Manas As Marathon

Like thirty-day recitation, akhand^[*]path^[*] —the recitation of the Manas within a twenty-four-hour period—tends to be an individual or family activity, although public programs sponsored by temples, ashrams, or civic organizations occasionally take place in Banaras, and even family programs may involve the services of paid reciters. The most important point about this kind of recitation is that it be "unbroken" (akhand^[*] ). Given the scale of the epic, such a performance is necessarily a tour de force requiring the kind of dedication and stamina usually reserved, in the contemporary West, for endurance sporting events. Indeed, even though such a reading is normally understood to require twenty-four

[38] "Rita," interview, July 1983.

hours, there is nothing (apart from human frailty) to prevent its accomplishment within a shorter period—one woman proudly told me that she had completed a recitation in eighteen hours; moreover, she knew someone who had done it in sixteen. Given such Olympian dedication to speed, one will understand that little attention can be paid to the niceties of diction and comprehension, and the recitation at times seems little more than a blur of sound interrupted periodically by a recognizable samput^[*] .

One motive for undertaking such a path^[*] is to obtain greater familiarity with the text, and several Ramayanis told me that they had performed many of these recitations as part of their effort to commit the epic to memory—this knowledge being an essential qualification for a professional expounder. Rameshvar Prasad Tripathi, an elderly expounder of Allahabad, told me that during one period of his youth he had undertaken the discipline of reciting the entire epic daily, gradually gaining speed until he was able to complete the whole of it in eleven hours (the record among my interviewees!).^[39] Such a rapid-fire rendition of a religious text—and judging from my experience of twenty-four-hour performances, I would have to suppose that an eleven-hour rendering of the Manas might sound more like the buzzing of bees than the words of Tulsidas^[40] —is not, in the Hindu context, viewed as peremptory or disrespectful, since the text, as a mantra, is understood to be inherently potent and efficacious, regardless of the speed at which it is recited. Further, to appreciate or understand the text means first of all to "know" it, and this in turn implies having it "situated in the throat" (kanthasth^[*] —the Hindi idiom for "memorized"). To this end constant repetition, however rapid and mechanical, is regarded as a valuable means.