The Ultimate Commentary

In the middle of the nineteenth century, an influential Ramayani by the name of Raghunath Das "Sindhi," working under the patronage of Maharaja Udit Narayan Singh, composed a commentary entitled Manasdipika (Lamp of the Manas ).^[131] In a verse prologue explaining how the work came to be written, Raghunath declared that his patron had caused three "commentaries" (tilak ) to be created.

The first commentary was the great Ramlila ,
beholding which, man is saved from hell.
The legions of soratha^[*] and doha ,
of ingenious chand and lovely caupai —
whatever meaning each possesses
is clearly shown in the beautiful lila .^[132]

[131] The earliest edition in my records is one published in Banaras in 1853 (publisher unknown); the work subsequently appeared in numerous editions, including a Naval Kishor Press version (Lucknow, 1873).

[132] Quoted in Awasthi, Ramlila , 57.

The passage goes on to identify a famous illuminated manuscript, the Citra Ramayan^[*] (picture Ramayan), as the second commentary, and the Manas dipika itself is said to be the third.

In 1983, when Udit Narayan's great-great-grandson Vibhuti Narayan Singh spoke to me of the significance of the Ramlila , he proposed a different order of composition for the three commentaries. His view was that his ancestor had aspired to "bring the Manas to life" and communicate it to the widest possible audience. To this end he had commissioned the Manas dipika , but when it was finished he reflected that it was too scholarly to reach the masses. Then he spent a fortune on an illuminated version, only to conclude that it too could never have a wide impact. At last he had the inspiration of his life: the overhaul of a local Ramlila into the great pageant-cycle of today. With this third tilak he at last achieved his goal. Concluded the maharaja, "And that is what is different about our Ramlila: it is not just a lila; it is a commentary on the Ramcaritmanas ."^[133]

Both Vibhuti Narayan Singh and Raghunath Das view the Ramlila in essentially the same way: as a form of textual exposition. Indeed, the Ramayani's verses stress the play's ability to explicate every single line of the epic. This assessment, often repeated by aficionados in explaining why the Ramnagar production is so special, suggests a link between the aims and techniques of Ramlila and Katha . This link and the nature of the pageant's "commentary" now need to be examined in greater detail.

As noted earlier, the city of Ayodhya remains a center for "continuous" (nitya ) Katha , in which the Manas is sequentially expounded on a daily basis. In most of the institutions that sponsor such programs, however, there are breaks in the exposition cycle during festival periods that commemorate important events in Ram's earthly life. At such times, the daily Katha is preempted by a participatory lila of one kind or another. One such period is the bright half of the month of Chaitra (March/April), when Ayodhya's biggest festival, Ram Navami, draws thousands of pilgrims and every major temple mounts a special program, sometimes featuring professional lila or jhanki troupes. Infant images of Ram and his brothers are placed in cradles and people sing songs of congratulation (badhaiyam^[*] ). The month of Shravan (July/August) is similarly renowned for its Swing Festival (jhulamela ); a rasik -inspired adaptation of a festival held in Vrindavan, it celebrates the dalliance of Ram and

[133] Vibhuti Narayan Singh, interview, February 1983.

Sita during the sensuous monsoon season. To climax this verdant month, all the temples and ashrams take their images in procession to the forested slopes of the hill known as Mani Parvat.^[134] Here they create decorated bowers containing opulent couch-swings on which the divine couples are swung and entertained with seasonal folksongs.

Within the context of Ayodhya's traditional cycle then, Katha and lila are viewed as complementary activities; however, because of its participatory nature and the fact that it engages all the senses, lila is regarded as a kind of intensification of Katha and takes precedence over it during its special seasons.^[135] Katha , as we have seen, is itself an elaboration of simple recitation (path^[*] ), to which it adds a new dimension by expanding the text into a profusion of interpretations and digressions. Like an ongoing Katha program, the Ramnagar Ramlila is likewise structured around a complete recitation of the Manas , and it also has a principal listener—the maharaja—who must be present each day in order for it to begin. The belief that the king of Banaras represents Shiva adds another dimension to his presence—for Shiva is the primal narrator of the Manas; thus in the maharaja the god listens reflexively to his own narration.^[136]

