Litterary Versions of the Ramayana[*] In Orissa
That there are many Ramayanas[*] has been acknowledged in a number of recent essays.[1] The remainder of this chapter presents those verbal versions of the story that seem relevant as background to Orissan pictures, which are the main concern of my book as a whole. First the written texts. The reader is advised not to expect a complete survey of versions of the epic, even in Oriya. Such surveys have already been made, and the student of literature may consult the following works directly: K. C. Sahoo, Oriya Rama Literature —an authoritative, detailed description of the full range of texts by an Oriya scholar;[2] ç K. Bulke, Ramkatha (Utpati aur Vikas )—a magisterial Hindi survey of all kinds of Indian and Southeast Asian written texts;[3] ç W. L. Smith, Ramayana[*] Traditions in Eastern India —a selective and provocative treatment of Assamese, Bengali, and Oriya versions.[4] ç
Literature may of course play a variety of roles in relation to visual imagery. Some works might be termed "canonical;' as the Bible is for Christian art; that is,
they may provide a relatively standardized framework of orthodoxy[5] While Valmiki's Sanskrit Ramayana[*] has been accorded this status, this text itself varies considerably with time and place, and it may have been too inaccessible or unfamiliar to have played a canonical role in fact, although Valmiki's name is revered. A second role that literature plays is as a text explicitly illustrated. Here Orissan manuscripts of the Adhyatma Ramayana[*] and the Vaidehisa Vilasa[*] that include pictures are obvious examples. Likewise for at least one set of paintings by professional painters we have a short, popular poem that the artist set out to illustrate, verse by verse. But the third role of literature is more amorphous arid significant: it may provide a familiar and hence influential version of a story to which the artist has been exposed. Here the long Ramayana[*] of Balarama[*] Dasa, read sequentially in temples and available in many villages in the form of unillustrated manuscripts, may have had a powerful, if not "canonical," impact. Similarly, various performed versions, departing from this as well as from Valmiki and other texts, are a potent source of artistic imagery Nor, finally, should the relation between texts and images be viewed as deterministic or one-way. Surely at times verbal stories reflect pictures that the teller has seen. With all these complexities in mind, it is worth situating some relevant literary traditions briefly, before turning to the images.
Valmiki
If one asks an Oriya, or for that matter any north Indian, today, "Who wrote the Ramayana[*] ?" the answer is almost inevitably Valmiki. This sage's role is encoded in many versions of the story, which begin with the killing of a male krauñcha bird while it was making love. Valmiki was moved by the sorrow (soka ) of the mate to recite a verse composed of thirty-two syllables, the meter (sloka ) of the great epic itself. And in most versions of the last book, when Sita is banished, it is Valmiki's hermitage where she takes refuge and where her sons Lava and Kusa are born and raised. Hence his place as the composer of the tale.
The modern scholar, armed with techniques of textual analysis as well as with practical skepticism, is aware that all seven volumes are hardly the work of a single author, and one may question the historicity of Valmiki himself. It has long been felt that the core comprises books two through six, the Ayodhya through Yuddha Kandas[*] . These probably originated in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. , whereas books one and seven (the Bala and Uttara Kandas[*] ) were added between the third century B.C. and the first A.D. [6] The method of transmission was exclusively oral at first, with some mnemonic devices that counteracted the inevitable process of diversification. Textual scholars recognize broadly differing northern and southern recensions, from which a critical edition has been constructed in the past thirty years.[7] ç Within the former, western and eastern recensions can be discerned, the second most relevant for us.[8] ç At the same time, we may in fact consider the seven volumes as a whole and ascribe them to Valmiki, simply because they were not critically differentiated by the Orissan public in the eighteenth century and later.
The sequence of events recited in my résumé is that of the Valmiki text of eastern India, found also in many later versions to be considered in more detail.
The Sanskrit, while at times self-contradictory and open to criticism, seems to present two broad concerns. One is moral—the role of the principal characters as ethical models. Thus Rama's nature, perhaps two-dimensional to Western eyes, is built around his generally unemotional acceptance of demands made by higher authority, including the abandonment of his kingdom and, ultimately, of his wife. Occasional lapses, such as the slaying of a woman (Tadaki[*] ) or the use of a ruse to kill the monkey king Valin, have been met with a rich array of Indian analyses and explanations. Likewise Sita, Laksmana[*] , Hanumana, and other actors serve as models of Indian social values, which may explain the enduring popularity of the epic as well as the urge to adapt it to modern circumstances.
