of battle. When the right hand drew back on the bowstring, the left hand was shocked: 'You've cared for us from childhood and kept us from hunger, yet, now, when we face this demon in battle, you are scared?' To this the right hand responded, 'You needn't think that. When I drew back, it was no retreat; I went close to Rama's ear because I wanted to ask a question, in secret: "How should we cut off this big oaf's heads?"' This is the meaning of this verse."

"I see, Indra. Is there any special rule about how to hold a bow?"

"Rule? The left holds the bow and the right draws the string. That's all. No one holds the bow in his right hand and draws with his left."

"I thought so. Now I think we should stop talking and look down to see what is going on in Ravana's palace."

[Indra and the gods leave. After his defeat, Ravana again summons his uncle, Maliyavan .]

"Greetings, Ravana. But what is this? What's happened?"

"Uncle, come closer, up to the throne."

"You are kind and, though it is not right for me to assume the status of a king, I will sit with you because you wish it so. Besides, you are like a son to me and can do nothing wrong. Yesterday you were angry and sent me away from the Council of Ministers, but it pains me to see you like this—your once mighty shoulders sag with despair! Could you, whose very name scatters kings in fear, could you have lost a battle? What am I saying? That's impossible since you are fearless even before the gods. Still your twenty shoulders always rode erect like mountains, but now ...

"Ravana, once you dug a fire pit by the Ganga, sat on a tiger skin, raised a fire high into the sky, and worshiped Brahma for thousands of years. Each of your ten heads and twenty arms was blessed in that roaring fire, while Brahma granted you spiritual wisdom. Ravana! Who can match your achievements? You are a raja, a warrior, a mas-

ter of mantras. Why are you so shaken? Did some enemy violate a rule of conduct on the battlefield? What has happened? Tell me."

"That's why I have called you—to tell you what happened yesterday. It's true. I have been defeated on the field of battle. Ordinarily, I wouldn't care if the whole world learned about my defeat, but sometimes, like the present, circumstances are different."

"Tell me."

"You see ...

Twenty eyes blazing with fire,
Ten noses flaring like roaring hot bellows,
Tongues too dry to taste sweet ambrosia,
I speak with a heavy heart.

"I entered the field thinking that I would defeat Rama, Laksmana, Hanuman, and their monkey armies, but now my heart, which races in anticipation whenever I join battle, is weighed down by despair. Look at my eyes! Once they shone like burning fires, but now they are so faded I can hardly see. And my noses—look at them breathing hard and fast."

"Ravana, an ancient text—'The Breathing Sastra '—tells us that a healthy person breathes 360 times every twenty-four minutes.^[32] One-third of those breaths, however, is unwanted air; it is simply exhaled and then used by grasses, bushes, and things like that. The remaining two-thirds of the inhalations is used by our body. Now, if we need 360 breaths every twenty-four minutes, a healthy person will take in 21,600 breaths each day, of which he uses about 14,400 and exhales the other 7,200. This kind of evenly balanced breathing makes us strong and protects us from illness.^[33] But our rate of breathing changes with our activities: when we work, it tends to increase, and when we sleep, we need less and should not breathe heavily. Waking hours require those 360 breaths every twenty-four minutes, but in sleep only 120 are necessary. So this is the problem: if you breathe too fast, you'll also exhale too much—like a rutting elephant or a panting horse—which decreases your life span."

"That's just it, uncle! Look at my breathing! It's out of control, and that's not all. I couldn't taste the purest of pure sugar, even if it were put on my tongue. You know that sweet syrup boiled down from sugarcane juice, that white stuff so thick that you can't chew it or drink it—you have to lick it—even that I couldn't taste now because my tongue is as dry as a dead man's tongue."

"Ravana, what happened?"

"As I said, ordinarily I wouldn't care if the whole world knew about it, but ... you see, I have been disgraced in the eyes of Sita. Uncle, it might be true that my arms are hard as diamonds and that I have conquered the kings on earth and the gods in heaven. Let them all laugh at my defeat; I do not care. Why should I? I have humiliated them already. No, it is not for them that I am overcome with shame. It's for that one with the long, fish eyes, that red-mouthed Janaki."

"The epithet 'fish-eyed' is noteworthy.^[34] There are many things to which eyes may be compared—there's even a book that lists them: a flame, a lotus, a lily, a poem, the ocean, ambrosia, and much more. But you can't use just any comparison; each has its proper place, its context. Knowing that makes a great poet. In this case, the phrase 'fish-eyed' implies a carp [kentai ] because a carp's body is soft and pleasing like an eye. The fish-eyed one is known by many names: some call her Janaki because she is the daughter of king Janaka; others call her Mithili because her family is from Mithila; and many know her by the name Sita, or 'furrow,' because her father discovered her while ploughing the fields. The Tamil word for 'furrow' is pataiccal , but in this instance we follow the northern language and call her Sita."

"Yes, her. It is Sita's laugh that I fear. If she hears this news, she will consider me weak and unworthy of her love. That's why I am buried in grief."

"Ravana, what disgrace is there in defeat? You fought fairly on the field. Of course, I did warn you that your horoscope held no victory, but you ignored me and listened instead to the shouting of your armies. Now you say that only Sita worries you, but what is she to you? Look, you are a great warrior! What is all this needless fear about?"

"If Sita finds out, I would be disgraced—that's what. I thought I couldn't lose. I had elephants and horses, while Rama had only monkeys—but what a horde of monkeys they were! From nowhere, Hanuman leapt up and challenged me to a duel without weapons. I made a huge fist and pounded his chest; he was stunned, but regained his balance. Then I bared my chest and Hanuman struck a blow I cannot describe; it reached the stubs of those thirty-two elephant tusks cut off in my chest, and I fell down. Even now I feel the pain.

"We had other enemies, too. The gods who had gathered to watch chanted mantras for Rama and conducted sacrifices for his victory. Our soldiers fought, but they fell in heaps, losing their heads, arms, and legs on the field. With vultures picking at their bodies, suddenly I was all alone, facing Rama; then the vultures, clutching bloody flesh in their beaks, flew off in a such a mass that for a moment the sun was blacked out! Suddenly my crown was drenched in blood and flesh from those vultures flying overhead, while the gods showered Rama with a crown of flowers. The humiliation was unspeakable! Not only for me but for the entire demon race descended from Brahma and Pulastiyan. The world knows that Rama attacked us because I stole Sita, and now I look tike a fool. I can't believe it—the greatest raja in the Three Worlds beaten by two men and a bunch of monkeys!"

"It all proves one thing, Ravana: no matter how strong one is, an alliance with others is indispensable for victory—not just any support, though, for it must also be timely. Like the husk that protects the grain: the husk may seem useless, but for a time it is essential. From your account of the battle, I'd say the error lay in your decision to face the enemy by yourself."

"I did have support, uncle. Mountainous armies of spear-carrying demons, a full two hundred divisions, advanced against Rama. But they are no more; after Rama's arrows flew, not one head remained on a horse, an elephant, or a soldier."

"Two hundred divisions annihilated by one man is highly unusual. And they all lost their heads? There's something strange here. It's not just a matter of strength, because you've got that. Is it Rama and his arrows?"

"Yes. Everyone said, 'Don't worry. Rama is a mortal man? Well, he may be human, but his arrows are not."

"Tell me more about his arrows. Why could nothing stand against them?"

"Well [laughs ], when the head is cut off, what can one do? And it's not just Rama; there's his brother Laksmana, too.

Even if Siva, wearing the waxing moon,
     and all the gods in these Three Worlds
Stood firm with my armies,
We would not defeat Laksmana, brother of Rama,
Whose mighty bow showers arrows upon us.^[35]

"This first line about the waxing moon alludes to a story. Siva is usually called Moon Crown but Kampan uses the words 'waxing moon' to remind us of the tale of Daksa Raja and his sixty daughters. Many daughters married, but twenty-seven remained with him until one day he asked the moon to marry them, and the moon agreed. However, as the moon was leading his wives away, Daksa warned him: 'Treat them all equally; if you show preference for one, I will punish you.' When they arrived in his country, the moon was fair to them all, but there's destiny, ulvinai , which no man can control, not even ascetics or Brahmins. No one. As it turned out, the moon loved one wife deeply, and the other twenty-six complained to their father, who cursed the moon: 'Your strength will now decrease, and the sun's will increase.'

"From that day forward, the rays of the moon grew weaker and weaker, and the sun grew hotter and hotter. Finally, as the moon was about to fade out completely, people on earth sought relief from Narayana, who went to the moon and said: 'Quick, before you have no power, go and ask Siva for refuge.' To Siva he went and was comforted by these words: 'I cannot change Daksa's curse, but I will give you the strength to regain your sixteen phases each time you lose them.' And that is the origin of the waxing and waning moons each month. But—and this is the point—even if that powerful Siva and all the other gods joined me and stood against Laksmana, we would meet defeat."

"What about Rama?"

"Rama? He needs nothing more than the arrows he holds in one hand. His arrows have yogic powers and they follow you everywhere—into the netherworlds or up into the heavens. Even the cosmic fires that destroy the world would be burned by his arrows, which obliterate everything, including any mouth that questions their powers and any mind that disregards their purpose."

"But, Ravana, you are a great warrior—"

"Listen, Uncle. When Rama releases his arrows ... I ... I don't know how to describe them ... he shoots so fast, such a flash, they blind even the gods. Straining my twenty eyes, I can't tell if he's lifting his bow, fitting an arrow, or shooting one! When he does shoot, the whole world becomes one enormous arrow. It's hopeless. He is no ordinary man. You know the power of Siva's trident? Indra's

thunderbolt? Visnu's discus? Well, none have the strength of Rama's little finger!"

"Tell me more, Ravana."

"I've already mentioned Laksmana, Rama's brother. Once, after battling with the gods, I considered red-eyed Visnu the most powerful force in the Three Worlds. Then I met Arjuna and realized that he was the strongest, but now, after facing Laksmana, I know that he is invincible. He's a yogi, a great yogi. How can I describe him? Only that the power of Visnu and Arjuna are mere specks of dust on Laksmana's feet."

"And Rama?"

"The power of Rama's arrows is beyond the power of my speech. He shoots not one or two, but ten, even hundreds, all at once, producing them like the creator god Brahma. They are guided by Visnu and never miss their mark; and when they strike, they destroy like Lord Siva. But these are simply words and cannot measure the power of Rama's arrows. There is nothing more to say."

"Are you saying that Rama is equal to the Three Gods?—to Brahma's creative power, Visnu's protective power, and Siva's destructive power? Is that right? Your similes are fine, but, Ravana, why are you chanting the name Rama, Rama with every sentence? Even when you call me Mama [uncle], it sounds like 'Rama'! Why sing a song to that mortal? Tell me that."

"I'm still in shock from the battle. I see Rama everywhere. Isn't that him, over there? No, I can't see straight. Did he advance from the west? Or the east? First I saw him on earth, then above in the sky—soon north became south, and left right. I look at you, and I see Rama coming to attack again! It's this fear, as if the battle rages on, that makes me slip and say 'Rama' instead of 'Mama.'"

"Don't shake so, Ravana. Probably some unfavorable constellation has caused your confusion, some inauspicious, unavoidable arrangement of the planets. No shame in that—just bad luck. But what about your great chariot? Didn't that give you an advantage?"

"At the beginning, yes. When I set out for battle in my flower-chariot, I felt confident because Rama had no conveyance at all. As he fought, however, I realized that he was riding on something. But what was it? It was so powerful for a moment, I thought it might be

that great eagle, Garuda. He moved so quickly, it might be Vayu. So invincible, it might be Agni. Raining down death everywhere, it might even be Yama. But when he came closer, I saw it was that monkey who raided Lanka! Rama was riding on Hanuman—that's why he was everywhere at once.

"Mama, my end has come. I am able to defeat Indra, the mountain god, and Siva bearing his axe, and Brahma on his lotus throne, but this new enemy, this Rama, he will kill me and Lanka will be no more. What shall I do, Mama? Can I escape and save Lanka, too?"

"So, this is what happened. You lost a battle to Rama."

"Oh, if that was all, I would not have called you. I cannot fight him again. The very name Rama terrifies me."

"Why consult me? Ask your ministers, your generals."

"I did consult them before—and look at the result!"

"Defeats do happen; don't let it discourage you."

"I need your advice, Mama."

"Listen, Ravana, this is all your own doing."

"Look, I will make you Chief Minister; your word will rule Lanka."

"Hmmm ... Chief Minister?"

"Yes. Even I will follow your advice; your every word will be my command."

"But I fear to give you advice. I know what to say, but I don't dare."

"No confidence? Don't worry; that will come in time."

"Ravana, when have you ever heeded a warning?"

"All I want is a little support, some advice."

"You asked for advice once before, from Marica when you planned to steal Sita, and—"

"And what?"

"And what did Marica say? He said: 'Don't do it; stealing Sita will bring dishonor and destruction.' And what did you do?"

"Well ... I got annoyed."

"Annoyed? You drew your sword and threatened his life!"

"But—"

"Did you or didn't you?"

"I did."

"Then you went straight ahead, brought back that woman to Lanka, and that's exactly where we are now."

"Then what can I do? Is there no way to save Lanka?"

"Release Sita."

The Puppeteers' Oral Commentary

In the introduction to this chapter, I said that the puppeteers are primarily commentators, that their role is to explicate the Rama story as much as to tell it; and if we multiply by twenty or thirty nights what they did in the performance translated above, we may grasp the extent to which this is true. This is the point I want to expand upon, before picking up the story again, because this relation of the oral commentary to the Kampan text is fundamental to the art of shadow puppetry in Kerala. Traditions such as this, in which a major literary text is orally performed, often fall prey to two opposite but equally misleading assumptions. On the one hand, it might be thought that the oral performers "make up" their version of the Rama story, that the performance is very different from the text; we know, however, that the puppet play relies heavily on verses from the Kamparamayanam and other sources. On the other hand, oral performance might also be misunderstood as a mechanical reproduction of its source text, that performance is no different from the text; but this, too, given the narrative alterations discussed earlier, is misleading. Still, the full extent of puppeteers' creative retelling is apparent only from their commentary as described in this and subsequent chapters.

A distinction between narrated text and exegetical commentary is recognized in Tamil, and in Indian tradition generally, in much the same terms as in the West: written texts (mulam , root) may have written or oral commentaries (urai , speech, utterance). In the Kerala puppet play and many Tamil traditions, the written text comprises verses (kavi, pattu ), and the commentary (vacanam , speech) is an oral, largely improvisational, explication of those memorized verses and the events narrated within them. Ordinarily, the text/verses are thought to carry

the narrative burden by presenting the events of the story, and the commentary adds explanation. In the puppet play, this separation of story and explication is also plainly marked by language since the verses are chanted in formal Tamil, whereas the commentary is spoken in various forms of hybrid Tamil-Malayalam. Nevertheless, any conventional distinction between narrative and exegesis does not accurately describe the division of labor in the puppet play, in which the epic verses amount to less than the full story and the oral commentary offers more than an explanation. A more accurate description is that the verses operate as a mnemonic trigger to the commentary, which has its own stories to tell.

Those stories are part of the puppet play's broader interpretive task, which is to build coherence for Kampan's Rama story. My understanding of the concept of building coherence owes much to John Miles Foley's discussion of "traditional referentiality," mentioned briefly in chapter 1. Extending his earlier analyses of the Yugoslav epic tradition from "structure to meaning," Foley first discusses the formulae (of the oral formulaic theory) and then explains that they "command fields of reference much larger than the single line, passage, or even text in which they occur" and "bear meanings as wide and deep as the tradition they encode."^[36] This traditional referentiality is metonymic, Foley continues, because it evokes in an informed audience a set of historical and intertextual associations, which complete the story in Yugoslav epic singing. Foley may have overstated the referential power of epic language (all language is metonymic to an extent), but surely he is correct that oral epics call forth an immense field of associations. Something very much like this traditional referentiality operates as well in the commentary of the Kerala puppeteers. In fact, the puppet play is doubly referential: the puppeteers create meanings not only through the language of Kampan's text but also through the tales, proverbs, and quotations in their commentary. In the text-world thus built by the puppeteers, no event is isolated, no act unexplained, no character adrift; each piece is attached to another piece, and so by picking up any one episode or verse, the skilled puppeteer may move to any other episode or verse. On a larger scale, single Rama texts are also fragments that touch, extend, and overlap others in a mosaic that local traditions reassemble. Even Kampan was aware of this wider referential frame, when, as the poet setting out to compose a Rama story, he compared himself to a cat attempting to lick up the whole of the Milk Ocean. So, too, if we think of the puppeteers as storytellers recounting and revising the

Rama story, we will not hear all that they say, but if we listen to them as commentators, they teach us what we already know—that there is no the Ramayana, only Rama stories, each incomplete and therefore inexplicable without reference to others.

The principal pathways to this wider narrative world in the drama-house are fixed-phrase expressions and auxiliary tales. As is true of other oral performers, the puppeteers have a weakness for epithets ("benefactor"-Vibhisana; "raja whose crown bows to no one"-Ravana; "Truth of the Vedas"-Rama; "waxing moon"-Siva), for etymologies (of tumi , of anmai ), and for proverbs ("Kill your mother, but never kill a messenger")—all of which lead to episodes beyond the epic content of the verse under discussion. More unique is the puppeteers' use of another fixed form, the piramanam (explanation, rule), which are quotations from traditional Indian literature, mostly Tamil and occasionally Sanskrit, but rarely Malayalam.^[37] Commonly in proverb form, piramanam are second only to the epic verses as a source of knowledge and a basis of textual authority. When Rama wants to explain the meaning of the word "benefactor" to Vibhisana, for instance, he quotes from a Tamil book of maxims (Tirukkural , misidentified in performance as the Vedas): "Look closely at his face and you see inside his mind; whether anger, sincerity, or deceit, you can see its outer sign in the face"; and to explain that birth determines personality, he quotes the Tamil poet Auvaiyar. Every skilled performer knows two or three hundred quotations, which he memorizes from old palm-leaf manuscripts or, more often, from the notebooks in which he has carefully copied them. Some piramanam are contained within an auxiliary tale and are quoted as a tag line for retrieving that tale, which is then told in order to explain the meaning of a verse (see below). In disputes between puppeteers, nothing silences an opponent more quickly than to throw a piramanam at him.

Auxiliary stories unconnected to these fixed-phrase expressions are also told by the puppeteers in their commentary. Folktales, pan-Indian myths, and Tamil temple myths, especially Saiva myths, are often woven into the wandering discourse, but the richest repository of these explanatory stories is a group of tales inserted into the Birth Book or compiled in a sequel, the Uttara Kanda. These tales contain material which editors apparently could neither fit neatly into the narrative nor omit altogether and thus chose to insert at the beginning or at the end of the story. The tales in the Uttara Kanda, omitted in Kampan but central to the puppet play, form a sort of "folk supplement" to the Rama story.

This sequel, the Uttara Kanda, contains two general categories of stories: those describing Ravana's history prior to the beginning of the epic (the history of Lanka, his genealogy, his exploits, and so forth) and those that extend the plot beyond the return to Ayodhya (Sita's banishment from Ayodhya, the birth of her two sons, Rama's horse sacrifice, and the final separation of Rama and Sita). Since neither the early Ravana stories nor the later darker tales about Rama suit bhakti intentions, the Kamparamayanam does not contain the Uttara Kanda. In fact, a clear line is drawn between it and Kampan's composition: the Tamil Uttara Kanda is attributed to Ottakkuttan and is not usually printed with Kampan's text.^[38] This intertextual tension surfaces in the puppeteers' story of how Kampan came to write his epic. After Ottakkuttan's defeat in the poetic competition with Kampan, he despairs and destroys his Rama story, but the victorious Kampan intervenes in the nick of time to save the loser's Uttara Kanda and then persuades him to "join it to my six books ... then we shall have a complete Tamil Ramayana." A unified Rama text, however, is exactly what we do not have, and the puppeteers' reliance on stories from the omitted Uttara Kanda in order to interpret Kampan's text indicates how far the folk tradition reaches beyond its source text.

The puppeteers choose to tell stories from the Uttara Kanda about Ravana and not Rama, and this selectivity reorients the epic. Although Kampan alludes to events in Ravana's past, his narrative begins with and ends with Rama; at the other extreme, some Rama texts begin with the history of Lanka and tell the story from Ravana's perspective. Effecting a compromise, the puppet play formally adheres to Kampan's sequence and its Rama orientation but circumvents it in two primary ways. First the puppeteers actually begin the narrative either at Pancavati or with the War Book, and thus introduce Ravana and his family at the beginning of the story; second, throughout performance, the puppeteers use the commentary to tell Ravana's story (at Pancavati, we might remember, Surpanakha narrates Ravana's past history in some detail). The stories told most frequently in the drama-house form a cycle that describes Ravana's exploits before he enters Kampan's epic plot and thus creates a symmetry between what we know of Ayodhya and what we know of Lanka. From this "Ravanayana" we learn, in the above performance alone, that Dasagriva has Brahmin ancestry, is a fervent devotee of Siva and Brahma, received boons from both gods, defeated Indra and the Cosmic Elephants, molested Vedavati, is a master of the vina, and is a megalomaniac.

This last quality is also the theme of a story that illustrates how the puppeteers' commentary reframes Kampan's text from Ravana's point of view. When, in the first scene of the above translation, Ravana wonders how a mere monkey was able to burn Lanka, Vibhisana reminds him of his victory march after conquering the Three Worlds, during which his arrogance earned him three curses: from Kubera's messenger (that Ravana would be destroyed by another messenger); from Vedavati (that, in a later birth as Sita, she would destroy him); and from Nandi (that a real "monkey-face" would destroy him).^[39] As a result, Vibhisana informs his brother, the fire of Sita's chastity, magnified by the mirror of the emissary Hanuman, has burned Lanka. Told as the very first scene in the puppet play (and not found in Kampan), the story of the three curses reframes the entire epic around Ravana's flawed character: the king of Lanka is doomed by his own past—by an arrogance that engenders vengeance in proud monkeys and chaste women. What device more firmly links past and present, placing one Rama story in relation to others, than a curse, especially three of them?^[40] No wonder that the puppeteers often call their Rama story "a tale of eighteen curses."^[41]

Throughout the War Book, the puppeteers tell other stories from this Ravana cycle to explain other aspects of his character, and each story may be repeated to a different effect. Vibhisana's version of Ravana's victory march, for example, emphasizes his pride and lust, whereas a second version of the story later, told by Indra to the gods, emphasizes his stupidity when he gives away many of the lives granted by Siva. If a puppeteer wishes to praise Ravana's devotion, on the other hand, he may select the story of Ravana's encounter with Siva, in which he received his name, or the story of his austerities to Brahma on the shores of Lake Kuntalam, in which he received his weapons, his sword, chariot, and invincibility against gods and demons. Ravana's heroic endurance, as another example, is glorified by the story of the Cosmic Elephants, during the victory march, in which he conquers the Guardians of the Eight Directions by lopping off their thirty-two tusks stuck in his chest. Ravana himself alludes to those tusks in describing to Maliyavan the pain he felt when Hanuman pounded his chest during the first humiliating battle. These episodes from the Uttara Kanda, many of which are not even mentioned in Kampan's verses, are essential to the puppeteers' retelling of the Kamparamayanam .

The puppeteers tell other stories, as well, especially of Siva (the Markandeya story) and of Visnu (Churning the Ocean, Gajendra Moksa ,

Madhu and Kaitabha). The last story deserves mention here because it is told frequently (three or four times in the course of a festival and twice in our sample of performances) and because it illustrates the fact that the commentary tells stories to explain the actions of epic characters other than Ravana. Madhu and Kaitabha, as the puppeteers tell it, are two demons born from Visnu's earwax (or feces) to humble Brahma's pride because the creator god was prematurely drawing up plans for the next creation when he should have been fast asleep in Visnu's stomach. Tricked by Visnu into losing their invincibility in this life, the demons are given boons to fight the god again and are reborn as Kumbhakarna and Atikayan, who then face Rama-Visnu on the battlefield. From the same story, the puppeteers also derive Jambuvan, born from Brahma's nose water, which was loosened by his fear of the demons, rolled down his face, and settled in the cleft of his chin.

A final illustration of the commentary's power to create coherence is Natesan Pillai's account of how Kampan came to compose his epic.^[42] Narrated within the explication of a single verse word (tumi ), this story demonstrates how completely the commentary subsumes the narrative function and enables the puppeteer to move from the part to the whole—from a verse in the Kamparamayanam to the history of its composition—within the mosaic of the Rama story tradition. Looking closely at the performance, we see that the Kampan verse serves as the door through which this senior puppeteer exits the epic text and moves to a different vantage point, where Indra and the gods speak as detached observers of the events on earth. By stepping outside the verses, Natesan Pillai is able to talk about Kampan's epic, and when his tale of Kampan's composition is completed, he reenters the epic narrative through that same "verse door." This and other auxiliary stories dominate the puppet play, exceeding in total performance time the narrative delivered in the verses.

I first suspected the limited role of the verses when I realized that the puppeteers do not chant all the verses that they know. After comparing several performances with Kampan's text, a consistent pattern stood out: if Kampan summarizes a story in a string of verses, the puppeteers sing only one of those verses and use the commentary to cover the material contained in the others. This selective use of the verses occurs in the scene already discussed, when Vibhisana addresses Ravana in the war council: Although the puppeteers sing only one of the several Kampan verses spoken by Vibhisana to tell the story of Ravana's victory march, their commentary includes all the details of that story—the

curses, the names of elephants, and so forth. The puppeteers do not chant all the verses they have memorized because they do not need them. Instead, the verses are mnemonic devices, like the piramanam , memorized to trigger narration in the oral commentary of episodes from the wider llama story tradition. To adapt Foley's idea of "traditional referentiality," Kampan's verses are similar to other pieces that comprise the referential realm of the Rama tradition, that field of meanings which every performance evokes and none can exhaust.

Chapter 7
The Death of Indrajit: Creating Conversations

In the previous chapter, I made the general point that the puppeteers adapt Kampan's epic poem primarily through their oral commentary. The specific techniques by which the commentary subsumes the text and dominates performance are the subject of this chapter. In brief, my argument will be that the puppeteers gain control by creating conversations through which they speak in their own voice. For that reason, as with the previous chapter, readers may wish to pay special attention to the use of dialogue in the following translation, which takes us straight to the heart of the War Book.

Here, in the War Book, one might expect to find Ravana's death because it is both the narrative climax in Kampan and the ritual center of the puppet play, which originated in order that Bhagavati could view the auspicious spectacle of the demon's final defeat. The Kerala tradition, however, seldom honors our expectations: it lives in performance but holds no interactive audience; it presents one of the most popular stories in Indian literature but is not primarily a narrative tradition; and the interminable, chaotic War Book, rather than one of the tightly plotted, earlier books, occupies center stage. Looking at the puppeteers' treatment of the War Book, we see once more that the puppet play has its own logic, sometimes in counterpoint to its textual source: the long series of overnight plays inside the drama-house reaches its dramatic climax not with Ravana's death but with that of his son, Indrajit.^[1]

The puppeteers kill off Ravana matter of factly, almost as a prelude to the moving scene of Mandodari grieving over her husband's corpse.^[2] Killing Indrajit, by contrast, consumes nearly three nights of perfor-

mance and requires the most complicated manipulations of puppets in the entire sequence of performances; on the second night, for instance, a spectacular event occurs when a large, wooden Garuda swoops down on a wire leading from a tall pole to a corner of the drama-house and revives Rama felled by Indrajit's snake-weapon. By no means is Ravana a minor character on the cloth screen, but he is less dangerous than his son, more vulnerable, more human, and continually misled, particularly by his love for Sita. Indrajit, on the other hand, is ascetic and invincible, except against someone of equal self-denial—someone who has fasted in the forest for fourteen years, that is, against Laksmana.^[3] As is true of other heroes in Indian folklore, the tragedy of Indrajit is intensified by the very fact that he, unlike Ravana, is unmarried and therefore dies a premature death.^[4] In this respect, father and son exemplify that complementarity between secular authority and spiritual power which is well known in Indian culture. King and renouncer are represented also by Rama and Laksmana, for example, which explains why the weak-willed Ravana is killed by his counterpart, Rama, and the resolute Indrajit must be conquered by his equal, Laksmana.^[5] As the puppeteers themselves explain: "Ravana is the body of the demons, Indrajit their life. When the life is gone, the body will not live long." That Indrajit's death, not Ravana's, heralds Rama's victory in the drama-houses of Kerala is a local innovation.

In the following translation, a eulogy to the majestic Indrajit is delivered by one of the senior puppeteers, K. L. Krishnan Kutty. After his performance, when I asked why Indrajit received three nights of performance and Ravana less than one, his eyes popped wide open and he said excitedly, "Because Indrajit is a great warrior! The greatest warrior!" He then went on to tell me in detail the story of Laksmana's fasting in the forest for fourteen years, of his diet and his austerities, and of how they produced the power necessary to subdue the "greatest warrior." It is only right that Krishnan Kutty should deliver this tribute to Indrajit, for his enthusiasm is matched by his skill. I still remember my first visit to his home, in 1984, when I casually showed him a handwritten copy of a folk Ramayana in Tamil, which he opened, read for a moment, winced, quickly corrected two spelling mistakes, and then rhythmically chanted the invocatory verses (which he had never seen before). His learning is bred from four generations of puppeteers in a Tamil family attached to the temple at Kavalapara, near Shoranur, one of only three places where the full Rama story is performed, which is a source of great pride for his family. In the 1930s, his father,

Laksmana Pulavar received a commemorative medal (virasringala ) from the Raja of Kavalapara in recognition of his performances at that temple; fifty years later, Krishnan Kutty received a commemorative wooden plaque from the Sangeet Natak Akademi in New Delhi.

These shifting sands of patronage have shaped the professional life of Krishnan Kutty. Among his family possessions are many palm-leaf manuscripts, those crumbling packets that scholars invest with mystical status because they are now so rare. Puppeteers have always considered these manuscripts valuable for reference and useful for memorization and teaching, but since the arrival of foreign (and Indian) text hunters, they have become wampum in a new trading relationship. Responsive to these demands but unable to produce more manuscripts and with editorial help from local scholars, encouragement from a cultural organization in New Delhi, and money from a private donor in Sweden, Krishnan Kutty has published the shadow puppet text of the Ayodhya Book (in Tamil) and the Birth Book (in Malayalam).^[6] Although very few copies have sold, all this activity has excited the jealousy of rival puppeteers, who speak eagerly of plans to publish their editions of the shadow puppet play. By the end of the 1980s, the shadow puppet tradition had completed its rite of passage to the printed page.

In the same decade, the tradition also made an uncertain entry into the international culture trade when the puppets were taken out of Kerala—first to New Delhi, then to Moscow, and eventually to Europe. In recognition of his learning and dedication, Krishnan Kutty was chosen to perform on these foreign tours; consequently, his modest ancestral house of two rooms and a storage space gained a new, concrete facade and a porch, where glass shelves display photo albums of his trips, the scarce palm-leaf manuscripts, rows of his edited books, and a stack of handsomely printed business cards. The new patronage supporting folk performing arts on the international festival circuit is difficult for anyone to ignore: "I make thirty rupees for an overnight performance here [in Kerala]," Krishnan Kutty confided, "but one thousand rupees for one hour in New Delhi." Still, he longs for the old days, when puppeteers were respected as learned men, like his father, and he worries about the steady decline of shadow puppetry in Kerala. New puppets are not made now—it is cheaper to repair the old ones—and few young men are taking up the art; although each of his four sons is a competent performer, only the two eldest say they want to make the puppet play their livelihood. Supported by his dutiful sons, a complete set of puppets, and a few lucrative performing sites inherited from his father,

Krishnan Kutty commands a large group of six puppeteers, but they are often thinly spread in order to cover two (even three) performances at different temples on the same night. As a result, he admits, the quality of the performances is declining. Sitting in a molded plastic chair on his new porch, he speaks of his travels, his successes, his books, but rarely the future.

Krishnan Kutty's own performances, fortunately, have lost none of their brilliance, as evinced in the following translation. It was recorded in Elakatu, a village not quite fifteen miles from Palghat on the old trading route northwest toward Calicut and the Arabian Sea. Local patronage here supports seventeen nights of puppet plays, and some nights fetch two or three thousand rupees (divided between performers and temple) in individual donations. Sitting directly opposite the Bhagavati temple on a hill that rises steeply away from the main road, the drama-house has a long front and a high ceiling. With such ample space and patronage, this is a popular site for puppeteers but not a favorable one for field research. On one occasion, a performer prevented me from recording (he was miffed, I later learned, that I had not given him any money for an interview the week before). On another day, temple officials, confident that I would sell my recordings abroad and become rich, forced me to cease tape-recording until I submitted a written request to the village council. When I returned with that request in 1989, the electrical power continually fluctuated between too much and too little current, so that my tapes were garbled beyond comprehension; when the power finally went out altogether, I fumbled with batteries and lost part of a valuable scene. I did learn something in the frustration of that power cut, however. All night about a dozen people were sleeping and lounging on the ground in front of the drama-house, but when the microphone and loudspeakers went silent, four men moved up to the entrance of the stage and sat on the steps, where they listened to the commentary for most of two hours. This handful of connoisseurs is hardly an audience (they, too, eventually went to sleep), but they reassured me that my appreciation of the puppeteers' art is not necessarily the self-serving enthusiasm of a field researcher.

The translation below picks up the story where we left it at the end of the previous chapter, after Ravana's humiliating first defeat, and covers four nights of performance from the War Book, including the deaths of Kumbhakarna, Atikayan, and Indrajit. Other figures, unknown or silent in Kampan, such as the umbrella holder (kutakkaran ), a comic pair of messengers, and the temple oracle (veliccappatu ), also

appear, but a discussion of their roles is deferred until the next chapter. The translation opens with an abridged prose summary of the previous night's narration and moves quickly to Kumbhakarna's appearance on the field of battle.

The Death of Indrajit

[Indra ] "Gods, listen to what Maliyavan told Ravana. He said that if the great demon-raja wanted to live in Lanka, he must release Sita. Ravana accepted this plan, reluctantly, but was intercepted by Mahodara, who sang his praises so loudly that Ravana once again grew confident. Sending messengers, Ravana summoned his brother Kumbhakarna, but when the giant demon entered the palace and saw the court in a war panic, he was shocked, bowed before his older brother, and asked what had happened. When Ravana explained the terrible loss in yesterday's battle and asked him to assume the responsibility of winning back the war, Kumbhakarna looked at Ravana and spoke: 'Brother, the only reason for this chaos is your foolish love for that man's wife. As long as she stays, the destruction of Lanka is certain. Release her and free us all from this shame.'

"But Ravana roared back, 'Quiet! It's not your place to advise me. She stays and Rama dies, that is the end of this debate.' Kumbhakarna called that mere 'words,' but Ravana reminded him of their proud heritage, their descent from Brahma: 'We are half-demon, half-Brahmin, and we do commit mistakes. If you are opposed to the idea of Sita's captivity, you might at least consider attacking the enemy who has attacked us.' Kumbhakarna replied that Ravana should have fought Rama first and then taken Sita, which so infuriated Ravana that he ordered his brother to leave the court. In the end, Kumbhakarna said that he, by force of blood, would obey his brother and king and fight Rama.

"And so with thirteen thousand soldiers, Kumbhakarna entered the field. Rama saw the gigantic figure emerge in the distance and spoke to Vibhisana, standing by his side:^[7]

"Mighty shoulders spreading so wide
My eyes can not measure them in a day,
Legs planted on the earth like mountains,
It can't be a warrior, but what is it?^[8]

"Vibhisana, yesterday we defeated Ravana and his two hundred thousand demon soldiers; I felled him, knocking off his crown, and he can no longer hold any hope of victory. Only one question remained: 'Will he release Sita and end this war? Or will he send more demons to be killed?' Yet, look! Over there! Another huge warrior has taken the field, and he is enormous! My eyes will require more than a day to move from his right shoulder to his left. He cannot be human-born—he looks like a mountain that emerged from the earth, like Mt. Meru, flanked by the cosmic elephants, with the nine planets circling his head. Who is this mountain-man?"

"Rama, look closely. What do you see?"

"I cannot answer. Could it be Ravana in disguise—has he changed his twenty arms and ten heads for these two arms and single head? Is his maya frightening us again? Tell me, tell me quickly."

"Rama,

Listen, noble one (ariya ), he is younger brother to
     the Raja of Lanka on this earth(atitalam )
And older brother to me;
Wearing anklets of black death, wielding a cruel trident,
He is Kumbhakarna, O, Lord of Victory.

"Notice, Rama, that the poet calls you ariya , or 'noble one.' We also call you pujyan , which means both 'noble one' and 'nothingness,' a cipher.^[9] Numbers are useful when we add, for instance, ten to twenty to find a sum, but more useful is this concept of nothingness and of everything at the same time. That's you, Rama. Nameless, formless, you are the unknowable, the hidden essence, the self-generating reality.