The Ramayanis chant the Manas but they do not expound it, for in this particular Katha the place of the exposition is taken by the miming of the players and their intermittent dialogues. Although ordinary exegesis is oral, that of the Ramlila is visual as well, and aficionados like to cite the fact that the pageant offers a "visible commentary" (drsya^[*]tika^[*] ) on the epic. As one of Schechner's interviewees noted with satisfaction, "If they say 'asok tree' they have an asok tree, if they say 'jungle' they go to a jungle, if they say 'Ayodhya' they show Ayodhya."^[137] Indeed, one cannot fail to be impressed by the producers' efforts at textual fidelity, the more surprising in the context of a performance that can hardly be called, in Western terms, naturalistic. Like the Hollywood director who is said to have insisted that a closed briefcase on a set representing a turn-of-the-century interior actually contain a newspaper from that period (because, he said, even though the audience would never know it

[134] "Jewel Mountain"; on the history of this site (which apparently encloses the remains of a Buddhist stupa) see Bakker, Ayodhya , 15-18.

[135] Most of this information is drawn from an interview (April 1984) with Sacchidanand Das, secretary to Pandit Ramkumar Das of Mani Parvat.

[136] Schechner aptly calls attention to the "reflexive" quality of Ramlila , terming the performance "a kind of conscious and reflexive display: a watching in the mirror"; Performative Circumstances , 254.

[137] Ibid., 240.

was there, "I will know!"),^[138] the Ramnagar producers indulge in visual details that remain invisible to the great majority of spectators. Of the thousands who flock to the popular "flower garden" scene, for example, few can get close enough to Ram and Sita's lotus-covered bower to realize, when the Ramayanis chant the verse,

The catak and cuckoo, parrot and cakor all sang
1.227.6

that in fidelity to this line, live birds are placed within the foliage and secured by strings around their feet. Similarly, when Indra's son Jayant, in the guise of a crow, tests Ram's greatness by pecking Sita's foot, Tulsi's two-word mention that "blood flowed" (3.1.8) occasions a brief halt in the action to allow a prop man to pour a tiny stream of red paint—equally invisible to the multitude—on the offended limb.^[139] Such fidelity to detail is not only a sign of the esteem in which the producers hold the Manas; it also reflects a visual sensibility characteristic of the devotional milieu in which the performance developed.

It should now be clear why the two white-turbaned directors of the Ramlila , who carry the script-books and prompt the actors, are accorded the honorific title vyas; for it is they, and not the Ramayanis, who assume responsibility for the elaboration (vyakhya ) of the text into an act of performance. Their work is thus conceived as akin to that of an expounder of oral Katha . Even though the textual mediation of a traditional commentator often begins with the rendering of an epic verse into contemporary prose, it does not end there, nor should it be supposed that mere translation is its primary function. As we have seen, such expounders presuppose an audience that is already conversant with the text, and the Ramlila 's producers appear to make similar assumptions. Thus, one should not assume that the pageant's dialogues are meant to serve the needs of an audience that no longer understands the Manas . Ramlila dialogues often depart significantly from the text, frequently expand on it, and leave large portions of it untouched to receive only visual elaboration.^[140] This approach, common to many lila productions,

[138] The director was Luchino Visconti and the film, Death in Venice (1971). The quote appeared in a New York Times article, the date of which I am unable to recall.

[139] This detail (invisible to me as well) was pointed out to me by Schechner; personal communication, April 1982.

[140] At Ramnagar there are even instances in which passages that could have been turned into dialogue have deliberately been left as recitation; e.g., the phulvari scene contains a stanza-length description of Ram and Lakshman (1.232-233), which contains a vocative ("O friend")—the usual cue for a samvad . Most commentators assume that one of Sita's companions is here addressing the princess, who has momentarily shut her eyes. This episode, depicting the first encounter between Ram and his eternal consort, has special significance for rasik devotees and has been endlessly elaborated in their writings; significantly, its "verbal icon" is traced while Sita, with eyes closed, is contemplating Ram with her inner sight. The lila planners apparently felt that to insert a speech here would spoil the mood, and so left the episode in Tulsi's words alone. (Reported by C. N. Singh, interview, February 1984).

is codified in such popular texts as Ramlilaramayan^[*]satik^[*] , which offers Ramlila committees a series of Manas passages with accompanying stage directions and suggestions for dialogue.^[141]

One of the most common ways in which the lila significantly expands on the text is found in its handling of the instances where Tulsi reports the occurrence of a conversation or speech but chooses not to quote it. Because at such moments Ramlila producers feel obliged to present the reported speech, they must decide how to reconstruct it. Sometimes they enlist the aid of other texts, such as the Valmiki and the Adhyatma Ramayanas^[*] , but in other instances they favor their own interpretations. A well-known example occurs when, just before crossing the Ganga, the exiles take leave of the courtier Sumantra and give him messages to carry back to the king. Ram and Sita speak comforting words, but Lakshman indulges in an emotional outburst, which Tulsi discreetly refrains from quoting.

