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Preferred Citation: Lutgendorf, Philip. The Life of a Text: Performing the Ramcaritmanas of Tulsidas. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  1991. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft796nb4pk/

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The Life of a Text Performing the Ramcaritmanas of Tulsidas Philip Lutgendorf UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford © 1991 The Regents of the University of California

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Preferred Citation: Lutgendorf, Philip. The Life of a Text: Performing the Ramcaritmanas of Tulsidas. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  1991. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft796nb4pk/

To Meher Baba, the Singer,
and
For My Parents

Acknowledgments

The company of good people is the treasury of all virtues.
I salute them with affection, and with words.
1.2.4

The poet Tulsidas wisely commenced his epic with a lengthy passage that has come to be known as the "obeisance to all beings" (samasti^[*] vandana )—an effective way of discharging the burden of gratitude every author feels. If the truth be told, I feel scarcely less comprehensive a debt, but I will refrain from invoking planets, rivers, and mountains (although they helped too—especially the Ganga and the Himalayas) and will simply cite some of the many friends and teachers whose assistance was invaluable in the research and writing of this book.

At the University of Chicago, Colin Masica first introduced me to the pleasures of the Ramcaritmanas ; Kali C. Bahl guided me in my initial reading and recitation and also first suggested a research project on the epic's contemporary performance. Both served as readers of my first draft, together with Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty and A. K. Ramanujan, who likewise contributed much insight, encouragement, and humor. Among many others at Chicago who deserve thanks, I must single out Edward Dimock (a teacher and friend for more than fifteen years), Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph (mentors and good neighbors in India), Joan Erdman and David Gitomer (each of. whom helped me sort out troublesome passages), Maureen Patterson, and C. M. Naim. Thanks too are due to administrators Katherine Mosely and Shirley Payne. I owe a special debt to Mircea Eliade, an undergraduate mentor and a lasting example of humane and meaningful scholarship.

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My study of Hindi was supported by fellowships from the United States Department of Education and the American Institute of Indian Studies; I would like to thank, at the Delhi office of the latter institution, Pradeep Mehendiratta and his staff, and my Hindi instructor, Santwana Nigam. The field research for this project was made possible by a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship; special thanks for assistance are due to Alice Brookner at Chicago and Sharada Nayak and her staff in New Delhi. In Banaras I owe gratitude to Dr. Tribhuvan Singh, my academic adviser in the Hindi Department at Banaras Hindu University; the Mankhand family, who cared for me through my first Ramlila ; and the staff of the A.I.I.S. Center for Art and Archaeology, especially Mr. V. R. Nambiar and his hospitable family; also to Dr. Virbhadra Mishra of the Sankat Mochan Foundation, and Virendra Singh and his family. In Mussoorie I owe thanks to Bill Jones and Hugh Bradby of the Woodstock School, and to Chitranjan Datt and the staff of the Landour Language School. Others in India who offered special help and inspiration were the families of Keki Desai and Kusum Singh in Delhi, Padma Srinivasan in Bombay, and Eruch Jessawalla, Mani Sheriar Irani, and other friends in Ahmadnagar, Maharashtra.

Profound thanks must be offered to the numerous Ramcaritmanas reciters, singers, expounders, and devotees in Banaras, Ayodhya, Chitrakut, and elsewhere who shared with me their knowledge and experience of their beloved epic; many of them are cited in the pages that follow. Here I would single out the special assistance given by Shrinath Mishra of Banaras; Baba Narayankant Tripathi and Ramnarayan Shukla of the Sankat Mochan temple; Ramkumar Das and Sacchidanand Das of Mani Parvat, Ayodhya; and Ramkinkar Upadhyay. Dr. Bhanuprasad Mehta gave timely help at the Chitrakut Bharat Milap, and Dr. Bhagavati Prasad Singh, retired head of the Hindi Department at Gorakhpur University, generously shared his extensive knowledge of the Ram bhakti tradition. Ramji Pandey, the chief Ramayani of the Ramnagar Ramlila , was my guide and amiable companion there and on pilgrimages to Ayodhya, Prayag, and Chitrakut. Also in Ramnagar I owe special thanks to the maharaja of Banaras, Vibhuti Narayan Singh; Giorgio Bonazzoli of the Kashiraj Trust, and in the tiny shop at the corner of the fort—the jovial vendor of the city's best tea, who opened his home to me on coronation night. Back in Shiva's city I salute my special guide in field research—and one to whom its evolution owes much—Chandradharprasad Narayan Singh, an inspiring example of connoisseurship mingled with devotion. To all such true rasiks of the epic, this work is especially offered.

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The writing of the dissertation that formed the basis for this book was supported by a fellowship from the Committee on Southern Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. Apart from the members of my dissertation committee, three patient readers offered special assistance and encouragement: John Stratton Hawley, Linda Hess, and Frances Pritchett. Linda Hess and Richard Schechner generously shared with me their rich knowledge and experience of the Ramnagar Ramlila . Nita Kumar and Scott Marcus offered assistance on specific aspects of Banarsi culture; I also benefited from the insights and encouragement of Thomas Coburn, Sandria Freitag, William Graham, and H. Daniel Smith. I owe much, too, to my colleagues at the University of Iowa—especially Sheldon Pollock, Paul Greenough, Maureen Robertson, and Thomas Rohlich. Thanks are also due to Todd Papke of the Weeg Computer Center for technical assistance in the production of the manuscript. Lynne Withey and Betsey Scheiner of the University of California Press merit special thanks, both for their encouragement and for their editorial labors in bringing this text to life. I would add that the warm friendship of many whom I have cited here has meant as much to me as their substantial contributions to my research.

Finally, I must thank those whose tangible and emotional contributions have been even more sustained: my parents on both sides of the family, Gary and Helen Lutgendorf and Mike and Dorothy Donner, and my wife and daughters, Susan, Mira, and Claire. Susan Kerri Lutgendorf (at various times) enjoyed and endured the long adventure of my language study and field research, which included listening to me recite the Ramcaritmanas at odd hours and nursing me through a tedious illness in what we sometimes called the "City of Blight"—all the while helping to raise two children and postponing her own important work in counseling and healing. Her companionship has been vital to my research and to my life.

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A Note on Transliteration

All italicized technical terms from Hindi and Sanskrit and the titles of literary works have been transliterated according to the system followed by the Library of Congress, with the exception that for Hindi words the medial and final vowel a , which is usually not pronounced, has been omitted from most words (thus Ramcaritmanas rather than Ramacaritamanasa ). However, for certain words that end with conjunct consonants, the final vowel has been retained (bhakta ), as native speakers often add a slight vowel in such cases and this form may likewise be more readily pronounced by readers. The final vowel has also been retained in a few words that have become familiar to English readers in Sanskrit-derived transliterations (karma, dharma, yoga). In transliterations of medieval Hindi verses, however, all vowels are shown, since they are normally pronounced for metrical reasons. The nasalization of a final vowel (anunasika ) is indicated by m^[*] (mem^[*] , gosaim^[*] ).