"People often ask, 'Why worship this nothingness?' Our answer is that nothing, this pujyan , takes form to protect us. You, too, assume the eight dispositions, such as love and compassion, that we all have. So what separates you from us? Consider the Saiva texts, which describe three layers of body: subtle, gross, and physical.^[10] The physical body is that which is visible to the naked eye; inside is another, the gross body, which can be known by yoga and meditation; and inside it is a still more subtle body, which is known only by wisdom. Humans and gods alike have these three layers, but there is a difference. The outer bodies of all the beings in the world comprise the outer body of god, and the inner bodies of all the beings form the inner body of god; the innermost bodies are subsumed in god's innermost

body. In short, god's body is this world. People debate the nature of god: some say he has name and form, some deny it, whereas the simple truth, Rama, is that god takes bodily form to protect this world in times of crisis. Because you are an example of that compassion, we call you pujyan ."

"Yes, Vibhisana, but who is that giant warrior beating down on us?"

"Right, and look at the rest of the first line, in which 'foot place' (atitalam ) refers to the earth because one walks on it. This is an example of a derived noun; the other category of nouns are those understood by conventional usage. Now, words in each of these two categories can be either a general noun or a special noun; thus, there are four classes of nouns. For instance, we use the word pankam to denote 'mud' [ceru ]. Other things that come from mud, like the word pankayam (lotus) are derived nouns, though many would consider this a noun by convention. On the other hand, people seldom use the word pankayam and prefer instead centamarai , which is a special derived noun.

"Similarly, mukkannan , or 'three-eyed,' is a derived noun when we use it to mean 'coconut.' But when we use it to mean 'Siva,' it is a special derived noun. 'Foot place' is also a special derived noun because it arose for a special reason, which is Vamana, the dwarf-avatar of Visnu, who—"

"Vibhisana, I appreciate your learned explanations, but first tell me, who is this ferocious warrior about to kill us?"

"That's what I am telling you, Rama, by explaining this phrase 'foot place.' Long ago a raja and his son Mahabali built a magnificent city of Asurapati, whence the demons ruled the Three Worlds. Soon the gods and sages petitioned Brahma for relief from the demons' violence, and Brahma sent them to Narayana, who assured them that he would end their troubles once and for all. 'First,' he said, 'we must churn the Milk Ocean to acquire ambrosia. Bring that huge Mandara mountain; the long snake named Vasuki; the sixteen-phased moon, Candra; and finally that snake Karkottan. But, for this task, you gods also need the help of the demons, especially their king, Mahabali.'

"Then with the demons' help, the gods set up Mr. Mandara as the churning stick, using the moon as a latch and a horse as a pin to fasten the stick to the tortoise as its resting place. With Vasuki wrapped around the stick, the gods held his tail and the demons his head, and

they began to churn. They churned and churned until Vasuki was unable to bear the pain and spat out his dangerous poison, which swelled into a huge ball and advanced toward the demons, who dropped the snake's head and fled. Narayana stopped them by saying he would swallow the poison, which he did, but he could not hold it down, and it emerged again in a murderous mass. Knowing it would kill them all, the gods ran to Mt. Kailasa and pleaded with Siva to assist them.

"'Do not fear, gods. Stay here,' advised Siva, who then summoned a great ascetic and told him to bring the poison back to Kailasa. When the ascetic approached the black mass, it called out, 'Stay back or die!' But the ascetic simply said, 'I am Siva's messenger. Come rest in my hands,' and the poison entered his palm—at least that's what the old legends say. The ascetic returned to Kailasa and put the poison in Siva's hands, who pressed it into a ball, like soft rice, and tossed it in his mouth. There are two versions of what happened next. Some say that Parvati, fearing that Siva would die if he swallowed the poison, squeezed his throat so that the poison went no further—it stayed fight there in his throat. The other story is that Siva himself halted the poison in his throat to protect those who sought his refuge. The old legends often differ like this, but no version fails to state that Siva held the poison without swallowing it. That's why Siva is called Dark Throat or Poison Throat.^[11]

"Siva then told the gods to return and churn again for the ambrosia. They did, and eventually the liquid emerged, but the demons and gods fought over it. In that battle, Indra, riding on his elephant Airavata, cut off Mahabali's head with his thunderbolt, while Sukra, Mahabali's guru, watched—"

"Vibhisana, this is a fascinating tale about Mahabali's death, but what about this figure bearing down on us right now ?"

"Swami, every story has details, which unfold as the story is told, and eventually we will return to the starting point. For now, just listen. Grieving over Mahabali's loss, Sukra tried to revive him. Carrying his head and body to the Milk Ocean, he fitted them together, chanted a secret mantra and ... Mahabali arose as from a dream. Bowing at Sukra's feet, Mahabali said, 'Great guru, you have let me live again. When I battle Indra for the second time, is there a boon that will protect me from death?' 'Yes,' the guru replied, 'if you perform an esoteric sacrifice, you can defeat a thousand Indras.' And so

Sukra and Mahabali kindled a fire, made offerings of milk and fruit and ghee, and chanted mantras into the flames. Soon Brahma emerged from the flames and gave Mahabali horses, arrows, bows, and a jewel-garland that made its owner invincible. Armed with these boons, Mahabali summoned his demon armies and again charged against the gods, who fell back in fear when they saw the once-dead king leading the charge. Brhaspati, guru to the gods, explained what had happened and said, 'Flee now while there is time; we can do nothing against this Mahabali.'"

"Yes, Vibhisana, this is all very interesting, but who is this warrior? At least tell me his name before he slays me."

"I'm coming to that. So the gods fled and Mahabali occupied the heavens, entertained by celestial dancers and musicians. Indra was furious and prepared to attack Mahabali, but Brahma intervened and bade him consult Visnu, who promised Indra that he would destroy Mahabali. Meanwhile on earth, a son of Brahma, sage Kasyapa, married the thirteen daughters of the moon. With one wife, Aditi, he fathered the gods, and with another, Diti, he brought forth the demons. Aditi knew at once that Diti's demon-sons would overcome her god-sons, so she asked her husband, Kasyapa, for another son to subdue the demons. Kasyapa listened and spoke: 'Even barren women will conceive if they follow these instructions: for the twelve days after the new moon in Panguni, you must repeat the Five-Letter Mantra, the Maya Mantra, and the Truth Mantra.'^[12]

"For those twelve days, Aditi meditated on those mantras, and when the star rose early on the thirteenth morning, she cried out, 'Swami, you must take some form to defeat the demons.' 'So be it,' a voice responded. Ten months later, on Krsna's birthday, Vamana [Visnu's dwarf-avatar] was born. The old stories provide a long description of his tiny body, but it can be summarized in one sentence: 'If you understand a banyan-tree seed, you understand Vamana.' Meanwhile, Mahabali dug a deep pit, filled it with sandalwood, poured on ghee, and kindled a roaring fire. For days the sacrifice continued, as the demon-raja distributed gifts to anyone who came and asked. When Vamana approached, Mahabali himself fell at the little Brahmin's holy feet and escorted him in a royal chariot to the guest house. After his esteemed guest had rested, Mahabali spoke. 'Sir, why have you come?'

"'I am a student of the Vedas; I need a small plot of land to live on while I complete my studies,' Vamana politely replied.

"'Granted. How much land do you wish?'

"'Only as much as I can measure in three steps.'

"'Such a large request from such a little man,' Mahabali muttered and shook his head. 'If you had asked for three entire villages, I would not refuse you.'

"'Oh, no, sir. Only three steps of land, please.'

"Now in those days no deeds, surveyors, or documents were needed to transfer land. What's the point? Someone says you have the land—and it's yours. A person's word was sufficient. However, when Vamana spoke with Mahabali, Sukra, his guru, was suspicious. Leaning toward his king, Sukra whispered, 'This is no child; he's Visnu. Give him land and your life is finished.' But Mahabali rebuked him. 'Don't say such things. You know the saying: "Those who give even when they have nothing live forever; those who prevent a gift will struggle to earn saltless rice." That's what the old books say. Besides, if I say "I give," it means I gave.'

"As Sukra watched, Mahabali poured water through Vamana's hands to seal the agreement and said, 'Take your three steps.' Suddenly, the dwarf expanded into a huge figure that covered the earth with one step and the heavens with his second. Mahabali then realized this was Visnu and offered his own head as a resting place for the god's third step.

"This is the point, Rama. When Visnu took his dwarf-avatar and measured the earth with his steps, the phrase 'foot place' became a special derived noun for 'earth,' which brings me back to your original question about the giant warrior before us. The earth's loveliest city is Lanka, whose raja is the older brother of this warrior on the battlefield. Strong as Yama, wearing a special anklet that rings a warning to anyone on the field, wielding a spear in his right hand, surrounded by thousands of demons, that is no mountain before you, no maya form of Ravana, that's Kumbhakarna!^[13]

You who swallow the worlds,
In his hand he holds
A spear that swallows warriors' lives,
Given by him who swallowed poison."^[14]

"I see. This is Ravana's younger brother and your older brother, right? But, tell me why the spear is special."

"Rama, permit this ignoramus to ask a question. Is it necessary to say that Kumbhakarna is both my older brother and Ravana's younger brother? Would not one relation be sufficient? Since you did not notice this apparent redundancy, let me explain. Both relations, in fact, are necessary to establish Kumbhakarna's identity because his father, Vicaravasu, married four women: Tevavanni, Putpa, Kalai, and Kekaci. Thus, only if I say that Kumbhakarna is both my older brother and Ravana's younger brother can one know that his mother is our mother, Kekaci.

"But there is another level of meaning in all this. When I said he comes 'after Ravana,' it means that he is junior not only in age but also in demonic disposition.^[15] He's a raksasa , yes, but he has something of Siva in him, too, and therefore commits fewer sins than Ravana. At the same time, he comes 'before me' and so is more demonic than I am. Is the meaning of this line clear now, Rama?"

"It is, but please tell me about his spear before it pierces me."

"You are wise to single out that spear from among the hundreds of weapons he holds because it's Siva's spear, as the verse explains. Notice that the poet uses the word 'swallow' in the first line to identify Visnu as 'He who swallows the world,' which refers to you, Rama. During the periodic dissolutions of the world, all living creatures return to Brahma seated on the lotus stalk, which recedes back inside Visnu, who then holds the earth's waters in himself. However, in the last line, 'swallowing poison' refers to Siva's actions in the story I just told about churning the ocean. Also, the spear itself is said to 'swallow,' to consume the lives of enemies. Do you see how the verse works? It says: 'You who swallow the worlds, listen: this spear, which swallows warriors' lives, was given by him who swallowed the poison.'"

"Oh, it's Siva's trident. But is this the trident of Siva? Aren't there many such spears?"

"Good question. Particularly because in the puranas , Siva appears to give weapons to nearly everyone! Suppose he gives a specific weapon to a persona, who then gives it to another, is it still a 'weapon given by Siva'? I think not. The weapon must be given directly by Siva; otherwise it's not a 'Siva-weapon.' When a great devotee meditates

and asks Siva for a weapon, the god fashions a special one for that person. Kumbhakarna is a case in point because he received his spear in return for devotion to Siva, and, remember, Siva doesn't give weapons to everyone who asks. If he did, he would do absolutely nothing but make weapons and give them away."

"Yes, yes, but how powerful is this spear?"

"Long ago, when Indra attacked the city of the gods, the white elephant Airavata blocked his path. Rushing headlong, Indra grabbed its tusks, but the massive elephant flew up into the sky and tried to shake off the king of the gods. To avoid the disgrace of falling from heaven, Indra held on firmly to its tusks, swinging wildly as the elephant flew through the air. That's how Indra conquered Airavata, yet that same Indra was conquered by Kumbhakarna, who is coming toward us now."

"What else can you tell me about Kumbhakarna?"

"Well, the trident indicates his hand strength, but there is also body strength and leg strength ...

Greater than he who is death to Death,
Greater than he who ended the Ender with his foot,
Kumbhakarna conquered Visnu and
Tied the vakai victory flower on his spear.^[16]

"The verse begins with a reference to Siva as 'death to Death,' which is a separate story and time—"

"You mean the story of Markandeya? Please tell it."

"Very briefly, then, in the city of Katakam a Brahmin named Kuccakan and his wife Ilava gave birth to a son, who grew up to be a scholar and one day left the house to meditate in the deep forest. Meditating on Siva, he sat motionless as a stone while wild animals crept silently around him. Soon Visnu appeared before the boy, who slowly withdrew from his meditation and bowed. Then the god spoke: 'Because you are motionless as a crane (kocca ), I name you Kocciyan.^[17] Study well, and wait for Siva's blessings.' Having completed his education, the boy returned home where his father explained that he must get married, but the young man refused: 'Married life is not for me. All life has problems, but at least they end, whereas the troubles of married life are endless. True pleasure comes with Siva's grace and that requires asceticism.'

"His father was fed up with this philosophizing: 'You must marry; it's my command and you know very well that a son must never contradict his father's word. As the proverb says: "He who opposes his father or harms his mother or denies a sadhu's wishes will swallow balls of molten iron in hell"' And so the boy relented: 'As you wish, Father, but I impose these conditions: my bride should not come from a motherless family, a fatherless family, a family with disease, or a one-child family; she must not be named after any of the seven constellations, after a river, or a bird.^[18] She must possess a healthy body, the balance of this earth, the wisdom of a sage, and the humility to serve others.^[19] Find this woman, Father, and I am ready to marry.'

"His father then set out on a journey and eventually reached an ash-ram where a sage named Uccattiyan had a daughter with all the qualities his son had demanded. Meanwhile—this is a complex story, hard to tell in a few words—Uccattiyan's daughter was bathing with her friends in a pool when a rutting elephant suddenly appeared. The girls scattered in all directions, but the sage's daughter fell into a deep well. Uccattiyan searched and searched and finally found her body lying at the bottom of the well; dragging it up, he laid it on the ground and collapsed in grief. At that moment, the Brahmin, Kuccakan, came along to ask the sage to accept his boy as a son-in-law, but when he saw the girl's corpse, he turned to Uccattiyan and said, 'Why grieve about death? Take the body over to that temple, and protect it for now. Tomorrow I will revive your daughter.' Kuccakan knew perfectly well that Yama had taken away the girl's life and that he would have to fight the God of Death to win it back. As soon as he left the scene, the elephant returned, went straight to the temple, lifted up the corpse, and ran off with it. When the girl awoke, she was stunned: 'An elephant? Carrying me in its trunk? Elephants trample and crush, so why is this one cradling me like a baby?'

"Then with her divine eye she saw into the elephant's past lives, and this is what she saw: Once there was a man named Devataccan whose son, Dharmatattan, became an orphan. When the son began to spend his inheritance wildly, he met a Brahmin named Necamahi, disguised as an alchemist. Hoping to trick the rich Dharmatattan, the alchemist said, 'Give me whatever coins you have, and I will turn them to gold. Bring me everything, and the gold you gain will not

be contained within the walls of a house.' Crazed with greed, the young man sold all his possessions—cattle, cows, furniture, jewels—and then gave all the coins to the alchemist. Placing them in a box, the man chanted a mantra and poured ghee into the flames rising from the box. Soon the heavy smoke overwhelmed Dharmatattan, who fell down unconscious while Necamahi quickly snatched away the box of coins and replaced it with another that held old scraps of metal. When Dharmatattan recovered, the alchemist spoke: 'I must go to perform a Kali puja ; on the third day I will return and then the gold will be yours. Watch over the box until I return.' The third day came, but not Necamahi. Deciding that if he got no gold, he would at least recover his coins, Dharmatattan cautiously put out the fire, opened the lid, and to his horror, saw only twisted pieces of brass and iron. With no means to support himself, Dharmatattan committed suicide.

"For his suicide, Dharmatattan was cursed to be reborn as an elephant, and for many years, in many previous lives as elephants, he performed good deeds. Only one more good deed was required in order to regain his human form; and so it happened: he, as an elephant, revived the sage's daughter and gained a new life as Dharmachatra, and the girl was married to Kuccakan's reluctant son. The couple lived happily and had a son named Mirakantan, who soon married Kuruvati, daughter of sage Bhradvasi. This couple had no children, even after repeated acts of charity, so Mirakantan decided to set out to Benares to ask Siva for a child. Arriving at the Ganga, he undertook fierce austerities in Siva's name until, finally, the Great God appeared and asked him what he wanted.

"When he learned that Mirakantan desired a son, Siva offered him a choice: 'You may have a son who is evil and stupid but will live for a hundred years, or you may have a son who is virtuous and wise but will die at sixteen years. Which do you wish?' Immediately Mirakantan answered, 'Give me the sixteen-year-old son. What good is a dolt even if he lives for a century?' In due course, the son was born and his parents named him Markandeya. As his sixteenth year approached, his parents watched him anxiously and when he asked why, his father replied, 'You were born by the grace of Siva and were allotted only sixteen years of life. Soon you will die and we cannot bear it.' But the son consoled his father: 'Appa, do not worry. I will approach Siva myself.'

"Young Markandeya went straight into the forest, selected a secluded spot, and sat down in deep meditation. There he sat, and when his sixteenth year arrived, Yama looked at his accountant and asked, 'Anyone due today?' The clerk leafed through his enormous ledger of lives and stopped at a line: 'Yes, here we are. A boy named Markandeya was due yesterday, in fact, and he's still in meditation in the forest.'

"'Did we simply overlook him, or is his meditation so powerful that it confused us?'

"'No matter. We must go get him now.'

"But when Yama's men arrived on the scene, they were paralyzed by the sheer force of Markandeya's devotion, and they returned empty.-handed. Yama was furious and rose to go himself, but his minister, Kalan, stopped him. 'Lord, please remain here. I will go and bring back that little boy.' Riding Yama's buffalo and swinging his noose, Kalan charged toward the forest and only stopped within a few inches of the seated Markandeya, who neither moved nor spoke. Finally, Kalan was forced to speak. 'Markandeya! You know that Siva gave you only sixteen years, and now you've crossed over into the seventeenth. What gives you the authority to transgress Siva's boon? Speak!' Markandeya said nothing, and again Kalan screamed at him, 'Listen, this is no trifling matter. I am Kalan, Yama's henchman. Even if Brahma were slated to die, I'd take his life! You can delay death no longer.'

"Finally, the boy spoke: 'So, you are Kalan. Come to take my life, have you? If my life is over, there's no need to take me to Yama. I will go directly to Siva. Leave!' As they argued, Kalan drew out his noose and flung it around Markandeya, but the boy threw himself around the Siva lingam he was worshiping and cried, 'Siva! Receive me, receive me!' Suddenly Siva appeared in a form visible only to Markandeya and said to him, 'I grant you a long life.' Then Siva kicked Kalan's chest with his leg, driving him into the earth and killing him. All the gods gathered and requested Siva to revive Kalan, so that Death might resume its normal course. Siva did that but also said to Kalan, 'Do not go near my devotees again. Henceforth, I will receive my own worshipers.'

"This is the story contained in the phrase that describes Siva as 'death to Death' (kalan to kalan ). Notice also that Siva killed Death with his foot (kal ), so the line reads: 'kalan to kalan by kal .' The underlying meaning, Rama, is that Kumbhakarna is more powerful than Siva, the Destroyer of Death."

"You've described Kumbhakarna's body strength, Vibhisana, but tell me more about his trident."

"As the verse says, Kumbhakarna once decorated that weapon with the victory flower after he defeated Visnu. That's the power of his spear, Rama."

"What! Are you saying that he conquered Visnu in battle?^[20] Does this Kumbhakarna have no weaknesses?"

"No. He does. You know that story of his boon, I presume. When Ravana asked and received a boon of invincibility against the gods and demons, Kumbhakarna was about to ask for the same, but the gods realized that such a boon would be too dangerous, and so they asked Sarasvati to help. The goddess of learning seated herself in Kumbhakarna's tongue, and when he opened his mouth to ask for a boon of immortality, she changed the words so that he gained deathlessness only for six months; during the other six months when he is vulnerable, he sleeps. We are fortunate, indeed, that this is the period of his sleep; in other words, if Ravana had waited a little longer until his giant brother awoke, Kumbhakarna would kill you."

"Here he comes, Vibhisana, prepare for battle."

[The battle is joined and, eventually, Rama kills Kumbhakarna, who lies dead on the field. His funeral pyre roars and the news is brought to Ravana, who grieves for his brother until his son Atikayan steps to his side and vows revenge. When Atikayan enters the field of battle, Vibhisana describes, his history and powers to Rama.^[21] Laksmana then battles Atikayan, matching the demon's arrows with his own, as wounded bodies on the battlefield are torn and eaten by vultures. Vibhisana advises Laksmana to withdraw from the field and asks Rama to direct Hanuman against Atikayan, but the monkey is beaten back. Again Laksmana engages Atikayan in fierce battle, smashes his weapons, and sends him to g ama. In his palace, Ravana is informed by his messengers and cries out:]

"First that monkey burned our city, and then my palace is put under siege. I've lost a battle to Rama, Kumbhakarna has been killed, and now I've lost my son!"

[His wife Danyamalini :] "Kumbhakarna is gone, our beloved son is dead, and who is next? All this because you want to keep that Sita as a concubine! [To Indrajit ] Son, your brother is dead and now the fate of Lanka rests on your shoulders."

"Do not grieve, Mother. I will surely defeat our enemies. Father, send me to battle."

"Just seeing your strong hands, Son, gives me courage, but we have suffered another loss, a great loss."

"Now you tell me! Why did you send my little brother when I, conqueror of Indra, was here to fight? I humiliated that monkey Hanuman when he spied on us. Armed with special weapons, I leave for the battlefield this very minute."

"What weapons have you, Son?"

"Many. Siva granted me the snake-weapon, the Brahma-weapon, and the Narayana-weapon, and many more. And they have not yet been used. Remember that I am your son and will enter the field chanting your name."

"Yes! Go! Go and kill them both, especially the younger one who has killed your brother."

"Laksmana? I'll offer his head as a gift to the Earth Goddess."

"Go quickly, but not alone. Take these forty divisions and two generals, Dumraksa and Mahaparsha."

[Surrounded by his huge armies, looming like black clouds on the horizon, Indrajit advances to the battlefield; seeing them, Laksmana speaks to Vibhisana :]

"They are packed as thick as Sesa's coils, as massive as a herd of elephants, yet they move more swiftly than the wind. Who is that in front? Who could have given birth to such a monster?

Like rolling thunder the war drums sound!
Who is that, Vibhisana?
Who rides his gleaming chariot onto the field
Like a mad elephant chased by Saturn?"^[22]

"That is Ravana's son Indrajit, who never steps backward on a battlefield. Beware, oh, beware, Laksmana!"

"Vibhisana, what is this? You are performing a full-length prostration to him, whimpering with fear!"

"Yes, Laksmana, because Indrajit is incomparable in battle. No one is stronger, and I fear for you. I thought that the death of Atikayan would deliver the last blow to Ravana, but now we must face this giant!"

"How formidable is he?"

"Swami, to recount his history would do violence to your ears! I will not speak without Rama's permission."

[Rama ] "You may speak!"

"Laksmana,

Listen, wide-shouldered Prince of Ayodhya.
He was brought up by the demons as 'Ravani,'
Until he learned mantra-magic, conquered Indra,
And earned the title Indra-lit.

"I will attempt to tell his story briefly, yet even then it should be interesting, well enunciated, and its meter clear. The commentary. should be learned, combining rules from the sastras , logic from the philosophies, and myths from the puranas . Anyone who attempts to explain a verse like this without first studying these texts is like a man trying to bind a wild elephant with a wet lotus stalk. First, however, I need the blessings of Visnu to erase the karma I will earn for uttering the harsh words in this story. As the saying goes: 'Visnu is invoked even before the invocation.' "^[23]

"Is Indralit evil as well as invincible?"

"No, Laksmana, he is not evil. Powerful, majestic, but not evil. He knows only integrity and nothing base. Listen now to his names."

"Names? More than one?"

"As you know, there are several namings: at birth, after ten days, one month, and six months, and this son of Ravana was named on each occasion, according to his nature."

"Are these naming days the same for all castes? And would the different nature of the castes mean different types of names?"

"Your guru is best qualified to answer such questions. All I can say is that each caste follows the custom of naming a child after his father; Rama, for instance, is called Dasarati, after your father. Generally this applies to the first-born son, but not always since Parasurama, the fifth son of Jamadagni, was also named after his father. Now this Indrajit, Ravana's first son, roared so loudly at his birth that he was called Ravanasiya-abutiya-kumanda-Ravani, or Ravani for short. His first name is thus an example of a derived noun, which I explained to you earlier, based on his father and his father's qualities. His second name is Meghanatha, or Cloud Lord, because his birth roar sounded like thunder clouds.

"His third name is Bastard because he was born of a woman not married to his father. You see, one day long ago Parvati went to take

her bath, and Siva made love to her maidservant, but when he released his seed, she begged him not to impregnate her. Siva agreed and arrested his seed in her womb, saying that when she was married, she would conceive from his semen. Now when Parvati learned of all this, she was furious and cursed the woman: 'You who have the brains of a frog will give birth to a frog!' Meanwhile, a man begged Siva for a child, and the god decided that the cursed maidservant should be his wife; thus, when she became pregnant, she gave birth to Mandodari, from manduka> or 'frog.' Much later Ravana rode on his victory march and abducted Mandodari, along with much else, and eventually married her. In due course she gave birth to Indrajit, so he is called Bastard."

"Has he other names?"

"A fourth name referred to in this verse is Mayavi because he is skilled in maya ."

"All the demons in Lanka are skilled in maya . Why should Indrajit in particular be given that name?

"True, but not all those demons have traveled to Mr. Kailasa and studied magic with Siva. You see, Indrajit's mantras frighten even the gods in heaven because he has more yogic power than those sages who are immune to the charms of young breasts sparkling with jewels."

"I know that his last name is Conqueror of Indra [Indra-jit], but Ravana and Kumbhakarna also subdued Indra. Why has Ravana's son alone been given this name?"

"Excellent question—because there is an answer! Remember that he not only defeated Indra but also captured him and imprisoned him in Lanka. Having lost their king, the other gods then went to Brahma, who pleaded with Ravana for Indra's release, but the demon-raja explained that his son, and not he, was responsible. When Brahma heard this he burst out, 'Then that son of yours should be known as Conqueror of Indra.'"

"Now that I know his history, Vibhisana, please tell me how to fight him. Remember, as a prince, I fight honorably."

"He, too, is a warrior of honor. But if honor fails, he will resort to magic. Let me explain.

He leaps to the sky and you follow,
Now he is on earth, now he is gone,

He is a mountain, a ghost, a demon;
He is here, there, everywhere!

"Indrajit is a master of what is known as The Reverse. That is, he does the opposite of what he says; he attacks when he says he is defending and defends when he says he is attacking. If he says 'front,' you'd better protect your back. He also knows maya fighting, which is a little different: after battling him for a long time, suddenly he's not there! You see him in the heavens and speed there, but as you arrive, he jumps back to earth. He comes at you from the north, the south, all the eight directions! And he never, never retreats; he fights until his opponent lays down his bow and prostrates at his feet.

"He'll attack in the form of a huge mountain with feet and arms, and if he doesn't win, he'll metamorphose into myriad monstrous forms. Laksmana, you must never forget that these forms are not real, they are maya , and that in order to destroy those forms, you must shoot for the hands and legs. Still, Indrajit will fight on, for his power is immense. Even when you think you have destroyed him several times over, he will continue to attack, for days and days, without hunger or thirst.

His magic battle shapes are many:
A wild animal deep in a forest,
A Brahmin chanting your name, a blazing fire, or an avalanche of
     stones,
Even King of Lanka, broad-shouldered Ravana himself!

"He will come at you snarling like a lion, and you must destroy that illusion with your arrows. The next moment you will see a Brahmin chanting the holy Vedas, discoursing on dharma, and singing your praises; prostrate at this Brahmin's feet and he will bludgeon you to death. Fire or stones will rain down on you, but do not be afraid; stand your ground and attack. In the end, he may take the form of his own father, Ravana, and attack."

"Vibhisana, is there more?"

"Listen. This magician will turn day into night, so do not be fooled if suddenly you see the moon and stars. Do not lay down your weapons and leave the battle. Count the hours as they pass during each day's battle so that you know when night should come. At all times, remember this: you must disregard what you think you see and instead destroy his maya forms with your arrows."

"What am I to do? His strengths are endless and so, it seems, are his deceptions. How can I possibly defeat him?"

"He is cunning, Laksmana, but no matter what form this Indrajit assumes, he is never invisible. Three marks identify him always: his chariot, his eyes, and his legs. His chariot moves to the right or left according to his whims; it knows none of these distinctions between earth, sky, and netherworlds. Up to the fiery, sun, into the cool waters, around the highest peaks—it goes anywhere he wishes.

He turns night to day, day to night
Creates clouds that rain down blood,
Appears as elephants, horses, chariots,
Even as you, as Laksmana!"

"Is there more?"

"More, much more. Whatever he wishes, he becomes. It's that simple. He will appear to you, for instance, as Laksmana, or several Laksmanas. One will say, 'I'm Laksmana,' and another, 'No, I am.' You must shoot an arrow at each Laksmana and dispel its maya . Then Rama will appear from nowhere, walk up to you, and say, 'Brother, where have you been? After killing Atikayan, I called for you.' But if you fall down at his feet, this Rama will cut your throat. Bharata might appear and say, 'Laksmana, the fourteen years are finished.' Although the voice will be Bharata's, you must not be deceived. Without a moment's hesitation, shoot an arrow and kill that false Bharata. If not, in the second that you delay, this grand deceiver, this cunning Indrajit, will destroy everyone on the battlefield!"

"I understand, Vibhisana. Is this all I must know?"^[24]

"Listen, Indrajit may appear as me, as Vibhisana!"

"As you? Then how do I know that you, right now, are not an illusion?"

"That is quite easy. No matter what form the demon assumes, his teeth will protrude, and his eyes will roll around and around. Then, of course, his feet will rest firmly on the ground."^[25]

"Is there anything more I must know, Vibhisana?"

"Oh, yes, something very essential.

No one in this sun-encircled world can break his bow,
No one except a man who has fasted in the forest

For fourteen years without food, water and sleep,
No one else can conquer this conqueror of Indra.^[26]

"You understand what this means, Laksmana? Having followed Rama into the forest and lived as an ascetic for these fourteen years, you, and only you, are empowered to defeat this terrible colossus!^[27] Still, victory is not assured. Look! As we have been talking, Indrajit's armies have surrounded us. Our monkey armies are unable to break through, and we are cut off from Rama resting in the battle house.^[28] Take command, Laksmana; your word I obey as Rama's."

"Draw back, Vibhisana. I will advance."

"Remember all that I told you."

[Drums and shouts are heard, as Hanuman bravely leads the army. Quickly the monkeys are thrown into disarray; Sugriva is felled by Indrajit's arrow. Hanuman rips up a tree and advances on Indrajit, who jeers at him :]

"Monkey-face! Stop jumping around and talk with me like a man."

"I'm not—"

"Shut up, monkey, and listen to me. Is this some kind of game you're playing? Attacking me not with bow or spear but with trees and stones? Are you mad? Will that spindly branch ward off my missiles?"

"With this stone—"

"Speak up, animal, speak up!"

"You think words will defeat me? Quit babbling and fight. Why should I stop to talk? Does lightning wait before it strikes? Or a lion before it leaps? Advance, brave Indrajit, or are you afraid?"

[More battle noises ]

"Take this, runt!"

"I'll rip out that tongue of yours!"

[Hanuman hurls mountains, stones, and trees at Indrajit, who calmly reduces each to powder with his arrows .]

"C'mon, monkey, pick up a bow and fight like a man."

"We pick up trees and rocks, but we never 'eat grass,' as you'll soon do."^[29]

"Where is that pitiful one named Laksmana? Has he fled, too? I want revenge for the death of my little brother, Atikayan."

"Where were you, Indrajit, when he was killed?"

"My brother was a mere boy, and he fought without deceit, yet Laksmana would not spare his life. Where is he?"

"He's there, just—"

"First, see what you can do with my arrows."

[After driving off Hanuman, Indrajit sees Laksmana cut down row after row of demons and turns his arrows against the prince. Suddenly Indrajit disappears, and the monkeys think he has been killed, but Laksmana hears a voice calling to him from above :]

[Siva puppet ] "Laksmana, I've come from Kailasa to see you. Have you no humility? Put down your bow and speak with me."

"Humility? No, only insight. Die, false Siva."

[An arrow pierces the Siva puppet; Visnu puppet appears .]

"Laksmana, I am Lord Visnu. Will you show me no respect and bow at my feet?"

"Lord Visnu? No. Die, maya -man, Indrajit."

[An arrow pierces the Visnu puppet; similar scenes are repeated with Ganesa and Rama puppets .]

[Indra ] "Listen, gods, to what happened next. The sun set, night fell, and the moon and stars shone in the sky. The monkeys were about to turn back from the field when Laksmana remembered Vibhisana's warning and destroyed this maya , too, with a hail of arrows. Then a ten-headed demon appeared and told Laksmana that he no longer desired Sita, that he was releasing her, and that the war was over. But Laksmana realized again that this, too, was maya and destroyed the mirage with his arrows. Finally, Indrajit attempted another trick: two celestial women tried to seduce Laksmana, but he fended them off with words.^[30] Then, Vibhisana reappeared."

"Laksmana, night will fall soon and then we are helpless against the demons' maya ."

"Let's return to camp and consult with Rama, but first we must feed our armies before they die of exhaustion. Vibhisana, go quickly into the forest and bring back fruits and nuts. I'll wait here. Angada, hold my bow."

[Indra ] "Gods, what happened was this: seeing that his enemies were now scattered and off guard, Indrajit climbed high in the sky

and readied his most powerful weapon, the snake-missile with coils that bind and deceive. Praying first to Siva, who granted him the weapon, and then to Ravana, he released the arrow, which immediately bound Laksmana and the rest of the army lifeless on the field."

[Enter the kutakkaran, or umbrella holder, who approaches Indrajit and parodies the battle sounds made by the puppeteers :]

"Bing-bang! Wham-bang! Bing-bang, who are you?"

"Me? I'm Indrajit—just shot the snake-weapon, the whole point of this performance!"

"Oh, and you came here by this chariot, I suppose."

"Right. How'd you come?"

"I'm the umbrella holder; I just grabbed onto the chariot and came along for the ride."

"And what do you want?"

"Problem is your snake-weapon didn't kill them; only knocked 'em out. I'll finish them off by stabbing them with the tip of my staff. We'll walk along the battlefield and inspect each body, and if my staff doesn't finish them off, you can shoot another arrow at them."

"All right."

"Who's this lying here?"

"God! It's all the monkey children, little kids whom I have killed!"

"Terrible, but they are the little monkeys who stoic fruit from Lanka. Let's revive them with some water and shoo them away. Now, who's this?"

"It's Nalan, the one who built the causeway to Lanka by carrying all those stones on his head."

"A boss man, a contractor, huh?"

"Yes. Give him a good stab."

"Ugh! [Stabs him ] And this one?"

"That's Nilan."

"Oh, I need some of that."

"Of what?"

"You see my wife hasn't washed her sari for a week and—"

"You wash your wife's saris?

"If you saw, them, you'd understand why no one else would touch them. Besides, who is low enough to be a washerman to me?"

"Forget it. Do you know what Nilan did?"

"No."

"When the monkeys entered Lanka, Rama ordered a fort built of stones, and this monkey did it. He's a mason. Pierce him."

"Here's Sugriva."

"Give him a double dose!"

"Why?"

"Might not be dead, might just be lying down because he's got a hangover."

"Sugriva did like his drink, didn't he? Besides, remember what he did to your father? Knocked off his crown as he stood on his parapet looking down at Rama."

"Let him have it.

"Here's Angada."

"Vali's son?"

"Yes, he's the one—"

"I haven't forgotten. He came as Rama's messenger, demanded a throne from Ravana, and then spoke crudely: 'Release Sita or fight!' Stab him through the heart."

"Done. And this is Jambuvan."

"Who?"

"The smart one, with brains, but there's a story about that. There were four fishermen. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, when kids return from school, and the four walked along the edge of a pond, talking: 'No use fishing now; it's the wrong time. We'll return tomorrow at noon and catch whatever's in this pond.' They left, but a wise, old flog in the pond had heard them and gave a warning to a big fish:

"'Tomorrow at noon four fishermen are coming here with their nets,' the frog said, 'so we'd better escape tonight and go to another pond.' But the big fish replied, 'I'm One Hundred Brains, and I'll use them to wiggle out of this problem. You are Poor Brains, so you must flee.'

"Then Poor Brains the frog went to a turtle and told him that the fishermen were coming, but the turtle shouted, 'I'm One Thousand Brains and you have none. Go on alone.'