A second concern is aesthetic and, paradoxically, emotional. The Ramayana[*] is identified as the Adikavya, or first example of High Poetry, a status that derives less from its technical poetics than from the broad sense of mood. While Rama himself grieves remarkably little at his own travails, the story itself is built around the emotion of sorrow (karuña rasa ), which informs major moments and hence is imparted to the audience.[9] Others among the nine standard moods—the heroic, the humorous, even the erotic—are brought in, but it is the pathetic that prevails. Thus our mythical author, or rather the text itself as it has evolved, shows a general aesthetic intent that unifies diverse stories of palace intrigue and fairy-tale exploits in the jungle.
It has been argued that this Sanskrit text provides a basic framework for the vernacular poems of eastern India, which only explain, reduplicate, resolve, apologize for, and in minor ways elaborate upon Valmiki to reflect various later concerns.[10] Indeed there are Oriya transliterations of Valmiki,[11] ç and he is invoked as the originator of the story in most Oriya versions discussed below. The great sixteenth-century Orissan poet Balarama[*] Dasa refers to pandits in his day reciting Valmiki's text.[12] ç
Yet granting its moral and aesthetic power, I find it difficult to accord Valmiki's Sanskrit a consistent role in directly guiding later literary versions of the Ramayana[*] , let alone visual ones. This objection derives partly from my focus upon authors such as Sarala Dasa and Upendra Bhañja, who depart substantially from Valmiki's framework. I am struck by the ease with which Valmiki is invoked today by people who have in fact not read the Sanskrit or even a complete translation of it into some modern language. In short, my picture of the role of Valmiki for Orissan artists is similar to the one attributed to him in the television version of the epic that captivated India in 1987 and survives in the form of videocassettes.[13] Each episode acknowledges the sage as the original author, and there is no suggestion of explicitly departing from his version for any reason. This acknowledgment does not indicate complete familiarity with the Sanskrit, although undoubtedly the television producer and his advisors knew some version of Valmiki's text. But they also drew upon a variety of other traditions, including a wide range of vernacular versions explicitly invoked in the cause of national integration. Nor does respect for Valmiki rule out innovations like those of past retellers of the story. If one is struck that more of the vernacular versions corresponds to Valmiki than to any other ancient source (such as Jain variants that present a substantially altered structure), that may be because Valmiki's Sanskrit preserves a consensus version of other written as well as oral Rama stories. These must collectively be taken as
the source for later authors and indeed for most people in a society where writing did not have its present normative status. We would be deluded to search for a single model or to privilege one, whatever its classical status.
Later Sanskrit Versions
Recasting the story in Sanskrit did not stop with the epic that bears Valmiki's name; many literary and religious versions are known. I shall focus on two that were illustrated in Orissa. The first is of pan-Indian significance—the Adhyatma ("Supreme Spirit") Ramayana[*] , one of a class of short Sanskrit works composed with later devotional and philosophical concerns. This has been ascribed to the fifteenth or early sixteenth century and is associated with Banaras in particular.[14] The impact of the Adhyatma Ramayana[*] on vernacular writing is widely recognized, not only on Tulsi Das's Ramcharitmanas , as one might expect from the composition of that influential Hindi poem in the same place a few decades later, but also on works in tongues as distant as Malayalam.[15] ç The major Bengali Ramayana[*] by Krittibasa[*] , similar in some ways, may have been composed slightly earlier; yet elements that it shares with the Ramcharitmanas seem to be interpolations into the unusually elastic Bengali text. Similarly we shall hear more of the Adhyatma Ramayana[*] as a source for Oriya writers.
The Adhyatma Ramayana[*] may be understood as a condensation of Valmiki, leaving out those matters that do not focus; upon Rama, with three broad additional concerns. First, this is a work of monastic Vedanta philosophy, for which all phenomena are dependent upon the world soul, or brahman, here equated with Rama himself, who is undifferentiated, without attributes (nirguna[*] ). Thus events are preordained. For instance, Manthara does not act from her own evil to prevent Rama's coronation but is impelled by the goddess Sarasvati (2.2.46). Illusion, or maya, in this system characterizes everything. The epitome of this principle is the order Rama gives Sita, as he departs to hunt the illusionary deer (maya mriga[*] ), that she hide her true self in the fire inside the hut and create an illusionary form (Maya Sita) that will be kidnapped by Ravana[*] (3.7.3-4). Thus his own grief at her loss is feigned, even to his brother, and the story is robbed of direct tragedy. At the same time, the tale assumes a rich phenomenological irony Maya Sita had previously appeared as a motif in earlier texts, such as the Kurma and Brahmavaivarta Puranas[*] reflecting concern with Sita's purity. But illusion plays a larger role in the Adhyatma Ramayana[*] as a consistent principle that undercuts the actual plot.