For readability and to avoid an excess of diacritics, a different approach has been adopted for proper nouns. These are given without diacritics and with the substitution of sh for both the consonants

and , of ch for both and , of ksh for , and of ri for (thus Ramchandra, Lakshman, Krishna). Certain common Anglicizations have been adopted, generally following Webster's Ninth Collegiate (swami, ashram, sadhu, Singh), and place names have generally been given in common English spellings (Vrindavan, Kashi, Rewa). The names of modern Indian authors who write in English are presented as

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they themselves transliterate them. As noted above for technical terms, so in the case of names, final conjuncts have generally been joined to a short vowel (Mishra, Shukla); so too the names of certain deities that may be familiar to readers in such spellings (Shiva, Garuda). The names of castes and dialects follow the same rules (Brahman, Kshatriya, Khari Boli). For those who wish to be certain of pronounciation, an appended glossary provides proper nouns with diacritics.

Throughout this book, the term "Ramayan" is used to designate the broad tradition of retellings of the Ram narrative, and in occasional references by Hindi speakers to their Ramayan, that is, the Ramcaritmanas ; the Sanskritic transliteration (Ramayana^[*] ) refers only to Sanskrit works so titled.

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One
The Text and the Research Context

The nature of this Manas, how it came to be, and to what end it was manifested to the world—I will now narrate all these matters, remembering Uma and her Lord.
1.35

Introduction

Anyone interested in the religion and culture of Northern India sooner or later encounters a reference to the epic poem Ramcaritmanas and its remarkable popularity.^[1] This sixteenth-century retelling of the legend of Ram by the poet Tulsidas has been hailed "not merely as the greatest modern Indian epic, but as something like a living sum of Indian culture," singled out as "the tallest tree in the magic garden of medieval Hindu poesy," and acclaimed (by the father of Indian independence, Mahatma Gandhi) as "the greatest book of all devotional literature."^[2] Western observers have christened it "the Bible of Northern India" and have called it "the best and most trustworthy guide to the popular living faith of its people."^[3]

[1] All translations from the Ramcaritmanas are mine except where otherwise indicated. Numbers refer to the popular Gita Press version edited by Hanuman Prasad Poddar. For an explanation of the numbering system, see below, p. 15.

[2] The first quotation is from R. C. Prasad, in his introduction to the revised edition of Growse, The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , v; the second is from Smith, Akbar, The Great Mogul , 417; the third is from Gandhi, An Autobiography , 47.

[3] E.g., Macfie, The Ramayan of Tulsidas ; the second phrase comes from Growse, The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , xxxviii.

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Such remarkable notices may arouse one's curiosity, first of all, to read the text—although here the English-language reader may be daunted by the fact that (for reasons to be discussed below) Tulsidas's great epic fares rather badly in translation. Beyond that, a student interested in the popularity and impact of this remarkable work has had to be content with a literature consisting primarily of textual studies that, despite their undoubted contributions to an understanding of the origin, structure, and meaning of the epic, shed little light on its interaction with its audience—an interaction that has never been primarily through the medium of the written word. Indeed, it seems ironic that a text so often cited as a popular and living tradition has received so little study as such, apart from a handful of treatments of Ramlila folk dramas, the most obviously "theatrical" genre of Ramcaritmanas performance. The present study, which grew out of one reader's encounter with the text and increasing curiosity about its living performers, seeks to fill this lacuna by investigating a wide spectrum of performance genres that utilize the epic, including traditions of public and private recitation, folksinging and formal exposition, as well as the more familiar Ramlila pageants. Approaching the text from the perspective of its performance, it will suggest that, in the audience's experience, the two are essentially inseparable.

Since its underlying approach will be to treat the Ramcaritmanas as, in S. C. R. Weightman's admirable phrase, "a religious event"^[4] and as a living—hence necessarily changing and evolving—presence in North Indian society, this study will also be concerned with the historical development of the performance genres that it treats. This is problematic, since written source materials are meager, and oral history—although richer—cannot be relied on for accuracy. Yet a historical perspective is all the more necessary given the tendency of many within the Hindu tradition to assert the hoary antiquity and static changelessness of their practices, and of some Western scholars to accept such pronouncements uncritically. The living tree of Hinduism may indeed have deep roots, but it is constantly putting out new branches as well as occasionally shedding dead leaves, and although many of the performance genres described here had ancient precursors, their evolution and present popularity reflects, as will be seen, specific social and historical developments of the comparatively recent past.

Even a study of text-in-performance must necessarily begin with the text—itself an essential context for understanding its performance. The

[4] Weightman, "The Ramcaritmanas as a Religious Event," 53-72.

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present chapter is intended to provide the general reader with background information necessary for an appreciation of the performance genres to be examined in succeeding chapters. To this end it touches on a number of potentially vast subjects: the history of the Ramayan tradition, the life and works of Tulsidas, and the metrical and narrative structure of the Ramcaritmanas —even though, in some cases, exemplary studies or even whole literatures on these topics already exist. For a study based primarily on field research, other contexts must also be delineated: conceptual, methodological, and geographical; hence this chapter also introduces some of the concepts that underlie the study, places them in reference to other recent research, and outlines the structure of the investigation to follow. It concludes with a brief introduction to the city of Banaras and its importance as a setting for the performance of the Tulsidas epic.

Tulsidas and the Ramayan Tradition

The Ramcaritmanas is an original retelling, in a literary dialect of Hindi, of the ancient tale of Prince Ram of Ayodhya—a story that exists in countless variants both within and beyond the Indian subcontinent and represents one of the world's most popular and enduring narrative traditions. The Ram legend has not only given rise to hundreds of literary texts, including several that rank among the masterpieces of world literature, but has also flourished for at least two millennia—and still flourishes today—in oral tradition.

The most influential early text of this tradition is the one called Ramayana^[*] ; indeed, in India this name has come to be used as a sort of genre name for all texts of the tradition and even as a colloquial label for any long narrative (as in the Hindi expression "to narrate a Ramayan"—i.e., to go on at great length about some matter). Traditionally attributed to the poet Valmiki, this Sanskrit epic of some 24,000 couplets is thought to have been composed within the first few centuries before the beginning of the Christian Era^[5] . Internal evidence suggests that a considerable portion of it may indeed have been the work of a single author, but nothing is known of Valmiki as a historical figure. Popular legend depicts him as a lowborn robber who was transformed into a sage by the grace of Ram and who wrote his narrative during his hero's own lifetime, in the Treta Yuga or second aeon of the current cosmic cycle, which Hindus commonly place in the extremely remote

[5] On the dating of this text, see Goldman, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki : Balakanda^[*] , 20-23. Note, however, that many scholars disagree with Goldman's early attribution.