Then Lakshman uttered some harsh words,
but the Lord, perceiving them to be improper, checked him.
2.96.4

Here the producers face a problem in deciding what to have their player say, for the nature of Lakshman's remarks on the riverbank has long been a matter of controversy.^[142] With characteristic boldness, the Ramnagar directors disregard Valmiki's version of the speech and instead create a short but powerful dialogue that effectively captures the fiery spirit of Tulsi's Lakshman.

[141] Mishra, ed., Ramlilaramayan^[*]satik^[*] . This popular work has been reprinted many times; I recently purchased a 1981 edition.

[142] Most recensions of Valmiki make no mention of any complaint by Lakshman (2.46.28 in the Critical Edition), although paradoxically in Sumantra's later reporting of the scene (2.52.18-22) he does quote some angry remarks—a textual inconsistency that has attracted the notice of many commentators. See the notes to the relevant passages in Pollock, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki , Vol. 2: Ayodhyakanda^[*] , 408, 422-23.

The stark irreverence of this samvad —an example of the play's tendency, shared with Katha , to domesticate epic characters—is greatly enjoyed by the Ramnagar audience, which responds with an excited cheer: "Sri Lakhanlal ji ki jay!" (Victory to dear Shri Lakshman!).

An example of a more substantial expansion on the epic text occurs in the "Bow Sacrifice" episode and typifies another type of exegesis often found in Katha: the elaboration of legendary allusions in the Manas . When King Janak gives Vishvamitra, Ram, and Lakshman a tour of the arena where Shiva's bow is displayed and Sita's bridegroom choice is to take place, the poet makes a passing reference to a story that the king relates:

He respectfully narrated his own story,
and showed the sage the whole of the arena.
1.244.4

Here too the Ramnagar expounders feel constrained to provide elaboration: to explain how the divine bow came into Janak's possession and why Sita's betrothal depends on it—two matters nowhere treated in the Manas . And so after the Ramayanis chant the above verse, the player portraying King Janak declares,

O Lord, Sati relinquished her body at Daksha's sacrifice, and because of that glorious act, Mahadev-ji [Shiva] destroyed the sacrifice with this very bow. At that time the assembled gods propitiated Mahadev-ji with a hymn of praise, whereupon by the agreement of all the gods, this bow was given to the eldest son of King Nimiraj. Since that day it has been worshiped in my family.

One day, taking Janaki [Sita] with me, I left the palace and went off to where the bow was kept, worshiped it, and then returned. Then Janaki thought to herself, "It's such a hardship for Father to have to come so far," and so she picked up the bow and brought it home! O Lord, for that reason I took the vow that I will give this maiden to whomever can break the bow.^[144]

In such passages, the domesticating of story and characters is achieved both by the introduction of homely tales that are not in the epic and by

[143] From the dialogue book of the Ramnagar Ramlila: Day Ten, "Crossing of the Ganga"; I am grateful to Linda Hess for supplying me with a copy of the script.

[144] Ramnagar Ramlila , Day Five: "Bow Sacrifice." The bow was of gigantic proportions and immensely heavy; that a young girl could carry it was thus indicative of an extraordinary nature, and of her need for a no-less-extraordinary husband.

the language itself, which is often idiomatic and colloquial and at times—especially in the speeches of Ravan and the heated exchange between Lakshman and Parashuram—highly amusing. Its choppy, singsong sentences make gods and demons, sages and kings, begin to sound like one's relatives and neighbors.