"Then the frog saw a crab, with eight legs, and invited it to flee with him. 'I'm Eight Brains,' answered the crab, 'and I can escape, but you have no brains and must leave now.' 'All right,' thought Poor Brains the frog, 'if you can all escape, then I can, too.' So the frog decided to stay in the pond with the rest.

"On the next day, the fishermen cast their nets, and the first thing they caught was the big fish. They put it in their basket, and when the frog heard its cries, he laughed and sang, 'One Hundred Brains got the basket!' Next the turtle was caught, but they thought it might escape from the basket, so they trapped it under a stone. Again the frog laughed. 'One Thousand Brains got the stone!' When the crab was caught, they tore off its eight legs and tossed them away, and Poor Brains sang, 'Eight Brains got the earth!' Lastly they caught the frog, but they took pity on it and didn't kill it. They let it go, and thus Poor Brains survived because of compassion, not brains.

"But Jambuvan has real brains, so we best kill him before he awakes." [The umbrella holder stabs him several times .]

"Look. It's Laksmana."

"Ah, the Beautiful One. Blessed with the thirty-two marks of beauty, which even the gods do not possess. Because he's the one who killed your brother, you must drive your arrows deep into his chest."

"There! He's dead for sure. Next is Hanuman."

"He's not alive, is he? When he came to Lanka to find Sita and leapt from house to house, I stuck my head out of a window, and he slapped it with his tail so hard it hurt for three days."

"Don't worry. He's dead."

"How do you know?"

"Put your finger in his nose—there's no breath. Anyway, it's too dark now to cut off their heads. We'll wait until tomorrow morning. Let's return to Ravana." [They enter the palace .] Ravana, good news. They're finished! All of them, killed by my snake-weapon."

"You bring me great happiness, Son, as I knew you would."

"Only Rama and Vibhisana escaped."

"That's nothing. Tomorrow we will finish them off, now that they're alone. To celebrate, we have a little treat for you, a little dance, and then you should sleep well. Summon the dancers from the heavens."^[31]

[Two celestial dancers are pinned up around Ravana and the natakam is performed for ninety minutes, during which the puppeteers bless each one-rupee donor with a song :]

"By the grace of Kunnumpuli Bhagavati, let Lela's grandmother
     survive her illness;
"By the grace of Kunnumpuli Bhagavati, let Murthy study well and
     pass his exams;
"By the compassion of Lord Rama and Kunnumpuli Bhagavati, let
     Sashi's baby goats get well."

[Meanwhile, Vibhisana returns from gathering fruits for the army, sees his comrades fallen on the field, and fears that Rama will suspect him of treachery because Indrajit is his nephew. When Rama is led to the battlefield and sees his brother and his friends lying dead, he is shocked into disbelief. He calls out Laksmana's name, imploring him to rise, but falls down on his body and wails :]

"No more war for me, and no more fame!
My victory bow, my wife, my kingdom,
Even Siva who gave me life—I renounce them all!
If you, Laksmana, do not live.

"Father and mother we left; Ayodhya we left,
Yet, like the Vedas, we were inseparable, Laksmana;
Now you've left me and earth is not my home;
Let my soul leave, too, if Yama will receive it."

[Vibhisana arrives and is reviled by Rama but manages to convince him that Indrajit's weapon is to blame. Rama speaks :]^[32]

"I see. But what is this snake-weapon? How can we remove it?"

"There are two stories, Rama, and one has a piramanam ?. Listen. Long, long ago, lost in the cycles of time, when Brahmas succeed Brahmas, when nothing is ever 'first' and creation is without beginning, a Brahma with five heads emerged from Visnu's navel. Immediately he kindled a great sacrificial fire and began to form the Fourteen Worlds from his lotus-throne, and from that fire came the snake-weapon, the Brahma-weapon, and the Narayana-weapon. Siva did tapas to Brahma, his father, who then conferred the weapons on him, because Siva is a warrior god. Meanwhile, in Patala Loka, In-

drajit was born to Ravana a and began his long training under his guru, Sukra. At the end of twelve years, Sukra sent his student to Siva to learn esoteric mantras and maya , and from Siva, Indrajit gained the most powerful weapon, the snake-weapon. This is one story."

"Forget the second. What can we do to revive the army?"

"We can do nothing, Rama. No one can. Not the gods, not the sages, not even Brahma, who created the weapon. Anyone who tries to neutralize it will lose his own life first. The snake-weapon can only be removed of its own accord."

"We can do nothing?"

[As Rama grieves over Laksmana, Indra and the gods appear above .]^[33]

"Gods, look at what has happened—Indrajit has knocked out Laksmana and the monkey army, and Rama has lost heart! What will happen to us now? We all went to Visnu, sang his praises, and asked for help against Ravana. He agreed and was born as Rama to destroy our enemies—you know the rest of the story—but now Rama lies unconscious on his brother's body.^[34] If nothing is done to revive Laksmana, Rama will remain inert; if Rama remains inert, Ravana will continue to rule this world; and if Ravana continues to rule, what about us? Think hard: Is there any way to rescue Laksmana from the snake-weapon?"

"None, Indra. No one can do anything."

"Ah, remember that Garuda is the enemy of the snakes as a result of a curse put on them by their mother, Kadru. She made a bet with her sister over the color of Indra's white horse: Kadru said that the horse was black, while her sister said white. They agreed that they would view the horse in the morning and that whoever lost would serve as the other's slave. That night Kadru called her snake-sons and told them to spit a little ball of poison on the horse and turn it black by morning, but the snakes refused, saying that they would not cheat their aunt. Furious, Kadru cursed them all to die, some by fire, some to be eaten by Garuda.

"Siva knew about this curse when he received the snake-weapon from Brahma. Eventually Indrajit won it, but while Siva still held it, he issued a warning to the snake in his hair: 'Wander everywhere in the Fourteen Worlds, but do not visit the world of snakes.' Curiosity, however, drove the snake there, where the other snakes warned

him, 'You are a special snake, from Siva, but don't stay here because you'll be eaten by Garuda.' Still, the snake did not move, and soon Garuda came and drove him back to Siva, who gave him refuge. Then Garuda also approached Siva, received his blessings, and asked that the snake in his hair be given to him as food. Siva hesitated, then agreed: 'During the treta yuga you may eat this snake, too. Now go.'

"Because of Siva's boon and Kadru's curse, Garuda can defeat this snake-weapon, but we gods must summon Garuda with meditation and praise-songs."^[35]

[The gods sing to Garuda, and soon his puppet appears on the far left of the screen .]

"I've seen two miracles today."

"Indrajit's snake-weapon is one. What's the second, Indra?"

"Garuda's tears. You see, when he was born—no, that is a long story so we'll tell it tomorrow. Anyway, like many birds, he can see clearly for leagues and leagues, and he can fly so high that the world looks like a little black spot. Mt. Meru is thousands of yojanas away, but from its highest peak, Garuda spied Rama in Lanka, and as soon as he saw him, he shed tears of pain and tears of joy at the same time!"

"We all cry tears of pain and tears of joy, but how can one do both at the same time? Explain, Indra."

"I don't understand it either, but that is all we can describe tonight. Tomorrow, when the sun sets, we will continue. Siva's blessings be with you all; let Rama and Narayana protect you."

[On the next night, the Brahmin puppets present their summary, of the previous night .]

"With the gods watching in amazement, Garuda flew to Rama and tore apart the snakes that bound Laksmana and the monkeys, reviving them all. Garuda then sang a series of songs celebrating the mystery of Rama: 'You are the cause of all existence and also a human being who grieves over your brother's body.'^[36] [Garuda suddenly flew away, and Hanuman spoke :]^[37]

"Rama, we must take the initiative immediately. Consider Sita, who is suffering from the news that the snake-weapon killed us, and consider Ravana and his generals, who are rejoicing inside the palace. If

we raise a loud battle cry, Sita will take heart and the demons will stiffen with fear. Give the word, Rama."

"Hanuman, you are a genius. Monkeys, form ranks and advance on the palace with battle cries." [They shout loudly .]

[Ravana ] "What? Their war cries again! But they're dead, fallen under the snake coils of the Indrajit's weapon. Still, that's the sound of Rama's bow and that's Laksmana's bowstring and Hanuman's roar!"

[Ravana storms off to his son's bedroom and shouts at the sleeping Indrajit .]

"Wake up!"

"Welcome, respected Raja and Lord of—"

"Forget those formalities and listen to that noise! Why are you still asleep?"

"Father, Laksmana's arrows ripped holes in my body and drank my blood. Only my maya kept me from death. I'm exhausted and need rest; that's why I'm lying down."

"What maya ?"

"I told you. I was losing, so I flew up into the sky and shot the snake-weapon. Laksmana and all the monkeys were knocked dead."

"Dead? Listen to that noise outside the palace!"

[Ravana orders his messengers to survey the battlefield; they return quickly and report that the monkeys are revived and ready for battle .]

"Son, what shall we do? Quick, say something!"

"Ravana, I need a night's rest. Tomorrow morning I will shoulder the Brahma-weapon and destroy our enemies."

"Sleep, Son, sleep. But we must keep the battle raging until morning. Generals, advance against the monkeys."

[Ravana's bravest generals assemble their troops on the battlefield and advance against Rama's army. As the battle begins, one of Ravana's generals shouts at the umbrella holder :]^[38]

"Hey, kutakkaran , hold up the standard!"

"Not without my pay."

"Pay? It's the middle of a battle. Hold up the umbrella!"

"I want my money from last time. No one paid me."

"False. We did pay you last time."

"Not that time. I mean the battle long ago, between the gods and demons when they churned the Milk Ocean. I'm owed money from that."

"You held the umbrella in that battle? Then you owe us money!"

"Me? Who says?"

"My wife. She keeps all the accounts."

"All right. I'll bear your banner in this battle, too. Pay me what you wish."

"Here. Now let's fight."

[A strange cry is heard—"Kriyommmmmmmmmm"—and the umbrella holder addresses the speaker :]

"Who are you?"

"I'm the Veliccappatu , the Light Crier."

"Then why don't you cry in the morning?"

"Not that 'light' stupid. Light as in 'clear.' I'm the oracle of Bhagavati. A priest, if you like."

"You serve Bhagavati?"

"Yes, and when she enters me, she calls out through my mouth, giving perpetual predictions, promises, and prognostications."

"Bhagavati enters you?"

"Yes, my whole body shakes—"

"It shakes for as long as Bhagavati possesses you?"

"Yes."

"But does your tongue shake, too?"

"Tongue shake? Never thought about it."

"Oh, well. What deities do you serve?"

"Kutichattan, Ciruchattan—"

"Which Bhagavatis?"

"Primarily one—the Money Maker Bhagavati."

"Sounds like the right idea."

"Yes. Worship the Money Maker and all the other Bhagavatis will follow."

"We'll see, smart alec. Ask that Money Maker Bhagavati to do something for me."

"Your wish is my—"

"But don't you have to get possessed first?"

"Right. Almost forgot. Let Bhagavati come on me and we'll see what she has to say. 'Kriyommmmm, kriyommmmm! Kutakkaran! Kutakkaran ! Give a black chicken to the umbrella holder.'"

"That's timely. Let's hear from another Bhagavati."

"'Kriyommmmmm, kriyommmmm, split a coconut and gain two sons.'"

"Try another."

"'Kriyommmmmm. Twist four threads together and gain one hundred sons.'"

"A hundred kids!"

"Not what you want?"

"No. I've got a specific request."

"What?"

"My wife has been pregnant for eighteen months. Will the child be male or female? Born during the day or night?"

"'Kriyommmmmm, kriyommmmm! The child might be male, and it might be female. Or it might be a big-bellied goblin.'"

"What?"

"Well, anyone pregnant for eighteen months better expect some kind of monster."

"Useless, absolutely useless. Why are you here in the first place?"

"Going to war."

"A priest, a Veliccappatu to war? But if you insist, I'll hold the umbrella for you."

[Loud screams and war drums are heard and then slowly recede until they stop altogether. When the messengers, Sangadi and his companion, report further losses to Ravana, the demon-raja again summons his only surviving son :]^[39]

"Indrajit, do something fast, before we all are killed."

"My plan is this: we'll kill all the monkeys, then Laksmana and Rama, and show their corpses to Sita."

[Indrajit enters the field with sixty divisions, causing the monkeys to flee in panic, but Rama and Laksmana, riding on Hanuman, come to

the front and destroy most of his army. Then Indrajit blows his victory conch and shouts :]

"Laksmana, think of this: the younger brother performs funeral rites for the older brother. If Rama dies first, that's fine, but who will perform Rama's rites when I kill the second-born first?"

"What about your own younger brother Atikayan, whom we slew? Will he perform your funeral rites, Indrajit?"

"Your deaths will repay me for the deaths of my brothers, Atikayan and Aksakumaran, and my uncles, Kumbhakarna and Kara."

"Do not worry, demon, all requisite funerary rites will be properly observed. Your grieving father will conduct your funeral, after which Vibhisana will do the same for him."

[In fierce fighting, Laksmana destroys Indrajit's chariot and drives him back to Ravana's palace, where Ravana's minister, Mahodara, devises a plan to take Laksmana off guard: assuming the guise of Indra, he rides on Indra's white elephant and appears to Laksmana, who puts down his bow and respectfully raises his hands to the king of the gods. Immediately, the demons inform Indrajit, who flies up into the sky to survey the scene .]^[40]

"This is the time for the Brahma-weapon: neither Rama nor Vibhisana is on the field, and Laksmana is defenseless."

[He releases the Brahma-weapon, killing Laksmana, Hanuman, Sugriva, and all the other monkeys .]

"Hey, kutakkaran , witness my power this time!"

"Yours? You shot the Brahma-weapon, true, but as they fell I came and stabbed each one of them with my staff."

"Is that right?"

"Who's that?"

"Nalan."

"Kalan?"

"No. Na-lan."

"Pa-lan?"

"Ah! You murder the language."

"Who died?"

"Forget it. Let him have it; he built the bridge to Lanka."

"Who's that?"

"Sugriva."

"I know him well. One day myself and Ravana—"

"Wrong again. Say, 'Ravana and I.'"

"Sure. Ravana and I, and some women—"

"Not 'women,' 'ladies.'"

"All right. Ravana and I, and some ladies, and a missinger—"

"'Messenger,' stupid."

"Have it your way. Point is that we all were standing on the tower when that Sugriva leapt up, knocked off Ravana's crown, and cuffed him."

"Who's that?"^[41]

"Laksmana."

"Rama's brother?"

"Right, the one who mutilated my aunt, Surpanakha."

"Hmmm. Better give him a few extra stabs."

"Wait. He's a great yogi. He's also a 'full quiver.'"

"Why does he quiver? Rheumatism?"

"No. 'Full quiver' means his weapons are powerful."

"Terrible to shiver so."

"Shut up and stab him hard."

"Who's this?"

"Hanuman."

"Ohhh ... see you later—"

"Hey! Where you going?"

"Remember when this monkey secretly entered Lanka? As he was leaping from roof to roof, I stuck out my head to see who it was and—Wham! Bham!—he beat me with his tail."

"Kill him!"

"Right. He's dead now."

"Let these bodies lie here until the morning. We'll cut off their heads then."

"Oh, great idea! Just like last time, when you shot the snake-weapon and the eagle revived them all?

"Don't worry. Garuda was able to release the snake-weapon because

he is the sworn enemy of snakes, but he has no connection to the Brahma-weapon."

"Maybe, but some other bird might come—"

"No bird is going to come."

"If you say so, but—"

"Let's report to Ravana." [Indrajit returns to the palace .]

"Enter, Son."

"Father, we have killed them all, all except Rama and your brother Vibhisana. I am exhausted and need rest. Tomorrow, you may enter the field and fight Rama, all alone."

[Rama returns to the field and, seeing his allies again lying dead, cries out :]

"As brave generals and wise ministers,
Seven armies they entered the field,
But no voice speaks to me now,
They have entered the heaven of ancient kings.^[42]

"Sugriva, speak to me! Speak as you spoke when you befriended me in the forest after I had lost Sita. Rise up, friend, you who revived my courage when you knocked off Ravana's crown. Rise up and say something. Is that Angada? I remember...

As he lay dying, your father's soft hands
Held mine and placed you in my care;
Now your hands are torn and bleeding—in my defense!
Who would not die of this shame?

"And Hanuman! You saved me from death when you found Sita in Lanka. But now it is I who weep like a warrior's widow over your dead body.

Cruel Indrajit felled you on this bloody field,
Great son of the Wind God, Oh Hanuman!
I see you and I cry like a woman;
Is anyone on earth more miserable?

"No! Not you, Laksmana! You are mother and father to me. All that is good, all that I have is you, yet now, Little Brother, you are no more!

Father and mother, and all my strength,
Son, brother, and all my wealth are you;

You have left me and worldly fame,
And I remain, with the greater grief.^[43]

Wives may die, but we marry, again;
Our children die, and others are born;
Lost wealth is regained, knowledge retrieved;
But, tell me, is a dead brother replaced?^[44]

"Speak to me, Laksmana, speak! No. He will not. He is dead, and so is dharma."

[Rama falls in a swoon on Laksmana's body. Again, the gods gather overhead and Indra speaks :]

"Once more Indrajit has felled Laksmana and the monkey army, and Rama, having lost all hope, lies unconscious on his brother's body. Seeing this scene, different people would describe it differently. Ordinary people, for instance, would see it this way:

Who will soften Rama's grief?
Who will console him, speak kind words
Or move his hands from his brother's body?
Abandoned, alone, this is the evil of death.^[45]

"This first interpretation of the scene is the common man's view. To him, Rama was born of Kausalya, married Sita, and lived the life of a hermit in the forest until he was deceived by the golden deer and Sita's desire for it. Disguised as a sage, Ravana captured Sita and started the war, and now, overcome with grief at Laksmana's death, Rama is himself prepared to die. This is how most people would describe the scene. Moved by Rama's grief, and with no one to console him, they would go to him and say, 'Rama, everyone who is born must die. Do not lose heart. Do not think of suicide.' Their sympathy for Rama as a man who married Sita and then lost his little brother and allies would lead these people to support him.

"Other people, those with great bhakti, would react to the same scene with different emotions, as in this verse:

When we petitioned you, scion of great kings,
To annihilate the demons and end our suffering,
You showed compassion and took birth as Rama;
Why present this magic show to us?^[46]

"You see, these devotees would remember that we gods petitioned Visnu to save us and that he agreed and was born as Rama in Ayodhya. They know that Rama went to the forest with Laksmana and

Sita, that she was stolen by Ravana, that Indrajit defeated Laksmana, and that Rama fell on his brother's body in grief. Nonetheless, they know also that all this is a sham, a show, since Rama is Narayana and Laksmana is Adisesa, upon whom Rama rests even now, on the battlefield. That's why these devotees would sing: 'Why present this magic show to us?' They realize that Visnu's avatar has no little brother, no mother, and no father, because he is deathless.

"If the first group views Rama as a human warrior and the second as Visnu's avatar, the third group understands something more:

Drawing in all worlds, all lives, insides and outsides,
Emerging and growing, becoming everyone, everything,
Like a spider spinning webs and threads from itself,
You fashion past and present, yet remain unchanged.^[47]

"These people realize that beyond our attachment to earth, beyond money, beyond pleasure, is the state of brahman . Nothing else is real! Nothing! This state of bliss encompasses the fourteen known worlds, the thousand and eight outer regions, the countless celestial realms—and all this is Siva. Like thousands of ornaments shaped of gold, the life-forms in these worlds are but aspects of brahman or Siva. Even Rama, fallen over his little brother on the battlefield, is nothing but brahman . We see Rama, but he is brahman . Like bubbles rising from water, Visnu takes form in every, eon—as a fish, as a child, and now as Rama. And the Laksmana whose death he seems to mourn is not dead, for he has no birth. People with this knowledge of brahman would say to Rama, 'Do not mourn for that which was not born. Do not curse dharma, for there is neither dharma nor adharma.'

"These, oh gods, are the three ways of understanding Rama's grief. And we must wait for Vibhisana to return from the forest to see if he can lift the power of the Brahma-weapon."

"Yes, Indra. But look, Ravana's messengers are returning to him."

[Several demon women take Sita above the battlefield to show her Rama's corpse, but Trijata (Vibhisana's sister) convinces Sita that Rama is not dead. Celestial dancers are summoned to Ravana's palace for another natakam. Later, on rise battlefield, Jambuvan wakes up when he hears his name .]^[48]

"Who's that? Sounds like Vibhisana, but how could he be alive? Is it Rama? Or maybe the demons have come because they know I am

immune to the Brahma-weapon. Or it might be the gods, come to ask me to help Rama."

"Jambuvan, it's me."

"Vibhisana! Didn't the Brahma-weapon hit you?"

"No. Rama sent me into the forest for fruits."

"Please, get me some water; I'm dying of thirst."

"Here, Jambuvan, drink slowly; your wounds are not yet healed."

"Ah! This water is wonderful. Where'd you get it?"

"The gods gave it to me when they saw that you had all been knocked down."

"It's like water from the Ganga. Actually, when I was born, my father gave some to me and that kept me alive for three days—ah, that's a long story and we must find Hanuman, since he, too, will have survived the Brahma-weapon, and give him some of this water."

"He's already here."

"What! Everything's done before I ask."

"Hanuman, we depend on you for everything. If you live, we all live. If you revive Laksmana, Rama will live, and if he lives, then dharma, the Vedas, and everything, including these Fourteen Worlds, will continue. Only by thinking of you can we survive."

[Hanuman, chuckling ] "How can that be, Jambuvan?"

"What do you mean?"

"You say you live by thinking of me, but if you're not alive how can you think of me to live?"

"Well—don't confuse me. Anyway, thinking isn't enough. You must act."

"But I am alive and the armies are not, yet you said that if—"

"Listen, Hanuman, we have only three-quarters of an hour to revive Laksmana and the others; then the sun rises and Indrajit will behead them. Before that, you must travel seventy-three thousand yojanas to the Medicine Mountain, find the longevity herb, and return."

"Are you joking?"

"Joking?"

"Seventy-three thousand yojanas in three-quarters of an hour? And return? It's ... it's impossible."

"But, Hanuman, if you don't—"

"That far, that quickly, to locate a rare herb for an incurable disease? Ridiculous, that's all."

"But, Hanuman, listen:

In a drop of water from Brahma's nose
In the seventh kalpa I was born, Hanuman;
Many miracles, many eons I have seen;
You shall revive them instantly.^[49]

"Hanuman, I know what I'm talking about. Rama's and Laksmana's lives depend on you. Find this special herb and return in three-quarters of an hour."

"Jambuvan, it's seventy-three thousand yojanas !"

"You won't need a quarter of an hour, not five minutes, not even one minute."

"But—"

"Don't question me, Hanuman. You can travel there in a flash."

"'Flash'?"

"Let me give you an analogy. Suppose you hold seven lotus flower stalks closely together and then pierce them in the center with a sharp needle. The time it takes the needle to leave one stalk and enter the next is the time you will need to travel to the Medicine Mountain and back."

"How do you know?"

"I've seen many miracles, including your three fathers and mothers—"

"What? Three fathers and mothers!"

"You've forgotten what I told you long ago—"^[50]

"Tell me your own story, Jambuvan."

"It's a long, long story, requiring more than an eon to recount and we've only got three-quarters of an hour. But, briefly, I am a child of Brahma. Let me explain. Existence moves in cycles of creation and dissolution because everything that is born—from the Three Gods to an insect—also dies. These cycles are divided into days and nights of Brahma: when he sleeps, there is an eon of dissolution; when he wakes, there is an eon of creation. Each eon contains one thousand smaller cycles of the four yugas , and when seventy-one of these cycles

are completed, a manumantra is over. After fourteen manumantras , or nine hundred and ninety-four cycles of yugas , there is a twilight period, a final cycle of four yugas , before the new nanu appears.^[51]

"During all these cycles of four yugas , dharma appears in different forms. During the first yuga , when it takes the form of a holy cow and walks on four feet, dharma is everywhere, in every life-form; temples, icons, and worship are thus unnecessary. In the second yuga , however, when dharma appears in the form of an ass, those physical symbols of dharma are necessary. Finally, during the last yuga , the terrible Kali Yuga, the castes are mixed, demons multiply, and famine stalks. People live for only twenty-six years, girls have their first period at six, and we all shrink in size. In the first yuga , people are one thousand feet tall, four hundred feet in the second yuga , forty in the third, but only four feet tall in the last yuga . Of course, the Devi Mahatmya says that even in the Kali Yuga, the Great Goddess sends wise men to earth to help others, but I don't know whether this is true.

"Anyway, when Brahma had finished an con of creation, a hundred years of drought parched the earth, the sun multiplied into a thousand suns, and everything on earth burned. Unable to bear the heat, Adisesa spat out a poisonous fire that dried up the Seven Seas, and there was no water even to bless the ashes of dead men; but somehow good men formal their way to Brahma. After a hundred years of fire, Brahma sent searing winds that beat the surface of the earth for another hundred years, and finally, a deluge covered everything, during which Brahma slipped back into the lotus bud that receded into Visnu's navel. Then another con of dissolution, another night of Brahma, began. During this night of water, when everything is Visnu, Brahma was not asleep (as he should be) but was already planning his next creation. Irked by Brahma's pride, Visnu created the demons Madhu and Kaitabha, who sprang from his ears and leapt into the waters. They were hungry until the Earth Goddess fed them and offered them a boon, for which they chose this: 'Let no enemy kill us; let us decide how we shall die.' Armed with this boon, they swam through the water, looking for enemies until they saw the lotus stalk growing from Visnu's navel. They grabbed it and challenged Brahma, who awoke shaking with fear.^[52]

"Hanuman, that's when I was born. As Brahma shook in fear, a drop of sweat rolled from his nose and rested in the cleft of his chin,

and from that drop of sweat I was born, just three days before Brahma created the world again. Born at night, the cama kala , I was named Campavan. There's a piramanam that explains it this way: 'Born at the time [campavam ] of night, Campavan is his name.' Because I protected Brahma from Madhu and Kaitabha when he created the world three days later, Brahma placed me as the firstborn on Rose Apple [jambu ] Island, and so my name is Jambuvan."

"How old are you, then?"

"We are now in the treta yuga , the second age when the Rama-avatar appears, in the twenty-seventh Mahayuga , during the seventh Manu , and in that sense, I am 'seven.' But how many human years, I can't say. Listen. The gods—Parvati, Visnu, Siva, Brahma—each gave me a special seed and told me to plant them on Rose Apple Island.

'The joining herb, healing herb, soothing herb
And the incomparable longevity herb—
Plant these four on Rose Apple Island,'
The gods commanded me.^[53]

"Those herbs grow now on Visvapatri mountain, near the northern slope of Mt. Meru. One of them revives the dead after the breath has left the body—that's the longevity herb; another joins parts of a severed body; a third revives people from an unconscious swoon; and the last is an herb that cures all diseases. But you must bring back the first, the longevity herb, the Sanjeevi."^[54]

"Which direction do I go?"

"From here, from Lanka, you leap one hundred yojanas to the mainland, then nine thousand yojanas to the foothills of the Himalayas, which are two thousand yojanas wide and ten thousand high. Jump over them to reach Mt. Kinka [?] and Mt. Putkonam, which is fifteen thousand miles high. Cross it and you enter the Ancient Forest, nine thousand miles deep, and beyond it you'll enter another thick forest, after which you will see Mt. Meru. On the southern slope is Kailasa and a lake, but don't go that way because Parvati once cursed men there to be born as women. Instead, go west toward Vaikunta, past Alakapuri, until you reach Visvapatri to the north where the garden of special herbs is guarded by devotees of Visnu. Tell them you were sent by Jambuvan to get the longevity herb for Rama. They'll give it to you."

"I'm off."

"First you must assume your true size; only then can you cover the distance in a flash."

[Hanuman sails over the various landmarks, until he reaches the Medicine Mountain, where he chants Rama's name .]

"Who are you?"

"I'm Rama's emissary, Hanuman, sent by Jambuvan to get an herb to resuscitate Rama and Laksmana, who are lying helpless on the battlefield."

"The Rama-avatar? Oh, is it the treta yuga already?"

"Yes. Please hurry, you see—"

"Jambuvan sent you? So he's still there?"

"Yes. Please—"

"All right. Specifically, which herb do you want?"

"Ah! I don't remember the name."

"Then you better go back and—"

"That's impossible. No time. I'll take the whole mountain with me!"

"Whole mountain?"

"There's no other way."

"Take it and bring it back without injury."

"This is a Rama mission. There is only victory."

[Hanuman uproots the Medicine Mountain and flies back to Lanka, where Jambuvan and Vibhisana marvel at his strength and devotion. The longevity herb is given to Rama, Laksmana, and the others, who awaken and ask Hanuman to lead them into battle. Marching to Ravana's palace, where victory celebrations continue, Hanuman shouts :]

"Demons! Come out and fight us!"

"Ravana, did you hear that? They've been revived again!"

"What can we do now, Indrajit?"

"Here's my plan: we'll make a fake Sita and kill her in front of Hanuman; then I'll say that I am leading an army against Ayodhya. That will demoralize Rama, while I build a sacrificial fire to get new weapons."

[Indrajit flies above and kills the fake Sita in front of Hanuman, but Vibhisana, using one of the coconut-shell lamps inside the drama-house ,

inspects the puppet slumped on the floor and reports to Rama that it is a false Sita. When he also reports that Indrajit is raising a sacrificial fire in order to gain a powerful bow, Laksmana, Vibhisana, Hanuman, and Angada battle Indrajit at the fire. Hanuman and Angada are driven back, but Laksmana confronts Indrajit. Indrajit shoots a dozen special arrows, each one guided across the screen by the puppeteers, but they are blocked by Laksmana and fall to the floor of the drama-house with a clatter. Laksmana speaks :]

"Indrajit, your body looks like a pin cushion!"

"Here's the Narayana-weapon."

"Sri Rama, Rama, Rama—"

"What's that you're mumbling, Laksmana?"

"Release your arrow; you'll see."

[The Narayana-weapon circles three times around Laksmana and then settles at his feet. Shocked, Indrajit goes back to Ravana with new doubts .]

"Laksmana cannot be human; he is invincible. But could Rama really be an avatar of Visnu? That would be a maya even greater than mine."

"What is this, Son? You're shaking like a snake cornered by Garuda. What happened to the sacrifice?"

"They put it out and then we fought, but my missiles were deflected by Laksmana. Then I shot the Narayana-weapon, but ... but it worshiped him!"

"Impossible! The Narayana-weapon worships no one but Narayana."

"That's just it. I fought him from above, from below, with every kind of weapon and deceit, and still I could not defeat this Laksmana. He's not human, Father, he's an aspect of Visnu."

"Nonsense!"

"He will reduce the Three Worlds to fine powder if he wishes. If we continue to fight him, Lanka is doomed. That woman you stole is not human either, and the moment you release her, they will call off their attack."

"Don't speak to me of—"

"Do you wish to live, Father? I ask because I love you."

"Quiet!"

"Then you wish to kill me, yourself, and the rest of our race? Release Sita or we will all find our fate on the points of Rama's arrows."

"You talk like an slobbering idiot! When I first brought Sita here, I heard no objection from you, but now, in the face of battle, you quake like a woman yourself. If you won't fight Laksmana, I will! Stand aside and allow me to protect the name of Lanka.

Prattling idiot! Not by releasing that woman in front of the gods,
But by releasing this water-bubble body in battle
Will twenty-armed Ravana earn a glory
More permanent than these Three Worlds."^[55]

"Father, I can't let you die—"

"Out of my way!"

"As long as I still live, I will not allow you to fight, Father. Stand back and let me pass to the battlefield."

"Go, my son, but take my chariot and my bow with you."

[Indrajit mounts the huge chariot and commands the driver to find Laksmana on the battlefield. On the way, he encounters a series of bad omens and then reaches Laksmana, who speaks :]^[56]

"Back again, Indrajit?"

"With your death certificate. Take this."

[Laksmana deflects all Indrajit's arrows while his own strike Indrajit's chariot and bow again and again but cause no harm .]

"Vibhisana, what can I do? I shatter his bow, with my arrow, but it remains intact. I destroy his chariot, but it still moves."

"Laksmana, shatter his jeweled ring and his bow will shatter; break the axle and the chariot will collapse."

[Indrajit ] "Traitor! You're my uncle, Vibhisana, but you've betrayed me by revealing these secrets."

"I've done nothing to match your crimes!"

[As the gods watch overhead, Laksmana shatters Indrajit's jeweled ring and his chariot axle and then cuts off his head. Red dye is thrown on Indrajit's puppet, which dangles lifelessly from the cloth screen, as the puppeteers sing the last verse of the performance :]

'Rama, Rama' in my heart,
     'Rama, Rama' in my deepest dreams

'Rama, Hari-Rama'
     I call out every day.
When fear strikes,
     or life is cruel
I simply call your name:
     'Rama, Hari-Rama.^[57]

"Tonight we end the story here, and tomorrow we tell of the colossal battle between Rama and Ravana."

Creating Conversations

In reading these translated performances and threading through their frequent digressions, readers may appreciate the point of the previous chapter that the puppeteers do not "tell" Kampan's Rama story as much as they explain it. In what follows, I expand that argument by analyzing the creation of conversations as the primary technique by which the puppeteers explicate and thereby gain control over Kampan's text. My description of these conversations covers not only verbal exchanges between epic characters, who speak in voices either faint or heard not at all in the epic text, but also dialogic relations between the oral commentary and the chanted verses.^[58] In discussing these mechanics and varieties of talk in the puppet play, I am guided by Bakhtin's concept of double-voiced or embedded speech, in which a second speaker imposes new intentions on another's speech, for this is the interpretive task of the puppeteers.^[59]

Four different conversations are spoken inside the drama-house.^[60]

1. The first conversation is spoken between the Brahmin puppets, Muttuppattar and Gangaiyati, who were introduced in chapter 3 as the narrators during the "Song of the Drama-House." I said there that their "master-of-ceremonies" repartee does not appear in Kampan and is a product of the puppet play, but what is salient here is that they deliver it entirely in dialogue. This first conversation indicates the drive to dialogue in the puppet play because performances might have been framed by a single voice—of one of the famous puppeteers saluted in the introduction, for example.

2. Once the Brahmin puppets are removed from the screen (never to return), the role of narrator is largely ignored as the performance moves into the second conversation, that spoken between epic characters

pinned up on the screen. In this second dialogue, which is heard throughout performance, puppeteers link each verse and each segment of the commentary in a conversational chain: the verse is chanted as if spoken by one character to another and then followed by commentary either in the first speaker's voice or as a response from another speaker, which prompts another verse, and so on, until morning.

3. A third conversation is spoken whenever the puppeteers veer off into an auxiliary story (see previous chapter) that contains dialogue. Although descriptive passages in these auxiliary stories are not invariably in dialogue, they are nonetheless spoken as part of the conversation between epic characters (conversation 2) in which those stories are embedded.

4. A fourth and final conversation is heard between Indra and the gods, who act as detached narrators. After the Brahmin puppets (conversation 1) leave the screen, the role of narrator is only clumsily handled by the epic characters (in conversations 2 and 3), who must somehow double as actor and independent observer, for example, during Vibhisana's long speech to Rama with which the translation above begins. (Readers may want to reread that speech because it is adduced several times in this discussion.) Puppeteers sometimes slowly slide the identity of the speaker from epic actor to narrator, as in this speech to Rama, for instance, when Vibhisana says, "Rama, notice that the poet here calls you ariya ," and then provides an exegesis for that word. Small-scale explications of this nature are regularly achieved without a formal shift in conversational frame; however, if the puppeteers wish to comment on weighty events—to set right the meaning of Ravana's first defeat, disclose the full meaning of Indrajit's death, speculate on various interpretations of Rama's grief, or tell the story of how Kampan composed his epic—they shift to a dialogue between Indra and the gods pinned high up on the screen above the epic action.

Unlike the Brahmin narrators, this pair of speakers is not a folk innovation, although the puppet play does alter their role. In Kampan, Indra and the gods appear seldom and nearly always as characters who speak directly to the epic characters in order to influence the epic action at crucial moments: advising Bharata to return to Ayodhya, reminding Rama of his dharma mission, and sending Rama a chariot in the final battle, for example. In the shadow puppet play, by contrast, Indra appears frequently, always with another puppet (who represents the other gods collectively) and always as a narrator who speaks with his fellow gods but not with epic characters.^[61] Nevertheless, as an audience

for the epic actors, Indra and the gods are not insignificant. In the last scene of the great battle, as we shall hear, Ravana urges Rama to spare no effort to present a spectacle worthy of the gods, and Rama addresses them before he kills the demon-raja: "Gods, I, Rama, now kill Ravana."