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Figure 1.
A pilgrim recites the Manas for a sadhu, in Ayodhya at dawn on
Ram's birth anniversary (Ram Navami)

past—"nine lakh [900,000] years ago." Valmiki is thus hailed by later tradition as adikavi —the first poet, the inventor of the influential sloka meter and the mentor of all later poets, especially those of the Ram narrative tradition.

Although the Sanskrit epic exerted a great influence on later retellings of the Story, the vernacular "Ramayans" that began to be produced from roughly the eleventh century did not offer simple translations of Valmiki's story, but rather reinterpretations of it. Because the specific transformations of the story through various texts have been traced by literary scholars,^[6] it suffices here to note that the most important trend in the development of the tradition was the reinterpretation of the narrative in the light of the bhakti (devotional) movement, which effected the transformation of the epic's protagonist from an earthly prince with godlike qualities of heroism, compassion, and justice, to a full-fledged divinity—or rather, the divinity; for in North India today the word Ram is the most commonly used nonsectarian designation for the Supreme Being.

The bhakti movement, in significant contrast to the earlier southward penetration of Aryan Sanskritic culture, appears to have begun in

[6] See, for example, Bulcke, Ramkatha : utpatti aur vikas ; Whaling, The Rise of the Religious Significance of Rama .

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South India and slowly spread northward. Although certain of its influential texts were composed in Sanskrit, the movement was characterized by a preference for local languages, reflecting a concern to make its teachings accessible to the widest possible audience, irrespective of caste or class. The earliest texts associated with this new orientation, the hymns of the Vaishnava Alvars and the Shaiva Nayanmars, were composed in Tamil, the Dravidian language spoken near the southern tip of India. The first major vernacular Ramayan was also in Tamil: the Iramavataram of the c. eleventh-century poet Kampan, which remains the best-known Ramayan in Tamil-speaking regions.^[7] Already in Kampan's version, Ram as the earthly incarnation (avatar ) of the supreme lord Vishnu retained his divine qualities of omniscience and omnipotence, so that his entanglement in the plot became merely a matter of appearance—or as the tradition would say, of lila : a self-staged divine "sport." Likewise, his beloved wife Sita had acquired many of the titles and attributes of the great goddess, mother of the universe, and her inviolability had become such a matter of principle that the poet had to concoct the device of having her demon abductor scoop up the plot of earth she stood upon, lest the touch of his hands defile her.

Kampan's epic was followed by the c. thirteenth-century Telugu Ramayana^[*] of Buddharaja and by the fourteenth-century Bengali epic of Krittibasa. But even by the middle of the sixteenth century, there was still no major Ramayan in any of the dialects of the central Gangetic plain—the region that, ironically, was the geographical locus of the Ram legend. The story remained widely known and was told and retold in Hindu communities; its Sanskrit versions continued to be studied and commented on by members of the religious elite and expounded by them to wider audiences. But it may well reflect on the conservatism of this elite that no major literary rendering of the story had been made in the "impure" language of the people, even though such versions had long won acceptance further to the south and east.

The birthdate of the man who was to compose the Hindi epic of Ram—the poet Tulsidas—cannot be fixed with certainty, but many scholars have settled on 1532 as a likely year.^[8] An unresolved and more emotional debate has concerned the poet's birthplace, with no less than seven places in present-day Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states vying for the

[7] For a partial English translation, see Hart and Heifetz, The Ramayana^[*]of Kampan .

[8] Gupta, Tulsidas , 138-40; in English see the same author's "Biographical Sketch," in Nagendra, ed., Tulasidasa: His Mind and Art , 64. F. R. Allchin, however, favors a birthdate of 1543; see the introduction to his translation of Kavitavali , 33.

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honor of claiming Tulsidas as native son.^[9] Most modern accounts of Tulsi's life are based on slender internal evidence from his poetry supplemented by two controversial accounts attributed to contemporaries^[10] and by later devotional hagiographies. In several apparently autobiographical verses in the Kavitavali and Vinay patrika —works thought to belong to the poet's old age—Tulsi refers to early abandonment by his parents (traditionally attributed to his having been born during an unlucky astrological conjunction) and to a childhood of loneliness, hunger, and pain, from which he was apparently rescued by a group of Vaishnava sadhus who gave him his first lessons in devotion to Ram, the "purifier of the fallen."^[11] Yet it is thought that Tulsi himself did not become a sadhu at once but underwent a period of traditional Sanskrit education, probably at Banaras, and then returned to his native village to marry and live the life of a householder until a personal crisis caused him to renounce home and family. His subsequent wanderings took him to Ayodhya, Ram's birthplace and capital, and later to Banaras, where he settled, composed most of his major works, and died at an advanced age—probably in 1623.

The bare framework of this probable biography has of course been richly embellished by the hagiographic tradition. One of the best-known legends concerns Tulsi's decision to renounce worldly life, which is said to have been precipitated by his infatuation for his wife, Ratnavali. Unable to bear her absence while she was visiting her parents, Tulsi is said to have braved a rain-swollen river to reach his in-laws' house, only to receive, on arrival, a stinging rebuke from Ratnavali in the form of a couplet that has become proverbial.

This passion for my flesh-and-bone-filled body—
had you such for Lord Ram, you'd have no dread of death.^[12]

These words are said to have opened Tulsi's inner eye and effected his conversion into a lifelong devotee of Ram, and so Ratnavali is some-

[9] Gupta, Tulsidas , 140-61; "Biographical Sketch," 65-77.

[10] These are the Mulgosaim^[*]carit , attributed to Benimadhav Das (d. 1643) and the Gautamcandrika of Krishnadatta Mishra, supposedly composed in 1624; both were discovered only in the twentieth century. The former is widely regarded as spurious; the latter has been cautiously accepted by some scholars. For a brief discussion, see Gopal, Tulasidas , xii.

[11] See Kavitavali 6.73, 7.57, and Vinay patrika 275.1-3. For discussion of these verses, see Allchin's introduction to his translations of both works, Kavitavali , 33-34, and The Petition to Ram , 31-32. "Purifier of the fallen" is a translation of the much-used epithet patit-pavan ; see, for example, the closing chand of the Ramcaritmanas (7.130.9).

[12] The original verses are given by Grierson in "Notes on Tul'si Das," 267.

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times cited as his "initiating teacher" (diksa^[*]guru ). Other well-known stories concern the poet's ascetic and devotional practices (sadhana ) and his mystical experiences and miracles. Some of these will be recounted later in the words of modern devotees, for they show the reverence in which Tulsi and his poetry continue to be held.