Second, this text is informed by bhakti, or a devotional attitude toward Rama, who hence becomes more a god and less a mere human. This attitude is visible in a good deal of later Ramayana[*] literature and is comparable to the development of devotion to Krisna[*] in north India, but here the devotee is seen predominantly in the stance of a servant, rather than that of a lover, unlike Krisna[*] with his female followers, the gopis. The Adhyatma Ramayana[*] is associated with the Ramanandin sect of ascetics (sadhus ), for whom the preferred name-ending Dasa (servant) indicates the ideal of humility.[16] At the same time in the Adhyatma, Rama becomes more than one of a number of avatars, is equated with Visnu[*] himself, and at times seems to transcend even Visnu[*] .[17] ç The result is to create a tension between the
Vedanta philosophical context, in which even the ultimate reality of Rama as an actor in the world should logically be called into question, and the devotional urge to emphasize his exploits.
Bhakti is visible in the way in which the Adhyatma Ramayana[*] presents Rama as delivering to salvation those whom he kills, for example the demon Maricha (3.7.22-25). Moreover, devotion is explicit in a number of hymns of praise inserted into the text, such as the encomium uttered by Ahalya when she is released from the form of a stone (1.5.43-64). The best known of these passages, the sermon preached by Rama as chapter 5 of the last book known as the Ramagita (imitating the Bhagavadgita ), is probably older than the text as a whole.[18]
Third, the Adhyatma Ramayana[*] incorporates Saiva and tantric elements, again producing some contradictions with the philosophical and devotional aspects of this work. The framework, in which the story is told by Siva in answer to Parvati's questions, may not in itself be of great significance, for it is part of the status of the text as a Purana[*] . Before the bridge to Lanka[*] is built, Rama installs a liñga on the shore and worships Siva, presumably a nod to the actual shrine at Rameshvaram (6.4.1-4). One is reminded that this text served the Ramanandins, a Vaisnava[*] sect centered in Benares, the abode of Siva. Similarly, tantric or Sakta elements have been discerned, although it may also be argued that sakti is fundamentally conceived here as Rama's maya , occasionally acting through Sita but not an independent feminine force of creation.[19] The text is in general complex and reflects conflicting currents, like most documents of Indian religion.
The popularity of the Adhyatma Ramayana[*] in Orissa is indicated by its repeated translation into Oriya between 1600 and 1900. Of the translations, the one most frequently illustrated was that of Gopala Telenga, made in the middle of the eighteenth century.[20] Gopala, a Telugu speaker as indicated by his name, was a brahman who served at the court of the ruler Ajit Sinha in Sambalpur. His is not entirely a literal translation of the standard Sanskrit text. For example, Ravana[*] takes not only Sita but also her entire hut to avoid touching her, a motif that appears elsewhere to minimize the possibility of her pollution. Most significant, at the beginning of each book Lord Jagannatha is invoked, and in the sixth, the Yuddha Kanda[*] sixty verses are added in his praise. In the same way that Siva could be accommodated in the original text, the principal god of Orissa could be brought into this vernacular translation.
The Brahma Ramayana[*] is a second and far less widely known Sanskrit work, not composed in Orissa but extant in two copies there, one of which is illustrated.[21] Both of these manuscripts are in simple Sanskrit, not translated but in Oriya characters, like most Oriya copies of the Gita Govinda, which was easily understood in the same form. Elsewhere the text exists in Devanagari script.[22] ç It appears to be part of a larger work called the Brihatkosala[*] Kanda[*] and to have fallen into three portions—Rama's Lila the marriage of Rama and Sita, and then additional play or Lila .[23] ç The Ramayana[*] plot is minimal, although the episodes of Ahalya and Tadaki[*] do appear in the illustrated Orissan version. The bulk of the text, however, concerns Rama's sport with a number of women. There is strong resemblance to Krisna's[*] relationship to the cow-maidens (gopis ), in which the seemingly erotic relation to the godhead is in fact a form of ecstatic devotion appropriate to
male followers as well as female. The elaborate description of rasa (rustic dance) dominates this text, as in many Krisna-ite[*] works.[24] Thus the Rama-bhakti of the Adhyatma Ramayana[*] is taken one step further in such a work.