In and of themselves, these four conversations are not unusual, but it is remarkable that the puppet play creates them by a systematic and deliberate conversion of Kampan's text. Each Kampan verse is changed to speech, which is then woven into a dialogue with speeches in the oral commentary; as a result, every word in performance (except the infrequent prose transitions [avatarikai ] and some devotional songs) is spoken to a listener in an unbroken flow of conversation which ceases only when the puppets are taken down at five o'clock in the morning. Even the abrupt and frequent alternations between chanted verses and declaimed commentary do not break the conversational thread of performance. For example, consider again the example of the dialogue between Vibhusana and Rama at the beginning of the translation above. In the first verse, Rama poses a question ("Who is this mighty warrior?"), which he expands upon in the commentary until Vibhisana responds with the second verse ("Listen, Noble One"), after which Vibhisana continues to ramble on in commentary for almost half an hour. However far Vibhisana may wander—and when a puppeteer sails away with his favorite topic, the commentary sounds very much like a monologue—he is always hauled back into dialogue by a question put by himself or his partner. Every word in the verses and every. word in commentary is spoken within one of these four conversations.^[62]

The relationship between verses and commentary is itself dialogic and reveals how conversations enable the puppeteers to gain control of the epic story. I find it useful to think of commentary and text as a form of double-voiced speech, along the lines suggested by the Russian critic, M. M. Bakhtin, who identifies a variety of forms in which a second speaker overlays the first speaker's words with a second and contrasting meaning. Parody is a good example. As Bakhtin points out, not all quoted or embedded speech is double-voiced; only when the two voices convey two distinct intentions is the utterance double-voiced because only then is the speaker able "to impose a new intention on the utterance, which nevertheless retains its own proper referential intention."^[63] When the puppeteers chant the verses, we hear two voices but not two intentions; when they repeat verse words in commentary, however, and, even more, when they abandon simple exegesis for their own discourse, two voices are audible. This distinction between the voice of the com-

mentary and voice of the verses may be plotted along a continuum from lesser to greater discord: at one end, the voice of the puppet play imitates Kampan; at the other, it speaks independently of and sometimes (as explained in the next chapter) against the poet's intention.

At the imitation end of the spectrum are the chanted verses, during which the performer's voice is least distinct from that of the medieval epic. Because the words of the verses are (in Bakhtin's term) "already occupied," chanting them is single-voiced, and the puppet play attempts to impersonate Kampan's text. As Bakhtin explains, "If we hear another voice, then we hear something which did not figure in the imitator's plan."^[64] Nonetheless, even at this "imitation end" of the continuum, the folk tradition asserts some control by converting the verses to speeches and then linking them in the uninterrupted chain of conversation spoken by epic characters throughout the night-long performance. Many of Kampan's verses are already dialogues between epic characters, but they differ from the folk performance in the crucial aspect of voice. Speeches in Kampan are encased within the poet's voice, which appends a finite verb ("he said", "she shouted," etc.) at the close of each verse or at the close of the last verse in a series, whereas speeches in the puppet play are spoken directly by the epic characters. To achieve this immediacy, the puppeteers systematically drop the finite verb—the quotation marks, so to speak—from Kampan's verse; as a result, instead of reading (the line) "'Who is that great warrior?' asked Rama," we hear Rama ask: "Who is that great warrior?"^[65] (Although in written dialogue the finite verb is often necessary to indicate the speaker, in oral performance this is usually obvious by context.) This minor but consistent omission throughout performance alters the effect of the chanted verse; the textual intention still dominates, but now the puppeteers speak through the characters.

This conversion of Kampan's dialogue verses to speech is not a conversion from reported speech to direct speech; both Kampan's verses and the performed verses are direct speech, and such terms are inaccurate in any case since direct speech contains a "report" of who spoke and what the person said.^[66] For a sharper distinction between Kampan's dialogue and the puppeteer's dialogue, and perhaps between other forms of written literature and oral performance, I prefer the term "vocalization." Briefly defined, words spoken and heard are vocalized; words read silently, even in dialogue, are not. Although recent research has narrowed the once great divide between written and oral expression, especially in terms of shared formal features, such as parallelism, I am

convinced that they remain radically different in effect, which we recognize whenever we read a play and then see it on stage. In other words, the contrast between the puppet play and Kampan's poems is that between speaking and writing, or, in Albert Lord's apt phrase, between "words heard and words seen."^[67] Kampan's text, too, was probably orally recited, but even hearing dialogue written in the third person lacks the immediacy of hearing dialogue spoken in the first person. Truly direct speech is vocalized—spoken and heard in oral performances, or conversations, like those in the puppet play.

In addition to Kampan's dialogue verses, his descriptive verses are also vocalized in first-person speech by the puppeteers. Although converting these verses to dialogue is more complex than the single-word omission used to convert dialogue verses, it is still relatively simple. One or two new lines are often required, but the most frequent method is to replace the finite verb at the end of a verse with a vocative or imperative or both. An example is the puppeteer's vocalization of Kampan's famous opening verse of the Surpanakha episode, which likens the beauty of the Godavari River to poetry. When chanting this verse, the puppeteers change Kampan's final words "the heroes saw" ( virar kantar ) to "look, brother" (tampi, kanay ); rather than reading the poet's description of what Rama saw, we hear Rama describe it to Laksmana:

"Look, Brother, here is the Godavari,
     lying as a necklace on the world
Nourishing the rich soil
     rushing over waterfalls
Flowing through the five regions
     in clear, cool streams
Like a good poet's verse."

Alternatively, the puppeteers sometimes omit the descriptive verses altogether from the scenes sung in the puppet play; for instance, when Vibhisana extols Kumbhakarna's prowess (in the opening scene above), a string of verses detailing the warrior's appearance, his chariot, his armor, and his armies is dropped, and only the dialogue verses are retained (and altered, as already described) by the puppet play. If we look back at the Surpanakha and Va1i episodes in chapters 4 and 5, we will see that they, too, are presented almost entirely in dialogue, and this principle of omitting descriptive verses in favor of conversation governs the adaptation of episode after episode in the puppeteers' telling of the Rama story.

In its continuous drive toward dialogue, the puppet play reaches deep into Kampan's verses and converts even inner thoughts to speech. This conversion requires substantial alteration, and sometimes the whole Kampan verse is replaced by a folk equivalent; in this case, emotions unspoken in Kampan are vocalized by another character to herself or to an imagined interlocutor, as when Surpanakha, burning with lovesickness, addresses the moon. A comparison of Kampan's verse describing Surpanakha's feelings with its vocalized adaptation sung by the puppeteers illustrates the difference:

Kampa
Now as the warm wind from the Malayas entered her chest
Like Death's long spear, she who had thought herself
Able to consume the God of Love and the full moon
For a curry along with him was suffering and losing strength.^[68]

Puppet Play
Waxing moon! I'll make a curry of you! and then eat Rama, too.
But, no, the mountain wind, like harsh Death's spear,
Enters my seething breast,
And now I will sleep.

Although the puppeteers make revisions to Kampan's verse (the God of Love is omitted from, and Rama added to, Surpanakha's intended curry of victims; "losing strength" becomes "I will sleep"), they omit nothing essential and retain the poet's central image of the mountain breeze piercing, as death's spear, Surpanakha's chest. Despite this continuity of content, however, the verse sung in the puppet play is cast in a new psychological light because Surpanakha's emotions are spoken in her voice rather than refracted through the poet's words. If Kampan's verse is sorrowful, turning on the contrast between Surpanakha's desire and her suffering, then the folk verse is pathetic, almost comical, exposing the foolhardy bravado of one who boasts to the moon in the first line and yet is laid low by love in the last line.

Silent thoughts in Kampan are also voiced in the puppet play when the speaker addresses herself with a single word, commonly a vocative (manace , "Oh, heart") which replaces the last phrase of a verse ("he thought", "she feared," etc.). To understand this contrast between emotions thought and emotions spoken, I again compare verses from the Surpanakha episode, but instead of altering a Kampan verse, this time the puppet play replaces it entirely with a folk verse. Having seen

Rama on the banks of the river, Surpanakha attempts to identify the handsome figure:

Kampan
"The God of Love," she thought, "who lives in the heart
Had his body destroyed and Indra has a thousand eyes.
Siva has three eyes like lotus flowers and Brahma??
Who created the world from his navel has four arms."^[69]

Puppet Play
Is he Kama, visiting this earth with his love-bow?
Or Indra, king of gods, or some earthly raja?
Could he be Laksmi's consort, Visnu?
Or Siva glistening with garlands?
Or the Sun-god in his circling chariot?
Oh heart [manace ], who is this man?

This and all similar vocalizations of Kampan's verses, I am arguing, increase the puppeteers' control over the epic in performance. Vocal-izations appear to imitate the text, to speak in its voice, but they also open the door to a second intention; and once this dlialogic wedge has been inserted between the text and its recitation, conversations created by the puppet play pry them further and further apart. This distinction between the text and the puppeteers' voice sharpens as the performance moves from Kampan verses to their own commentary. After the imitative chanting of the four-line verse, the puppeteers repeat the first line and then provide a gloss which may unfold into tales and myths; the remaining three lines may also be repeated and glossed, but more common is the repetition and explication of single verse words (ariya and atitalam in the initial verse in the above translation). Such repetitions of verse lines and verse words push performance away from imitation and toward double-voiced speech, for now the poet's word is subject to the puppeteers' interpretation. Just as the poet embeds his characters' speech within his own, the puppeteers speak these verse fragments within their own commentary and thereby infuse them with new meaning. Rather than speaking as the poet (in a chanted verse), the puppeteers speak for him, and Kampan becomes another voice, another character, like the many traditional sayings (piramanam ) that the puppeteers manipulate for their own interpretive ends. Although the repeated verse words echo the epic poem, they also build small bridges to the more expansive commentary, within which the textual voice will eventually fade; the word ariya , for instance, leads into the theology of

the body, a discourse on grammar, and a telling of the Markandeya story. Although a dialogic gap has been opened, the puppeteers' voice still supplements Kampan, with only a minor difference in intention, and does not yet supplant the poet's words.

That difference becomes the distinction of doubled speech when the puppeteers elaborate their exegesis and spin out digressions. With the chanted verses steadily receding from the performative present, the resulting disjunction between epic action and oral commentary may itself become the topic of discussion, as is demonstrated by the now familiar example in the initial segment of commentary when Vibhisana speaks to Rama. While Kumbhakarna. and his armies of elephants and horses charge toward them, Vibhisana addresses Rama, and when the giant warrior is nearly upon them and the earth quakes beneath them, still Vibhisana speaks. For nearly two hours he speaks, slowly raising his right hand and carefully lowering it, two or three times, to dramatize a point. With no other movement visible on the screen, we understand Rama's growing anxiety about the "giant warrior bearing down upon" him as Vibhisana expatiates on the epithet "worthy one" (ariya ), tells the story of Mahabali, and explains noun classifications, all the time ignoring his Lord's pleas, and finally concludes with a long account of the Markandeya story. Rama, however, must show patience while the puppeteers tell their own stories.

At times, this incongruity between rambling commentary and imminent epic action is comical, as in another, later example from the translation in this chapter, when Jambuvan speaks to Hanuman. The monkey devotee must travel to the Medicine Mountain seventy-three thousand yojanas away and return quickly with the magical herbs that will revive Laksmana and the monkeys, but Jambuvan leisurely describes his own birth:

"It's a long, long story, requiring more than an eon to recount and we've only got three-quarters of an hour. But, in brief, I am a child of Brahma. Let me explain. Existence moves in cycles of creation and dissolution, since everything born—from the Three Gods to an insect—also dies . . ." [and so forth, for several minutes].

If it could be said in 1935 that the puppets "often remain stationary, merely gesticulating with right or left hand, during long spells of ca-denced chants," I can confirm that they have not picked up much speed

over the past half century.^[70] Given the commentarial nature of the puppet play, some tension between rapid plot and long-winded exposition is unavoidable, but the puppeteers flaunt this disparity rather than conceal it. Kumbakharna charges at Rama, and Laksmana and the monkey army lie unconscious, but the epic action must wait for the stories told in the commentary.

A less deliberate but more vivid illustration of the commentary's ability to invest the text with new intentions is the story of Kampan's poem told by Natesan Pillai, which was mentioned in the previous chapter. The story is prompted by a verse: during the construction of the causeway to Lanka, the ambitious monkey Kumutan throws an enormous boulder into the sea, sending water drops (tumi ) to the gods in heaven, who believe that ambrosia will rise again, as it did when the gods and demons churned the Milk Ocean.^[71] When chanting this verse, the puppeteers merge their voice with that of the text, but when they quote the verse and gloss the word tumi in the commentary, we hear their voice speaking. Once the verse is within their interpretive grasp, they crack it wide open to reveal the history of Kampan's text, from the desire of a Chola king to hear a "Rama story in the southern language" to the debate over tumi , from Kampan's deceit and Bhagavati's assistance to the poet's triumph over his rival and the composition of the Kamparamayanam . Through this extraordinary story, the puppeteers also gain control of the text by historicizing it. Although the verse about Kumutan appears halfway through the ten thousand verses of Kampan's text, the commentary claims that is was the very first verse written by him, and Natesan Pillai's story closes by stamping the epic with the day and year when Kampan first recited his composition. By creating these conversations in which the poet speaks, lies, worships, and eventually recites his own composition, the puppet play gives voice even to Kampan himself.

Doubled speech, competing intentions, and the puppeteers' grip on performance is evident also in ordinary dialogue spoken by epic characters (conversation 2). To say that the puppeteers speak in their own voice is more than metaphor here, since the epic characters speak not in Kampan's literary Tamil but in an idiomatic Tamil (cetti basai ); unlike the converted verses and repeated verse-words, these dialogues are not "occupied" by the poet's meanings and are thus more susceptible to the intentions of the puppeteers. We do not hear this dialogue if, as in our favorite scene between Vibhisana and Rama, the speeches last for five or ten minutes, but when the speakers alternate more quickly, the puppeteers' voices are distinctly audible. An example from the above trans-

lation occurs when Ravana considers what to do after Kumbhakarna's death:

"First that monkey burned our city , and then my palace is put under siege. I've lost a battle to Rama, Kumbhakarna has been killed, and now I've lost my son!"

[His wife, Danyamalini :] "Kumbhakarna is gone, our beloved son is dead, and who is next? All this because you want to keep that Sita as a concubine! [ To Indrajit ] Son, your brother is dead and now the fate of Lanka rests on your shoulders."

"Do not grieve, Mother. I will surely defeat our enemies. Father, send me to battle."

"Just seeing your strong hands, Son, gives me courage, but we have suffered another loss, a great loss.

"Now you tell me! Why did you send my little brother when I, conqueror of Indra, was here to fight? I humiliated that monkey Hanuman when he spied on us. Armed with special weapons, I leave for the battlefield this very minute."

"What weapons have you, Son?"

"Many. Siva granted me the snake-weapon, the Brahma-weapon, and the Narayana-weapon, and many more. And they have not yet been used. Remember that I am your son and will enter the field chanting your name."

"Yes! Go! Go and kill them both, especially the younger one who has killed your brother."

"Laksmana? I'll offer his head as a gift to the Earth Goddess."

The performed epic is loosened still further from its textual moorings when the dialogue accelerates into a rapid-fire argument between two characters, as in this excerpt from the translation in this chapter, in which Indrajit and Hanuman trade insults:

"Monkey-face! Stop jumping around and talk with me like a man."

"I'm not—"

"Shut up, monkey, and listen to me. Is this some kind of game you're playing? Attacking me not with bow or spear but with trees

and stones? Are you mad? Will that spindly branch ward off my missiles?"

"With this stone—"

"Speak up, animal, speak up!"

"You think words will defeat me? Quit babbling and fight. Why should I stop to talk? Does lightning wait before it strikes? Or a lion before it leaps? Advance, brave Indrajit, or are you afraid?"

[ More battle noises ]

"Take this, runt!"

"I'll rip out that tongue of yours!"

Here the epic characters respond to each other and not to the long-forgotten verse that prompted this heated exchange. Performance moves even further outside the text and into the world created by the puppeteers when dialogue is spoken not between epic characters but within an auxiliary tale (conversation 3 ). In the story of Poor Brains, for instance, the words are trebly distanced from the verses: they are spoken by characters in a story told by the umbrella bearer to Indrajit within the oral commentary spoken by the puppeteers.

Although the skillful performer eventually joins his commentary, whatever its contents, to his explication of a verse, these conversations between epic characters and within auxiliary stories are spoken by equal, distinct voices. Throughout the night, the puppeteers will chant and explicate verses, but they lay their surest claim to the Kamparamayanam by creating conversations.

Behind the ventriloquism of the puppets is yet another conversation, one in which the puppeteers speak with each other. I save this for last because it contains that interaction between speakers and listeners I had expected to find between the puppeteers and an audience on the other side of the screen—that dialogue whose absence baffled me for so long and yet was present all along when I learned where to look. Like their puppets, Kerala puppeteers always speak in pairs: a lead man and his support. After the initial pair have performed for an hour or so, a third man, who has been sleeping or resting in the drama-house, relieves one of them, who then sleeps for some time until he spells his now exhausted original partner. This rotation of chanting and sleeping (one of the world's more bizarre work schedules) requires three men, and given the dwindling numbers of active puppeteers, seldom are more than three

present in the drama-house. Seated together on a wooden bench or woven mats, the exchange between lead and support man assumes various forms but never abandons conversation. When a verse is recited, for example, the lead usually chants the first half of each line and his partner completes it; during the commentary, on the other hand, their interaction is reduced to a minimum when the lead puppeteer speaks uninterruptedly for several minutes.

As stated earlier, verse and commentary speak as voices within a continuous conversation, and when we realize that these are puppeteers speaking to each other, we can identify other dialogic devices. First, the conversational thread of the commentary is tenuously, if monotonously, sustained by the droning sound ("ahhhh . . .") muttered by the support man whenever his lead pauses for breath or thought and by questions from the support man (like the straight man in a comedy routine). Second, irrespective of length, speeches open and/or close with epithets employed as vocatives ("Rama-god" for Rama; "Young god" for Laksmana; "Ruler of Lanka" for Vibhisana). Ostensibly addressed to the epic characters, these epithets actually cue the exchange between puppeteers. If in the middle of an exchange between Rama and Vibhisana about the upcoming battle, to return to our well-worked example, the lead man inserts the long tale of the Churning of the Ocean and only returns to the epic narrative thirty minutes later with the question, "So what do you think . . . ?" his partner is likely to have forgotten who is speaking about what to whom; the panic on a young performer's face is painful but brief for he is rescued when the lead man appends to his question the epithet, "Ruler of Lanka?" With context thus restored, the support man is able to respond convincingly as Vibhisana.

Contrary to the impression this book might give, the commentary is not merely a series of long-winded discourses by sleepy puppeteers. Everything changes, as seen above, when the lead man shortens his speeches or his partner interrupts in an attempt to wrest control for himself; and when the interaction inside the drama-house escalates into this rapid-fire exchange, it is obvious that underneath the puppets' conversations the puppeteers have been speaking to themselves all along. In the example referred to above, when Indrajit insulted Hanuman (with cries of "Take this, runt,"), the puppeteer speaking for Indrajit challenged his partner, jabbing his finger and shouting at him, and nearly knocked him off the bench, while Hanuman's speaker raised his eyebrows and responded with cool disdain for Indrajit's aggressive

posturing. On another occasion later in the same performance, a puppeteer surprised his partner by asking an unexpected question and skillfully drew out the answer he (Angada) needed in order to dismantle his partner's (Jambuvan's) argument that fighting for Rama was futile:

[Angada ] "Sure, sure, Jambuvan, but who killed Madhu and Kaitabha?"

[Jambuvan ] "Er . . . Visnu."

"And who killed Hiranya?"

"It was Visnu . . . in his man-lion avatar."

"And who is going to kill these demons who face us now?"

"It will be Rama . . . as Visnu's avatar. I see what you mean,

Angada. But how can I face Rama after this disgraceful retreat?"

When performance moves into this high-speed, unpredictable exchange, one forgets the puppets pinned motionless on the cloth screen. Their flickering shadows are still visible for more than a hundred yards outside, but the performance has become a conversation spoken by the men inside the drama-house.

Tactics of talk employed by the puppeteers to control their conversations range from ordinary jibes to special puppet-play rules. Locked in an argument about the etymology of one of Indrajit's names, for instance, a puppeteer will not hesitate to cry, "Perhaps, but you sleep too much to be trusted with mental matters!" Similarly, the inveterate tendency of some puppeteers to speak at length on issues of vital importance to themselves often tests the limits of collegial respect: "Let that be," a frustrated partner once interrupted his lead's relentless description of Ravana's palace and towers and chambers, "and explain how you got here, Vibhisana." Certain senior puppeteers are notorious for their self-satisfying discourses and cavalier disregard for time, while others, fearful that the sun will in fact rise before Hanuman returns with the medicinal herbs, attempt to hasten the pace of the commentary in order to complete the night's action. One night, as a senior man was gliding languidly through Jambuvan's account of the origin of the world, his partner cut him short: "I see, Jambuvan, so that's how you were born; but what can we do about Laksmana's death?" Of course, no one likes to be interrupted, and puppeteers not willing to relinquish control of the commentary will raise their voice, speak faster, or simply

stonewall their partner. A cleverer trick for wresting verbal control, however, lies in the rules of the drama-house: if a puppeteer sails blissfully away on a digression, one need only recite a piramanam or quote a line from the verse under discussion (which everyone has forgotten), and suddenly, by force of professional habit, the puppeteer who was speaking will stop in mid-sentence and sing the line in unison with the man who has now wrested control of performance.

Despite this verbal jockeying for position, nights in the drama-house are not soured by antagonism. Frustration is common but not hostility. Looking back at the hundreds of performance hours I observed, and after making allowances for the odd egotist or disgruntled puppeteer brooding on some personal problem, I am struck by the cooperation and mutual respect displayed by the performers. The learned quotation and rapid retort, the skillful parody and display of logic are all calculated to please the little band of fellow puppeteers. Even when only two puppeteers are awake, they take pride in explaining how Ravana got his name or in exposing the tomfoolery of the messenger Sangadi. A measure of shame is likewise shared when someone hesitates, forgets the next verse, or begins with the wrong line. That is why neophyte performers clutch a crib sheet listing the first letter of each verse written in sequence in a tiny script, and why senior puppeteers also take into the drama-house a notebook containing the full verses (and sometimes piramanam ), which they may refer to but not read. Only once did I see a junior puppeteer completely at a loss; the poor man suddenly went blank in mid-verse; "I don't know the verses here," he murmured to his partner and hung his head, while the senior man looked at him in a mixture of pity and contempt and carried on with the commentary.

Quality counts on the other side of the cloth screen, too, as I explained in chapter I, but the puppeteers have little direct interaction with their patrons. Temple officials and influential men will eventually decide whether or not to invite the troupe back next year, and hundreds, sometimes thousands, of individuals will register their approval with one-rupee donations. However, the timing of these individual donations only points up the isolation of the puppeteers: whereas in most oral performances such donations are made during performance as a means of communicating with and influencing the performers with requests, in the puppet play those gifts are made before the performance begins, and the donors will not be present when their names are sung to secure blessings from the goddess Bhagavati. This absent audience of temple officials and one-rupee donors, like the goddess and the sleepy

crowd in front of the drama-house, hear words and see shadows only on the outside of the white cloth screen, where certain details of the epic action are invisible (such as Vibhisana's inspection of the false Sita fallen on the floor of the drama-house, and a small puja when Sita is about to enter the fire).^[72] The puppet play's public audiences do not participate in the performance; at best, they overhear it.

To be sure, all forms of puppetry impede interaction with an audience because the performer is hidden, and performances depend on the ventriloquist's illusion. For the spectator, part of the pleasure of the performance is to allow oneself to be fooled by the deception and to see through it at the same time, to hear the hidden puppeteer's voice and to pretend it comes from the visible puppet.^[73] Shadow puppetry, however, asks of spectators yet another degree of self-deception because (with rare exceptions) they do not even see the puppets clearly. In Kerala, the illusion is perhaps too successful. High up in the drama-house behind shadows, screen, and puppets, chanting medieval verses and a learned commentary, making few concessions to music or movement, these puppeteers have receded into their private world.

Puppeteers with whom I discussed the lack of an audience did not see it this way, however. They claimed a Golden Age once existed when they were patronized by local rajas and played to vast crowds who were later lured from the drama-house to the movie-house. Undoubtedly, large audiences did occasionally gather to see the puppet play, for they do so occasionally today—when the puppet play is presented concurrently with more popular events of the temple festival. I have also seen photographs of several hundred people gathered to see a performance on the final day of a festival held in the mid-1950s. All other evidence, on the other hand, suggests that these occasions are exceptions that prove the rule that the puppet play in Kerala is not performed for entertainment. For instance, the puppet play's absent audience was noted in 1935 by a foreign observer and again in 1943 by a local scholar who left no room for doubt: "It does not matter whether there is an audience or not."^[74] Shortly thereafter, and still nearly two decades before movies reached villages in Kerala, another scholar made this recommendation:

If the olapavakuthu [puppet play]^[75] is to survive (and it would be a great pity if it did not), it will apparently have to undergo considerable renovation in the reduction of exposition, a change that would have the desirable effect of quickening the movements of the figures on the screen

and bringing the kuthu [puppet play] nearer the natural desire of people for rhythmic representation. (Cousins 1970 [1948]: 212)

Although scant, these pre-1950 descriptions of performance are enough to indicate that the puppet play's tortoise-like pace and lack of an audience are not recent losses in a media war with movies and television. Equally important, they remind us that the puppeteers are expounders, not tellers, a fact that the above recommendation, with its friendly advice for a "reduction of exposition" and a "quickening of movements," did not grasp.

What that advice also failed to understand is that, unlike other storytelling traditions that use marionettes, scrolls, cards, puppets, and other props, the aesthetic of the Kerala puppet play is not visual; it is verbal. Nowhere is this verbal orientation, and the primacy of the commentary, more apparent than in the battle scenes and death scenes of the War Book. These fast-moving, action-packed scenes, especially Garuda's rescue of Rama, do attract some spectators to the drama-house, and such episodes are standard fare when the puppeteers perform at cultural festivals in New Delhi or elsewhere.^[76] But even in the War Book, when leather weapons are hurled across the cloth screen and thrust into leather chests, the puppets are very often at rest, pinned motionless on the screen for thirty minutes or an hour while the commentary rolls on and on without interruption. It is significant that the Kerala puppets are pinned on the screen, whereas elsewhere in India they are temporarily held against it, and in Southeast Asia they are inserted in a banana-tree trunk, to be taken out and manipulated later. Even the manufacture of the Kerala puppets leaves little doubt as to their intended activity on the screen, for typically they are made with only one movable arm and one movable hand.^[77] Behind this static tableau of pinned puppets, the puppeteers are less concerned with a visual presentation of events for an external audience than with creating conversations for those inside the drama-house. It would be difficult to improve on this description written more than fifty years ago:

It is a privilege to listen to their discourses and the subtleties of their discussion, which are animated by competitive enthusiasm, and there is hardly any subject on which they have not something to say. (Achuyta Menon 1940: 17)

Chapter 8
Rama'sCoronation The Limits of Restoration

This book has described two primary means by which the puppeteers recontextualize Kampan's Ramayana. While chapters 4 and 5 emphasized the narrative alterations that occur within the drama-house, chapters 6 and 7 argued that the oral commentary and conversations place performance even more firmly in the hands of the puppeteers. Such a separation of narrative content from performative technique is artificial, of course, and this final chapter brings them together in a discussion of the voices that challenge the bhakti text. These countervailing voices are particularly audible in the concluding episodes of the epic, and especially in the very last scene, Rama's coronation (pattabisekam ), where they test the limits of that restoration. With that scene, the puppet play, Kampan's poem, and this book conclude.

The translation below covers the final two nights of performance—Ravana's death and Rama's return to Ayodhya. I recorded them at Palappuram, a major site of the puppet tradition nearly twenty miles west of Palghat and a few miles north of the Bharatapuzha River. Palappuram is a prosperous town, boasting a private college and a complex of three Bhagavati temples, which sponsor an elaborate annual festival (puram ), complete with papier-mache horses in mock combat and a series of special events (Kathakali, modern drama, classical music) that rival the famous festival at Trichur, not far away. In a society that ranks festivals by the number of elephants, Palappuram need not be ashamed of its twenty-four pachyderms hired for the occasion. Mixing the sprawling chaos of an American county fair with the fervor of a

Hindu religious pageant, the Bhagavati festival attracts sprawling crowds who mill around the temple grounds and frequent the temporary stalls to purchase food, beverages, puja accessories, cassette tapes of "bhakti pop," and, what is truly indispensable, firecrackers. The Pa-lappuram temple complex hosting this festival is the hub of a network of smaller temples located in surrounding villages that help underwrite seventeen nights of shadow puppetry—a measure of local wealth and the prestige of the tradition here. Even more impressive were the twelve puppeteers (three or four are the norm) who filled the spacious, two-storied drama-house on the opening night in 1989. Nevertheless, and as I had learned to expect, near midnight, when the performance formally began, the crowds evaporated and these puppeteers sang to themselves. During the two performances translated here, which presented the colossal events of Ravana's death and Rama's coronation, the nights were so still that I could hear the wooden wheels of bullock carts creaking on the asphalt road behind the drama-house.

The puppeteers of Palappuram are Tamil-speaking Mutaliyars who have practiced the art of shadow puppetry since they migrated from Tamil Nadu three or four hundred years ago.^[1] Today they live in a cluster of streets set back from the busy state highway that roars straight through Palappuram. Leaving that main road and turning into their neighborhood, one enters a tiny Tamil enclave. The visual effect is immediate———the Mariyamman temple at the near end of the street and the Ganesa temple at the far end rise up in sculpted stone towers (rather than slope down with the wooden roofs of Kerala temples). Walking down this narrow street, one also hears a curious slapping sound, for inside the houses men sit at their pit looms, pulling the wooden shuttle back and forth—the same men who sit on a wooden bench and chant the Rama story in the drama-house. Every year at festival time these Tamil families pool their money and construct a large papier-mache horse to compete with those constructed by other settlements and villages in the mock battles at the Bhagavati temple in Palappuram; they do not, however, hold puppet plays in their own temples.^[2] This small cluster of Tamil families surrounded by Malayalis replicates the position of the puppet play in the Bhagavati festival.

Presiding over this little kingdom of puppeteers and weavers is An-namalai Pulavar, a wispy, frail man in his late sixties. He is president of the local weavers' cooperative society, he owns some land, he leads the performances inside the drama-house, and his ancestral house dominates the main street in the Tamil quarter. Climbing a few steps out of

the hot street, one enters a front room where guests are received and business transacted, and it is there I sit in a battered metal folding chair whenever I come to interview the grand old man. Hospitality is never lacking—good coffee, ripe bananas and homemade sweets were plen-tiful-but talking with Annamalai Pulavar does not fill many pages in my notebook. Although courteous, he seems to take little pleasure in talking about the puppet play. People he does discuss, especially his rival puppeteers, who "knew next to nothing," and the German researcher who came ten years ago and bought two manuscripts "for five hundred rupees;" he raises his hand high and spreads his fingers wide to make sure I count them. Attempting to deflect the conversation away from this tiresome issue, I ask questions about last night's performance, why Vibhisana said such and such to Rama, but he quickly loses interest and glances out the window, preoccupied. In the drama-house, however, his enthusiasm is unbounded, as evidenced by the eighty-minute commentary he delivered at the outset of the translation that follows. Sitting ramrod straight on the wooden bench, the gold settings of his stud earrings gleaming in the lamp light, he fixes a determined stare on everyone and commands high standards from his associates. He is physically enfeebled now and appears to wander at times, but his absorption in the epic characters has never filled to produce a convincing performance.

The translation follows directly on the previous translation and covers the final two nights of performance. We pick up the action at the end of the "Song of the Drama-House" (after the Brahmin puppets have thanked the sponsors) when Indra (Annamalai Pulavar) explains his good fortune at Indrajit's death.

Rama's Coronation

[Brahmin puppets ] "Indrajit is dead and when Ravana hears this news, he certainly will not sit idly in his palace."

"Certainly not. Moved by grief for his last surviving son, he will rise to fight Rama."

"And then we can watch the great battle between Rama and Ravana, but exactly how it will end we can't say."

"True. We know what to expect in general, but not the details."

"So let's wait here and watch what happens on the battlefield."

[The Brahmin puppets leave, and gods appear overhead. As they watch Angada carry Indrajit's head in procession to Rama, Indra begins to sing :]

Like the blemish on the moon in the night sky,
My humiliation, I feared, would never fade away;
But this brave bowman has erased it forever,
Now no obstacle, no travail, mars my good fortune!^[3]

"Do you realize what has just happened?"

"Tell us, Indra Maharaja."

"This long struggle between Rama and Ravana is now ending. In-drajit was Ravana's life [uyir ], and once the life is gone the body will not live long. Ravana may have conquered the Three Worlds, but no one was a greater warrior than Indrajit. Twice he knocked Laksmana unconscious; twice Rama lost heart, cursed dharma, and almost killed himself. Only an eagle and then a monkey saved them from final defeat, and from death. Armed with Siva mantras and maya , Indrajit was invincible except against a person who had fasted in the forest for fourteen years. Remember, too, that this demon once defeated and imprisoned me, earning the name Conqueror of Indra. Ever since that day I have lived in unending fear, but now Laksmana's arrow has removed its source.^[4]

"To understand how much I feared Indrajit, think of the moon, for it, too, is a raja, a monarch of the night. Even the splendor of the full moon, however, is diminished by scars on its surface, and Indra-jit's curse on my life seemed as indelible as those black marks."

"How did the moon get its marks, Indra?"

"It's a long story, more than one story in fact, but you should know them for they take us back to the original form of Siva, the Pure Light, without physical shape or quality, the light of lights that illumines all the worlds."

"All the worlds?"

"There's a piramanam for that: 'The primordial man has ninety-six million locks of hair.^[5] Each lock holds one thousand million worlds; within each world is a set of Siva, Visnu, Brahma, sages, and Brahmins.' This explains how the original Siva stretches through space: his head is the heavens; his feet the netherworlds; his eight limbs the

eight directions; his two eyes the sun and the moon. And his moon eye was without blemish. It preceded even the gods."

"How is that?"

"One story is that the moon was born from the eye of a sage named Atri. It happened this way. Another sage, Narada, wished to humble the three goddesses Sarasvati, Laksmi and Parvati, who thought no woman was more beautiful than they. Narada had peanuts made from the purest gold, put them in a pot, and went to Sarasvati. Bowing with respect, he said: 'I'm hungry. Can you fry these golden peanuts so that I can eat?' But she replied, 'I'm not able to accomplish that task. Ask Laksmi in Vaikunta.'

"In the end, none of the goddesses—not Sarasvati, not Laksmi, not even Parvati in Kailasa———could cook the golden peanuts. So Narada took the pot of peanuts in search for someone to feed him, and eventually he came to Atri's hermitage. The sage was lost in meditation, but his wife, Anasuya, greeted Narada; and when he asked her to feed him by frying the peanuts, she said, 'I will, by the powers of my chastity.' Taking the pot in her hand, she meditated for a few minutes and then served ordinary, hot peanuts. Rather than eat them, however, Narada ran to the goddesses and showed them what Anasuya had done. Immediately they went to their husbands, Brahma, Visnu, and Siva, touched their feet in deference, and made a request: 'Please go to earth and test the chastity of Atri's wife, Anasuya. She appears to be chaste, but who knows?'

"At first the goddesses' husbands refused: 'No thanks. She's powerful and might trick us. Besides, everyone knows she's pure. No need to test her.' Their wives persisted, and eventually the gods agreed. Disguised as wandering holy men, they marched up to Anasuya, but she knew who they were and spoke innocently:

"'Welcome, sages. What do you require?'

"'Feed us, please. But you must do so without clothes.'

"'Bathe first, and I will feed you.'

"When the gods left to bathe, Anasuya thought, 'If I am to serve them without any clothes, let them return as newborn babies.' And so Siva, Visnu, and Brahma were transformed into little babies whom Anasuya held in her lap and fed soft rice. Later she placed each baby in a cradle and sang them to sleep. When Narada reported this to the three goddesses, they went quickly to Anasuya, who received

them graciously: 'To what do I owe the honor of your visit?' Sarasvati spoke first, 'You have turned our husbands into babies; please return them to us.'

"'They are here,' said sweet-natured Anasuya, 'in these cradles. Please find your husband and take him.' Sarasvati stepped up and looked into each cradle again and again but she could not identify her husband Brahma, for the babies had identical faces, like the six faces of Murukan when he was born. Then Laksmi and Parvati tried to find their husbands, but they, too, were frustrated. Finally, the three goddesses begged Anasuya to restore their husbands to their real forms; Anasuya agreed and the three gods appeared as one! At that moment, her husband, Atri, arrived, saw what had happened, and spoke to the goddesses: 'Are you ignorant of the fact, of the reality, that your husbands, Brahma, Visnu, and Siva, are one?' The goddesses lowered their heads in shame, and the three gods, through Anasuya's powers, separated out from their united form and rejoined their wives individually.