The genesis of the Hindi epic of Ram has received considerable study.^[13] Although the influence of Valmiki's classic may be taken for granted, Tulsidas makes significant departures from the older epic's version of the story, and some of these appear to reflect the influence of other Sanskrit texts. Thus the Bhagavatapurana^[*] probably inspired his glowing depiction of Ram's childhood, while the drama Prasannaraghava may have influenced his decision to include a romantic encounter between Ram and Sita in a flower garden (phulvari )—a scene that has become one of the Hindi epic's most beloved passages (1.227.3-236). Another likely influence was the Adhyatmaramayana^[*] ("spiritual" or "esoteric" Ramayana^[*] ), a text probably composed in South India in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, which added a significant dimension to the theology of Ram by presenting him as not only an incarnation of the preserver-god Vishnu but as the personification of the ultimate reality or ground of being—the brahman of the Upanishads and of the Advaita or non-dualist school of philosophy.^[14] Although this interpretation weakened the narrative and reduced the character of Ram to an austere abstraction who could hardly arouse the devotional sentiments of the masses, it may have helped inspire Tulsi's more successful integration of the Advaita and Vaishnava systems. It also anticipated one of Tulsi's most striking deviations from the traditional story: his introduction of an "illusory Sita" who alone suffers the indignity of abduction and imprisonment in Ravan's stronghold, while the real Sita—Ram's inviolable sakti , or feminine energy—remains safely concealed in the element of fire.^[15]

The Ramcaritmanas is both the longest and earliest of the poet's major works; its composition was apparently begun when Tulsidas was in his early forties. The opening section of the poem includes the following well-known passage:

[13] Gupta, Tulsidas ; Vaudeville, Etude sur les sources ; and Bulcke, Ramkathaaur Tulsidas ; an English summary of Bulcke's analysis of the stages of composition is contained in his essay, "Ramacaritamanasa and Its Relevance to Modern Age," 58-75.

[14] Whaling, The Rise of the Religious Significance of Rama , 111. The text is available in an English translation by Bali Nath, The AdhyatmaRamayana^[*] .

[15] The relevant passages are 3.24.1-5 (in which Sita conceals herself and substitutes her pratibimb , or "shadow") and 6.108.14-109.14 (in which the shadow is destroyed and the real Sita restored).

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Now reverently bowing my head to Shiva
I narrate the spotless saga of Ram's deeds.
In this year 1631 1 tell the tale,
laying my head at the Lord's feet.
On Tuesday, the ninth of the gentle month,
in the city of Avadh, these acts are revealed.
1.34.3-5

Tulsi thus assigns the commencement of his labor to the birthday of Ram in the year 1631 of the Vikram Era—i.e., A.D . 1574—in Ayodhya, Ram's own city. The weighty text must have occupied him for several years, and the fact that its fourth book opens with an invocation to Kashi (Banaras) is generally taken as an indication that the poet had by then shifted his residence to that city.

Even though the immediate reception accorded to Tulsi's epic cannot be historically documented, several passages in the poet's works suggest a concern to anticipate and respond to critics. The invocatory stanzas of the epic include an ironic obeisance to the "ranks of scoundrels" who delight in criticizing others and a reference to "poetic connoisseurs" who are likely to laugh at his efforts, for as he observes,

My speech is the vernacular, my mentality simple.
It's deserving of laughter—no fault in laughing!

My speech lacks every virtue
but one, known to all the world.
Reflecting on this, let those
of pure discrimination listen well.

For herein is the lofty name of Raghupati—
utterly pure, essence of Veda and Purana!
1.9.4, 1.9, 1.10.1

While Tulsi's denial of poetic skill (couched, of course, in verses of great ingenuity) may have been aimed at those who favored the highly contrived Sanskrit poetry still influential in his day, his assertion that his work contains the essence of the scriptures was more likely directed at critics within the Brahmanical elite. That the vernacular Ramayan was initially derided in these conservative quarters is suggested by the hagiographical tradition and by a few verses in Tulsi's later works.^[16] Yet such a negative reaction in turn suggests that the work had found an

[16] Thus in Vinay patrika 8:3, the poet complains to Shiva that the god's "servants" in Banaras have been tormenting him. The Gautam candrika speaks of "conceited traditionalists" taking offense at Tulsi's devotional verses.

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enthusiastic reception among other groups, which may have included the mercantile class and the lower orders of society, including religious mendicants.

How rapidly the influence of the Hindi epic spread, in the absence of printing and despite the fact of overwhelming illiteracy, may be gauged from the fact that Nabha Das in his Bhaktamal —a work probably composed toward the end of Tulsi's life—hailed the Banarasi poet as Valmiki himself, who had taken birth again to reissue his Ramayana^[*] to the world.^[17] Nabha is thought to have resided at Galta, a Vaishnava shrine in Rajasthan, roughly a thousand kilometers from Tulsi's home but an important halting place for itinerant sadhus. It is likely that such mendicants played a major role in the early dissemination of the epic and were among its first expounders.

The small number of extant seventeenth-century manuscripts and the much larger number of eighteenth-century ones reveal some interesting features. Perhaps as many as 10 percent are in Kaithi, the script of the Kayasth, or scribal, caste—a writing system favored in political and economic contexts.^[18] A smaller but still significant number are in Persian script, and the second-oldest translation of the epic (1804) is into the Persian language. All of this suggests the text's popularity with the aristocracy and business classes. Its association with Brahmans and acceptance by them as a work of the highest religious authority appears to have come about only gradually. As recently as. 1887, F. S. Growse could observe that there were many pandits who "still affect to despise [Tulsi's] work as an unworthy concession to the illiterate masses."^[19]

A popular legend highlights the tension that is thought to have surrounded the religious establishment's initial response to Tulsi's epic. The Brahmans of Banaras, censorious of Tulsi for having rendered a sacred story in the common tongue, decided to test the worth of the text by placing it at the bottom of a pile of Sanskrit scriptures in the sanctum of the Vishvanath Temple, which was then locked for the night. When the shrine was opened in the morning, the Hindi work was found to have risen to the top of the pile, and its cover bore the words satyam^[*] , sivam^[*] , sundaram^[*] (truth, auspiciousness, beauty) inscribed by an un-

[17] Rupkala, SriBhaktamal , 756, chappay 129. On the dating of this text, see Gupta, "Priya Dasa," 64.

[18] This estimate was made by C. N. Singh, who examined a large number of early manuscripts while helping edit the Kashiraj Trust edition—the first Manas edition to utilize Kaithi manuscripts; interview, February 1984.

[19] Growse, The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , lv.