Another form of commentary that the Ramlila shares with the Katha tradition is its use of excerpts from other texts, and especially from other works of Tulsidas, to expand on the Manas . Such an expansion reflects the producers' need to provide action, dialogue, and music whenever Tulsi mentions its occurrence. Thus, when the poet describes how the women of Ayodhya, hearing the news of Ram's birth, stream into the palace to see the child and congratulate his parents,

Bearing golden vessels and trays heaped with auspicious things,
singing, they passed through the king's portal.
1.194.4

the producers must not only show us the women (represented by a handful of sari-clad actors) but must also let us hear their songs. The text sung here consists of two stanzas of the conventional congratulatory type (badhai ), bearing no poetic signature. Similarly, when the poet describes Sita's companions "singing songs with sweet voices" (1.228.3), the sakhis in the performance actually sing a song, reportedly drawn from a work entitled Siyarampaccisi . And as might be expected, in the course of the marriage ceremonies more women's songs are introduced, including one from Tulsi's short work Ramlalanahchu .^[145]

The Ramlila 's commentary is expressed not only in words but also in gestures. A good example is the treatment of Ram's "mysterious speech" to Parashuram, which precipitates the latter's recognition of the hero's divinity. The production today accepts an interpretation by certain commentators, which I have already described.^[146] When the Ramayanis chant the words,

Such is the greatness of the Brahman race
1.284.5

the boy playing Ram pushes aside his upper garment and points gravely to his bare chest. This gives his words a striking new meaning, for afici-

[145] Awasthi, Ramlila , 86.

[146] See pp. 221-23.

onados understand that he is displaying a mark made by the foot of Bhrigu—one of the physical signs by which Lord Vishnu may unfailingly be recognized. This staging is said to have been suggested by one Kamlasharan, who died several decades ago after coaching the boy actors at Ramnagar for nearly half a century. He in turn reportedly learned it from his guru, Purushottam Datt, who himself played Ram and later became a vyas; Purushottam Datt was a pupil of the great Ramkumar Mishra, in whose fertile imagination this bhav may have originated.^[147]

Such interpretive decisions were never made lightly, and the lore of the Ramnagar production includes many stories of furious debates that raged over what may appear to outsiders to be minor details of staging, costuming, and dialogue. Another story told of Kamlasharan concerns the interpretation of a line in Lanka^[*]kand^[*] . When Ram tells Lakshman to kill Ravan's powerful son, Meghnad, he follows it with an order to the other principal warriors in his entourage:

O Jambavant, Sugriv, and Vibhishan,
You three remain with the army.
6.75.10

The question that vexed lila stagers here was "which army"—Ram's or Lakshman's? Did Ram let his younger brother face Meghnad with only a small force, or did he send his best fighters to accompany him? It is said that after mulling over the matter for many years, Kamlasharan decided on the latter interpretation, because he reasoned that Ram would not risk further injury to Lakshman (who had already been mortally wounded by one of Meghnad's magic weapons); he therefore ordered the three players to depart with Lakshman. However, the other principal vyas , who was in charge of the adult actors, disagreed and insisted that his players remain with Ram. The argument simmered through several seasons. Eventually the two protagonists debated the question in the presence of the maharaja, citing such factors as the mythical geography of Lanka and the strategy of the two armies. The maharaja sided with Kamlasharan's opponent on strategic grounds; to this day the three warriors remain at Ram's side during Lakshman's final confrontation with Meghnad.^[148]

[147] C. N. Singh, interview, February 1984.

[148] Ibid.

Shivpur’s Visual Allegory

Although the royal Ramlila cycle presents a striking example of spatial commentary, even modest local productions lacking resources for the expansive environments constructed at Ramnagar have evolved methods of staging that comment no less effectively on Tulsi's text. At Shivpur, a village on the northwestern outskirts of Banaras, virtually the entire Ramlila transpires within a large rectangular enclosure oriented to the four directions. Each of the walled sides has an elevated dais at its center: the one to the north is approached by seven steps and surmounted by a throne; the southern dais has five steps and likewise bears a throne; the eastern dais is raised only two steps; and the one to the west is but a single step above ground level. These platforms are linked by raised walkways that intersect at the center of the enclosure, dividing the performance area into four rectangles (figure 31).