"She bade them farewell for it was twilight, but as the humiliated goddesses walked back to their heavenly homes, they cursed her: 'If she is so pure, let her lose her husband and suffer as a widow when the sun rises.' Narada told Anasuya of the curse, and she began to worship Surya, the Sun God: 'Do not rise again. Do not rise or my husband will die and I will suffer as a widow.' On the next morning, the sun did not rise and the earth remained dark endlessly, day after day, until the gods shouted in anger, 'That woman has plunged the world into total darkness.' They marched to the earth where they begged Atri to forgive their wives' pettiness and restore light to the world. Listening intently, Atri spoke: 'Let the sun and moon be born from my eyes.'

"That's one story, but the moon has other origins, as this piramanam explains: 'From Atri's eyes; from Visnu's navel; from Svaha's stomach; from the Milk Ocean; from Brahma's creation.' The worlds are created and destroyed, created and destroyed, in endless cycles. Some myths say Siva creates the worlds, some say Visnu, some Brahma, and some claim that the sages create the worlds. Once when Visnu was creating the worlds, the moon is said to have sprung from his navel; he was beautiful like Kama and women followed him with their eyes. Even Svaha, wife of Agni, the Fire God, fell in love with the moon and made love with him. Afraid that her husband

would get angry, she swallowed her lover to protect him, and later he was born from her stomach.

"Yet another story describes how the moon was born with a halo of stars from the Milk Ocean and placed in Siva's matted locks. Still another explains how Brahma created the moon. You see, gods, the stories are legion, but the point is that the moon was without blemish from the very beginning."

"But what about the 'mark,' the dark spot on the moon? How did it get there?"

"That's another story. Using the serpent Vasuki as a rope, Mt. Meru as the stick, and the moon to fasten it, the gods and demons churned the Milk Ocean. When the poison flew up, the demons dropped the snake's head, the gods dropped its tail, and they all fled. Mr. Meru would have crashed down if Visnu had not taken his tortoise-avatar and balanced the mountain on his back. Well, in the chaos, Vasuki spat out hot poison, which splattered both Visnu and the moon, and from that day Visnu's body has been dark-colored and the moon has been stained. A different story goes back to the moon's birth from Svaha, wife of Agni. They say that when the moon emerged from Svaha's stomach, Agni was so angry that he fried the moon's body like a pappadam , creating the bubbles that we see as spots.^[6]

"But the best story is about Daksa and his twenty-seven daughters.^[7] One day the handsome moon came and married them all so that he was surrounded by stars. Back in his palace, however, the moon gave attention to only one of his wives, and the other twenty-six were never called to his bed. When these daughters complained to their father, Daksa summoned the moon: 'You have failed to treat your wives equally and therefore I curse you to lose your light and become a mere shadow.' Gradually, the moon began to lose power and pass through its phases until last phase began and it was about to lose all its light. Desperate, the moon finally found the sage Agastya, who advised him to eat rabbit meat in order to regain his strength. Afraid that he might not find the meat when he wanted it, the moon grabbed several rabbits and held them close to his chest, and they are the dark spots we see on the pale moon today.

"Still another story takes us back to Kiskindha, when Rama shot his arrow straight through the seven sal trees to convince Sugriva that he

was a worthy ally in the fight against Vali. Looking at the seven trees, Rama said to Laksmana: 'Are these trees or mountains? They stretch so far into the skies that I wonder if their branches have scraped against the surface of the moon and created its dark spots.' All these stories, you must understand, prove that the moon was originally without defect and that later it was scarred."

"But, Indra, there are spots on the moon, so how can it be perfect?"

"The Bhagavata Purana says, 'Comparable to the highest reality, the moon is without blemish; its dark spot is the earth's shadow.' You see, the primordial reality has no qualities. Whether it manifests as brahman , as eternal light, as Siva, or anything else, it remains flawless. Just as any blemish we may see is a reflection of us, the earth casts its shadow on the moon: in reality, neither is intrinsically defiled. This is the truth, the absolute truth! And this is the point: I, too, was plagued by an illusory scar, by fear of Indrajit, until this moment when Laksmana cut off his head. His beheading, you are to understand, fulfills the pledge Visnu made long ago to the Earth Goddess to destroy the demons: Visnu was born as Rama, his conch as Bharata, his discus as Satrughna, and Adisesa as Laksmana, who has now destroyed Indrajit. Having lost his 'life,' his son Indrajit, Ravana is certain to die and then we can enjoy the fruits of piety, meditation, and sacrifices again. Let us shower Rama with flowers and shout his victory cry when the final battle with Ravana begins."^[8] "Yes, look below. There's a procession of monkeys led by Angada, who carries Indrajit's head to Rama."

[Rama speaks to Laksmana :]

"Welcome my mother, my brother, my life,
Come savior, come guardian of Dasaratha-Rama,
Come my precious brother, who killed the terror
While I lay in an ocean of misery.

"Laksmana! Once again you have saved me from my own doubts and fears. I placed those arrows in your hands and sent you to fight Indrajit, but—"

"I have killed him, as you commanded."

"No, Laksmana, not you alone."

"Not me? Then who?"

"Laksmana, no one can match you as a warrior, but without Hanuman neither of us would now be alive. As I lay unconscious on your body, his strength propelled him millions of miles to bring back the San-jeevi herb to revive us all. Remember also Garuda, who defeated In-drajit when he ripped apart the snake-weapon with his beak and talons, and remember Vibhisana, who defeated Indrajit by teaching you how to counter iris maya . And the gods, above all else remember the gods, who defeated Indrajit, because everything we do is their act. Still, among men, you alone were able to face and kill Indrajit in battle. I only praise the others so that they do not feel slighted and accuse me of favoring you. Now return the arrows to me."

[Ravana, who has not yet heard the news of lndrajit's death, summons his messengers :]^[9]

"What has happened to my son in his battle with Laksmana? Run quickly to the battlefield and report to me."

[One messenger ] "Sangadi, what did the raja say?"

[Sangadi ] "What? You were in front and still didn't listen?"

"I thought you were listening, so I kept quiet."

"Hmmm . . . how do we carry out instructions when we don't know what they are? Better go back and ask."

"He'll be furious."

"We'll tell a little white lie and find out what we need to know."

[They return to the palace, where Ravana receives them expectantly :]

"You're quick. What's the news?"

"News? The prices in the market are soaring."

"Not that news, you fools! My son went to war—"

"Listen. We had an accident."

"What's that?"

"You summoned us and spoke some words to us, right? Well, that fool Sangadi took all the words and tied them up in a bundle. We came to a field and had to jump across an irrigation channel. Sangadi jumped—"

"He's a good jumper."

"Yes, but when he jumped all the words fell out of his bundle and into the water."

"Did you find the words?"

"We tried to. We drank the water but only got sick!"

"Don't lie to me; this is a lot of bull."

"No, really, we wouldn't make fun of you, Ravana. We just lost your words."

"All right. I'll teach you how to remember my words. Repeat exactly what I say."

"We're ready."

"Go quickly to the battlefield . . ."

"Go quickly to the battlefield . . ."

". . . and find out whether Laksmana or Indrajit has won the battle."

". . . and find out whether Laksmana or Indrajit has won the battle."

"Get going!"

"Get going!"

"Hey, don't talk to me that way."

"Hey, don't talk to me that way."

"Take this, you fool."

"Take this, you fool."

"Enough, Sangadi. Let's go."

"We just took a beating . . . because we did what Ravana told us to do."

"But we forgot his words the first time. Anyway, we better go to the battlefield and report back quickly."

[Reaching the battlefield, they survey the corpses .]^[10]

"Here's the battlefield. Look, there's Indrajit's indestructible chariot and bow."

"Who's that, lying down over there?"

"Does it look like Indrajit?"

"Can't see."

"Does he have a pottu on his forehead?"^[11]

"I'll go have a look. Oh, god, he doesn't even have a head!"

"Check his right hand; he wore a jeweled ring."

"Can't see. Too bloody. Oh, it is Indrajit!"

"It is? That's terrible . . . for Ravana I mean. He's lost all his brothers, and now all his sons."

"We must somehow tell him of this loss and show proper grief when we do it."

"Why? What's the loss of Indrajit to us?"

"I agree, but if we don't want Ravana's fury unleashed on us, we'd best pretend."

"Right. It's monsoon time again, and I guess we can put some chilies in our eyes to make us cry."

"We'll manage somehow."

[They sing a mock dirge, a parody of what Ravana will later sing :]

"Oh, Indrajit, our nation's son, you've gone forever!
Sangadi, Sangadi.
Oh, Indrajit, our local boy, we've lost you forever,
Sangadi, Sangadi."

"Why are you calling 'Sangadi' and putting me into a funeral song?"

"Nothing special. When someone dies, everyone gathers and sings whatever comes into their heads. It's the same the whole world over. That's all."

[When they reach the palace, Ravana speaks :]

"What's all this crying about? I sent you to find out about my son, and you come back singing a funeral song."

"Sangadi's only son died just three days after receiving his college degree."

"Too bad, but it will pass. But what about my son?"

"Your son?"

"Yes! He went to war!"

"Oh, that. It's like this—"

"You mean he defeated his enemies, right?"

"No. It's just that—"

"What? He went to heaven?"

"Maharaja, Ravana, listen: your son has been killed by Laksmana." "No! Not him, too! [Ravavna moves toward Indrajit's body and cries out .] This cannot be! Not long ago you seized Indra's throne as if it were a mere plaything, and fragrant garlands wreathed your body that now lies beheaded, to be eaten by vultures and dogs. Simply because I loved that woman Sita, today I must perform for you the funeral rites that one day you should have performed for me.

"When you were a baby, I watched you grow stronger day by day, like the waxing moon. Every day I prayed hard that I would see you defeat the gods, but now I see only your headless body. We all must die some day, I know, but must it be this horrible? I remember, too, the games we played when you were a baby, and I still hear the jingle of silver bells on your tiny feet. One day you caught two lion cubs and tumbled with them in the grass while I watched and laughed. At night I used to hold you on my lap and feed you soft rice until the moon rose; I pointed to it and sang, 'Come down, little moon, come down and play with my little boy.' And you, when you saw that rabbit in the moon, you jumped up and down, trying to catch it! But, oh, my son, what pleasures can now be mine?"

[After prayers to Siva, Ravana and his Tiff bathe Indrajit's body and prepare it for cremation. Then Ravana shouts :]

"I can't stand it anymore! I've lost my brothers and my sons, and it's she, it's Sita, who's to blame. With one swing of this sword I'll cut her in two! [He rushes toward the Ashoka grove and meets Mahodara, his Prime Minister .] Out of my way, step aside."

"What is your destination, Ravana?"

"Out of my way!"

"I am your Prime Minister and deserve to know your plans, sir."

"I'm going to the Ashoka grove."

"Going to talk with Sita?"

"Not exactly."

"Then?"

"Did you know that Indrajit is dead?"

"No."

"Well, you know it now. All my brothers and sons are dead, and Rama's wife has caused it all. She deserves to die. Out of my way!"

"Ravana, you are respected as a great raja and a brave warrior. Why bring disgrace upon yourself by killing an innocent woman?"

"Disgrace?"

"If you take up your sword in anger and kill a woman known for her purity, everyone will mock you. Siva, Visnu, and Brahma, from whom you descend, will clap their hands and laugh: 'That Ravana is truly great! He kills innocent women!'"

"You are right . . . you are right. It would be wrong."

"Besides you have another duty."

"To go to battle."

"Yes, against Rama, not Sita. Think: If you kill Sita and then defeat Rama—and in this second battle you will be victorious—when you return to the throne, your love for her will torment you."

"Hmmm."

"You. will live with her memory, but she won't be there. Without brothers, without sons, and without Sita, suicide might be your only course. Therefore, first go to war against Rama."

"What you say is correct, but there's a problem."

"What?"

"You, me, Maliyavan, and the messengers are the only ones left. Everyone else has died in battle."

[ Mahodara reminds Ravana that a ferocious horde of demons, once attached to Kumbhakarna, live in the netherworld. They are summoned and advance to Lanka, creating a huge dust storm that blackens the sky. Having reached the palace, they address Ravana :]^[12]

"Brother of Surpanakha, Kumbhakarna, and Vibhisana, master of the Sama Veda, shaker of Mr. Kailasa, Conqueror of the Cosmic Elephants, Dasagriva, we bow our humble heads at your lotus feet. Why have you called us here?"

"I've called you to help me accomplish a task. Two princes of the solar dynasty, Rama and Laksmana, and Rama's wife, Sita, built a hut in the forest at Pancavati. When my sister, Surpanakha, passed the spot and saw Sita's beauty, she attempted to bring her to Lanka as my wife, but Rama's brother Laksmana cut off her nose and breasts. When, in blood and tears, she told me this story, I resolved to avenge her humiliation. And so, with Marica's help, I went myself to Pancavati and brought Sita back to Lanka."

[Vanni, leader of the new armies ] "And you've invited us here for your marriage to Sita?"

"No . . . we're not . . . married yet. I mean, certain circumstances have arisen . . ."

"Circumstances?"

"The trouble began when Hanuman, son of the Wind God, entered Lanka and found Sita. He left, but not before he killed my son Aksakumaran and thousands of demons and set fire to the city. Then Rama and his monkey armies set siege to the city, and the battles began. I lost the first battle and, then, one by one, I lost my brother Kumbhakarna and my sons Atikayan and Indrajit—all killed in battle. That is why I have called you: to face my enemies in battle tomorrow."

"Is that all?"

"What do you mean 'all'?"

"We thought you had summoned us to lift up the earth, or to pulverize the Seven Mountains, or to drink up the Seven Seas. And now you tell us it's only to fight a couple of humans and a troop of monkeys!"

"Do not dismiss lightly these humans and monkeys?'

[Maliyavan ] "Wisely spoken. Ravana had the same attitude when Rama and his army first set siege to Lanka. Besides, those puny humans, as you call them, vanquished Vali."

'Vali? Really?"

"And they killed your leader, Kumbhakarna."

"They killed Kumbhakarna?"

"Yes. As for the monkeys, one named Hanuman leaps over oceans, sets cities on fire, and makes widows by the thousands."

"I see. It's not a marriage we've been invited to—it's a real war!"

[In the morning, after a natakam of celestial dancers, Ravana and Vanni lead their armies to the battlefield; Indra, watching from above, addresses the gods :]

"Look, Ravana and his armies have massed for another attack. They have a thousand divisions, but Rama only—"

"Do not worry, Indra, even a million demons cannot kill Rama."

"I know you are right. Still, let us chant for his victory as we watch the battle."

[While the gods chant 'Victory to Rama,' the limitless demon army takes the field. Seeing them, Jambuvan loses heart and leads the monkeys in flight, but Rama sends Angada to stop them .]

"Halt! Halt!"

"Angada, come on, we're running for our lives. What can our seventy divisions do against their thousand? We'd only make a meal for them! I'm not ready to die yet."

"Jambuvan! Don't say that. Once, at my father's death, you spoke brave words and now you talk of retreat!"

"You're a young boy, Angada, and cannot understand what these demons can do in battle. Ravana has hordes, and this time Rama will not defeat him."

"But, surely Laksmana, Hanuman, and Sugriva—"

"Don't be naive. Do you think we are anything more than bodyguards to them? Did anyone protect my son, Vacantan, when Kumbhakarna mauled him? And no one will stop the pain when you die, either. Better to escape into the forest and drink pure water and eat fresh fruits. Let Rama win or lose; what's it to us anyway? Why should we die for them?"

"Jambuvan, do you think—"

"Listen, you just mentioned that I spoke to you at your father's death. What do you know of death if you've only seen one?"

"Well, what do you know of death?"

"Boy, I've seen death since the day I was born, since the third day of this era. Mali and Maliyavan, Kala Nemi and Hiranya, Madhu and Kaitabha—where are they all now?"

"Sure, sure, Jambuvan, but who killed Madhu and Kaitabha?"

"What?"

"Who killed Madhu and Kaitabha?"

"Er . . . Visnu."

"And who killed Hiranya?"

"It was Visnu . . . in his man-lion avatar."

"And who is going to kill these demons who face us now?"

"It will be Rama . . . as Visnu's avatar. I see what you mean, Angada. But how can I face Rama after this disgraceful retreat?"

"Don't worry, I'll make sure that Rama knows nothing."^[13]

[Amid loud war drums and furious fighting, Ravana hurls a spear at Vibhisana, but Laksmana steps in front and receives it in his chest. Hanuman, sent again by. Vibhisana, brings medicinal herbs and revives the lifeless Laksmana; Ravana's armies are annihilated.^[14] From his palace tower Ravana sees the massive destruction and prepares to fight Rama. As he mounts his chariot, he speaks to Mandodari, Mahodara, and his private troops:]

"This will be the final battle. From tomorrow, either Sita or Mandodari will live as a widow. You soldiers who remain alive, fight beside me against Rama."

[As the war drums roll below, Siva speaks to Indra :]

"Ravana has finally ridden out to battle against Rama in his flower-chariot. But, look, Rama is on foot! Send him your chariot, Indra."

[Indra sends his chariot to Rama, who mounts it and arrives on the battlefield; Mahodara enters first and Rama kills him with many arrows, each severing a separate part of his body.^[15] Suddenly a strange cry startles Rama.]

"Who are you?"

"I'm an umbrella holder."

"I can see that! What are you doing on this battlefield?"

"Look. You have killed everyone in sight. All that remains is Ravana himself."

"So?"

"When he comes to battle, you'll kill him, too."

"I will."

"Before you . . . er . . . do away with him, can you give me some lib'ation?"

"You're thirsty?"

"No. I want you to fight me so I can get lib'ation."

"You mean you want me to kill you and grant you 'liberation'?"

"Yes, but first I would like your blessings."

"What do you wish for?"

"Well, in this life I've had to scrape by, so in the next birth I want to be rich. Second, my body looks like a shrunken gourd, so next

time I want to be handsome 'cause then women will wink at me instead of spitting betel juice in my direction."

"Wealth and beauty—what else does one need? Meditate on my name and they are yours. Now you must die."

[Rama raises his sword, but the umbrella holder cringes :]

"Ooooouch!"

"You shouldn't fear death."

"I know, but I do . . . just a little."

[Rama kills him. The war drums announce Ravana's entrance on the battlefield .]

"Prepare to meet your death, Rama.

Listen here, human!
Do not think Ravana will lose this battle!
Fierce arrows will bathe your body in blood
And Yama will come for you today!"

[ Rama responds :]^[16]

"Compassion spared you in the first battle,
But don't count on that today, Mr. Ravana.
I offer your head as a gift to the gods.
Look quickly, behold my war dance!"

"Listen, Rama. . . .

Down in Patala, in the skies, in Lanka,
On middle earth, on Wheel Mountain, upon Mt. Meru,
My flower-chariot flies, and you, poor human,
Cannot conquer my victory. flag.

"Rama! Look above you. Gods and humans have gathered to watch our majestic battle. You in Indra's chariot and I in my flower-chariot, we will fight on earth, in the netherworlds, and in the heavens—over the full length and breadth of the worlds. Let no one say this was an ordinary battle."

"Fly where you wish, Ravana. Choose the spot for your death?"

"On earth!"

[They battle eveywhere, but as neither Rama nor Ravana is able to gain an advantage, Ravana turns to his priest .]

"Sukra, this Rama seems invincible. Is there no way to defeat him?"

"Go to Patala Lanka, raise a sacrificial fire, and from it you will receive a special bow and arrow with which you can kill Rama."

[With Mandodari's help, Ravana chants mantras and raises a fire. Unable to find Ravana, Rama is confused and complains to Vibhisana, who finds Ravana raising the fire, assumes the form of a bee and stings the fire, a bad omen which Ravana curses. Vibhisana resumes his normal form and reports to Rama :]

"Act quickly, Rama! Ravana is building a huge fire in the nether-world to gain new weapons. Destroy that fire immediately!"

"Go, Vibhisana, destroy the sacrifice! And if you fail, drag Ravana's wife by the hair to the sacrifice for that will surely disturb his concentration and his sacrifice."

[On Rama's orders, Vibhisana flies on Hanuman's back, battles the demons, and scatters the fire^[17] Then Mandodari addresses Ravana:]

"The sacrifice has been destroyed! Now I'll have to light a fire for your funeral!"

"No, Mandodari. Do not worry; no one can kill me, and my only sorrow is that I will outlive you."

[On the battlefield, Rama and Ravana counter each other's weapons until, finally, Rama is able to cut off Ravana's heads and arms but not kill him. Rama then speaks to a sage :]

"Agastya, each time I sever one of Ravana's heads, another grows in its place."

"Pray to the Sun God and he will reveal a secret."

[Rama sings and Surya appears .]

"Surya, is there no way to kill Ravana?"

"Rama, listen carefully. Ravana's strength lies in a pot of ambrosia hidden in the left side of his chest. If you destroy it with your Brahma-weapon, he will die and you will be absolved of the sin of killing a Brahmin."^[18]

[Rama shoots his Brahma-weapon, which pierces Ravana's chest and destroys the pot of ambrosia .]

"Now I'll cut off nine of his heads. Done! And with this final arrow I'll sever his tenth and final head!"

[When Rama cuts off his last head, Ravana slowly chants a verse in praise of Rama :]

"Govinda! All-Knowing Visnu! Ramachandra! In my final moments, grant me your blessings."

"Whatever you wish, Ravana."

"You are destined to destroy me in three incarnations. In your man-lion incarnation you killed me as Hiranya, and now in your human form you kill me as Ravana. In your next incarnation, I ask that you kill me and take me to heaven with you.^[19] Show compassion and grant me this request."

"Granted."

"My second request is that you show me your cosmic form?"

"Granted, but first you must cover your eyes to protect them,"

[Rama reveals his absolute form; Ravana chants Rama's names and then speaks :]

"Rama, kill me as I meditate on your cosmic form."

"Gods, l, Rama, now kill Ravana!"

[An arrow is placed through the Ravana puppet, which is then splashed with red dye and left dangling from the cloth screen while the gods sing :]

     "'Rama, Rama' in my heart
     'Rama, Rama,' in my deepest dreams
'Rama, Hari-Rama,'
     I call out every day
When fear strikes
     or life is cruel,
I simply call your name,
     'Rama, Hari-Rama.'"

[Vibhisana tells Rama that the monkeys are mutilating Ravana's corpse and that he cannot bear to watch. Rama orders the monkeys to desist, and they answer :]

"But, Rama, he's evil."

"No longer. Leave him and let Vibhisana perform the last rites for his brother."

[Vibhisana approaches Ravana's body and is overcome with grief :]

     "Poison does not kill if not swallowed,
     yet the fatal poison called Sita
Strtck you dead when you looked at her;
Destroyer of kings, Yama to gods,

     mighty brother, dead on the field,
What do you think now of my words
     that once you scorned?"^[20]

[Mandodari comes to her husband's body and wails :]

"When Rama's arrows ravaged and covered from head to toe
Your splendid body that shook Mt. Kailasa and white-flowered Siva,
Did they enter looking for your life force?
Or for that secret chamber where you hid love for sweet-haired Sita"^[21]

[Fireworks celebrate Ravana's death outside the drama-house .]

[Vibhisana ] "Mandodari, grief is useless now. Our duty is to cremate his body properly."

"Yes. I will bathe, put on new white clothes, and prepare to burn with him on the pyre."

[The fire lit, Mandodari burns with Ravana. Rama then orders Laksmana to conduct the coronation of Vibhisana as Raja of Lanka. After circumambulating Vibhisana, Laksmana places the crown on his head. Rama speaks :]

"Vibhisana, you must rule Lanka justly. Hanuman, bring Sita here." "And here we end the story for tonight. Tomorrow, come to Ayo-dhya and watch the coronation of Rama!"

[On the final night of performance, the Brahmin puppets speak :]

"Last night we told of the great battle, the Rama-Ravana battle, fought in the Three Worlds and eight directions. In Lanka, with Ravana dead and Vibhisana crowned Raja of the city, Hanuman sang to Sita."

"Good news, Sita, good news! Rama has killed that giant Ravana! Your perseverance, your endurance in this prison, is rewarded and your long, beautiful black hair may now join with Rama. Like Siva and Parvati, like Atri and Anasuya, Satyavan and Savitri, Hariscandra and Candramati, you and Rama will live united. By Rama's order, Vibhisana has been crowned Raja of Lanka, with Nilan, Sampati, and Annal as his ministers. Vibhisana will rule justly because he is not touched with hate, and he will treat the descendants of Ravana as his own. All the soldiers have been killed—"

"But, Hanuman, their widows . . . what of them?"

"Vibhisana will see to their welfare. Sita, why are you silent? You are like a mother to me. Speak."

"Hanuman, you see—"

"What? Tell me, what is wrong? Do you think me an imposter? I am the same Hanuman who came to you in the Ashoka grove and predicted that Rama would rescue you within a month. Rise up, Sita, and come with me to Rama."

"Hanuman, you are a true friend, and I remain silent not for the reasons that you imagine. You alone know what I suffered in Ravana's prison; abused, tormented, with no word from Rama, I decided to kill myself . . . once I tied a vine to a tree . . . and at that moment you appeared. When you left, I vowed that I would kill myself if Rama did not come within thirty days, and now you are here with this news! What does one say to a person who has twice saved one's life? I know no words and that is why I cannot speak. Even if I gave the earth, heaven, and the underworld, they would not suffice because everything in those Three Worlds is mutable, whereas you are eternal. So I have decided merely to bow my head at your feet; at least the respect you receive from me will never perish."^[22]

"No, Sita, do not bow, to me. You are a goddess, a holy mother to me. Please respect my feelings. If you must offer something, give me a boon. That will be enough."

"Ask for anything you wish."

"There is only one boon that I could possibly desire—that you and Rama will live together forever. I will be content to serve you, to bring you flowers, and keep you cool, like a deep pool of water."

"If that is your wish, it is granted."

[Meanwhile Rama addresses Vibhisana :]

"Hanuman delays, Ruler of Lanka!
Go to Sita and console her
And bring her here in full beauty
That she may dazzle my eyes!^[23]

"Where is Hanuman? I told him to bring Sita and still he has not returned. Vibhisana, bring her dressed in jewels and a sari, as if she were entering the marriage hall."

[Vibhisana turns to face Sita and Hanuman .]

"Sita, your fidelity has been rewarded. Rama has entered Lanka, destroyed Ravana, and set you free. Your husband wishes to see you; even the gods are waiting to receive you. Take off your prison clothes, and dress in your finest sari and jewels so that they will be pleased."

"Vibhisana, you are Rama's messenger and I do not wish to oppose you or my husband. But consider this: everyone knows that I have been separated from Rama for a year, imprisoned in Ravana's palace. What would those gods, sages, and royal women think if they see me appear in my wedding jewels? 'Where did she get them? She's looking pretty!' they will sneer. No, I will remain as I am, for if a woman is separated from her husband, she should remain in rags until she is reunited with him. To do otherwise would invite unkind suspicions about my conduct. Certainly, you do not wish to encourage that, and I doubt that it would give Rama pleasure, either."

"Sita! Sita! There is no need for concern on that issue. No one doubts your fidelity to Rama. We all know that since the day you were separated in Pancavati, you have refused clothes, food, even water. You are the very model of truthfulness, who never so much as thought of another man while separated from your husband. Wearing fine clothes will not tarnish your reputation. Go now and change, to please Rama."

"Vibhisana, I will accept your word as I would accept Hanuman's. Although I feel it is not proper to put on royal clothes before actually seeing Rama, I will change and join you." [She turns to Hanuman .] Why are you silent? Is something wrong?"

"No—"

"Then lead me to Rama."

[A seated Sita puppet, representing her imprisonment, is replaced by a standing Sita puppet; all puppets turn to face Rama, and Sita speaks :]

"Rama, I bow to you as my husband, as protector of all living creatures. We are only 'bodies,' and you guide us through this sea of suffering called life. Do you know, can you possibly imagine, how I longed for you? Only yesterday, I had given up all hope of ever seeing you again, and now you are here. We must resume our married life. I swear to you, Rama, that I have been faithful to you in mind, deed, and speech. If I have ever committed a minor oversight, a

child's forgetfulness, you must forgive me. For one year I suffered in Ravana's captivity—even Hanuman cannot tell you all I suffered."

"I see no signs of suffering, Sita. The only change is that your conduct has suffered."

"Rama, what are you saying? If you reject me now, I—"

"You know very well that a woman separated from her husband must not wear new clothes or jewelry, nor loosen her hair, nor enjoy good food or drink. But I see no evidence of such deprivation in you. If you had fasted for this year, like ascetics who uphold virtue, you would be weak, emaciated. But, no, you are round and healthy. And look at your clothes! Those jewels!"

"Rama, when Vibhisana came to lead me here, I was not wearing these clothes. Since the day I was captured by Ravana, I did not change my clothes or wear jewelry, but Vibhisana said you desired to see me in fine clothes. Inside I said 'No,' but Vibhisana insisted that it was your order. I have preserved my fidelity, as a gift I would offer you when you rescued me. Accept me now as your wife."

"How can I after you've been in Ravana's palace? Obviously you enjoyed yourself in his court, and now that he is dead you ask me to take you back! And you say that this is what I 'desired'? A demon's wife?"

"Rama! Believe me! I wore no other clothes until Vibhisana ordered me to change into these. Then the maidservants continued to fasten on more jewels; I said, 'No more,' but they insisted that it would please you. I did fast in Lanka; my only subsistence was your name, which I chanted and meditated upon every day. Just as the sages in the forest grow healthy in the fiercest austerities, I, too, grew strong meditating on your name. Examine my body, if you wish; you will find no trace of food."

"Do not fall at my feet and cry that I should accept you. Cry only that your Ravana is dead!"

"How can you call me a courtesan! If you believe that, you must leave me since you know the custom that a man should enter the forest when he renounces his wife. Yes, you've done your duty—killed Ravana and crowned Vibhisana—so what keeps you here in Lanka? Leave me and go into the forest as a wandering ascetic. Otherwise, why did you send for me?"

"Why? Listen.

I crossed seas, overcame fierce enemies,
Destroyed demons with lightning-fast weapons,
And came to Lanka not to rescue you,
But to rescue my own honor.^[24]

"I did not come to Lanka to rescue you; Ravana stole my wife, and I came here to remove that disgrace from my name. The demons are destroyed and my honor restored. Now—"

"What! You came here to restore your honor? Killed Ravana so that you would remove the stain on your name?"

"I came here to exonerate myself."

"Wait! Who ordered Vibhisana to bring me back dressed in fine clothes? Am I wrong to have considered him your emissary? Should he have disobeyed your command and not told me to change?"

"You repeat your claim that Vibhisana made you change your clothes, but if a woman is touched by another man, if her chastity is compromised, any good woman would first ask forgiveness from her husband. Not you. From the beginning you have professed your innocence. As for what Vibhisana said, will you obey whatever words escape from his lips? 'Will the planets stop just because Paramesvara [Siva] says "Stop"?' One's sense of decency should guide one's actions. Yours has not. Therefore, either ask forgiveness or be gone!"

"Rama! I am innocent! I have done nothing wrong. All my long and painful sacrifice in Lanka, unlike that of an ascetic, bears no fruit. How can you, who are learned and compassionate, order me to leave?"

"Who can understand women? Gods see into all things as clearly as they see into a nelli fruit, but they cannot penetrate a woman's mind.^[25] Brahma does not understand Sarasvati; Visnu lies in Laksmi's arms but does not comprehend her; even Siva, who is himself half-woman, cannot make sense of Parvati."

"How can you speak like this, Rama?

The whole world knows my chastity,
Even Brahma cannot sway nay woman's mind,
But if you who protect us all refuse me,
Can any god change your mind?^[26]

"Look closely at me, at my actions, Rama. There is only fidelity, nothing more. But if you will not believe me, there is one thing left for me to do. Laksmana, gather wood for a fire."

[Laksmana turns to Rama for permission, but Rama is silent. Laksmana stacks the wood, and Sita invokes the Fire God as the puppeteers perform a small puja behind the screen :]

"Come, Agni! Come to me! Long ago in Mithila, after Rama broke my father's bow, I invoked you as a witness to my pledge never to leave my husband. Now, once again, I call on you to bear witness: If I have ever been unfaithful to my husband, in word, thought, or deed, then burn me with your flames. If I am innocent, return me to Rama."

[Chanting Rama's name, Sita leaps into the flames, and Agni speaks :]

"Her fire is too hot! Sita's chastity is burning me. Sita, return to Rama."

[Rama ] "What is this? One woman jumps into the flames, and another emerges unharmed? Who are you?"

"No, Rama, I'm not a woman. I am Agni and she is your wife. When she entered my flames, she scorched me with her truth. She has done you no wrong.

In mind, word, and body she knew only you;
But do you harbor base thoughts,
Or are you wise, Rama?
Accept her and end her long suffering."

"Because you, Agni, vouch for her, I will accept Sita as my wife."

[Sita stands behind Rama while the gods appear overhead and address Rama :]

"Rama, have you forgotten that you are the avatar of Narayana, the protector of dharma on earth, and that Sita is Laksmi? How can you imagine that she would err? Look, above you. It's Dasaratha in his celestial form."

[Rama bows to his father, who speaks :]

"The past is over, Son, and you must prepare for your coronation. Rama, how I longed to see you. That fear—that I would never see you again—is what killed me. When I heard the words that sent you into exile and made Bharata king, they pierced my chest like sharp spears. Only now, by embracing you, have they been removed. Take

this crown that I have brought from Brahma's heaven. Take it and rule Ayodhya!"

"Father, I know full well how you suffered in granting those boons, and now I will return to Ayodhya for my coronation."

"Rama, I offer you two boons."

"These are my requests:

You gave boons to mother and brother,
Then renounced them as unworthy 'wife' and 'son';
I ask that you, my father,
Return 'mother' and 'brother' to me."^[27]

"Rama, I only renounced Kaikeyi and Bharata because I thought they had wronged you. But I was mistaken; neither acted against you. Oh, the story of those treacherous boons began even before I offered them to Kaikeyi on the battlefield. [His puppet moves upward and is removed .]^[28]

[Rama ] "Vibhisana, we must now prepare to leave for Ayodhya. But how? Is there some vehicle we can use?"

"Yes, Rama. We will use Ravana's flower-chariot."

[Laksmana, Vibhisana, and Rama settle in the chariot. In an abrupt shift, all the puppets tarn from facing left, toward Lanka, and face right, toward Ayodhya .]

"What's that, Vibhisana?"

"Ravana's tower, where he slept before a battle. If you want it, we can rip it up and take it with us."

"No. I don't need it."

[Jambuvan enters and cries out :]^[29]

"I saw Mali and Maliyavan,
I saw Kala Nemi and Hiranya,
But never have I seen
A person revoke a gift he gave!"^[30]

"Oh, I see what you mean, Jambuvan. Vibhisana, do you grant me permission to use Ravana's chariot?"

"Yes."

"Now, are we ready to depart?"

"Rama, do not leave us monkeys behind. We also want to see your coronation in Ayodhya."

"All right. Climb aboard."

"Rama, I will not set foot in that chariot."

"Jambuvan! Why not?"

"I want to see nay son, Vacantan, who led the troops against Kumbhakarna and was killed. I will not leave without him."

"I understand. Laksmana, write a message to Yama asking him to revive Vacantan and his two regiments of soldiers."

[Hanuman takes the message to Yama, who sends him to Brahma's heaven, whence he is sent to Visnu's heaven, where he retrieves the soul but not the body of Vacantan. Finally, Brahma recreates Vacantan from his soul, and Hanuman leads him back to Rama. With no further reason for delay, Rama, Sita, Laksmana, Hanuman, and all the monkeys depart for Ayodhya in the chariot. Sita speaks :]

"Rama, you came all the way from Pancavati to Lanka on foot; show me what happened along the way."

[Rama points out various landmarks of his journey to Lanka, until Sita says :]^[31]

"Tell me about this place, from which you built the bridge."^[32]

"It's called Rama's Lord [Ramesvaram] and it purifies all sins. As you know, one will suffer in hell for any of thirty thousand crimes; and if you commit one of the five heinous sins^[33] —murdering a Brahmin, a cow, your guru, wife, or parents—then you never leave hell. However, if you bathe in the holy waters of Ramesvaram, even these terrible sins, even killing a parent, will be absolved. Everything—including the greatest sin of refusing food to mendicants when you hide behind closed doors and eat sumptuously—even that unforgivable sin will be washed away in these waters."

"Is there no sin that cannot be absolved there?"

"There is: ingratitude. All else will vanish, like dew drops before the sun, but not repaying a kindness done on your behalf—that's never excused. As the proverb says: 'To forget a small kindness is not a small error.' And now we need to build a Siva temple here at Ramesvaram. Hanuman, go to Kaci and bring back a Siva lingam."