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known hand. Faced with this divine imprimatur (in Sanskrit, no less), the pandits were forced to give grudging respect to the text.^[20]

The legend suggests Tulsi's success at transcending sectarian differences and at synthesizing diverse strands of the Hindu tradition. In the nineteenth century, Growse noted the abundance of sects identifying themselves with the names and teachings of their founders, and Tulsi's overarching and catholic influence: "There are Vallabhacharis and Radha-Vallabhis and Maluk Dasis and Pran Nathis, and so on, in interminable succession, but there are no Tulsi Dasis. Virtually, however, the whole of Vaishnava Hinduism has fallen under his sway; for the principles that he expounded have permeated every sect and explicitly or implicitly now form the nucleus of the popular faith as it prevails throughout the whole of the Bengal Presidency from Hardwar to Calcutta."^[21]

Reconciliation and synthesis are indeed underlying themes of Tulsi's epic: the reconciliation of Vaishnavism and Shaivism through a henotheistic vision that advocates worshiping Shiva as Father of the Universe while making him the archetypal devotee of Ram. A similar rapprochement is effected between the nirgun^[*] and sagun^[*] traditions—between worship of a formless God and of a God "with attributes." Tulsi's contribution is to offer, in Frank Whaling's words, "an integral rather than a new symbol" of Ram,^[22] and his hero is at once Valmiki's exemplary prince, the cosmic Vishnu of the Puranas, and the transcendent brahman of the Advaitins. What weaves together such "inconsistent" theological strands is the overwhelming devotional mood of the poem, expressing fervent love for the divine through poetry of the most captivating musicality.

The Ramcaritmanas is one of a dozen works generally accepted as authentic compositions of Tulsidas.^[23] These include six "minor" and six "major" texts that together have acquired a sort of canonical status for the Ram tradition, so that their verses may be cited as authoritative "proof" or "validation" (praman^[*] ) of any point an expounder or commentator wishes to make. In addition to these literary works, the North Indian oral tradition includes a sizable body of couplets and short songs that claim Tulsidas as their author by inserting his name in the poetic

[20] The legend is recounted in the Mulgosaim^[*]carit ; the version given here is based on an oral retelling by a temple priest of Ramnagar; February 1984.

[21] Growse, The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , lix.

[22] Whaling, The Rise of the Religious Significance of Rama , 228.

[23] For a short summary of their contents, see Grierson, "Notes on Tul'si Das," 197-205, 253-59.

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"signature line" (bhanita ) common to such poems. Some of these aphorisms and songs are indeed drawn from Tulsi's written works—scores of lines from the Ramcaritmanas have entered folk speech as proverbs^[24] —but others belong to none of the poet's known works or are in dialects (such as Khari Boli) or even other North Indian languages (e.g., Punjabi and Gujarati) that he is unlikely to have known.^[25] Such fragments belong to a genre of literature in which folk poets assume the name and persona of famous poets—Kabir, Tulsi, Surdas, and Mira being four favorites—in order to invoke a characteristic ethos or aura of authority.^[26] But whereas the proliferation of such compositions has sometimes confused or even obliterated the boundaries of a poet's authentic oeuvre,^[27] the Tulsidas oral tradition exists as a complement to a distinct and well-attested literary corpus. Thus while editions of Surdas's major work, Sursagar , may contain anywhere from a few hundred to many thousand poems, the numerous published editions of the Ramcaritmanas exhibit only comparatively minor variations.^[28]

One other poem needs mention in the context of Tulsi's works, genuine or otherwise. The Hanumancalisa —"forty verses to Hanuman"—which popular belief, backed up by a signature line, universally attributes to Tulsidas, has become one of the most recited short religious texts in contemporary North India.^[29] The poem opens with a couplet from the Ramcaritmanas and contains several other lines that appear to be adapted from the epic; the remainder suggests a rather inelegant approximation of Tulsidas's style. But questions of authenticity and literary merit aside, the most striking thing about this poem is its enormous popularity. As a prime text of the flourishing cult of Hanuman—one of the most visible manifestations of popular Hinduism—it is fervently recited by millions of people every Tuesday and Saturday, the two week-

[24] Examples of these may be found in the section on lokokti (folk sayings) in Shukla, ed., Tulsigranthavali 4:93-158.

[25] Some of these compositions may be attributable to later authors who bore the same name, such as Tulsi Sahab of Hathras (1763-1843), a poet of the Sant tradition who is regarded by some devotees as a reincarnation of Tulsidas.

[26] Bhanita literally means "uttered"; such a poetic signature is also known as a chap , or "seal." On this convention, see Hawley, "Author and Authority," 269-90. On its use by Kabir and others, see Vaudeville, Kabir , 62.

[27] On the problem of delineating an "authentic" Surdas, see Bryant, Poems to the Child-God, vii-xi; and Hawley, SurDas , 35-63. Textual problems in Kabir are discussed by Vaudeville, Kabir , 49-70. No early manuscripts exist for the countless poems attributed to Mirabai; see Hawley and Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India, 122-29.

[28] For a discussion of variant manuscript readings, see Chaube, Manasanusilan , 37-169; or Mishra, ed., Ramcaritmanas , 463-501.

[29] For a rough translation accompanied by some discussion of the poem's message and popularity, see Kapoor, Hanuman Chalisa.

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days regarded as especially suitable for worshiping Ram's ideal devotee, and also at other times when special assistance is sought (thus it is said that the onset of annual school examinations brings a flood of college students into Hanuman temples to devoutly' intone the prayer). Authentic or not, the verses of the Hanumancalisa are today among the best-known lines attributed to Tulsidas.^[30]

Since the Ramcaritmanas is a text in the Ramayan tradition, for which the Sanskrit epic of Valmiki is the accepted archetype, it is commonly referred to simply as "the Ramayan" and many popular editions bear only this name on their spine and cover, perhaps adding above it in small print: "composed by Goswami Tulsidas" (GosvamiTulsidas-jikrt^[*] ).^[31] Such use of the generic title is of course revealing of the fact that this epic has become in effect the archetypal Ramayan text for Hindi speakers. The "Ramayan composed by Valmiki" (Valmikikrt^[*]Ramayana^[*] ) is to the vast majority of people only a famous name for the archetype of a beloved story, not a known or accessible text, and most Hindi versions of it are prose condensations of its story, not literal translations of its verses.^[32] Few devotees would be able to describe how Tulsi's version differs from its Sanskrit precursor, for their conception of the story depends overwhelmingly on the Hindi poet's rendition of it. And indeed, the immensely successful Indian television serialization, "Ramayan," which aired during 1987-88, closely followed Tulsi's version of the story.^[33]

The significance of Tulsi's own chosen title, Ramcaritmanas —which W. D. P. Hill has rendered "The Holy Lake of the Acts of Ram"—is discussed in some detail below. Although Western authors have sometimes replaced this unwieldy compound with the acronym RCM, the Hindi tradition prefers to shorten it to its final element and call it simply the Manas —a custom I follow here.^[34] This abbreviation, as we shall see, is not a mere truncation of the title, but a significant condensation that focuses on the central metaphor of the poem.

[30] Despite his popularity, Hanuman remains little studied. To date, one of the best treatments is Wolcott, "Hanuman."

[31] The term gosvami ("master of cattle" / "master of the senses," commonly Anglicized as "Goswami") is a respectful title given to certain religious leaders; the suffix -ji connotes enhanced respect. In Vaishnava discourse, the term "Goswami-ji" normally refers to Tulsidas.

[32] A typical example is Gupta, Valmikramayan^[*] .

[33] See Chapter 6, People of the Book.