Early Oriya Texts
In addressing the textual sources of Orissan pictures of the Ramayana[*] , it would be impossible to omit two monuments of early Oriya literature, even though neither has, to my knowledge, been directly illustrated. Both Sarala Dasa's Mahabharata and Balarama[*] Dasa's Jagamohana Ramayana[*] are so well known and widely revered that we may presume most artists in the region would have had some familiarity with them.
The Adikavi, or Father of Vernacular Poetry in Orissa, Sarala Dasa, active probably in the third quarter of the fifteenth century, is famed for his Mahabharata .[25] This work draws upon oral traditions, including elements that also crop up in different form in various Sanskrit works.[26] ç It was followed by three more or less literal translations of the epic, none of which equalled Sarala's[*] in popularity. The poet is identified as a sudra, a peasant whose brother was a ferryman, a status that is; in keeping with the rural language and earthy flavor of his work. For instance, Siva's worship as the liñga is explained with a story that he shocked his mother-in-law by addressing her naked at the time of a ceremony, so that she cursed him to be worshiped in the undignified form of a phallus.[27] ç Likewise local touches are only to be expected—for example the enlargement of the story of the tribal Ekalavya, who, in the guise of the Sabara Jara, kills Krisna[*] and follows his unburned body to Purl, where it becomes Lord Jagannatha.[28] ç
Like the Sanskrit Mahabharata, Sarala Dasa's poem includes a version of the story of Rama that is yet further removed from Valmiki. Here again some details occur in other versions, such as the explanation of Surpanakha's[*] anger with Laksmana[*] for having decapitated her son Japa while he was meditating in an anthill.[29] Rama is said to be reborn as Krisna[*] , and Laksmana[*] (who is also an avatar of Siva) as Balarama[*] , linking various strands of plot and religion. Some elements are shared with the Bengali tradition, such as the inclusion of multiple forms of Ravana[*] killed in different ages.[30] ç Sarala Dasa's expanded accounts of the ascetic Risyasringa[*] , of the magic deer, and of the incident of a milkman who feeds the heroes in the forest are discussed below in connection with their illustrations.
Balarama[*] Dasa worked some forty years after Sarala and is usually viewed as part of the Oriya entourage of the great Bengali Vaisnava[*] reformer Chaitanya, who visited Puri in 1510. In fact his lengthy version of the Ramayana[*] seems to have been completed in 1504 and is not directly influenced by Chaitanya.[31] His supposedly frenzied religious devotion, along with tales of the entire group of Oriya saints known as pañcha sakhas (five companions of Chaitanya), may be a later fabrication. In a colophon he is identified as the son of the minister of a ruler and as a karana[*] (scribe).[32] ç Thus he belonged to what was in fact quite a high-placed subcaste in Orissa, although technically he was a sudra, part of the lowest of the four major ranks of Hindu society, a position emphasized by followers of Chaitanya in view of the ideal of humble servitude. In general his brand of Vaisnavism[*] , centered on Jagannatha, is rooted in Orissa in the late fifteenth century.
Balarama[*] Dasa puts his story in the mouth of four different narrators, framing the epic in a complex way like the Ramcharitmanas .[33] Indeed he honors Valmiki as the first narrator on earth, and his Jagamohana Ramayana[*] (also known as Dandi[*] Ramayana[*] , from the meter) includes most of the variants of the eastern recension of Valmiki, such as the story of how the demon Kalanemi attempted to deter Hanumana from visiting Mount Gandhamadana, detailed below in Chapter 4. He also introduces elements found in the Adhyatma Ramayana[*] although not peculiar to it: the framing dialogue between Siva and Parvati and the creation of a Maya Sita before the kidnap. Indeed, illusion appears often as a matrix for phenomena, as in the Adhyatma Ramayana[*] .[34] ç There are again affinities with Bengali Rama stories, as well as with south Indian vernacular versions.[35] ç At the same time, events are consistently localized in Orissa; thus Rama's return to Ayodhya becomes the Bahuda[*] Jatra, or return of Lord Jagannatha's cart procession in Puri. Some events are given amusing human twists: on Mount Malyavan Rama gets a crane to supply him with food cooked by Sita, overcoming the bird's reluctance to accept food from a mere woman by assuring it that wife and husband are one.[36] ç At the same time, Balarama[*] Dasa must be credited with some originality. For example, the distinctively Oriya story of the origin of mushrooms in the umbrellas severed from Ravana's[*] chariot appears for the first time in writing in the Jagamohana Ramayana[*] .[37] ç On the whole this text weaves a wealth of novel detail around the framework of Valmiki. Its central place in the Orissan religious tradition is shown by its being read orally in toto, as Tulsi Das is used elsewhere in north India during the festival Dashahra.