According to Bhanushankar Mehta, who has studied this production, the northern dais with its high stairway (reflecting traditional cosmology and the sequence of seven steps through which Tulsi narrates his tale) is the seat of divine characters and sages. The lower throne-dais to the south, with its staircase symbolic of the fivefold material world, is the seat of worldly kings—Dashrath, Janak, Bali, Sugriv, Vibhishan, and of course, Ravan. The orientation of these two platforms conforms to symbolic geography, the north being associated with the gods and immortality, the south with mortality, the underworld, and demons. The eastern platform is the seat of female characters: Kaushalya (whom Tulsi salutes as "the eastern sky . . . in which appeared Ram's beautiful moon"; 1.16.4-5), Ram's stepmother Kaikeyi, Janak's queens, and Sita (who is from the eastern kingdom of Videha); it serves as both the flower garden in Janakpur (the site of Ram and Sita's first meeting) and the Ashok grove in Lanka (the garden of their separation). The western and lowest platform, said to represent humble devotees, is used by the Ramayanis.^[149]

Most of the action of the play transpires on the bisecting runways that link these cardinal platforms and literally chart the "goings of Ram" (Rama-ayana —a traditional interpretation of the Sanskrit epic's title). The main axis of the narrative is the north-south path, along which the Lord descends from his heavenly abode to engage in adventures that eventually carry him to its opposite pole for a decisive con-

[149] Mehta, "Udit udaygiri mañc par," pt. 2, pp. 40-43; "Rang^[*] Tulsi ka, mañc Ram ka," 57-62.

Figure 31.
The Shivpur Ramlila grounds

frontation with his archrival. His mission accomplished, he returns in triumph and reascends the seven steps to occupy his throne in Ayodhya. Spectators occupy the four quadrants bounded by the runways, which place them in the midst of the story: in a world visited and transformed by Ram.

Mehta is a Banarsi physician and lifelong Ramlila aficionado whose writings on the pageant occasionally appear in the local press or the popular Hindi weekly Dharmyug . When he attended the Shivpur production, he was struck by the peculiar tetradic symmetry of its staging, which immediately reminded him of the overall design of the Manas epic. Like Tulsidas, the creators of this neighborhood pageant seem to have sought to frame the deeds of Ram within a geometric paradigm, each side of which highlights a key aspect of the whole. Assuming each of the platforms to correspond to one of the ghats of the Manas Lake, Mehta developed an elaborate chart of correspondences that relates the foursquare design to other symbolic tetrads invoked by epic commentators (table 1). Such analysis reflects the ingenuity and penchant for all-encompassing systematization of traditional scholarship, yet it is not altogether farfetched. The Shivpur Ramlila is itself a product of the

same tradition, and its distinctive layout clearly suggests an underlying symbolic logic.

In other details, the Shivpur production resembles many other Banaras Ramlilas : it lasts thirty days; features Ramayanis who chant each line and players who periodically interject dialogues; and utilizes a directing vyas , who stands with script-book in hand, prompting the actors. But in its original and symbolic groundplan, which translates into visual terms the epic's own implicit structure, this neighborhood Ramlila seems no less sophisticated than its royal cousin at Ramnagar, and it contradicts the notion that local productions are only vulgarized and scaled-down versions of the royal pageant.^[150] If Ramnagar's patrons expanded their lila into a macrocosm that ultimately encompassed and re-envisioned their kingdom, Shivpur's sponsors, more constrained in their means, created a microcosm not unlike the mystical groundplan of a medieval Hindu temple (sthala mandala^[*] ), which likewise embodied and externalized the theology of the builders. The aim in each case was the same: the spatial articulation of myth.

From the devotee's point of view, the Ramlila 's tangible, encompassing world of text-made-flesh bids fair to represent the ultimate realization of the Manas . Some would go further and accord the lila a kind of primacy. A Ramnagar connoisseur once remarked to me that, although it is conventionally held that the pageant is a commentary on the Manas , "I sometimes feel that it is really the other way around and the Manas itself exists to explain our Ramlila! That's how living a thing this lila is for us."^[151] If Katha , as some of its practitioners suggest, presents the epic as a mirror for our contemplation, then Ramlila invites us, Alice-like, to step into that mirror (as the rasik adept ultimately enters the magic realm of his visualization) and experience a world transformed.

[150] Cf. Schechner's description of the Tulsi Ghat production, which he compares unfavorably to Ramnagar; Performative Circumstances , pp. 274-75.

[151] C. N. Singh, interview, February 1984.