[34] Even titles of scholarly works in Hindi often refer to the text by this name; e.g., Chaube, Manasanusilan (A study of the Manas ); Chaturvedi, ManaskiRam Katha (The Ram story in the Manas ). The same abbreviation occurs in speech, and a traditional scholar of the epic is sometimes termed a Manasi (Manas specialist).

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Metrical and Narrative Structure

The Ramcaritmanas is a poem of roughly 12,800 lines divided into 1073 "stanzas" (to be defined shortly), which are set in seven "books" (kand^[*] ). The latter division is common in texts of the Ramayan tradition and reflects the primacy and influence of the Valmiki epic, which is so organized. All but one of Tulsi's books bear the same names as those of the Sanskrit epic,^[35] but this resemblance does not extend to their contents and relative lengths. Tulsi's first book, Balkand^[*] , for example, is his longest, comprising roughly a third of the epic and including much introductory material not directly related to the Ram narrative; the Sanskrit epic's opening book is its second shortest and commences the story of Ram with relatively little digression.

Although by the standards of Indian epics the Manas is fairly compact (it is less than a third the length of Valmiki's version), it is nonetheless substantial, and the line-count noted above reflects a poem that in printed editions typically runs to between five and seven hundred pages. The titles and relative lengths of the seven books are as follows:^[36]

Viewed in terms of the relative lengths of its sections, the work presents a rough symmetry: the first two and last two books are longer (the last two are lengthier than the stanza count suggests, as their stanzas themselves are generally longer), and the middle three shorter. The

[35] The exception is the sixth book, to which Valmiki gives the title Yuddhakanda^[*] , "The Book of War."

[36] In all citations, the kand^[*] will be indicated by number: "1" for Balkand^[*] "2" for Ayodhyakand^[*] , etc.

[37] This book contains a controversial stanza that some commentators regard as an interpolation; the Kashiraj edition, for example (published by the maharaja of Banaras under the editorship of Vishvanath Prasad Mishra) assigns no number to the troubling stanza (although it includes it), yielding an Ayodhya of 325 stanzas.

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shortest book, Kiskindha^[*]kand^[*] , which describes Ram's encounter with the monkeys who will be instrumental in recovering his abducted wife, serves as a turning point in the narrative. Much of the first and last books consists of extended "introduction" and "epilogue" to the core narrative, which begins about halfway through the first book and ends about a third of the way into the final book.

The term "stanza" reflects no equivalent term in Hindi but is a useful designation for the conventional divisions of the text, which are based on a repeated sequential use of two meters: caupai and doha .^[38] The former refers to a two-line unit containing four equal parts. Its individual lines are each known as an ardhali (half) and comprise thirty-two "beats" or "instants" (matra ), the metrical units of most Hindi prosody, which are based on the perceived relative duration of long and short vowels. Each ardhali is divided in turn into two feet (pad ) of sixteen beats, separated by a caesura (indicated in writing by a vertical line called a viram , or "stop"; a double viram marks the end of a full line). A sample line from Balkand^[*] is given below; vowels marked with a macron and diphthongs are regarded as long and carry the relative weight of two beats; the others are short.

akaracarilakha caurasi | jatijivajala thala nabha vasi ||

(There exist) 8,400,000 forms of life, born by four modes, dwelling in water, on earth, and in the atmosphere.
1.8.1

Although in theory a caupai should consist of two such lines, in practice the term refers to any single line in this meter, and a person asked to recite "a caupai " from the Manas will usually quote an ardhali such as the one given above. Moreover, many stanzas contain an uneven number of lines, indicating that Tulsidas himself did not feel constrained to place such verses in pairs. Most modern editions of the Manas number each line in caupai meter as an individual unit, and this convention will be followed here.

As the epic's predominant verse form, caupais^[*] have been likened by the poet to the lotus leaves that crowd the surface of a lake. They are interspersed, however, with the blossoming lotuses of more "ornamental" meters. The most common of these is the doha and its variant form, the soratha^[*] . A doha is a couplet, each line of which consists of two unequal parts, usually of thirteen and eleven beats respectively; in reci-

[38] For a general introduction to Hindi prosody, see Kellogg, A Grammar of the Hindi Language; caupai meter is discussed beginning on p. 578.

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tation, the break between the two parts of each line can be discerned, but in notation it is not shown.

Hearing this, people who lived along the road
came running, leaving homes and work.
Delighted to behold the embodiments of love,
all obtained their births' reward.
2.221

A soratha^[*] is a doha's mirror image: two lines each divided into eleven and thirteen-beat segments, with the rhyme falling at the end of the first segment rather than at the end of the line.

Shiva's heart was greatly agitated
but Sati did not perceive his secret.
Tulsi says, he craved sight of the Lord;
his mind hesitated but his eyes were greedy.
1.48b

Throughout the epic, each series of caupais^[*] —commonly eight or ten lines—is bracketed by one or more dohas or sorathas^[*] . These couplets are numbered consecutively throughout each book, and it is the repeated structural unit of caupais^[*] + doha/soratha^[*] that I refer to as a "stanza." Thus, for example, the citation "7.24.6" refers to the sixth line in the twenty-fourth stanza of the seventh book (Uttar kand^[*] )—the stanza that concludes with doha number 24.^[39] When a stanza concludes with a series of couplets, it is the convention to assign them a single number and to designate individual couplets with letters of the alphabet. Thus "24c" refers to the third of a series of couplets at the end of stanza twenty-four.

The use of the caupai-doha stanza as the basic structural unit for a poetic narrative was not original to Tulsidas but appears to have had a long history in the North Indian vernaculars. In Avadhi itself—the dia-

[39] One could argue that a stanza might just as reasonably begin with a doha/soratha^[*] , since all but one of the kands^[*] open with invocatory verses in these meters. In fact, both notation systems are in use, but oral performers typically seem to regard the doha as a unit of closure, and the authoritative commentary Manaspiyus^[*] (ed. Sharan) prefers this approach. As a consequence of this convention, invocatory dohas will be designated by a "zero" (0) in notation; thus "2.0" refers to the doha that opens Ayodhyakand^[*] .