Balarama[*] Dasa dealt with the story of Rama in a number of other, shorter poems of the forms known as chautisa (thirty-four couplets beginning with each letter of the alphabet in sequence) and barahmasa (with twelve verses for the months). These seem particularly to draw upon the Sundara Kanda[*] and the grief of the separated couple.[38] No illustrated copies of those works are known.
Two unpublished minor works are worth mentioning here because they have been illustrated at least once. These are a Durga Stuti and a Hanumana Stuti ascribed to Balarama[*] Dasa, known from an illustrated manuscript now in Ahmedabad.[39] Such stutis form a large class of popular verses in praise of various gods and goddesses. Several addressed to Durga are attributed to Hina (inferior) Balarama[*] ; although they follow the same meter as the Jagamohana Ramayana[*] , they are probably not the work of the sixteenth-century poet. The Ahmedabad illustrated text describes the occasion when Rama and Laksmana[*] were bound by Indrajita's snake-arrow. The hero recites his previous story to Durga, who advises him to pray to Garuda[*] , who in turn comes and disperses the snakes. The following part of the same work is devoted to Hanumana.
Later Oriya Texts
Oriya literature since 1550 includes many versions of the Ramayana[*] . There are, for example, several short works called Tika[*] Ramayana[*] , each purporting to be a précis of Balarama[*] Dasa, in fact also adding new stories.[40] The Vilanka Ramayana[*] of Siddhesvara Dasa is probably a work of the seventeenth century, concerning an interlude between the Yuddha and Uttara Kandas[*] in which a thousand-headed
Ravana[*] was killed with the intervention of Sita in the battle.[41] The eighteenth-century Angada Padi[*] of Vipra Laksmidhar[*] Dasa focuses on Angada's embassy to Ravana[*] .[42] ç Such short versions, like the ephemeral pamphlets summarizing the epic that are sold today, must have been widely known.
Yet it was the complex writing of Orissa's great poet, Upendra Bhañja, that was more frequently illustrated. Upendra was a member of the royal family of Ghumsar in central Orissa, today on the western edge of Ganjam District.[43] His grandfather, the Raja Dhananjaya[*] , had in the seventeenth century written a euphuistic poem called Raghunatha Vilasa[*] , in which Rama is identified with Jagannatha.[44] ç Upendra may have been born around 1670 and presumably lived in the world of the court, although his father ruled only briefly.[45] ç He himself mentions his initiation into the Rama Taraka Mantra, a spell invoking the protection of Rama, which accords with his frequent use of the Rama story in his poetry. His seventy poetic works, many of them long, belong mainly to the early eighteenth century.
Upendra Bhañja's writing in general can hardly be described with neutrality One touchy issue is his frequent use of erotic subject matter, which must have been widely acceptable in Orissan society at some points, although it has at times been condemned as obscene. A second sticking point is his elaborate style, which carries that of his grandfather many stages further. His word choice is arcane and Sanskritic, although the proximity of Oriya to Sanskrit makes his diction less artificial than it might seem. He employs the gamut of literary devices known to courtly poetry, or kavya: slesa[*] (punning), yamaka (alliteration), gomutra (zigzag reading), and many more. Such devices would seem to make for such obscurity that one might expect his work to have been known only in very limited circles. Yet his verses have long been used in the storytelling tradition called pala, where the verbal ingenuity, romance, and music of his lines still captivate rural audiences. As the great Oriya freedom fighter Gopabandhu wrote in this century,
Oh Upendra, the Pandits recite your lines at courts,
Gay travellers on the road,
The peasants in the, fields and ladies in the harems,
And the courtesans too, while they dance.[46]
The Vaidehisa Vilasa[*] or "Sport of the Husband of Sita," is a prime example of Upendra's poetic dexterity, Each line in the: work begins with the letter Va. Each canto differs from the next in the poetic device it employs, so that the effect is varied in sound as well as in substance. One canto may consist of relatively straightforward descriptive couplets, while: the next is long complexly rhymed verses based on double entendres. Nor does the selection of subjects inevitably emphasize the erotic, or sringara[*] mood. Valmiki's first six books (the Uttara Kanda[*] is omitted altogether by Upendra) correspond to the following cantos of the Vaidehisa Vilasa[*] :
Bala Kanda[*] : Chhandas 1-16
Ayodhya Kanda[*] : Chhanda 17
Aranya[*] Kanda[*] : Chhandas 18-26
Kiskindha[*] Kanda[*] : Chhandas 27-33
Sundara Kanda[*] : Chhandas 34-39
Yuddha Kanda[*] : Chhandas 40-52
The brief treatment of the critical events of the Ayodhya Kanda[*] shows a distinct preference for the lyrical over the dramatic.