[When Hanuman does not return, Rama grows impatient and orders Sita to form a lingam from the sand, but just as Sita completes her lingam, Hanuman appears with his .]

"Hanuman ... you were a little late, so Sita has made a lingam with her own hands. We have just consecrated it, infusing it with life. This lingam might curse yours, so we must separate them. Curl your tail around ours, and move it over there."

[Hanuman ] "Ugh! I can't budge it. Not an inch!"

"Leave it where it is. All who come here to Ramesvaram will worship your lingam first, and afterwards, this Rama lingam. If anyone worships the Rama lingam before your Siva lingam, then their sins will not be absolved by bathing here. Now, we must continue our journey back to Ayodhya."

[Flving in the chariot, Rama points out landmarks of their adventures in exile, and Sita recalls that Bharadwaj invited them to visit his ashram on their return, but Rama recalls something else :]

"Remember also what Bharata swore on the day we left him fourteen years ago: 'If you do not return by sunrise on the first day of the fifteenth year, I will immolate myself.' Hanuman, go quickly and tell Bharata that we are here in Bharadwaj's ashram."

[Scene switches to Bharata and Satrughna on the outskirts of Ayodhya, where they have lived in semi-exile since Rama left .]

[Bharata ] "Satrughna, Rama has not yet returned and time is running out! We must determine the exact time; consult the Brahmins."

"They say it's exactly two hours until sunrise."^[34]

"And still Rama is not here. I gave my word to Rama and I will keep it. Prepare the fire pit immediately."

"But Bharata! Let me talk with Kausalya first."

[Kausalya arrives and speaks :]

"Bharata—"

"I gave my promise to Rama and I intend to fulfill it. That is all."

"Bharata, there may be a million Ramas, but you are incomparable. Your death would leave the world without compassion. If Rama does not come tonight, he will come tomorrow. Do not throw away your life uselessly."

"Mother, even you cannot sweep away my vow to Rama. I have said that I will die on the first morning of the fifteenth year, and that time has come."

"Bharata, listen to me—"

"No. Satrughna, is the fire ready?"

"Ready."

"Rama, Rama, Rama—"

[As Bharata jumps into the flames, Hanuman arrives disguised as a Brahmin and speaks :]

"Stop! Stop! Rama has come! He and Laksmana are at Bharadwaj's ashram. Your death would have accomplished nothing. There! I've put out the fire."

"But who are you?"

"Hanuman, son of Vayu and emissary of Rama. [Brahmin puppet removed; Hanuman puppet pinned up ] Here is Rama's signet ring."

"His ring? Then, I accept you."

"Come, let's all go to greet Rama. Climb in this chariot; later I'll tell you the long story of what happened." [They fly back to Rama .]

"Rama! Greetings to you, brother."

"Bharata, tell me about Ayodhya. How is everyone?"

"Since the day you left, Rama, I have been engaged in austerities. You must ask Sumantra about the affairs of state since they were left to him."

"Tell us, Sumantra. What has transpired during these fourteen years?"

"Rama, ...

Like women desiring ornaments of gold
Like grain aching for fresh rain,
Like mothers longing for their first son
We waited and waited, for you.^[35]

"This verse, better than anything I might say, describes Ayodhya since your departure; we have done nothing but think of your return: 'Is it today that he comes? Tomorrow?' No other words have been spoken in Ayodhya for fourteen years."

[Bharata ] "Rama, we must prepare for your coronation. First bathe in the Sarayu river, then take off that forest bark and put on your royal dress. The rest of you, decorate the palace. We need flower garlands everywhere! Hang them from every corner and every roof. Prepare the temple! Invite the fifty-six rajas!"

[Conch shells sound, cymbals ring, and drums boom, as the puppeteers chant loudly :]

"Rama is Raja of Ayodhya!"

The Limits of Restoration

Ravana is dead, Rama reigns, and the epic struggle is resolved, but behind the finality and tranquility of Rama's coronation lie the tensions that this book has traced through the now completed series of overnight performances inside the drama-house. Discussing those tensions in the preceding chapters has led me to identify several distinct features of the puppet play and its adaptation of the Kamparamayanam. Let me summarize those findings as background before extending the analysis in this concluding chapter.

1. The Tamil Ramayana composed by Kampan (twelfth century?) in the Chola country was transmitted to the Palghat region of Kerala by Tamil weavers and merchants in the fifteenth or sixteenth century and was adapted by those groups to the art of shadow puppetry sometime before the mid-eighteenth century. Both the Kamparamayanam and the Rama story told by the puppeteers are composite texts borrowed from diverse sources.

2. The linguistic and cultural admixture of the Kerala puppet play (Tamil text in a Malayali temple festival performed [primarily] by Tamils for Malayali patrons in a Tamil-Malayalam hybrid) is inseparable from the history of the Palghat region as a borderland and a nexus for trade.

3. The puppet play relies heavily on the Kamparamayanam : 70 percent of the verses are chanted verbatim with printed editions of that text or vary by no more than two words.

4. The puppet play, however, recontextualizes Kampan. The puppeteers sing Kampan's composition in a context in which Rama is not worshiped, demonstrating that a Rama story is not the same as Rama bhakti. The general principle of adaptation is additive; rather than rewrite Kampan's poem, the puppet play reorients it through innovations ("Song of the Drama-house," Brahmin narrators, natakam , conversations, oral commentary, auxiliary stories, folk verses, altered Kampan verses).

5. Narrative change is one major technique by which the puppeteers adapt the medieval epic to its new context: through limited but strategic alterations in content, bhakti ideals of isolation and perfection are tempered by folk principles of relation and balance; in particular, the puppet play narrows the moral distance between Rama and the demons.

6. The puppeteers also recontextualize Kampan's poem through oral commentary and conversations. In their commentary the puppeteers reach beyond Kampan's text and tell stories from the wider Rama tradition; through a set of four conversations, which comprise the whole of performance, the puppeteers weaken the voice of the poet and speak in their own voice.

7. These conversations create internal listeners, inside the text and inside the drama-house. The absent (external) audience is a consequence of several factors: the medium of shadow puppetry, a removed stage, difficult language, slow commentary, verbal (rather than visual) orientation, and the ritual role of performance.

8. Finally, however, the puppet play's adaptation of Kampan is an accommodation. Rather than reject the bhakti ideals of Kampan's epic, the puppet play complicates them with a folk morality, and the result is a Rama story more complex than either Kampan or any single folk text.

Two of these conclusions are the core of the puppeteers' recontextualization of the Kamparamayanam in Kerala: the narrative and moral shift (5); and the commentary and conversations (6). These two primary means of adaptation—changes in content and changes of speaker—work together, especially in the countervailing voices of the puppet play. Skeptical, angry, comic—these are the voices that we heard when Surpanakha mourned her son and when Viii rebuked Rama, and we hear them again during the coronation of Rama when they deflate epic intent and tilt the story toward the ethical balance sought in those earlier episodes. These countervoices also complete the analysis of vocalization begun in the previous chapter for they speak in sharp opposition to the received text. Critical words are heard in Kampan, too, but the puppet play amplifies them and creates new characters to express them, especially on the two final nights translated in this chapter when the puppet play tests the limits of Rama's triumphant return to Ayodhya.

At the outset, we must understand both that Kampan's conclusion is a restoration and that it is only one of three typical conclusions to a Rama story. Folktales and songs, for example, often omit more than half of what is considered the plot and close with the marriage of Rama and Sita; auspicious and joyful, this first typical conclusion is not clouded by later events in the forest and in Lanka. Longer, "epic" texts of the Rama story, like other epics in India, however, seldom settle for such a simple resolution and instead drive into tangled allegiances and dilemmas to reach, despite the temporary solutions achieved by victory and revenge, an uncertain end. In many oral epics, for example, the hero fades away, as a holy man or as a warrior lifted to heaven, and some go out of their way to deny the hero a marriage (conclusion 1) by dragging him from the wedding pavilion to the battlefield, where he will die.^[36] Tragedy and ambiguity, the hallmarks of this second conclusion to Rama texts, take the story far beyond the exile and into the Uttara Kanda, where Sita is banished and finally received into the earth while Rama ascends to heaven. A third conclusion, midway between the felicitous marriage and the fadeaway Uttara Kanda, is Rama's coronation (pattabisekam ) at Ayodhya, and this is the ending in many bhakti texts, including Kampan.^[37] That event, occurring long after the marriage but before the final separation of Sita from Rama, is both auspicious and ambiguous: bhakti theology demands more than marriage—the avatar of Visnu must confront evil and lust, and subdue them—but can Rama remain untouched by that contact?

In the Kamparamayanam , Rama's coronation is a triumphant restoration, a culmination of recuperative events set in motion by Rama's conquest of Ravana. As I said earlier, Ravana's death, at the end of the penultimate performance, is not the puppet play's dramatic climax; but Ravana's puppet, splashed with red dye and dangling upside down on the screen, is the final image of the vanquished enemies of dharma. When the bloodied screen is taken down (some say to remove the evil of killing the Brahmin Ravana) and a new cloth tied up for the next night, the long war is at an end. An even more decisive shift is enacted on the final night when Sita is vindicated in the trial by fire and stands by Rama's side; at that point, the epic appears to have overturned the past, to have erased fourteen painful years that began with a mother's fear and led to exile, abduction, bloody war, and death. On the cloth screen, this turning point is unmistakable: from their very first appearance many nights ago, Rama, Laksmana, and their allies have faced left

(viewed from inside), toward Lanka, until suddenly, after the trial by fire, all the puppets turn and face right, toward Ayodhya. Soon the long dead Dasaratha appears, deus ex machina, and declares to Rama: "When I heard the words that sent you into exile ... they pierced my chest like sharp spears. Only now ... have they been removed." Restitution is complete when Rama requests that his father restore Bharata and Kaikeyi to their former status as his brother and mother, and Dasaratha does so. These reconciliations achieved, the restoration of lost harmony is symbolized by Rama's return to Ayodhya, an aerial journey that is an event-by-event retracing of the unhappy path to Lanka, a Ramayana in reverse.

At the coronation in Ayodhya, after Ravana and his demon armies have been eradicated, Vibhisana crowned king of Lanka, and Sita reunited with Rama, the whole earth rejoices in the restitution of Rama's rule. The narrative of the puppet play does not deviate from the received text in this regard, and after twelve or twenty or forty nights of chanting, the puppeteers faithfully rest their telling with King Rama, until this final moment represented by a standing puppet, now seated on the throne at Ayodhya. Much has been restored, but like Valmiki and other texts that extend into the Uttara Kanda, the puppet play is only half convinced by this conclusion. The triumphant return of the exiles and Rama's righteous rule are called into question by the puppeteers' commentary on the last nights of performance, specifically by Sita and Jambuvan, who remember what the epic has turned its back upon.

Scrupulously the puppeteers adhere to Kampan's narration of Sita's trial by fire—they do not alter a single verse nor omit a detail (that Sita's purity burns the Fire God, for example), yet the scene seethes with a hostility only hinted at in the epic text. Sita's reunion with Rama is far from harmonious even in Kampan, where the entire episode is off-kilter, shot through with a metaphysical "lunacy," as David Shulman remarked.^[38] In the puppet play, the disorder in this abrupt return to normality erupts into discord, vocalized through Sita, who now speaks with a sarcasm we do not hear from her in the epic text.^[39] At issue is her fidelity. A woman separated from her husband is, by tradition, a widow; during her year in Lanka, Sita therefore has refused to eat Ravana's food or to wear fine clothes and jewelry. But now that Ravana is dead, should she go to Rama in rags or wear a beautiful sari? Sita knows that this is a serious question, and Rama will seize upon her improper vestiture as evidence that she has been unfaithful to him, yet on this critical point,

Kampan's Sita, though not silent, is acquiescent.^[40] When she learns from Vibhisana a that Rama desires her to come to him "dressed beautifully" (cirotum ), Sita at first hesitates:

To remain as I am is virtuous and pious,
As the gods, my husband, the sages,
And chaste women of high rank all know;
To wear fine clothes is not proper now, Oh mighty Vibhisana.^[41]

But when Vibhisana insists that this request is Rama's order, Sita agrees and does not protest again.

In the puppeteers' commentary, however, Sita is far from silent and speaks from the first in a mocking voice to Vibhisana. Not to go to Rama in her torn clothes, she declares, "would invite unkind suspicions about my conduct. Certainly you do not wish to encourage that, and I doubt that it would give Rama pleasure, either." Only after wisely securing these grounds for her innocence and only after Vibhisana reassures her (as he does not in Kampan) that no one doubts her chastity, does Sita accept Rama's order. She is then dressed by servants and prepares to follow Vibhisana, yet as she leaves, she turns to Hanuman and asks him the question that he asked her only a few minutes ago: "Why are you silent? Is something wrong?" "No," Hanuman replies, but plainly he and Sita understand something that Vibhisana and Rama do not.

For a short moment, when first in Rama's presence, Sita believes that all her sorrows are lifted, until suddenly Rama accuses her of infidelity, of growing fat on palace pleasures, and rejects her. In Kampan, Sita responds by reminding Rama that Hanuman himself must have informed him that she suffered terribly. Next she despairs that all her self-denial amounts to naught, that all the gods know she is innocent, yet her own husband does not comprehend a woman's mind; with no alternative, she decides to die and asks Laksmana to prepare the fire. She is distraught, even angry, but Kampan's Sita does not openly contradict her husband or accuse him of cruelty; her voice is plaintive and confused, but never mocking or bitter. Confronted on the cloth screen, however, Sita speaks fire in her defense and turns her scathing tongue against the patently weak arguments of her husband. For instance, when Rama announces in a verse that he came to Lanka not to rescue her but to kill Ravana and regain his lost honor, the puppeteers' Sita interrupts: "What! You came here to restore your honor? Killed Ravana so that you

would remove the stain on your name?" Earlier, when Rama accuses her of enjoying Ravana's bed, she shrewdly turns this argument against him:

"How can you call me a courtesan [vesi ]? If you believe that, you must leave me since you know the custom that a man should enter the forest when he renounces his wife. Yes, you have done your duty—killed Ravana and crowned Vibhisana—so what keeps you here in Lanka? Leave me and go into the forest as a wandering ascetic."

To appreciate Sita's sarcasm we must know that in a previous verse Rama condemned Sita for not acting "like ascetics who uphold virtue"; now Rama must himself return to the forest if he wishes to uphold his ascetic ideal. But Rama, whose words are harsh enough in Kampan, speaks with the heartlessness of a wounded lover in the puppet play: "Do not fall at my feet and cry that I should accept you. Cry only that your Ravana is dead!" In the end, and only on the strength of Agni's testimony of Sita's purity, Rama accepts his wife, yet it is difficult to imagine that their bitter, mutual recriminations have left no scars.

Precisely at this moment of reunion, the celebration is undercut by another voice, that of Jambuvan, leader of Rama's bear allies. With the puppets turned to face Ayodhya for the return journey, with Rama, Sita, Laksmana, and all the monkeys seated in defeated Ravana's chariot, and with the past apparently erased, Jambuvan enters in tears. Asked why, he explains in a folk adaptation of a Kampan verse:

I saw Mali and Maliyavan,
I saw Kala Nemi and Hiranya,
But never have I seen
A person take back what he gave.^[42]

With this verse and the scene that follows, the puppet play presents an abbreviated form of "The Revival of Vacantan." In this episode, considered a later addition to Kampan manuscripts, Jambuvan questions Rama's character but even those interpolated verses do not burn with the accusatory tone heard in the folk verses in the puppet play. In the verse above, Jambuvan's allegation that Rama is using Ravana's chariot, which he only minutes ago gave to Vibhisana, may appear contrived, but the rancor it injects into the scene is not: Jambuvan is angry at Rama's indifference to the death of his son, Vacantan, who died unnoticed by

the poet in the ferocious battle with Kumbhakarna and now stands as symbol of those who lost their lives in defense of Rama's cause, Rama may celebrate that his brother and wife are alive, but what of the thousands who died that they should live? Are they to be forgotten amid the reconciliations and return to Ayodhya?

Wise, old Jambuvan, never quite as pious as Hanuman or Sugriva in the puppet play, has had misgivings about Rama and his war all along.^[43] Much earlier, when Angada attempted to halt his retreat from battle, the old leader explained:

"What can our seventy divisions do against their thousand? We'd only make a meal for them! I'm not ready to die yet."

"Jambuvan, don't say that! Once, at my father's death, you spoke to me with brave words and now you talk of retreat!"

"You're young, Angada, and cannot understand what these demons can do in battle, Ravana has hordes, and this time Rama will not defeat him."

"But, surely Laksmana, Hanuman, and Sugriva—"

"Don't be naive. Do you think we are anything more than bodyguards to them? Did anyone protect my son, Vacantan, when Kumbhakarna mauled him? And no one will stop the pain when you die, either. Better to escape into the forest and drink pure water and eat fresh fruits. Let Rama win or lose; what's it to us anyway? Why should we die for them?"

Jambuvan questions Rama's war in Kampan, too, though his words are less caustic. In one Kampan verse he asks, "If men rule or Ravana rules, what's the difference?" but this is a tepid and strategic revision of a proverb often quoted to express skepticism toward authority: "If Rama rules or Ravana rules, what's the difference?" In the puppet play, Jambuvan attacks Rama's motives with the same skepticism as the proverb and other countervailing voices that refuse to accept the bhakti text's attempt at restoration.

Even Rama is disgusted with war and loses heart in his campaign against the demons.^[44] When we compare the treatment of his emotions in Kampan with that in the puppet play, however, two related differences emerge which confirm earlier observations: (1) the emphasis is verbal in the puppet play but visual in Kampan; and (2) the puppet play

vocalizes emotions mute in the epic text. As a first example, consider the parallel verses given below, which describe Rama's reactions when he sees Laksmana felled by Indrajit's snake-weapon:

Puppet Play
No more war for me, and no more fame!
My victory bow, my wife, my kingdom
Even Siva who gave me life—I renounce them all!
If you, Laksmana, do not live.

Father and mother we left; Ayodhya we left;
Yet, like the Vedas, we were inseparable, Laksmana;
Now you've left me and earth is not my home;
Let my soul leave, too, if Yama will receive it.

Kampan
Strong-shouldered Rama looked at his bow at the knots of the snake-weapon
Looked at the still dark night, at the gods in heaven and
Screamed, "I'll rip up this earth"; then, biting his coral lips,
He considered what wise men had said, and remained calm.^[45]

He rubbed Laksmana's feet with his lotus hands
Opened Laksmana's lotus eyes and peered inside;
Hearing his heartbeat, he rejoiced lifted him to his chest,
And lay him on earth;
Looking into the sky, he wondered, "Is that devious Indra around?"

Although Rama's anger and frustration are evident in both sets of verses, those emotions are suggested in Kampan by what he sees and expressed in the puppet play by what he says. For instance, the first Kampan verse is structured by the recurrence of "looking" (nokku ): he looked at the useless bow, the knots of the snake-weapon, the night, the gods. Rama does scream but bites off his feelings and retreats inside, remembering that calm befits a perfected being. In the first folk verse, by contrast, the recurring element is verbal; crying vente ! ("no more"), Rama condemns war and its rewards in the first line and cries louder with each repetition of that word. Similarly, in the second Kampan

verse, Rama remains mute and continues to look, into Laksmana's eyes and again at the sky while contemplating revenge against Indrajit; in the second folk verse, however, we hear only Rama's sad words. Rama does not look at the source of his grief in the puppet play, he speaks of it.

Rama's despair at death is expressed again in a later, parallel scene when he finds his armies felled again, this time by Indrajit's Brahma-weapon, and again the puppet play replaces the Kampan verses with others more verbal and emotive. Moving along the battlefield, Rama stands over the body of Angada, whom he has pledged to protect and whose father he has killed. This highly charged scene is sung in the puppet play with a string of folk verses, the first of which and its equivalent Kampan verse read as follows:

Puppet Play
As he lay dying, your father's soft hands
Held mine and placed you in my care;
Now, your hands are torn and bleeding in my defense:
Who would not die of this shame?

Kampan
Like a bull fallen among a noble herd,
He saw that strong elephant,
Angada, his spear eyes blazing fire;
"This is the value of my protection," he cried,
"This shame, these battle wounds."^[46]

Kampan's verse again works through visual imagery—we see fallen bulls, strong elephants, fiery eyes—and even when Rama speaks of his shame (pali ) in the last two lines, he draws us to its visible manifestation in Angada's wounds. His feelings are also constrained by self-mockery when referring to his pledge of "protection." The folk verse, on the other hand, is almost entirely verbal; Rama addresses Angada directly, tenderly, and without the distance of self-reproach. When he refers to his failure to protect Angada and then juxtaposes Vali's "soft hands" with Angada's bloody ones, there is no irony, only remorse. A similar verbalization of grief recurs throughout the puppet play, for instance, when Rama, leaving Angada's body, moves further along the battlefield and sees Laksman's body. Although Kampan's eight beautiful verses describe Rama's emotions, the hero speaks in none of them, whereas in the puppet play he cries out:

Wives may die, but we marry again;
Our children die, and others are born;

Lost wealth is regained, knowledge retrieved;
But, tell me, is a dead brother replaced?

Rama's sorrow, Sita's sarcasm, and Jambuvan's cynicism do not share in the rejoicing that trumpets so loudly in the final scenes of the medieval text. They do not celebrate a future; they grieve· But the countervailing voices in the puppet play are not always grim, and some are comic, even farcical, especially when spoken by characters either absent or insignificant in Kampan. Among these clownish folk characters, the most talkative is the umbrella holder (kutakkaran ), who is nowhere found in Kampan but is conspicuously stationed next to Ravana on the cloth screen· He first stirs from his silent pose when he unexpectedly meets Indrajit on the battlefield and they survey the litter of corpses felled by Indrajit's snake-weapon. Speaking to the mighty warrior, the umbrella holder mimics the sounds of war:

"Bing-bang! Wham-bang! Bing-bang, who are you?"

"Me? I just shot the snake-weapon, the whole point of this performance."

...

"Problem is your snake-weapon didn't kill them; only knocked 'em out. I'll finish them off by stabbing them with the tip of my staff."

This scene, repeated with minor differences when Rama's army is knocked out by the Brahma-weapon, contains compound deflations of the epic text. Pairing the umbrella holder, a lowly servant who washes his wife's saris and "just grabbed onto the chariot and came along for the ride" with Indrajit, the most powerful figure in the epic, is not intended to elevate the stature of the demon-warrior. The servant's umbrella staff turns out to be more potent than Indrajit's snake-weapon, the epic's most lethal armament; and war itself is mocked by the umbrella holder's first words, which playfully simulate the battle sounds produced by drums in the drama-house. Parody extends to a later scene, too, when the epic battle grinds to a halt because the umbrella holder refuses to hold the banner of Ravana's armies without receiving his pay. Like Jambuvan's intrusive demand for his son's life, but gentler and more absurd, his strike for wages (as Lysistrata's for peace) exposes the fragility of the noble cause.·As if these blasphemies were not sufficient, we then watch the umbrella holder march down the

line, condemn each of Rama's captains (Nalan is a boss-man; Sugriva a drunk; Angada ill-mannered) and stab them one by one while they lie defenseless on the ground. In the end, this marginal and unrepentant figure appears fully converted to the bhakti ethos when he requests that Rama grant him moksa ; yet, just as Rama is about to strike, he flinches.

The nameless umbrella holder also plays the wise fool. In his conversation with Indrajit, he appears stupid, thinks intelligence is a "thing," and mangles grammar, but only he has the foresight to warn Indrajit that his dead enemies may be revived. Similarly, although he cannot pronounce the word "liberation," he is smart enough to gain boons for beauty and wealth in the next life. He also admonishes Indrajit to discriminate between bravado and courage when he tells an edifying folktale about another apparent dimwit, Poor Brains the frog, who warns his own exalted friends about an impending disaster.^[47] The frog's friends, Thousand Brains and the others, confident of their superior endowment, dismiss the threat and decide to remain in the doomed pond. Though skeptical, Poor Brains remains with them, and after the others die from their stupid pride, only he survives. Through the character of the umbrella holder, the puppet play recommends not cunning but prudence and common sense, which was taught also in the cautionary tale told in the "Song of the Drama-House" (chapter 3) about wisely giving money and brides.

The comic voice in Kerala is spoken as well by more respectable epic characters, including Hanuman, the ideal devotee. His journey to the Medicine Mountain in order to save Rama and Laksmana, indisputably one of the solemn moments in the War Book, is my favorite example of the puppet play laughing at epic inflation, Jambuvan speaks excitedly:

"Listen, Hanuman, we have only three-quarters of an hour to revive Laksmana and the others; then the sun rises and Indrajit will behead them. Before that, you must travel seventy-three thousand yojanas to the Medicine Mountain, find the longevity herb, and return."

"Are you joking?"

"Joking?"

"Seventy-three thousand yojanas in three-quarters of an hour? And return? It's ... it's impossible."

"But, Hanuman, if you don't—"

"That far, that quickly, to locate a rare herb for an incurable disease? Ridiculous, that's all."

If Hanuman's critical mission to revive llama and Laksmana is not immune to the puppet play's parody, what is? Nothing held in high regard, it seems, and certainly not the oracle-priest of Bhagavati. As described in chapter 1, the veliccappatu is the ritual link between temple and drama-house when he leads the procession to the puppeteers and offers them the official cloth and rice on the first night of performance; and he, after becoming possessed by Bhagavati, blesses their performance on each succeeding night. The oracle-priest also appears as a character in the puppet play, but only once, on the night of Indrajit's death, when, paralleling the umbrella holder's sham battle sounds, he playfully imitates the temple oracle's cries during spirit possession: "Kriyommmmmmmm!" That the pronouncements of this possessed oracle turn out to be hocus-pocus is not surprising since his spiritual inspiration is a phoney Bhagavati called Money Maker.

Dismissing the temple oracle by debunking his prophecies is part of the puppeteers' broad satire of verbal authority, including their own. The oracle's gibberish and the umbrella holder's grammatical blunders ("Ravana and me went") are linguistic transgressions so obvious that they draw attention to the verbal rules governing performance itself. The puppeteers are wordsmiths who must memorize at least twelve hundred (and as many as two thousand) verses and hundreds of quotations, deliver a lengthy, learned commentary, and comment on derivations and usage. Against these high demands, the puppeteers' play on words may be a charm intended to defuse the power of words: "Sticks and stones may break my bones," they seem to say, "but names [words] will never hurt me." In any case, words play tricks on nearly every major figure in the story. Ravana's messengers, an insignificant pair in Kampan, for instance, take a verbal beating on several occasions. Once, when neither has bothered to remember Ravana's orders, they attempt to avoid punishment by inventing a story: the words were tied up in a bundle, they say, but it fell into a river. Having lost the bundle of words, the messengers are then forced to relearn them, this time by repeating each phrase Ravana speaks, an exercise in tomfoolery that ends in a beating for the witless messengers when they duly restate Ravana's angry blast: "Don't talk to me like that, you dog!" Even Ravana is coaxed by Visnu (disguised as a Brahmin) into using a word that "cancels" most of the future lives granted to him by Siva. All this verbal

chicanery, however, is not what it seems, and although the victims appear to be fools, the joke is on language itself. When the umbrella holder errs or Ravana is duped, it is not that they are stupid but that speech is deceptive, indeterminate, dangerous. After all, Kampan began his epic by telling a lie.

Clowns and fools are prominent in the shadow puppet traditions elsewhere in south India (notably Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka), but the differences with the Kerala clown figures are revealing. In Andhra Pradesh, as Jonathan GoldbergBelle has shown, the clowns appear regularly in interludes or "skits" unconnected with the epic stow and indulge in sexual slapstick complete with huge penises, aggressive homosexuality, and female promiscuity. Drawing on Don Handelman's work, GoldbergBelle concludes that these clowns represent "internal oscillation" and not role reversal; that is, rather than simply reversing norms, the clowns contain both social and asocial roles, between which they vacillate.^[48] In Kerala, however, the umbrella holder and other humorous figures are jesters of a different order. Because performance serves as temple ritual and because the Kampan text is considered close to scripture, the umbrella holder and his foolish friends display little overt, or even covert, sexuality, and their scenes are more tightly integrated into the epic story. Nor do these clowns contain contradictory states within themselves; instead, they represent one half of a complementary pair that juxtaposes authority with its caricature (Ravana and the messengers, Indrajit and the umbrella holder, the oracle-priest parodied by the sham oracle-priest). The comic characters in Kerala thus achieve, by deflation, the balance that the puppeteers pursue throughout the puppet play.

These deflating figures and their countervailing voices bring our study of the Kerala puppet play full circle for, although we hear them most frequently in the War Book, we have heard them before. Sita's anger and Jambuvan's mockery, like Surpanakha's defense of kama and Vali's condemnation of Rama, arise from a worldview that reveals hidden affinities and seeks to redress injustice. Under this watchful eye, the Rama story told by the puppeteers cannot be a tale of triumph celebrating Rama's victory and coronation. On the contrary, if one emotion pervades the puppet play, it is grief, a sentiment that runs deep in the wider Rama tradition, especially the Uttara Kanda, from which the puppet play draws so much. A popular story explains that the sloka (a type of verse used by Valmiki) arose from the poet's cokam (grief) when he saw a lovebird cruelly killed by a hunter's arrow. Similarly, the goal

of puppet-play performance in Malaysia, according to Amin Sweeney, is to induce weeping in Rama and the audience.^[49]

The puppet play also cries aloud and often. Beginning with Surpanakha's wailing over her son's body and continuing on to Mandodari's mourning of Ravana, the Rama story told by the puppeteers is a tale dominated by the pain and separation of death. Comedy is not missing, as we have seen, but humor often appears only in order to relieve the relentless sorrow that attends the war against Lanka. We know that countervailing voices grieve when others celebrate, as Jambuvan does in the "Revival of Vacantan," but they also laugh when others mourn. Twice Rama weeps over his fallen comrades and brother, and twice his agony is preceded by the umbrella holder's and Indrajit's routine in which jokes are played and dirty laundry exposed. An even more explicit parody of grief occurs just before Ravana learns of Indrajit's death. Returning from the battlefield to report this sorrowful event, the messengers indulge in a mock dirge for Indrajit, inserting chilies into their eyes to cry crocodile tears. When they reach the palace and Ravana asks for news (of his son), they trifle with his sentiments, equating that news with gossip in the marketplace; anticipating Ravana's tears when he hears that his son is dead, they comment sarcastically, "It's monsoon time again." Nearly every major scene of mourning in the puppet play is similarly hedged with comedy, as an antidote, I think, to the intense sorrow that underlies the puppet play. The senior puppeteer Natesan Pillai once told me something that I duly wrote down but did not fully understand: "People like the Rama story," he said, "because it has so much sorrow (cokam ); they hear it and they get some relief from their own problems; it makes them happy." At first I thought that his words merely explained why so many people donate a rupee to performance—to eradicate disease, mitigate misfortune, or stake a claim to future success—but now I realize that they say something more: the power of the Rama tale told in the drama-house resides not in the divine status of its hero but in the soothing sadness of its stories.

No one grieves on the final day of performance. After the puppeteers declaimed the last words translated in this chapter, they left Rama on the screen, put up the Brahmin puppets, and for nearly four hours they read the names of twelve hundred one-rupee donors and sang songs on their behalf. At seven o'clock in the morning, with the sun already warm, they took down those puppets, pinned them on the outer side of the white cloth screen, and departed by bus for their homes. Only then, with the puppeteers gone and the story over, was the Rama puppet, seated on the

throne at Ayodhya, fully visible to the public; and it remained on view throughout the last day of the festival. As the final scene of the Rama story in both medieval poem and oral performance, this sight of the righteous king at rest is an auspicious resolution, an end to the epic conflict of betrayal, death, and mourning. But the puppet play in Kerala is a conversation, not a visual tableau, and there can be no complete restoration because other voices have spoken and the past is not so easily forgotten.

The puppeteers headed home, and next year they will return to tell their Rama story, unresolved and incomplete, but how many years they will continue to perform is anyone's guess. Already, as of 1989, the tradition is losing ground, and the lamps are no longer lit in at least a dozen temples that sponsored puppet plays as recently as 1960; at several other temples, the number of nights has been reduced from sixteen to twelve or from twelve to eight. More important, when puppets become damaged, new ones are no longer manufactured because the skin (of deer and buffalo) has become too expensive and the skill of puppet making too rare; torn puppets are patched together or discarded, and a complete set of intact puppets is not to be found. In 1979, upon learning that the most well-endowed puppet troupes had only about half of the more than one hundred puppets required for a full set, the All-India Handicrafts Board initiated a scheme to revive the skill of producing puppets, but it failed for lack of funds; a minor success is that one young puppeteer completed a course in puppet making at Pinguli, Maharashtra, though since then, no one has asked him to make puppets.^[50] Here and there, one sees drama-houses abandoned and in disrepair; I spent days looking for a particular drama-house outside Palghat and was eventually directed to a field, but it had vanished—its bricks and beams sold to a contractor.

Perhaps another two or three generations will pass before the Kerala shadow puppet play joins other folk performing arts in India's cultural museums. That end appears inevitable not because patronage will dry up—the personal problems which villagers seek to alleviate with one rupee are not likely to cease—but because there will be no puppeteers to receive patronage. The simple fact is that puppeteers are not being replaced by younger men. Forty puppeteers were reported to be active in 1982, of whom only twenty-five still performed in 1989, and many of them were too feeble to chant through the night.^[51] Over the five-year span of my research, three puppeteers died and one retired from

illness, but not a single new man entered the drama-house. The reason for this puppeteer drain, I believe, is that performing behind the cloth screen requires many years of training yet earns little income and prestige. While puppeteers are not treated with disrespect, neither are they shown the attention and courtesy accorded to higher caste performers. It is hard to imagine that conditions were dissimilar in the "good old days," but the art of shadow puppetry apparently holds even less attraction for young men today. Will the puppet play adapt and become more entertaining in order to survive? I see no sign of any change in the puppeteers' ritual recitation, but predictions of an early demise often prove to be notoriously shortsighted. An inexperienced but perceptive American observer of the Kerala puppet play wrote this:

The life of a puppet is said to average the life of a man. But in all probability, these puppets will not wear out, for the traveling days of the shadow play will no doubt soon be over. When the twenty-seater busses bring the sound and shadow-play of our own day, sound on film, within easy reach of the jungle, then these shadows of a remote age will fade out. The puppets will lie all year in the palm-frond case or stand shadowless behind glass in some museum.^[52]

That was written in 1935, and although the cinema has overtaken Palghat district, as it has all of India, the puppets still throw shadows in more than eighty drama-houses.^[53] One reason for such persistence is the prestige of the text, but more influential is the belief that donations, in whatever amount, will benefit the donor; this belief, shared by the tens of thousands of individuals who donate one rupee and the dozens of families who give hundreds or thousands of rupees each year, supplies lifeblood to the tradition. The possibility of personal relief also explains both how the puppet play has withstood the onslaught of the cinema and why it requires no public audience: it is not popular entertainment; it is temple ritual. The Kamparamayanam is respected, but presenting it with shadow puppets is considered by most to be a common man's puja , a medium through which everyone may address their problems to Bhagavati, though attendance is not required. Others may concur with those observers who have faulted the Kerala tradition for its remote puppeteers, and I cannot disagree that insulating them from audience interaction has denied the puppet play popularity, both locally and nationally, or that such isolation may well prevent the tradition from adapting and, ultimately, from surviving in a world of electronic entertainment.^[54] Yet weaknesses are sometimes strengths,

and I believe that the Kerala puppeteers' anonymity and absent audience have stimulated them to create conversations inside the drama-house. Whatever its future, the shadow puppet play in Kerala shows us that stories and their audiences are not always what or even where we think they are.

Appendix A
Three Samples of the Puppeteers' Commentary in Transliteration

Note: Malayalam words and suffixes are printed in italic. Breaks in the commentary are indicated by a slash mark (/).

Sample 1: Formal Exegesis of a Verse

arakkan cenaiyai nekutiya cilai Raman tol vali kuruvorkku nartiya porul narpalan untakum./ arakka cenai ilantatu connal ravanati raksasatikal ana tustanmarkal./inta cenaikalai ellam tan karittin itattil untakiya kotantam akiya villai valaittu/cakavanti villan inta astirankal etuttu malai polivatana tanmai pola polintu/ tan nikkirakattu ceyyakutiya carveccuramana Ramacuvamiyinutaiya tol vali kuruvorkku puja pala parakkiramamay vilankum inta verriyai/ etuttu kurappatta perkalum, anpotu kuti ketkappatta perkalum/ anupavikka kutiya palanakiya pirayojanum ennavakilum enru parkkira potu/ 'Natiya porul....' [Here the puppeteer returns to the verse.]