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lect of the Manas —it had been used in a number of allegorical romances by Sufi poets, beginning with the Candayan of Maulana Daud (c. 1380) and including the great Padmavati of Malik Muhammad Jayasi (c. 1540).^[40]

A third meter that occurs with fair frequency in the Manas is harigitikachand —"meter of short songs to Vishnu"; this is generally shortened to chand in notation. Verses in this meter seem to be inserted at moments of heightened emotion and serve to elaborate on something that has already been described rather than to advance the flow of the narrative, for which the more prosaic caupai is preferred. Chands are nearly always placed between a group of caupais^[*] and their concluding couplet; thus they are contained within "stanzas" as defined above, and in my notation simply continue the numbering of stanza lines. A chand comprises four equal lines of twenty-six to thirty beats. The final syllables in each line rhyme and there is often internal rhyme within lines; the rhyme scheme, combined with the frequent use of alliteration, gives this meter an especially rhythmic and musical quality. Appropriately, it is the chands among all the verses of the Manas that are most often set to melodies and sung as devotional hymns.^[41] A famous example occurs in the passage celebrating Ram's liberation of Ahalya—a woman transformed into a stone by her husband's curse. The first two lines of this chand read:

parasata pada pavanasoka nasavanapragata^[*]bhaitapa punjasahi |
dekhata Raghunayakajana sukha dayakasanamukha hoi kara jori rahi ||
1.211.1,2

In his 1887 translation F. S. Growse attempted to simulate the rhyme scheme of some of these musical verses; for the above lines he offered:

At the touch so sweet of his hallowed feet,
she awoke from her long unrest,
and meekly adored her sovereign lord,
awaiting his high behest.^[42]

Whatever the aesthetic merits of this approach, it necessitated taking considerable liberties with the text; a more literal translation would be:

[40] On the genre of Sufi premakhyan (allegorical romance) in Avadhi, see Millis, "Malik Muhammad Jayasi."

[41] For example, in one commercial recording of Manas hymns (SriRamayanamah^[*] , Bombay: Polydor of India, Ltd., 1979), nearly all the selections are in chand meter.

[42] Growse, The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , 133.

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At the touch of his holy feet, which destroys grief,
that treasury of asceticism became manifest.
Beholding Ram, who delights his devotees,
she stood before him with palms joined.

Meters other than the caupai , doha/soratha^[*] , and chand occur only rarely in the Manas . They include invocatory, Sanskrit slokas , which open each book and close the final one, and occasional hymns of praise (stuti ) spoken by characters—learned Brahmans or sages—who might be expected to address the Lord in Sanskrit; several of these are widely used in worship today.^[43] Another Hindi meter called tomar chand (spear meter)—similar to the caupai but with shorter and more strident lines—occurs twice during battle scenes (3.20.1-13; 6.113.1-16), to which it was evidently thought to be well suited.

Apart from its division into books and stanzas, the Manas has, in the view of its audience, a further implicit division into episodes (prasang^[*] ) and dialogues (samvad ). These appear to reflect the conventions and constraints of oral storytelling and sequential recitation.^[44] Their acquired names are often printed in the margins of modern editions for the convenience of devotees and are commonly invoked in oral discourse on the epic—thus a traditional scholar may be asked to expound the "episode of the departure for the forest" (van-gaman prasang^[*] ) or "Ram's dialogue with the boatman" (Ram-kevat^[*]samvad ). Certain beloved passages have acquired names that seem to bear little relation to their narrative content; thus, Lakshman's philosophical discourse to the tribal chief Guha in Book Two^[45] is commonly referred to as Laksman^[*]gita (The Gita expounded by Lakshman)—implying the similarity of its message to that delivered by Krishna to Arjuna in the Mahabharata .

One other convention deserves note, for it is used frequently in all the recurring "ornamental" meters of the epic: the bhanita , or signature of the poet. This usually consists of the word "Tulsi" or "Tulsidas" placed in a line in such a way that it must be construed to mean "Tulsidas says . . ." or taken as an interjection ("O Tulsi!"). Although such a signature was a convention in medieval lyric poetry that added an element of personal witness to the verses, within the epic scope of the Manas it was adapted to serve an additional purpose: to remind the

[43] E.g., Atri's hymn to Ram (3.4.1-24); Sutikshna's hymn to Ram (3.11.3-16); a pious Brahman's hymn to Shiva (7.108.1-18).

[44] Weightman suggests that it is in part the episodic structure of the Manas that makes it "read" badly in translation and gives Western readers a poor impression of the effect of the original; "The Ramcaritmanas as a Religious Event," 60.

[45] 2.92.3-94.2.

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audience of an overarching design within which the narrative is set. This design and its significance must now be briefly examined.

The Fathomless Lake: Tulsi's Narrative Framing

Recent studies in sociolinguistics and in the rhetorical approach to literary criticism have drawn attention to the technique of "framing"—the framing of communication in general and verbal art in particular. This concept has been developed and applied by linguists and anthropologists and most recently by folklorists interested in the study of "verbal art as performance"—to cite the title of an essay by Richard Bauman that makes a valuable contribution to performance theory. Drawing on the work of Gregory Bateson, Bauman notes,

It is characteristic of communicative interaction that it includes a range of explicit or implicit messages which carry instructions on how to interpret the other messages being communicated. This communication about communication Bateson termed metacommunication. . . . In Bateson's terms, "a frame is metacommunicative. Any message which either explicitly or implicitly defines a frame ipso facto gives the reader instructions or aids in his attempt to understand the messages included within the frame."^[46]

The theme of the present study is the presentation of a literary work to its audience, and the metacommunicative strategies employed by oral performers to "frame" the Manas are discussed in due course. It is useful, however, to begin by examining the ways in which the text itself has been deliberately "framed" by its author—that is, placed within contexts that provide the listener/reader with clues for interpreting its message. Such framing, I suggest, is not simply a literary convention but a cue to the intended use of the text in cultural performances.

Two explicit frames are built into the structure of the Manas ; each has implicit dimensions that may not be readily apparent to readers of a different cultural background. The first is the title itself, which is introduced in the thirty-fifth stanza and then developed into a complex allegory comprising more than a hundred lines. I identify this frame as "first." because, in selecting this title, Tulsi knew it was likely to be the first message about the work that would reach a listener. Hill's English rendering, "The Holy Lake of the Acts of Ram," though unexceptionable, inevitably fails to convey the mythological associations that the title evokes for the North Indian listener.

[46] Bauman, Verbal Art as Performance, 15. Bauman cites Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine, 1972), 188.

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The name Ram , no doubt the poet's own dearest element in the title—his mantra, or spiritually efficacious word par excellence—needs little elaboration here; not merely the name of the hero of the narrative, it was to Tulsi and his fellow devotees the personal designation of the supreme godhead.

I venerate "Ram," the name of Raghubar,
the cause of fire, sun, and moon.
Breath of the Veda, filled with Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva,
incomparable, qualityless; treasury of all qualifies.
The Great Mantra that Shiva repeats
and his instruction, giving liberation in Kashi.^[47] 1.19.1-3

The Sanskrit word carita (from the verbal root car, "to move") is a perfect participle connoting "going, moving, course as of heavenly bodies," and by extension, "acts, deeds, adventures."^[48] The compound Ram-carit is thus roughly synonymous with the term Ramayana^[*] , if the latter is taken to mean "the goings [movements] of Ram" (Rama + ayana ). Yet carit is not random movement but expresses the inherent qualities of the mover; in Sanskrit literature the word has been used in the titles of biographies of religious figures and idealized kings (e.g., the Buddhacarita of Asvaghosa; the Harsacarita^[*] of Bana). A Manas scholar in Banaras once expressed the meaning of carit with an analogy to geometry: a car is a moving point and its carit the circle it inscribes—the track or orbit that records its passage. In this interpretation, Ram is the moving point of the infinite that passes through our world, the track of his passage being delineated by his carit. For Tulsidas, this was an appropriate term to describe the earthly activities of one whom he revered as the incarnation of God.