The Vaidehisa Vilasa[*] refers respectfully to its own predecessors:
Valmiki and Vyasa each wrote Rama's epic.
Hanumana, the wind's son, wrote the play Mahanatak[*] .
Bhoja wrote Champu : Kalidasa's was perfected.
Balarama[*] Dasa wrote Oriya. On all I've reflected,
Bemused by these masterworks, with great trepidation.
There are stars in the sky for illumination,
Yet in the dark, fireflies also glow.
Please therefore accept my humble verses below.
(1.4)
In fact Upendra departs from Valmiki, following Balarama[*] Dasa in matters such as the creation of Maya Sita and going further than his Oriya predecessors in the inclusion of folk elements. He even alters the familiar structure by presenting Sita's birth before Rama's.
A second work by the same poet will enter into our study, although its main plot does not concern Rama at all. This is the Lavanyavati[*] , a romantic tale concerning the heroine for whom it is named and the hero Chandrabhanu.[47] Originally a heavenly couple, they are reborn as a princess of Simhala and a prince of Karnataka, who falls in love with her portrait. They meet in a dream, exchange love letters, meet secretly at the temple of Rameshvaram, and are married with their parents' consent. When Chandrabhanu departs to quell a rebellion, the couple live in romantic separation, but they are eventually reunited and ascend to the throne of Karnataka.
During preparations for the wedding, Lavanyavati's[*] father commissions a traveling entertainer to perform the Ramayana[*] in order to arouse her desire for Chandrabhanu.[48] As the translation of this portion in my Appendix 3 shows, the events of the epic are summarized succinctly in the text, generally following Upendra Bhañja's own Vaidehisa Vilasa[*] . At the conclusion, however, we realize that Lavanyavati[*] has identified Rama with her own beloved, and hence she presumably thinks of herself as Sita, the kidnap prefiguring her separation from Chandrabhanu. The adaptation of the Ramayana[*] in particular to the needs of romance may have to do with Upendra's own predilection for this divinity, apparent elsewhere in his work. In the Lavanyavati[*] itself, Rama is invoked at the very beginning. It is also appropriate, in view of the role of maya in versions of the Ramayana[*] popular in Orissa, that the whole tale should be presented as an illusion within a plot where dream and magic play a recurrent role.
Among other recent authors, Visvanatha Khuntia[*] is worth mentioning, not because he was directly illustrated but because his version of the Rama story was second only to Balarama[*] Dasa's in popularity. His name indicates that he belonged to a brahman family of temple servants in Puri. Khuntia[*] probably wrote early in the eighteenth century, and he was aware of Upendra Bhañja's works but primarily followed Valmiki.[49]
Visvanatha Khuntia's[*] work: is titled Vichitra Ramayana[*] , vichitra meaning "varied in melody," for the work is broken into sections to be sung to different ragas. It is also called a Ramalila[*] , suggesting its use as a dance-drama, and indeed it is not only read as a text but also used by boy dancers (Gotipuas[*] ) and is beloved for its simple lyrical poetry This version of the: story follows the southern recension of Valmiki, rather than the eastern (as did Balarama[*] Dasa's) and is on the whole closer to the Sanskrit plot than to Sarala Dasa's Mahabharata or even Upendra BhaÖja's Vaidehisa Vilasa[*] .
Visvanatha Khuntia's[*]Vichitra Ramayana[*] , perhaps because of its popularity, has played host to interpolations, which do not appear in older manuscripts of this text.[50] The episode of Mahiravana[*] is an interesting one, actually attributed in the printed text to Vikrama Narendra, a nineteenth-century author of his own, separate, Ramalila[*] This story, widespread in Sanskrit and in Indian vernaculars although not in most Oriya texts, involves an additional demon invoked by Ravana[*] after the death of his son Indrajita. Hanumana forms a fortress of his extended tail to protect the heroes but is tricked into letting Mahiravana[*] enter and abduct them. Mahiravana[*] prepares to sacrifice them to a form of the Goddess, but Rama asks the demon to demonstrate how to bow before her, at which point the Goddess decapitates him. The Sakta twist to the story, which is to be expected in Bengal, must also have appealed to elements in the populace of Orissa.