Sample 2: Conversation Between Epic Characters

(Jambuvan:) "Atu mattram illai. Ramanukku ilaiya tampiyakiya cobika inta ilaiyacuvami, inta ilaiyacuvami anavar inta brahmastiram evuntu ujivikapona kalam akilum. 'Mulu mati ulakum munrum nalaram murtti tanum.' Alocikumay iruntal, antaram, mattiyam, patalam, enru connal inta munru lokankal iruntu pilaiccatu; atavatu, cuvamiyanavar pilaikka vennumay iruntal, ilaiyacuvami pilaikkavennum, ilaiyacuvami pilaikka vennum vantal, cuvamiyinutaiya muharasiyum tirum. Cuvami ujivacca enru vantal, inta munru lokankal ujiviccatu enru tan colla vennum ... inta vastukal pilaikka vennumay iruntal, Hanumanana ni oruvan vijariccal potum.

(Hanuman:) "Ah ha."

"Ella perkalum pilaikkum."

"Enna aiya, Jambuvan Maharaja, nin-tiru-ati collukiratu ?"

"Enna?"

"Atiyen vijariccal , ella perkalum pilaikkum enru connal, atiyen vijariccamalo ? Atiyen vijariccal , eppati pilaiccavatu?

"Ni ippolutu vijariccal pilaiccu kanukiratu illai. Allaiyo ?

"Ah."?

"Anal appati manacinale vijariccal mattram poratu."

Sample 3: Rapid Dialogue Between Ravana and Messengers

(Messengers:) "Ceyti ella terintatu."

(Ravana:) "Enna?"

"Cantaile ella catanankalukkum ella vilai jasti akum."

"Eta! Keri ketta perkale! Atu illai nan connatu . En makan porukku pona ceyti ..."

"Allai ... oru aputam nerittatu enkalukku."

"Atu enna?"

"Veru onrum illai. Nin-tiru-ati enkalai alaiccatu, illaiyo ? Alaiccatu etu eto vartaikal conniye. Anta vartaikal ellam enakku piraku nikkiravan, Sangadi, atu ellam avan oru bantamaka kontu kattinatu ..."

"Katti ..."

"Katti, atu oru rentam muntil katti, cumai ettinatu ."

"Antaramo ?"

"Antaram , nankal appati vali natantu pokiratu potu oru vayal markkamaka ponatu ."

Appendix B
Sample Commentary in Tamil Script

Source: Appendix A, sample 1: formal exegesis of a verse.

Literal translation:

Those who tell of the strong shoulders of the bowman Rama, who destroyed the demon army, will realize their desires. To say "the demon army was destroyed" means that the discus-bearing bowman [Rama] took up his hard bow, fitted many arrows, and poured them down like a torrential rain upon Ravana and all his raksasas , all those cruel beings and their armies. To know what benefits accrue to those who tell of the powerful shoulders of Lord Rama, the compassionate all-god, and of his fruitful, magnanimous victory, and what benefits those who kindly hear [the story] will enjoy ... desired things [repeat line of verse].

Appendix C
Main Characters in the Puppeteers' Rama Story

Rama's Family

Ravana's Family

Monkeys and Bears

Notes

Chapter 1 An Absent Audience

Chapter 2 Rama Stories and Puppet Plays

Chapter 3 Ambivalent Accommodations: Bhakti and Folk Hinduism

Chapter 4 The Death of Sambukumaran: Kama and Its Defense

Chapter 5 Killing Vali: Rama's Confession

Chapter 6 Ravana's First Defeat: The Puppeteers' Oral Commentary

Chapter 7 The Death of Indrajit: Creating Conversations

Chapter 8 Rama'sCoronation The Limits of Restoration

Glossary

Note: For main characters in the puppeteers' Rama story, see Appendix C .

A

ADISESA (SESA) (snake): snake, coiled on the waters, upon which Visnu sleeps

AGASTYA: sage who assists Rama

AKVAL: prose summary of previous night's action that introduces each performance

AVATAR: lit. "descent" of Visnu, as Rama and other figures

AVATARIKAI : prose narration used as transition between scenes

B

BHAGAVATI: important goddess in Kerala, in whose festival the puppet play is performed

BHAKTI: religious devotion, of several varieties

BRAHMAN : underlying unity of existence; monism

D

DHARMA: morally correct, prescribed action

G

GANESA: elephant-headed son of Siva and Parvati, invoked in each performance as remover of obstacles

I

INDRA: king of gods; a narrator in the puppet play

K

KALPA : an eon in Indian mythology

KAMA /KAMA: sexual desire. lust/god of love

KATHA [HINDI ]: a performance mode of Ramcaritmanas

KAVI : verse (in Kampan's epic); pattu

KUTAKKARAN : umbrella (parasol) holder; low-status servant in temples and courts, and puppet play

KUTTU MATAM: playhouse; stage for the puppet play

L

LAKH: 100,000

LAKSMI: goddess of prosperity and wealth; wife of Visnu

LINGAM: icon for Siva

M

MAHABALI: king from whom Visnu as Vamana (dwarf-avatar) receives a boon of three steps of land

MAYA : illusion, deceit

MIKAI PATAL : "extra song/verse"; interpolated verse in manuscripts of Kampan's epic

MOKSA: spiritual liberation

MURUKAN: younger son of Siva (cf. Skanda); important Tamil god

N

NARAYANA: a name for Visnu

NATAKAM : "dance"; interruption in puppet play during which dancers entertain Ravana and puppeteers sing verses invoking blessings for their one-rupee donors

O

OTTAKKUTTAN: poet of Tamil Uttara Kanda; Kampan's rival

P

PARVATI: wife of Siva

PATTA PAVA (1): Brahmin puppets who act as narrators during the "Song of the Drama-House," with which each performance begins

PATTU : song, verse, kavi

PIRAMANAM : explication, quotation, rule (Skt. pramana )

POTTU : ash mark placed on forehead, usually after puja

PUJA : ceremony of worship

PULAVAR : learned man, scholar, puppeteer

PURANA : myth or legend; "old story"

R

RAKSASA : demon; enemy of the gods

RAMCARITMANAS : Hindi Ramayana, composed by Tulsidas in the sixteenth century

S

SARASVATI: goddess of learning and arts; wife of Brahma

SASTRAS : books of codified rules and regulations

SESA: see Adisesa

SUDRA: lowest caste in normative caste system

T

TAPAS : religious austerities

TOL PAVA (1) KUTTU : "leather puppet play"

TRETA YUGA : second of four eons in Hindu mythology, when Rama appears

U

UTTARA KANDA: sequel to Rama story included in many texts, such as Valmiki, but not in Kampan

V

VAIKUNTA: Visnu's heavenly home

VALLAL : benefactor, generous one

VALMIKI: legendary poet of early Rama text in Sanskrit

VELICCAPPATU : oracle-priest in Bhagavati temples

VESTI (VETTI ): man's lower garment in Tamil Nadu

VINA (VINAI ): south Indian musical instrument, lute; cf. north Indian sitar

VYAS (HINDI ): Brahmin singers of Ramcaritmanas

Y

YOJANA : traditional unit of distance; cf. "league"

YUGA : eon; age in Hindu mythology

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1922.
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1978.
Tamilaka tolpavanilal kuttu. Ph.D. diss., Madurai-Kamaraj University, Madurai.

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1956.
Kamparamayana Vacanam . 2 vols. Tirunelveli: South India Saiva Siddhanta Society.

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1924.
Kamparamayana Caritam . Calicut: n.p.

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1982.
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1970.
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1953.
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1949.
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Index

A

accommodation 45 -54, 92 -3, 224 ;

in the "Song of the Drama-House" 40 -5

Achuyta Menon, C. 193

Agni (god) 218 , 228

Anasuya 198 -9

Andhra Pradesh, puppet plays of 2 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 71 , 235

Angada (character) 87 , 91 , 99 , 115 , 116 , 208 , 229 , 231

Annamalai Pulavar 195 -6

Annaturai, C. N. 29

anti-Brahmin dramas 23

Arjuna 125

Arunachalam, M. 93

Atikayan (character) 132

Atri (sage) 198 , 199

audience, absent 9 -15, 191 -2, 224

Auvaiyar 113 , 129

avatar 54

Ayodhya Book 23 -4, 96 , 130 , 136

B

Bakhtin, M. M. 178 , 180 , 181

balance, in folk Ramayanas 78 , 224

Balinese shadow puppetry 10

Beautiful Book 25

"benefit of the text" (nu-l payan ) 51 -2

Bhagavati (goddess) 1 , 4 , 6 , 8 , 134 ;

blessings from 1516 ;

and Cinna Tampi 50 ;

oracle-priest of 234 ;

as ritual audience 12 ;

temple 4 , 5 -6

bhakti and folk religion 39 , 51 -4, 78 , 94 , 224 ;

and Rama's killing of Vali 89 , 91 , 92 , 94 ;

Saiva poems 29

Bharata (character) 218 , 219 , 221 -3, 226

Bhumi Devi 119

Birth Book 23 , 73 , 96 , 106 , 129 , 136

Brahma (god) 116 , 120 , 123 , 125 , 126 , 130 , 131 , 132 , 173 -4

Brahmin puppets (patta pava ) 5 , 7 , 46 -7, 196 -7, 213

Brahmins: and Cinna Tampi 46 , 49 ;

and Kamparamayanam49

C

Cakkyar Kuthu 6

Cataiyappan 35 , 103 -4, 106

Chidambaram Mudaliar, T. K. 93

Chola empire 1 , 27 -8, 103 ;

and the Rama cult 40

Cinna Tampi 45 -6, 49 -51, 97

comedy, in the Kerala puppet play 235 , 236

commentaries: oral 119 , 21 , 95 , 127 -33, 180 , 185 -6, 223 , 224 ;

printed 52

conversations, created by puppeteers 134 , 178 -93

Cosmic Elephants 116 , 130 , 131

Cousins, J. H. 193

cultural meaning, and performance 11

D

Daksa 124 , 200

Dasagriva (character) 130

Dasaratha (character) 108 , 218 -19, 226

dialogue, puppeteers' use of 134 , 179 -82, 186 -90

Doniger, Wendy 53

drama-house. See kuttu matam

Dravidian movement 28 -9;

anti-Rama campaign 90

F

family sponsorship 10 , 15 -16, 17

Flueckiger, Joyce 11

Foley, John Miles 14 -15, 128 , 153

folk Ramayanas 14 , 78 , 135 , 181

folk religion, and bhakti 39 , 51 -4, 78 , 94 , 224

Forest Book 24 , 73 , 79

G

Ganesa puppet 5 , 7 , 23 , 47

Godavari River 59 , 60 -1, 182

GoldbergBelle, Jonathan 36 , 235

Goldman, Bob 78

grief, in the Kerala puppet play 235 -6

H

Handelman, D. 12 , 235

Hanuman (character) 82 , 87 , 131 , 187 -8, 207 ;

and Bharata 221 , 222 ;

and the death of Indrajit 155 -6, 162 -3, 167 ;

and the defeat of Ravana 114 -15, 116 , 122 , 126 , 131 ;

finding of Sita 98 , 99 , 101 ;

journey to the Medicine Mountain 171 -5, 202 , 233 -4;

and Sita's return to Ayodhya 213 -14, 220 -1;

and Sita's trial by fire 227 ;

Hart, George 54

Hinduism, Four Goals of 52

Hyder Ali 32

Hymes, Dell 10

I

Indra (god) 103 , 116 -20, 126 , 130 , 131 , 132 , 156 -7, 169 -70, 197 -201, 207 ;

as narrator 179

Indrajit (character) 4 , 25 , 187 -8, 233 ;

death of 134 -5, 149 -78, 196 -7, 202 -5, 234 , 236

J

Jain texts, and Rama's killing of Vali 89

Jakobson, R 9

Jambuvan (character) 158 -9, 185 , 208 -9, 226 , 228 -9, 236 ;

and Hanuman's journey to the Medicine Mountain 170 -5, 233 -4;

and Rama's return to Ayodhya 219 -20

Javanese shadow puppetry 10 , 11 , 12

K

Kalaikottu Muni 108

kama (love), and Rama's meeting with Surpanakha 67 -8, 77 -8

Kampan 1 , 2 , 23 ;

and the death of Sambukumaran 72 ;

dialogue verses 181 -2;

and the killing of Vali 89 , 91 , 93 ;

legends about 47 -51, 104 -9;

and the puppeteers' oral commentary 132 -3;

and Rama's meeting with Surpanakha 71 , 73 , 75 , 76 , 77 ;

Ramayana 26 -30, 106 -9;

Kamparamayanam1 , 27 -30;

and the Chola period 40 ;

and Cinna Tampi 46 ;

in Kerala 30 -1, 34 -5;

and the Kerala puppet play 223 -34, 238 -9;

and the killing of Vali 93 ;

and the puppeteers 37 -8, 132 ;

and the Kanda 130

Kapur, Anuradha 15

Karnataka, puppet plays of 2 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 71 , 235

katha 13

Kathakali plays 6 , 96

Keeler, Ward, Javanese Shadow Plays, Javanese Selves11 , 12

Kerala 3 ;

and the Kamparamayanam30 -1, 34 -5, 54 , 71 ;

Palghat 1 , 30 -7, 46 ;

puppets 36 -7;

shadow puppetry 1 , 2 , 10 -12, 14 , 192 .

Kiskindha Book 25 , 79

Krishnan Kutty, K. L. 2 -3, 4 -5, 6 , 7 , 23 , 37 , 135 -7

Kubera 116 , 131

Kumbhakarna (character) 132 , 137 -45, 148 -9, 182 , 185 , 229

kuttu matam (drama house) 3 -5, 37 ;

at Elakatu 137 ;

at Kerala 11 ;

at Mannur 80 -2;

at Palghat 97 ;

at Suhavaram 3 -9

L

Laksmana (character) 5 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 87 ;

and the coronation of Vibhisana 213 ;

and the death of Indrajit 135 , 150 -7, 159 , 165 -6, 167 , 168 -9, 177 , 201 -2;

and the defeat of Ravana 110 , 113 , 115 , 118 , 123 -4, 125 ;

and Indrajit's snake-weapon 230 -1;

and

the killing of Vali 86 , 89 ;

killing of Sambukumaran 61 -2, 71 -3, 74 , 88 ;

mutilation of Surpanakha 70 -1, 73 , 88

Laksmana Pulavar 136

Laksmi (goddess) 198 , 199

Lanka, defeat of 4 , 99 , 100 , 131

legends: of Kampan 47 -51;

of Madhu and Kaitabha 132 ;

of Markandeya 145 -8, 185 ;

of the moon 124 , 198 -201

Lord, Albert 182

M

Mahabali, King 102 , 140 , 141 -3

Mahabharata 89 , 93

Maharashtra 2

Mahodara (character) 205 -6

Mair, Victor 35 -6

Malayalam language 3 , 33 -4, 128 , 129

Malayali puppeteers 80

Maliyavan (character) 99 , 110 , 120 -7, 131

Mandodari (character) 134 , 152 , 213 , 236

Mannur, drama-house at 80 -2

Marathas 35 -6

Marica (character) 126

Markandeya, legend of 145 -8, 185

Menon, Achyuta 90

Mills, Margaret 17

"mirror events" 12

Mutaliyars 35 , 195

N

Naicker, E. V. Ramaswami 29 , 90

Nambiyar, Kuncan 35 , 37

Nandi 116 -17, 131

Narada (sage) 14 , 118 , 198 , 199

Narayan, Kirin 17

Narayan, R. K. 23

Narayana (god) 124 , 140 , 141

narrators, gods as 179

natakam (dance) 15 , 223

Nayar, Narayana 3 , 5

Nayar, Sankara 3

O

oral commentary 1 , 19 , 21 , 95 , 127 -33, 180 , 185 -6, 223 , 224

oral literary formalism 9

oral performance, and audience 9 , 10 , 12 -15

Orissa 2

Ottakkuttan 28 , 35 , 49 , 72 , 104 , 105 , 106 ;

and the Uttara Kanda 130

Ottan Tullal 3 , 4 , 6

P

Palappuram 16 , 194 -6

Palghat 1 , 30 -7, 46 , 54 , 80

Parvati (goddess) 14 , 141 , 152 , 198 , 199

patronage 10 , 12 , 15 -18, 136 , 137 , 191 , 237 , 238 ;

and payment of performers 17 -18

patta pava (Brahmin puppets) 5 , 7 , 46 -7, 196 -7

performance studies 10

Pillai, Natesan 18 , 98 , 132 , 186 , 236

piramanam (explanation or role) 129 , 133 , 184

pulavars (poet-scholars) 45

puppeteers 1 -2;

and "benefit of the text" (nu-l payan ) 51 -2;

creating conversations 134 , 178 -93;

dialogue 179 -82, 186 -90, 314;

earnings 15 ;

foreign tours 136 ;

and the Kampan text 37 -8;

lack of new 237 -8;

legendary first puppeteer (Cinna Tampi) 45 -6, 49 -51;

Malayalis 80 ;

Marathi-speaking 36 , 37 ;

memorizing verses 37 -8, 80 ;

oral commentary 21 , 127 -33, 223 , 224 ;

of Palappuram 195 -6;

publication of texts 136 ;

sung verses 38 ;

Tamil-speaking 1 , 34 , 37

puppets: Kerala 36 -7;

making 237

Purnalingam Pillai, M. S. 29

R

Rama 1 , 2 , 5 ;

anti-Rama campaign 90 ;

and bhakti 53 ;

confession 88 -94;

coronation of 16 , 24 , 26 , 194 , 196 -223, 224 , 225 -9;

and the death of Indrajit 135 , 168 -70;

killing of Ravana 22 , 26 , 27 , 53 , 73 , 210 -13;

killing of Vali 59 , 82 -94;

marriage to Sita 23 , 225 ;

meeting with Surpanakha 38 , 59 , 60 , 64 -71, 73 -8, 183 -4;

and Ravana's first defeat 99 -127;

rejection of Sita 59 , 88 , 227 -8;

return to Ayodhya 194 , 213 -23;

stories 3 , 22 -6;

and the Uttara Kanda 130 ;

war 229 -32

Rama-Visnu (god) 78 , 132

Ramayana ; Kampan's 26 -30, 106 -9

Ramayanas, folk 14 , 78 , 135 , 181

Ramcaritmanas12 -13

Ram Lila drama 13

Rao, V. Narayana 14

Ravana (character) 22 , 24 -5, 87 ;

abduction of Sita 24 -5, 73 , 83 , 85 , 114 , 169 -70;

death 134 , 194 , 225 ;

and the death of Indrajit 135 , 138 -49, 163 , 196 , 201 -5, 236 ;

first defeat 99 -127;

and the puppeteers' commentary 131 ;

Rama's killing of 22 , 26 , 27 , 53 , 73 , 210 -13;

and the Uttara Kanda 130 ;

War Council 95

referentiality, traditional 14 , 128 , 133

S

Sambukumaran (character), death of 59 , 60 -75, 88

Sangam poems 28 , 29

Sarasvati (goddess) 198 , 199

Seltmann, F. 2

shadow puppeteers. See puppeteers

Shulman, David 226

Singer, Milton 10

Sita (character) 5 , 14 , 22 , 98 ;

and the death of Indrajit 205 -6;

and the defeat of Ravana 122 , 123 , 126 -7, 135 ;

and the fall of Lanka 100 , 101 , 131 ;

Hanuman's finding of 98 , 99 ;

killing of fake 175 -6;

marriage of Rama and 23 , 225 ;

Rama's rejection of 59 , 88 , 213 -18;

Ravana's abduction of 24 -5, 73 , 74 , 83 , 85 , 114 , 118 , 169 -70;

return to Ayodhya 219 , 220 -1;

trial by fire 218 , 225 , 226 -8

Siva (god) 14 , 110 , 111 -12, 124 , 130 , 131 , 197 -8;

and the defeat of Ravana 117 , 118 , 125 , 126 ;

and Kampan 50 ;

and Kumbhakarna 144 -5;

legend of "Poison Throat" 141

"Song of the Drama-House" 7 , 40 -5, 46 , 47 , 51 , 82 , 178 , 223 , 233

Sri Vaisnavism 53 -4

Sugriva (character) 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 -7, 88 , 89 , 91 , 92 , 99 ;

and the death of Indrajit 167 , 168 ;

and the defeat of Ravana 114 -15

Suhavaram village, Kerala 2 -9

Sukra 141 -2, 143

Surpanakha (character) 5 , 23 , 24 , 92 , 224 , 236 ;

Laksmana's mutilation of 70 -1, 73 , 88 , 94 ;

Rama's meeting with 38 , 59 , 60 , 64 -71, 73 -8, 183 -4

Svaha (goddess) 199 -200

Swami, Ramalinga 29

Sweeney, Amin 236

T

Tamil 3

Tamil Brahmins (Pattars) 33 , 34 ;

and Cinna Tampi 46 , 47

Tamil folklore, balance in 78

Tamil language 18 , 33 -4;

and oral commentary 128 ;

and the puppeteers 1 , 34 , 37 ;

Tamil-Malayalam patois 34 , 128 , 223

Tamil movement, and the Kamparamayanam28 -9

Tamil Nadu 2 , 3 , 35 , 36 , 37

Tamil Uttara Kanda 72

Tara (character) 82

temple patronage 16 -17

Tirunakari Alvar 30

tol pava kuttu ("leather puppet play") 2 , 12 , 35

"traditional referentiality" 14 , 128 , 133

Tulsidas 12 -13, 14 , 92

U

umbrella holder (character) 157 -9, 163 -4, 188 , 209 -10, 232 -3, 234 , 235

Uttara Kanda 129 -30, 131 , 225 , 226 , 235

V

Vacantan (character) 220 , 228 -9, 236

Vali (character), Rama's killing of 59 , 82 -94, 99

Valmiki 22 , 2729 , 27 , 35 , 60 , 104 , 235 ;

and Rama's coronation 226 ;

and Rama's killing of Vali 89 ;

Ramayana 46 ;

Uttara Kanda 72

Vamana (character) 142 -3

Vanni (character) 207

Varuna (character) 101 -3, 105 , 116

Vedavati 100 , 101 , 130 , 131

veliccappatu (oracle-priest) 234

Velli Tampiran 30

Vibhisana (character) 98 -9, 100 , 101 , 111 -13, 114 , 131 , 132 , 226 ;

and the death of Indrajit 137 -8, 150 -5;

and Rama's return to Ayodhya 217 , 219 ;

and Ravana's death 211 , 212 -13;

and Sita's trial by fire 227

village committees 12

village sponsorship 16 , 17

Visnu (god) 78 , 85 , 87 , 102 , 110 , 117 , 120 , 125 , 132 , 173 , 234

W

War Book 25 -6, 38 , 95 -7, 130 , 131 , 193 , 235 ;

death of Indrajit 134 , 138 -78;

Ravana's first defeat 99 -127

women's singing groups 11 -12

Y

Yama (king of the dead) 78 , 148

1. The title of Kampan's poem is Iramavataram , "The Descent [avatar] of Rama," but it is commonly known as Kamparamayanam , the "Ramayana of Kampan."

2. On this debate, see Stache-Rosen 1984.; Mair 1988, chapter 1.

3. See chapter 7.

4. These invocations on behalf of the one-rupee patrons are sung during a natakam , or "dance" of celestial women who are summoned to entertain Ravana (infrequently Rama) at various points during the puppet play. With the dancer puppets pinned on the screen, the puppeteers sing songs in praise of Bhagavati, Rama, Murukan, and other deities. See, for example, chapter 6.

5. A vesti (vetti ) is a sarong-like garment worn by men in south India.

6. Despite his ritual office and spirit possession, the oracle is not highly respected; to the puppeteers, he is a temple servant and an easy target for caricature (see chapter 6).

7. The details and scope of this opening puja varied greatly from troupe to troupe; some worship only the Rama puppet, while others worshiped all the major puppets together.

8. These puppets are perforated and opaque, nor translucent. For details on the manufacture and iconography of puppets in Kerala, see Seltmann 1986; UCLA Museum of Cultural History 1976.

9. One drum, para , is a double-headed barrel drum played with one or two sticks; the other, mattalam , is also double-headed but oblong in shape and played with the hands. They are often accompanied by a pair of heavy brass cymbals (ilattalm ), and occasionally by an oboe-like curved horn (kulal ). All these instruments are played by the puppeteers themselves or by their associates, who receive a fraction of the puppeteers' pay and form part of the overnight, catnapping audience inside the drama-house.

10. Cash is usually distributed to the puppeteers only on the final day.

11. Kabadi is a popular game played by young men, in which players cross a line and attempt to tag members of the opposing team without being tagged themselves, all the time repeating "kabadi, kabadi." If they are tagged or tackled or fail to repeat the word, they are out.

12. The text versus context dichotomy has been questioned on many fronts; see Ben-Amos 1993.

13. Jakobson 1960.

14. A good example of these early studies is Abrahams 1976. For India, see Lutgendorf 1991; Kapur 1990; Qureshi 1983; Hess 1983; Flueckiger 1988. For an analysis of audience-performer relations in New Mexico, see Briggs 1988. Finnegan (1977:214-35) discusses types of audience, while Bauman and Briggs (1990) provide an overview of research on audience.

15. Hymes 1975:18-19.

16. Hobart (1987:30) explains that this Balinese performance is "given primarily to an invisible audience, i.e., the gods, the human spectators being essentially irrelevant"; although performances adhere closely to texts, the story presented has "little or no conflict" and is "hardly audible" (pp. 162-63, 178).

17. Keeler 1987:15.

18. Zurbuchen (1987:138), for example, describes the active "evaluation" and "feedback" by audiences for ordinary night performances in Bali.

19. Proschan's claim that "[e]very traditional puppetry performance is a collaboration between puppeteer and audience" requires qualification (Proschan 1987:30). See also Proschan 1983:18-19.

20. Keeler 1987:17.

21. Keeler 1987:219.

22. Handelman 1990:41-48.

23. See Lutgendorf 1991:115-19.

24. Flueckiger 1991.

25. Narayana Rao 1991.

26. Foley 1991.

27. Kapur 1990:23.

28. Some temples divide the rupee donations between the puppeteers (60 percent), musicians (20 percent) and temple (20 percent). Inflation had raised file standard donation to 1.25 rupees at a few sites by 1989.

29. Family-sponsored performances are known as nerccai kuttu (drama [as offering in fulfillment] of a vow); village-sponsored performances are desamkuttu (village-[sponsored] drama).

30. Narayan 1989.

31. Mills 1991.

1. The proverb in Telugu (courtesy of V. Narayana Rao) is "katte, kotte, tecche ."

2. This Campu Ramyana might also be the twelfth-century Sanskrit text attributed to Bhoja, which is based on the southern recension of the Valmiki and

includes several incidents found in the puppet play. On the debate over the Mahanataka see S. K. De 1931.

3. Ravana's death is one example; see chapter 8, note 18.

4. For this conversation, see chapter 6.

5. Jesudasan and Jesudasan 1961:183. Perhaps the best known adaptation of Kampan is the Rama Natakam , an early eighteenth-century composition in a popular song genre (kirttana ) by Arunacalakkavirayar.

6. For Kampan's influence in Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, see Singaravelu 1968.

7. See Sanford 1974:12-18, passim; Champakalaksmi 1981; Ceturaman 1985; Pollock 1993:271.

8. Sanford 1974:17-18; Champakalakshmi 1981:118-23. Two eighth-century Pallava Rajas were also compared to Rama, but the evidence is not quite as impressive as one might think: in one case the king is compared to everyone from Arjuna to Manu, while in another the Rama comparison is merely an inference (South Indian Inscriptions , vol. 1, no. 25; vol. 3, no. 206).

9. See Shulman 1985:25-26.

10. For the publication history of the Kamparamayanam , see Civakami 1978.

11. On the politics of Tamil nationalism, see Irschick 1969 and Arooran 1980; on the various ideological strands of the Dravidian movement, see the 1992 dissertation by Sumathi Ramaswamy.

12. Cuppiramaniya Parati (1882-1921), for example, celebrated Kampan as a symbol of pure Tamil in his poem "Cen Tamil Natu" ("Pure Tamil Land").

13. In 1924 Sir John Marshall regarded the Dravidian hypothesis as the most valid, and further evidence has confirmed his opinion (Parpola 1994:59, passim).

14. For another interpretation of the construction of this Dravidian identity, see Washbrook 1989.

15. Periyar 1972a:15.

16. Purnalingam Pillai 1985:223-24.

17. See, for example, Ponnambalam Pillai 1910:60.

18. Vedachalam Pillai (Maraimalai Atikal) 1939:66.

19. Annaturai 1961.

20. Tecikavinayakam Pillai 1953. On E. V. R.'s revision of the Ramayana, see Richman 1991. For others in defense of Kampan, see Collamutam 1966; Naccumuri 1952.

21. For the Chola inscriptions, see Nilakantha Sastri 1975:468 and Ceturaman 1985:52; for the Pandiya inscription, see Banerjee 1986, 1:216. The Kannada inscription, from Hassan District, is given in Rice 1902, no. 77, p. 53, verse 25), but Emeneau (1985) doubts that the Kannada kamba is the Tamil poet.

22. Nadar 1957:33.

23. In 1926 scholars at Alvar Tirunakari obtained a manuscript of the Kamparamayanam containing the information that it was "completed in M.E. 970 [A.D. 1792] by Tiruvenkatam Tacar," who is said to have consulted forty-nine manuscripts and labored for thirty-five years before issuing his definitive manu-

script (Kampan 1942, 1:3). See also Vaiyapuri Pillai 1962:69; Srinivasan 1984, 1:172; Hikosaka and Samuel 1990:238.

24. The debate on authentic and spurious verses during the first decades of the twentieth century was carried on primarily in the scholarly journal Cen Tamil .

25. These four are: (a) An edition by Vai Mu. Kopalakirusnamacariyar, a learned, Vaisnava scholar. (b) A critical edition with full apparatus compiled at Annamalai University. (c) The Kampan Kalakam edition, which includes mikai patal (extra verses) but no variant readings. (d) The Alvar Tirunakari edition, compiled at this Sri Vaisnava temple center in southern Tamil Nadu.

Hereafter, in notes, Kampan verses are identified by their number in the Kopalakirusnamacariyar edition.

26. Buchanan 1807, 2:347.

27. This historical sketch is drawn from Logan 1887 and Krishna Iyer 1973.

28. The southern portion was called naladesam or "four-villages," namely Chittur, Tattamangalam, Nallepilly, and Pattancheri, where Tamil influence remains strong.

29. Fullarton 1787:167.

30. In the early nineteenth century, a British official noted that the Palghat Rajas were poverty-stricken from the ravages of half a century of war (Buchanan 1807, 2:347).

31. Krishna Iyer 1973:44-46.

32. Interview with V. S. Mani Iyer, Palghat, February. 1989.

33. Mahalingam 1972:312-13.

34. Govindakutty 1981. The Ascaryacudamani a play text, begins with Rama's and Surpanakha's meeting, as does the puppet play (Jones 1984).

35. I have extrapolated this figure from census records for the several parts of the Palghat region ( Census of India , 1901:120; Census of India 1941:89; Census of India , 1951:23-25).

36. Until recently, it appears that the puppet play comprised a Tamil and a Malayalam branch; see chapter 5, note 3.

37. On the importance of the trade route through the Palghat Gap, see Subrahmanyam 1989:78-79. On Tamil weavers and merchants in premodern Kerala, see Nayar and Mahalingam 1952:7, 21; Duarte Barbosa 1866:144-45; Vijaya Ramaswamy 1985:28, 150, 169.

38. The Kalpathy temple was built in 1425, bringing a sizable contingent of Tamil Brahmins and probably artisans and weavers, too, since temples are commercial as well as religious centers (Innis 1951:473; Logan 1887:cxxx).

39. Oral tradition among local Tamil Brahmins is that ancestors established eighteen (or ninety-six) Brahmin villages (agraharams ) where the Vedas were taught. Today this Tamil Vedic culture is undergoing a minor revival; see The Hindu , 24 June 1988; The Indian Express , 20 June 1988.

40. At Kuttala, near Kunicheri, and at Punkunam, near Trichur, and at Tekkegramam, near Chittur. The last site also contains a memorial to Eluttaccan, author of a celebrated Ramayana in Malayalam. At two large Rama temples in the puppet play area (Tiruvilyamala and Triprayar), episodes from the Rama story are presented in Kathakali and Cakkyar Kuttu, but not in shadow puppetry.

41. "Chettiyar" and "Mutaliyar" are labels often used by upwardly mobile groups; the Kerala puppeteers who use these terms appear to be Sengunthars (Kaikolars).

42. In the Vinotaracamancari (Viracami Cettiyar 1891). On Kampan's patron as a Mutaliyar, see Kampan 1926-71, 1:5.

43. Even allowing for the fact that "Mutaliyar" is commonly added to names, the continuity between scholars and puppeteers is clear.

44. Kurup 1984:52, 116; Kurup 1988:49-50.

45. The reference appears in Nambiyar's "Gosha Yatra" (Sivasankara Pillai 1970:81); I am indebted to Rich Freeman for his translation of the relevant lines.

46. The Telugu and Kannada data are given in Krishnaiah 1988; Goldberg-Belle 1984; and M. N. Sarma 1985; a Ceylonese tradition is noted in Coomaraswamy 1930. The Tamil literary evidence is summarized in M. Ramacuvami 1978:21-24.

47. Mair 1988, chapter 4. To this list of visual storytelling props used in the northern Deccan, we may add painted figurines and painted tents (Thangavelu 1992).

48. For the Maratha influence on south Indian shadow puppetry, see Gold-bergBelle 1984; Raventiran 1982.

49. On these Maratha picturemen, see Stache-Rosen 1984; Ray 1978. Morab (1977:42-43) found that itinerant families of leather puppeteers in northern Karnataka wandered hundreds of miles every year before returning to their home village.

50. GoldbergBelle 1984:183-90; Krishnaiah 1988:21.

51. A permanent building (kuttu matam ) constructed solely for shadow puppet performance appears to be unique to Kerala, although a photograph of "an old performance" in China shows what looks like a permanent stage (Jilin 1986:92).

52. On this verse, see chapter 6, note 20.

53. Although I was unable to compare handwritten texts used by different troupes, I discovered a close correspondence between a 1916 printed pamphlet of the verses and two recent books (Krishnan Kutty 1983 and 1987). The pamphlet contained many more verses than did the books, but verses common to them all rarely differed by more than a few words.

54. These "extra verses" (mikai patal ) the editors consider to be unauthentic, later additions to the text.

55. Three folk verses sung by the puppeteers are found in a Tamil folk Ramayana manuscript (published as Nataracan 1989) and a fourth in a Kuyil Ramayana (Venugopal 1993 :105). For a curious parallel with an Oriya and a Hindi text, see chapter 6, note 31.

1. On the development of Rama bhakti and devotional Rama texts, see Brockington 1985; Whaling 1980.

2. Durga puja precedes Dasara in north India, but the celebration of Dasara as Rama's victory is not at all common in the deep south, especially in local temple festivals. See Fuller 1992:108-19.

3. Goldman 1984:47.

4. See Balasubrahmanyam 1971:xx-xxxii; Sanford 1974:9-13; Champakalakshmi 1981:42-44, 120-25. Relief panels of the Rama story appear in north India (at Deogarh) and the Deccan (Chalukyan sites) several centuries before the Chola period, however. Pollock (1993) remarks on the "scanty" evidence for a Rama cult anywhere in India, except the Tamil country, before the twelfth century A.D .

5. Sanford 1974, especially 263-66. Historians studying Chola inscriptions have also found evidence of a royal Siva cult (Stein 1994:323-38).

6. On these inscriptions, see chapter 2, note 21. A temple inscription at Ettamannur in central Kerala is also said to record endowments for the study of the Kamparamayanam , but I have found no further details (Nayar and Mahalingam 1952:x); see also V. Raghavan (1956).

7. Champakalakshmi 1981:116-24.

8. Catacivan 1969; "hero" (virar ) occurs nearly two hundred times, followed by "generous one" (vallal ) approximately one hundred times.

9. On Cinna Tampi, legendary founder of the tol pava kuttu , see the discussion following this translation.

10. Appar and Cuntarar are major poets of early Saiva bhakti in Tamil.

11. "Fifty-one letters" is reckoned (somewhat arbitrarily) as thirty-six in Tamil plus fifteen in Malayalam, which are used for sounds borrowed from Sanskrit.

12. Laksmana (Chettiyar) Pulavar is the late father of Krishnan Kutty Pulavar.

13. The unusually large number of Nayars (Malayalis) in this list of past puppeteers is accounted for by the fact that the performer is himself a Nayar.

14. This reference to the Raja of Guruvayur, a small but important Krsna temple center on the western boundry of the tradition, is a rare mention of royal patronage in the puppet play; puppeteers in the Ponani area told me that they also include a mention of a Calicut king ("Camudira Raja") in their "Song of the Drama-House."

15. Here, and throughout this book, songs (kavi , or pattu ) are indented.

16. The four poetic gifts (nal kavi celvam ) are: maturam (sweetness), cittiram (singing in accordance with metric conditions), acu (ability to extemporize a composition), and vittara (ability to compose a long poem on a single theme).

