Tellings as Commentary and Programs for Action

Ramayana tellings provide a set of resources on which people have drawn—in their own way and for their own purposes—in order to accuse, justify, meditate, debate, and more. The papers in the final section of the volume, Part Three, explore how and why people select particular incidents from the Ramayana to express their view of reality. Such selective tellings—ones which adopt a nontraditional perspective on otherwise familiar features of the tale—have proved an effective means for conveying political views and for inculcating religious teachings. In Indian exegesis as well as tellings, the diversity of Ramayana tradition makes itself known.^[25]

Paula Richman's paper analyzes the logic of E. V. Ramasami's exegesis of the Ramayana . In an oft-reprinted pamphlet intended for a popular readership, he argues that morally ambiguous episodes such as the killing of Valin, Rama's harsh treatment of Sita, and the mutilation of Surpanakha constitute the real core of the Ramayana . Using these incidents to guide his assessment of Ramayana characters and their values, he scathingly attacks Hinduism—especially the worship of Rama—as a North Indian way of subjugating South Indians, while glorifying Ravana, whom he identifies with the values of "Dravidian" culture.^[26] Labeling the sanctity accorded the Ramayana , as well as the high status of the Brahmins that the Ramayana seeks to justify, as forms of North Indian domination, he exhorts fellow South Indians to liberate themselves by rejecting belief in Rama both as moral para-

digm and as god. Such a reading of the Rama story functions as a clarion call to cultural separatism.

Medieval Srivaisnava commentators used their own form of Ramayana exegesis to explain a different kind of freedom: spiritual liberation. Patricia Mumme's paper shows how Tenkalai Srivaisnavas regard the actions of Ramayana characters as revealing truths about the relationship between the devotee and the divine Lord. In contrast to theologians from the rival Vatakalai sect, who wrote primarily for an elite audience of learned Brahmins, the Tenkalais addressed themselves to a broader lay audience that included women and non-Brahmin men, edifying this diverse group by incorporating incidents from the Ramayana . In their exegesis, the Tenkalai commentators select what other tellings usually regard as minor incidents, remove them from their usual narrative context, and use them in unexpected ways as parables to thwart the expectations of their audience. Such incidents shock hearers into questioning their ordinary assumptions about the nature of salvation, preparing them to accept Srivaisnava theological claims.

Selectivity generates another kind of power in the rasik sampraday based in Ayodhya, a sect whose religious beliefs and meditational practices Philip Lutgendorf analyzes in his essay. The theology and practices of the rasik tradition assume a telling of the Ramayana that foregrounds the time right after the wedding of Rama and Sita, when the couple savors the pleasures of love in their golden palace. The Ramcaritmanas of Tulsidas (generally known by the shorter title Manas ) portrays this incident only briefly and discreetly; yet members of the rasik tradition elaborate on this account, prescribing various means to identify meditatively with the companions and servants of Sita and Rama during this period. Here we find not the heroic Rama but the erotic one, not the long-suffering Sita but one engaged in exploring life's pleasures. Rasik adepts say that the traditionally emphasized events—exile, war, coronation—constitute the conventional Ramayana , which is easily known; in contrast, true devotees seek the transcendent Ramayana of the love play between Rama and Sita, revealed only to initiates. Their interpretation of the Ramayana enables adherents to actualize heavenly play on earth through meditation.

If selectivity enables rasiks to attain their meditative goals, it is also, as Ramdas Lamb shows in his essay, key to the telling of the Ramayana among the Ramnamis, a militant Untouchable sect of the Chhattisgarh region in eastern Madhya Pradesh. Although the Ramnamis view the Manas as their official text, they reject some sections and stress others, reducing the text of 24,000 stanzas to a corpus of some four to five hundred individual verses. In addition, through ritual chanting and debates, members of the sect continue to personalize their Ramayana text, embellishing it with verses that usually then become part of the corpus. Lamb traces this process, showing how the Ramnamis began by viewing the Manas as inviolate but gradually came,

self-consciously, to cull the text for material consonant with their own beliefs. His research and that of Lutgendorf attest to another kind of fluidity within the Ramayana tradition, showing how even a single, apparently fixed text can be refashioned and thus appropriated to diverse ends.