17. A comparison of this paragraph with its literal translation (Appendix A, sample 1) will indicate some of the condensation I have used in editing performances for this book.

18. A Tamil proverb: Pattiram araintu piccai itu; puttakam araintu pennai kotu .

19. Katal iruvar karuttottu ataravu pattatu inpam .

20. The verse to Kampan (campa , invocation, 7), considered to be an interpolation in modern editions, is this:

We place on our head the feet of Kampan,
Who composed a story that spread and pleased all,

The story of the husband of flower-like Sita,
The story of Rama, whose name Siva proclaimed to Parvati long ago.

21. A possible exception is a procession from a Bhagavati temple to a Visnu temple in a nearby Brahmin settlement, although Brahmins do not participate in the festival, procession, or puppet play. Harding (1935:234) mentions that Brahmins were part of a procession from the Bhagavati temple to the drama-house on the final night of performance, but I suspect that his "Brahmins" are the non-Brahmin oracle and priests who lead the procession.

22. Most of these stories are recounted in Viracami Cettiyar 1891 ( Vinotaracamancari ); Turaicamipillai 1949 (Tamil Navalar Caritai ); Carma 1922 (Kampar Carittiram ); Purnalingam Pillai 1985:215 ff. See also Zvelebil 1973: 207-8.

23. See chapter 6.

24. Nilakanta Sastri 1975:2, pt. 2:524-28; Purnalingam Pillai 1985: 218.

25. Brahmin origins are often claimed for folk heroes in Tamil folklore, for example, the stories of Anantaci and Muttuppattan (Blackburn 1988).

26. This last service is performed by Kannaki, the goddess of Madurai, who comes to Tanjore to aid the poet in the Tiruvorriyur Stalapuranam (David Shulman, 1993, personal communication).

27.Bhagavatikku natakam . In several Bengali texts, too, the goddess assists Rama's victory; see W. L. Smith 1988:133.

28. On Siva's prominence in Kampan, see Maturai Palkalai Kalakam 1969.

29. As told to me by a puppeteer in 1989. Siva's birth as Kampan is sometimes left out of tellings. A shorter version explains that Bhagavati missed the original killing of Ravana by Rama because she was herself involved in killing the demon Daruka; when she complained, the puppet play began so that she could witness this spectacle every year. Valmiki's story that Brahma's door guardians, Jaya and Vijaya, were reborn as Ravana and Kumbhakarna is also told, with some variation, by the Kerala puppeteers.

30. Kopalakirusnamacariyar (Kampan 1926-71, 1:26) accepts this verse as "composed by Kampan," but other editions indicate that it is missing from several manuscripts and hence consider it a mikai patal , or added verse.

31. Thus "desired things" = artha and kama ; "wisdom and fame" = dharma; "liberation" = moksa (Kampan 1926-71, 1:27).

32. As Ramanujan has observed, karma is a minor key in the explanation of events in Indian folktales (Ramanujan 1991b).

33. On the paradox of "giving" in Tamil culture, see Hart 1979. A similar lesson about the dharma of donations is taught by Rama to Vibhisana in the War Book.

34. For more discussion of dharma, and in particular the proper exercise of generosity, see the performance in chapter 7.

35. On the varieties of Krsna bhakti, for example, see Hardy 1983.

36. O'Flaherty (Doniger) 1976:93.

37. On Rama's ambiguity in Kampan, see Shulman 1987; for the same in Valmiki, see Pollock 1991:15-21.

38. See Hart and Heifetz 1988:26-30.

39. Hart and Heifetz 1988:29.

40. For Sri Vaisnava use of the Rama story, see Carman and Narayanan 1989; Mumme 1991.

41. C. J. Fuller (1992:253) argues that one of the "fundamental objectives" of popular Hinduism is "to achieve identity, between worshipper and deity." I agree that narrowing the distance between humans and gods is central to folk/popular religion, but only because the objective is access to power not identity with it.

42. An example of the Sri Vaisnava influence on the puppeteers' commentary is seen on pp. 139-40; for a sample of Saiva Siddhanta discourse, see pp. 101-2.

1. Ramanujan has pointed out that opening scenes in Rama stories often allude to their underlying themes (Ramanujan 1991a).

2. This verse, the first "narrative" verse in Rama story told by the puppeteers, is well known because it has a double meaning (ciletai ): all the qualifies attributed to the river are equally attributable to poetry.

3. From this point forward, the performance continues as a conversation between epic characters. See chapter 7 for a description of conversations in the puppet play.

4. Here the puppeteers borrow a concept from classical Tamil poetry, aintinai (five-landscapes), to explain the place name, panca-vati (five-lands).

5. Scrambling to find the tree puppet, which was not at hand, a puppeteer eventually settled on the tower puppet as a substitute and earned grimaces of disapproval from the others in the drama-house.

6. This verse (mayam ninki , 2.8.51) and the next (mevu kanam , 2.8.52) are borrowed from Kampan's description of building another hut, at Chitrakuta.

7. Vin-kanten (heaven-I saw) is a folk etymology for vaikuntam .

8. Another Kampan verse: see note 6 above.

9. The god of love, and of mischief, is Kama, from kama (sexual desire).

10. Other versions of Hindu cosmology. are given by other puppeteers (for example, Mt. Chakravala is in the east, Mt. Astamana in the west).

11. The folk etymology, here is that Pulastiyan (the wise one) was born from Brahma's pulam (wisdom).

12. This name for Surpanakha is a combination of kama (sexual desire) and valli (creeper), a common epithet for women.

13. Kubera's mother was Tevavanni, Vicaravasu's first wife; Ravana and Surpanakha were born from another wife, Kekaci.

14. "Savapavam" replaces the usual "Carvapaumam"; the puppeteer forgot the eighth elephant's name.

15. Muti vanankata mannan .

16. "Disposition" translates guna .

17. Here the, performer uses a piramanam from the twelfth section of the Cutamani Nikantu , a medieval Tamil grammar.

18. Surpanakha cleverly substitutes the word kama (with its intimations of passion and lust) for the usual katal (romantic love) in this widely used proverb.

19. In Tamil: mukattil manacu teriyum .

20. Rama's sarcasm in recommending Laksmana as a possible spouse follows Valmiki, not Kampan.

21. Here Sita speaks what Rama thinks in Kampan; in this scene in Kampan, Sita is voiceless and runs away when confronted by Surpanakha. See discussion of vocalization in chapter 7.

22. At this point, a long piramanam (omitted here) from a Saiva Siddhanta text signals a shift from epic character to narrator, who delivers the discourse on the healing powers of the southern breeze (tenral ).

23. See Erndl 1991.

24. Malay manuscripts of the Rama story (Hikayat Seri Rama ) include the Sambukumaran story, but only one of the many Malay shadow play performances recorded by Sweeney included it (Zieseniss 1963:40; Sweeney 1972: 229). At least three Jain texts include the episode, but another thirty do not (Kulkarni 1990:31n. 43, passim). References to other Ramayana texts are from Gopalakrishna Rao 1984, passim; Brockington 1985:187; W. L. Smith 1988: 56-57. The episode in the chitrakathi tradition was confirmed by S. A. Krishnaiah (personal communication, 1988).

25. A frieze panel (in a series of Ramayana panels) on the Hazara Rama temple at Hampi (c. 1500 A.D. ) in north Karnataka depicts another unusual variant in which Laksmana appears to behead two ascetics. (Information and photograph of the frieze courtesy of Dr. Anna L. Dallapiccola).

26. From "The Ayotti Katai," a manuscript collected from Kanya Kumari District, Tamil Nadu (author's collection); see its recent publication as Nataracan 1987.

27. _Ramacuvami Pulavar 1956, 2:419-30. As commented upon later, the Uttara Kanda is often not included in editions of the Tamil Ramayana; see Ce. Venkatarama Cettiyar, 1986.

28. See Bulcke's analysis of versions of the Sambuka story in north Indian literature (Bulcke 1961:616-20). I am indebted to John D. Smith for his patience in translating these passages for me.

29. Laksmana kills Sambuka in the Jain Paumacariya (Bulcke 1962:619); the text in which Sambuka is cursed to be a tree is identified as "A. S. I." with no further explanation (p. 617). In many folk texts, Laksmana does Rama's work for him by killing Ravana as well.

30. A brief summary of this story is found in Father Bouchet's letter from the Coromandel, written in the seventeenth century (Lettres Edifiantes et Curicuses , 1718:172-73). Bulcke (1962:616-20) suggests that the Sambuka and Sambukumaran stories are related, whereas Brockington (1985:267n. 19) appears to conflate or confuse Sambuka with Sambukumaran.

31. Although Pollock (1991:3) notes the dramatic shift from the Ayodhya Book to the Forest Book, he debunks the two-separate-stories-theory on the basis of "what generations of performers and audiences have felt" (p. 5 ). One

wonders what evidence of those feelings is available to us; in Kerala, at least, the split between the two halves of the story is so apparent that the puppeteers begin their story at Pancavati.

32. Kampan verse, nilama (3.5.8).

33. Padre Fenicio, a Portuguese missionary who lived on the Malabar coast from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth century, summarizes this story, in his journal, as edited by Jarl Charpentier (Fenicio 1933:80-83). I am indebted to Naomi Katz for translating this passage for me.

34. Narayana Rao (1991) summarizes a representative version of Surpanakha's revenge as well as other women-centered tellings of the Rama story. The revenge is more explicit in shadow puppet plays in northern Karnataka. In one version, Surpanakha goes to heaven, gets ambrosia, revives her dead son's body, replaces his limbs, and asks him who killed him; he replies, "A man with an axe and Vaisnava marks. You must get revenge, otherwise I'll become a preta ['hungry ghost']" (S. A. Krishnaiah 1988, personal communication). In some Tamil folk texts, Laksmana, not Surpanakha is supplied with a motive for revenge: his mutilation of her is a response to her accusation that he slept with Visvamitra's mother (Parijatam 1987:140); and in E. V. Ramasami Naicker's retelling of the Rama story, both Rama and Laksmana fall in love with Surpanakha, who jilts them and is thus mutilated (Parijatam 1987:287).

35. On this Kampan verse, see above, note 6.

36. Hart and Heifetz 1988:86.

37. On the pious demon, see O'Flaherty (Doniger) 1976:63-138; Shulman 1980;317-34.

38. Kampan verse, titil (3.5.38); Kampan 1926-71, 3:179.

39. In Kampan, Rama remarks (to himself) on the "limitless beauty" of Surpanakha/Mohini, but his desire, fully revealed in the puppet play, is intimated in the southern recension of Valmiki when he says, "For with your charming body, you do not look like a raksasa woman to me." Note that this line is excised from the critical edition of Valmiki (Pollock 1991:274n. 16).

40. I am not suggesting that this alteration was deliberate, although that seems no more implausible than the alternative—that the change was inadvertent.

41. Kampan verse, aruttiyal (3.5.51).

42. Kampan verse, tam uru (3.5-45).

43. See Pollock"s useful commentary on this topic (1991:68 ff).

44. Surpanakha marries Laksmana, in their next births, in the Pabuji epic (Smith 1991:93). In other folk texts, Sita is teased about her relations with Ravana and asked to draw her captor's picture on her toe, or on a palm leaf, which then comes to life in her bedroom.

45. Goldman 1984:52-59.

46. The Adhyatma Ramayana is one notable example.

1. The only major difference between the puppet play and Kampan's treatment of the missing episodes is a string of five folk verses in which Laksmana cries out his anxiety while searching for Rama in the forest.

2. Expenses for the Vali episode are nearly twice that for ordinary nights; on this occasion, a family paid 2,001 rupees. The death of Indrajit and Garuda's rescue of Rama also receive special ritual elaboration.

3. Some puppeteers in Palghat are Malayalis (principally Nayar, Nedungadi, and Panicker), who have learned the art from the Tamils and alongside whom they often perform, but the backbone of the tradition are Tamils. A Malayali performer told me that he sings the following verse in their "Song of the Drama-House" (although I did not record it): "We salute Kannappan Nayar and Ponnaccan Nayar, who belonged to the old and best Velur tradition and long ago established this Kampan-drama."

4. On this special night, the sponsoring family hired a special musical group (pancavadhyam ) to lead the procession.

5. Kampan verse, manamum (4.7.113).

6. Compare the folk verse with its Kampan (aiya nunkal 4.7.104) equivalent below:

The feelings of love with which Brahma endowed
The faultless, faithful women of your noble clan,
Oh Rama, he did not give to us;
We enjoy what we can—that's how he made us.

7. Rama's narration of the Gajendra story is omitted.

8. "Life-force" translates uyir .

9. This exchange between Jatayu and Ravana, revealing the location of the life-index, is not found in Kampan.

10. Ravana later mocks Hanuman as the servant of a "coward" (Angada) who worships his father's killer (Rama). See chapter 6.

11. Later, when Rama sees Angada bloody on the field, he recalls with pain this scene (see chapter 7).

12. This folk verse, in which Rama admits his error, has no equivalent in Kampan.

13. I truncate the translation at this point, after which Rama instructs Sugriva in statesmanship, Rama pines for Sita in the rainy season, and Laksmana arrives in Kiskindha to summon the monkey army.

14. See W. L. Smith 1988:80-81.

15. Kulkarni 1990:33, 124-125; Brockington 1985:267-68, 273.

16. Vali's boon is a gift from Siva; see Kampan verse, kittuvar (4.3.40).

17. Racamanikkam 1965:6.

18. David Shulman (1979) provides a close reading of the theological issues in Kampan's telling of the Vali episode.

19. From the interpolated Valmiki (W. L. Smith 1988:80).

20. A good example is the Bengali Ramayana, Meghanadavadha Kavya , by Michael Madhusudan Dutt; see Seely 1991.

21. See Richman 1991:184.

22. Achyuta Menon 1940:97-101.

23. See note 5, this chapter.

24. However contrived Laksmana's explanation appears, it convinced one scholar, who wrote an exhaustive textual study of the Vali episode in Kampan (Srinivasan 1984, 1:217).

25. In a Malay text (Hikayat Seri Rama ), Vali catches Rama's arrow before it reaches its mark and then convinces Rama that he has done wrong; Rama offers to grant Vali his life, but his arrow must find its mark, and Vali dies (Zieseniss 1963:56). Rama also makes the offer in an Oriya text attributed to Bikrama Narendra (W. L. Smith 1988:83).

26. As Shulman (1987) points out, Kampan's Rama also is subject to the old Tamil code of shame and honor; cf. Hart and Heifetz (1988:28-30).

27. Although not included in the performance translated here, this prediction is often part of the puppeteers' commentary. It occurs in a Malayalam prose narrative of the puppet play (Karumangurukkal 1937) and in the Sanskrit Mahanataka , in which Rama instructs Vali to kill him in his (Rama's) sleep. In other texts (e.g., the Eastern recension of Valmiki), Tara curses Rama to be killed by Vali in a later birth (W. L. Smith 1988:94-95). On the pattern of violation-death-revenge in folk Hinduism, see Blackburn 1988.

28. Arunachalam 1981:112. Note also that in the reconstructed text, Rama's admission comes before Vali entrusts Angada to him.

29. Even the puppet play is not immune from such pressures. In manuscripts and performances, Rama's admission is made in the initial line of the folk verse: "Oh, listen, Vali, I have done a great wrong (pilai ceyten )!" However, in a puppeteer's handwritten manuscript one letter is changed and the verse reads: "Oh, listen, Vali, who have done a great wrong (pilai ceyta )!" Blame is thus shifted from Rama back to Vali.

30. The eighteenth-century Bengali text is Bisnupuri Ramayana ; the two Tamil folk texts are "Vali Motca Natakam" (Periya Eluttu [chapbook] edition) and "Ramayana Katai," a palm-leaf manuscript from Kanya Kumari (author's collection). In Krttibasa's Ramayana, Rama confesses to Laksmana that he is "filled with shame" for his killing of Vali (W. L. Smith 1988:83).

31. Viracami Cettiyar 1891:190-91.

1. See, for example, the folk texts in Kannada and Telugu described by Gopalakrishna Rao (1984:88, passim).

2. See Hatch 1934. The War Book is popular also in the shadow puppet play in Andhra Pradesh (C. R. Sarma 1973:44) and in the Chengam mural paintings in Tamil Nadu (Nagaswamy 1980:421).

3. Kampan 1926-71, 6, pt. 1:iv. He also comments on the extraordinary number and variety of interpolations in Kampan's War Book.

4. See Kampan 1926-71, 6, pt. 2:ix. These episodes are accepted by some editors as part of Kampan's original text.

5. The temple here is dedicated to Kannaki (not Bhagavati), the deified heroine of the Cilappatikaram , an epic composed by the brother of a Kerala king several centuries before Kampan; as in Kannaki temples in Tamil Nadu, the goddess here is imaged by a mirror and patronized by Chettiyars.

6. This privilege is called mata pulavar atimai , or "right of the [drama]-house puppeteer."

7. The Kanta Puranam is often thought to be a Tamil translation of the Sanskrit Skanda Purana , but is, in fact, a very different text (Shulman 1980:30-31). The influence of this Tamil text on Kampan's poem, which is acknowledged by the puppeteers, led the Dravidian movement leader E. V. Ramaswami Naicker to call the Rama story a "stolen story" (Periyar 1972b: 59-64).

8. Kampan verse, konakar (6.2.75).

9. Tay konralum tutan konrate

10. The puppeteers use curuti (Skt. sruti ) as a synonym for the "Veda," including the Upanishads; murtti they explicate as "meaning" (porul ).

11. Tirtta or "holy bathing place," "ford."

12. Omitted here is a description of the monkey army at work, including a conversation between Jambuvan and Hanuman.

13. Kampan verse, kumutan (6.7.42). Notice that this important verse is the only one in the translations not converted to dialogue by the puppeteers; also see note 15 below.

14. The Kiskindha Kanda has been omitted in this list.

15. In its second recitation, the verse, although unaltered, becomes dialogue because it is spoken by Kampan himself.

16. Kampan's text is seldom printed with the Uttara Kanda, however; see the discussion in chapter 8.

17. In the Naka pacam episode (see chapter 7), Garuda rescues Rama and his army from Indrajit's snake(naka )-weapon.

18. The singer either forgot or simply omitted the third and fourth miracles.

19. Kampan verse, enniya (invocation, 12). I follow Kopalakirusnamacariyar's reading of this verse, which includes the fatuously disputed date of Kampan's composition. See note 20 below.

20. Saka Era, after the Shaka kings in northern India, began in 78 A.D. ; Saka 807 is thus 885 A.D. Most scholars consider this ninth-century date too early for the Kamparamayanam and, on largely literary. evidence, date the poem from the late twelfth century. See Kampan 1926-71, 1:xii-xiii; Zvelebil 1973b: 208.

21. Omitted here is a description of building the causeway, a long conversation between Rama and Vibhisana about Lanka, and a humorous scene in which Ravana's spies are caught by the monkeys and released by Rama.

22. I have been unable to trace the source of this quotation.

23. Here I have truncated the puppeteer's commentary, which runs on at length and without eloquence, concerning the nature of Siva.

24. This iconoclasm is not uncommon in south Indian Saivism.

25. Compare this explanation with Rama's terse answer in Kampan: ayarttilen; mutivu ate ("I have not forgotten: the result will be that [Ravana's death]").

26. I have omitted an argument between Angada and Ravana about the power of Rama.

27. This is one of numerous points where the lead puppeteer (speaking for Angada) was cut short by another puppeteer in order to keep the narrative on track.

28. Kampan verse, varanam (6.15.1).

29. Another version of this story is told in the Tiruvarancuram Talapuranam , a Tamil temple myth, in which the Brahmin form is assumed by Ganesa, who tricks Ravana out of his boon from Siva (in this case, a powerful lingam). The inverted bush also appears later in the same myth when Visnu deceives Ravana and wins back Parvati (Shulman 1980:323-26).

30. At this point, Natesan Pillai jumped up from his catnap and entered the conversation. His explication of this verse has no parallel in the printed commentaries.

31. A folk verse. The same dialogue between Rama's hands is recorded (with a minor difference—the right asks Rama if it's proper to kill Ravana, a Brahmin ) in an Oriya folk text (Misra 1983:75 ) and in Tulsidas (Philip Lutgendorf 1991, personal communication).

32. Twenty-four minutes (nalikai ), one-sixtieth of a day, is a traditional unit of time in Tamil.

33. Here the puppeteer draws on his knowledge of Tamil Siddha medicine; see Zvelebil 1973b:224.

34. The Kampan verse, vanaku mannu (6. 15.11) compares Sita's eyes to a spear (vel).

35. Kampan verse, mulaiyamai (6.15.16). The puppeteers regularly gloss puvana munrum as "gods of the Three Worlds," whereas other commentators read it as "He [Siva] of the Three Worlds."

36. Foley 1991:6-7.

37. From the Sanskrit pramana (citation).

38. On the independent status of the Tamil Uttara Kanda, see Venkatarama Cettiyar 1986, 2:iii-v.

39. The story of Vedavati is found in the Sanskrit and Tamil Uttara Kanda, to which the puppeteers add Sita's birth from Vedavati's ashes in a vina played by Ravana; their version thus belongs to a cycle of folk stories that hint at a sexual relation between Sita and Ravana.

40. This is an example of what I have termed the "backward-building" tendency in traditional Indian literature (Blackburn 1989),

41. On Valmiki's curse of the bird hunter, which motivates his composition, see Shulman 1991b.

42. A more elaborate version of this story occurs in the Vinotaracamancari , Although that version follows the puppet play in nearly every detail, two major differences illustrate the theological shift from Vaisnava bhakti to folk religion, discussed in chapter 3. First, in the printed account Kampan is aided by Visnu, whereas the Goddess plays that role in the puppet play. Second, in the printed account it is again Visnu (carved on a stone pillar in the Srirangam temple) who confirms the authenticity. of Kampan's composition, whereas in the puppet play his poem is validated by a common woman's words.

1. In Valmiki's War Book, too, Indrajit's death is more important than Ravana's; see W. L. Smith 1988:123.

2. This scene has been considerably abbreviated in the translation.

3. The belief that only someone who has fasted in the forest for fourteen years (that is, only Laksmana) is able to kill Indrajit is found in many folk texts.

4. On the truncated lives of Tamil folk heroes, see Blackburn 1988:34, 217-19.

5. On the pairing of king and renouncer, see Heesterman 1985. Notice, too, that Dasaratha, Rama, and, to a lesser extent, Ravana exemplify the south Indian motif of an impotent monarch (Dirks 1987; Shulman 1985).

6. Krishnan Kutty Pulavar 1983, 1987. These books consist of the verses sung in performance and their formal exegesis.

7. Here ends the akaval , or prose summary that introduces each performance; this akaval is unusual in that it is spoken by Indra to the gods.

8. Kampan verse, tolotu tol (6. 15.111).

9. On this subtle equivalence of pujyam (cipher) and pujyan (noble one), the Tamil Lexicon offers both meanings for pucciyam .

10. The three bodies are sthula, sukkum , and karana .

11. This is a Tamil version of the story of Siva as Nilakantan, Dark-Throat, which appears also in Valmiki's Ramayana. The ascetic in this story is Cuntarar, an early Saiva bhakti poet.

12. The Pankuni new moon is amavaci ; the three mantras are: pancatsaram, maya-mantra, sat-mantra .

13. Thus concludes a skillful commentary: the puppeteer has digressed into several stories and yet, at the end, covers all the details in the verse under discussion.

14. Kampan verse, culamuntatu (6.15.122).

15. "Demonic disposition" translates raksasa guna .

16. Kampan verse, kalanar uyir .(6.15.117). Except for the initial words in their version (kalanukku kalan instead of kalanar uyir ), the puppeteers sing this verse verbatim with the Kampan text. Their exegesis, however, takes the first two lines to refer to Siva and not to Kumbhakarna as printed commentaries do.

17. From the Malayalam kocca ; the Tamil word is kokku .

18. He requests, in other words, a girl who cannot possibly exist.

19. Recalling the discussion in chapter 4 on the concept of balance, note here the metaphorical "balance of this earth."

20. Kumbhakarna's victory over Visnu (the puppeteers' reading of this verse) may refer to the former's earlier birth as Madhu, who battled Visnu to a draw. The puppeteers' telling of this version of the story is omitted from the translation.

21. Vibhisana's long speech is omitted.

22. A folk verse, antaratti .

23.Kappukku mun etukkum katavul tan mal akum

24. I have omitted a prosaic folk verse here because the commentary repeats its sense in more interesting language.

25. The feet of gods hover slightly above the ground.

26. See note 3, this chapter.

27. Omitted here is Vibhisana's description of the "lotus formation" used by Indrajit in battle and the "swan formation" that Rama's army must utilize to defeat it.

28. "Battle house" translates por vitu .

29. "Eat grass" is metaphorically what a defeated enemy must do.

30. A humorous interlude with the celestial dancers (stri ), not found in Kampan, is omitted in the translation.

31. Kampan mentions that Indrajit visited women of pleasure after leaving the battlefield and before entering the palace.

32. This scene is abbreviated.

33. In Kampan, too, Indra and the gods appear at this point.

34. Omitted here is a recapitulation of the entire Rama story to this point, which the lead puppeteer spun out for half an hour.

35. In Kampan, Garuda takes it upon himself to help Rama.

36. According to popular legend (see chapter 6), Kampan sang these songs in order to revive a dead boy in Chidambaram.

37. A description of Garuda's destruction of the snake-weapon is omitted.

38. Omitted here is a scene in which the two generals, Dhumraksa and Mahaparsha, are ordered to be mutilated and exiled after they are caught stealing home to sleep with their wives. Maliyavan intervenes and convinces Ravana that, given mounting losses, he cannot afford to kill any of his troops.

39. Omitted here is a scene is which Maharakkan, Kara's son, confronts Rama and is dispatched by him.

40. Several battle scenes have been omitted.

41. I have omitted part of the dialogue in this scene, which is a formulaic repetition of the earlier scene when the umbrella holder and Indrajit surveyed the field after the snake-weapon had been released.

42. Here begins a string of three folk verses.

43. Kampan verse, tayo (6.21.207).

44. Folk verse, oru manaivi .

45. Kampan verse, tankuvar (6.21.201).

46. Kampan verse, arakkar kulattai (6.21.224).

47. Kampan verse, antam (6.21.226).

48. In Kampan, Vibhisana wakes Hanuman and together they find Jambuvan, whereas the performance focuses on Jambuvan, in accordance with his enlarged role in the puppet play.

49. Folk verse arpa.

50. Hanuman's three fathers are Siva, Kesari, and Vayu; his mothers are Sambavi, Sadanjani and Anjani His Saivite parentage is common in Rama texts; one story, alluded to in the puppet play and told elsewhere, is that Siva spilled his seed and Vayu transferred it to an ape woman Anjani, the wife of Kesari (see W. L. Smith 1988:130).

51. I have abbreviated this account.

52. This version of the Madhu and Kaitabha story is foreshortened and highlights Jambuvan's birth.

53. A folk verse, cantana .

54. These herbs are described in Kampan, but the puppeteers give them specific names: cantana karani; calliya karani; vacalliya karani; amuta karani .

55. Kampan verse, petaimai (6.27.9).

56. The omens are a single Brahmin, a widow, and a firewood seller (evidence of cremation?).

57. This verse is also sung both after Ravana's death and in the "Song of the Drama-House."

58. Bakhtin 1978; Volosinov 1978. See Trawick 1988 for an application of Bakhtin's ideas to Tamil folk songs.

59. Bakhtin 1978

60. Coincidentally, recitation of the Hindi Ramcaritmanas is also organized by four conversations, but they are more distant frames surrounding the text, whereas in the puppet play they vocalize action within the text. See Lutgendorf 1991:22-26.

61. The only exception to this rule (that I found) is the gods' rebuke of Rama when he reluctantly accepts Sita after the trial by fire.

62. The two segments of performance not in dialogue are ( 1 ) songs sung in the "Song of the Drama-House" and in the natakam ; and (2) the avatarikai prose transitions between scenes.

63. Bakhtin 1978:280.

64. Bakhtin 1978:181.

65. Virar yar enrar becomes Virar yar .

66. For a critique of "direct" and "indirect" speech, see Coulmas 1986.

67. Lord 1991:16.

68. The translation is by Hart and Heifetz 1988:100.

69. The translation is by Hart and Heifetz 1988:86.

70. Harding 1935:234.

71. This verse is not adapted to dialogue because it is quoted like a piramanam rather than spoken by a character.

72. The puppets are seen by the public only once—after the final performance when Rama is pinned up on the outside of the cloth screen. See chapter 8.

73. See Bogatyrev 1983:60.

74. Iyer 1943:4; Harding 1935.

75. One explanation for the term used here (ola-pava-kuthu ) is that puppets were once made from ola (palm leaf) not leather; another is that deer skin is as fine as a palm leaf (M.D. Raghavan 1947:39).

76. A senior puppeteer once explained to me that when his troupe went to Moscow, they adapted their performance to fit their new audience: "Those people [Russians] didn't know the language, so we did a lot of right scenes and played the drums louder."

77. The majority of Kerala puppets have "one movable arm and hand, some have even two movable arms and hands, and very few have other movable parts" (Seltmann 1986:88).

1. As mentioned in chapter 2, note 41, these Mutaliyars are also known as Sengunthars or Kaikolars.

2. The only exception, to my knowledge, is that a group of Tamils in Chittur (near Palghat) did sponsor puppet plays until in-fighting split the community and prevented further sponsorship.

3. Kampan verse, ellivan (6.27.61).

4. This section of the commentary has been abbreviated.

5. "Million" translates koti ("crore," ten million).

6. A pappadam is a thin, crispy snack fried in oil.

7. Compare the earlier version of this story in chapter 6.

8. Thus ends Annamalai Pulavar's energetic eighty-minute commentary on a single verse. Several sections, which restate philosophical points already repetitiously explained, have been omitted.

9. The dim-witted messengers also appear in Kampan, but their conversation here is an innovation of the puppet play.

10. A slapstick conversation between the messengers is omitted.

11. A pottu is a dab of vermillion or ash (or both) in the middle of the forehead, often placed there after worship.

12. This summary in the brackets is itself highly condensed; these events consumed most of an hour.

13. Minor scenes of battle and tactical planning are omitted.

14. Here I have summarized a quick flurry of events (nearly the whole of the Velerru patalam that require complicated movements of puppets on the screen.

15. Here the puppeteers show again that they know well Kampan's verses, each of which they have reduced to a single line: "Indra-weapon, wham!" "X-weapon, wham!" etc.

16. Here follows a series of four folk verses: manita kel, cavari, patalattil, ata .

17. The destruction of Ravana's sacrifice duplicates the earlier destruction of Indrajit's sacrifice; many of these events, including dragging Mandodari by the hair, are common in folk Ramayanas. as (W. L. Smith 1988:74-75) and are depicted in sixteenth-century temple paintings at Chengam, Tamil Nadu (Nagaswamy 1980:421-22).

18. The puppeteers' treatment of Ravana's death differs significantly from Kampan's, in which Rama himself realizes that he must shoot the Brahma-weapon to kill Ravana. The puppet-play motif of disclosing Ravana's life-index in a pot of ambrosia is found in the Ramcaritmanas , the Adhyatma Ramayana , and several folk Ramayanas in south India (Gopalakrishna Rao 1984:103). However, whereas in all those texts Vibhisana reveals the secret, in Kerala Agastya advises Rama to call on Surya, who reveals the secret. Agastya appears in Valmiki, too, but only to advise Rama to meditate on Surya Deva, who confers his blessings on him without divulging the pot of ambrosia hidden in Ravana's chest.

19. That is, as Krsna, who slays Kamsa.

20. Kampan verse, unnate (6.36.220).

21. Kampan verse, vellerukka (6.36.239).

22. This point, not obvious in the verse, is also made by Kopalakirusnamacariyar (Kampan, 6, pt. 2:171), who adds parallels from the Tirukkural and Antal's poetry.

23. This folk verse is very close in meaning to the equivalent verse in Kampan enra potin (6.37.37).

24. Kampan verse, unnai mitpan (6.37.63).

25. The nelli fruit, with its nearly translucent skin, is a folk metaphor for clarity; see also chapter 6.

26. Kampan verse, parkkelam (6.37.75).

27. This folk verse (tampiyum ) borrows two lines from a Kampan verse, ayinum (6.37. 129), and renders a similar meaning.

28. Dasaratha here tells the story of his promise to Kaikeyi's father that her son, not Kausalya's, would inherit the throne.

29. Here the folk performance presents a condensed version of the "Revival of Vacantan" episode (Vacantan uyir varu patalam ), sometimes called "Yama Episode" (Iyama Patalam ); see chapter 8.

30. This hybrid verse illustrates well the puppeteers' use of Kampan. The first two lines are a formula used both by Kampan (maliyai kanten , 6.30. 52) and the puppeteers (chapter 8). The final two lines, not in Kampan, make Jambuvan's point: that Rama, having crowned Vibhisana king of Lanka, has taken Ravana's chariot for his own use. In other Tamil folk Ramayanas, Jambuvan speaks a variant of this hybrid verse to chide Sita when she desires to remove a beautiful grinding stone from Lanka (C. R. Sarma 1973:66-67; Venugopal 1993:105-6).

31. The return journey to Ayodhya in Kampan differs from that in the puppet play in the following details of the Kiskindha visit: (1) Sita does not take the initiative to ask Rama to visit Kiskindha; (2) Tara first gives Sita a garland; and (3) Sita offers condolences for Vali's death.

32. Here the puppeteers tell a truncated version of the story of Siva's lingam at Ramesvaram, considered an interpolated episode ("The Puja," pucai patalam ). The Kerala version follows closely accounts in other folk texts and Tamil myths (Kanta Puranam and Cetu Puranam ).

33. "Sins" translates pavankal .

34. "Two hours" translates aintu nalikai .

35. Folk verse, punnai nokki .

36. For this conclusion to Indian oval epics (especially Pabuji, Alha, Lorik and Canda Guga, Muttuppattan), see Blackburn et al. 1989. Gopi Chand is yet another example (Gold 1992).

37. The Hindi Ramayana by Tulsidas extends into the Uttara Kanda, but holds out "the promise of a new kind of transcendent, personal Ramraj " (Lutgendorf 1991:373).

38. Shulman 1991a:95. See Shulman on these themes of restoration in Kampan's episode of Sita's test by fire, although he finds more ferocity in Kampan's Sita than I do.

39. In Kampan and the puppet play, Sita does speak sharply to Rama in an earlier scene when he proposes that she should not accompany him into exile; in Valmiki, she insults him (Sutherland 1989:74).

40. A medieval Sri Vaisnava commentator on Valmiki justified Rama's anger when Sita carried out his command by explaining that both she and Vibhisana should have divined his true intention (Mumme 1991:209). In a Kutiyattam

drama from Kerala, Sita's appearance in fine clothes is explained away as a consequence of a boon from Anasuya (Jones 1984:18).

41. Kampan verse, yan ivani , (6.37.40).

42. On this verse, see note 30, chapter 8.

43. In a south Indian Sanskrit text, the Tattvasamgraharamayana , Jambuvan challenges Rama to a duel, but it is deferred until the Krsna avatar (V. Raghavan 1952/53 ).

44. In Kampan, Rama threatens suicide when he grieves over Jatayu's body.

45. Kampan verse, villinai (6.18.224), followed by tamarai (6.18.223).

46. Kampan verse, vitaikkulanka (6.21.197).

47. The puppeteers' telling is similar to one version in the Pancatantra ("Hundred Wit, Thousand Wit, and Single Wit"; Ryder 1972:444-46). Both versions, for example, include the motif of the fish overhearing the fishermen the day before, which updates W. N. Brown's claim (1919:34) that this motif is found in literary but not popular versions. Another oral variant, in which a mongoose, cobra, and tortoise prevaricate about a fire in their haystack home, while a jackal flees and lives, is recorded in Beck and Claus 1987:235-36. See also tales 497 and 498 in Bødker 1957.

48. GoldbergBelle 1989. Handelman later refined his analysis of oscillating clowns (Handelman 1990:240-45).

49. Personal communication, 1992.

50. This information was gathered in 1990 from written records and interviews at the All-India Handicrafts Centre, Trichur, Kerala.

51. The 1982 figure is from Seltmann (1986:16-17); the 1989 figure is from my fieldwork.

52. Harding 1935:234.

53. My list of drama-houses, compiled from interviews with puppeteers, contains seventy-nine sites, to which I have added others from a list compiled by Venu (1990:65). Seltmann (1986), who completed his fieldwork in 1982, lists thirty-five sites.

54. I refer to Cousins (1970) and Harding (1935), as quoted above, chapters 7 and 8.

Preferred Citation: Blackburn, Stuart. Inside the Drama-House: Rama Stories and Shadow Puppets in South India. Berkeley, Calif:  University of California Press,  c1996 1996. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft5q2nb449/