Manas is derived from the root man —"to think, believe, imagine, perceive, comprehend."^[49] This root and its derivatives—such as the Sanskrit word manas —pose a perennial problem for the translator, in that no one English term can express both its cognitive and its emotional connotations: it is frequently rendered as either "mind" or "heart." From this term is derived the word manas —"arising out of manas, "

[47] Mahatma Gandhi's reputed dying exclamation, "He Ram!" (O Ram!) offered a dramatic example of the widespread habit of invoking the name in moments of crisis. Tulsi helped popularize the belief that it is by virtue of the power of Ram's name, which Shiva whispers in the ear of anyone who dies in Kashi (Banaras), that liberation from further rebirth is assured.

[48] Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, 389.

[49] Ibid., 783.

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"belonging to manas "—that is, mind/heart-born. Used as a proper noun, this is the name of a remote Himalayan lake, situated on the Tibetan plateau at the foot of Mount Kailash, the abode of Shiva. References to this lake are found in numerous texts, beginning with the Mahabharata and Ramayana^[*] epics.^[50] In later religious poetry, the lake is often used as a metaphor for the mind itself in its highest aspect: its waters are said to be as pure and still as the consciousness of the contemplative is to become, and on their surface floats the stainless hamsa^[*] bird—symbol of the Self—which feeds on the pearls it plucks from the lake's clear waters. The discriminating hamsa^[*] also possesses the ability to separate milk from water, a skill that Tulsi likens to the ability of saintly people to grasp the good and discard the evil in worldly life (1.6).

The Manas , then, is the "Holy Lake" of Hill's translation: a profound reservoir gleaming at the foot of towering white peaks.^[51] This, the poet identifies as the fountainhead of Ram's mysterious carit, from which the discriminating listener, hamsa -like^[*] , may extract clues to Ram's reality. Tulsi attibutes the origin of the narrative and its title to Shiva himself.

Shiva formed this and placed it in his heart.^[52] Finding good occasion he narrated it to Parvati.
Upon contemplation, the excellent name,
Ramcaritmanas , he joyfully gave it.
1.35.11,12

He then begins his allegory, first situating the mystical lake in the "soil of good intelligence" in the depths of the heart, and the source of its water in the boundless ocean of scripture—the revealed Vedas and the Puranic "old stories" (1.36.3). The saints are likened to clouds? which draw this water from the depths and release it in showers of "Ram's fame"—the stories of his deeds, which enter the heart through the channels of the ears and so fill the Manas reservoir.

Having established the origin of his lake, the poet describes its surroundings:

[50] For relevant references, see Mani, Puranic Encyclopaedia, 474. The Valmiki text states that the river Sarayu, which flows through Ayodhya, arises from this lake (1.23.7,8 in the Critical Edition)—an idea that is developed in Tulsi's allegory. See Bhatt and Shah, eds., The ValmikiRamayana^[*] .

[51] Hagiographic tradition maintains that Tulsi's wanderings included a visit to this remote and sacred goal of Hindu pilgrims. For a modern account of the pilgrimage, see Hamsa, The Holy Mountain.

[52] There is a play on words here, as the term I have rendered "heart" is actually manas .

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The four lovely and excellent dialogues,
shaped by lucid contemplation,
are the four charming ghats
of this holy and auspicious lake.
1.36

The word "dialogues" (samvad ) refers to the other explicit set of frames, which will be discussed shortly: the narrating of the Manas as a series of interwoven conversations; these form the banks of this lake of Ram's glory. The poem's seven books are called "stairways" or "descents" (sopan ), leading down the ghats into the water, while its meters are the lotus leaves and flowers that cover the water's surface (1.37.1,4,5). Living creatures are added to the picture—the "bees of good deeds," which sip the nectar of the lotus verses; the "swans" of wisdom and detachment, and the "fish" of various poetic devices and moods, which dart about below the water's surface (1.37.7,8). Surrounding the lake is a forest of mango trees—"the assembly of devotees"—and the faith of these good people is the spring season, which ever reigns there (1.37.12). Thus the poet introduces into his landscape the potential audience of his poem.

Those who diligently sing these acts
are the skilled guardians of this lake.
Men and women, ever listening with reverence,
are the fortunate gods, masters of this Manas .
1.38.1,2

Similarly, lustful and vindictive people are said to be like crows and storks (the former impure, the latter scheming, according to the Hindu bestiary), but the lake holds no attraction for them, as it is free of the "snails, frogs, and scum" of sensual stories (1.38.3,4). Should they ever get a glimpse of it—which is all but impossible, since access is blocked by "straying paths of bad company" and "towering peaks of domestic cares" (1.38.7,8)—they will go away disappointed, without having drunk or bathed in its waters, and will afterward abuse it to others and discourage them from setting out to find it. Yet,

All these obstacles cannot obstruct one
on whom Ram has looked with grace.
Such a one bathes reverently in the lake
and the three terrible fires cannot scorch him.
Brother, let him who yearns to bathe in this lake
diligently cultivate the company of the holy!
1.39.5,6,8

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The poet then describes how .the "gladdening current of love" arises from the lake to become the "river of lovely song," which he identifies with the Sarayu, the sacred stream of Ayodhya. Later it joins the "Ganga of devotion to Ram" and the mighty Son, signifying "the fame of Ram and his brother in battle," until the many merged streams flow into "the ocean of Ram's inherent being" (1.40.1-4). Succeeding stanzas further expand the allegory, likening the major episodes of the narrative to various features of the river and its banks, and to the appearance of the river in each of the six seasons of the North Indian year (1.42.1-6).

The imagery of the Manas Lake and its ghats is not confined to this introductory passage but is reaffirmed periodically throughout the poem. Each of the seven books, true to the allegory, is termed a "descent" into the lake (sopan ). Balkand^[*] is the "first descent," Ayodhya is the second, and so on, each stage in the narrative drawing the listener deeper into the waters. In the final book, the image of the lake is reintroduced in the dialogue between Bhushundi and Garuda, which serves as an epilogue to the narrative.^[53]

The appropriateness of Tulsidas's choice of the Manas Lake as an allegorical frame for his epic is best appreciated in light of the role that the text has come to play in North Indian society—as a great reservoir of myth, folk wisdom, and devotional expression on which people constantly draw. The image also suggests a source of meaning that can never be exhausted, a story that can be continually reinterpreted and expanded on; this concept, as will be seen, is a presupposition of all Manas performance, as is the notion that there can never be a single definitive interpretation of the text.

The second explicit framing device in the Manas —the presentation of the narrative through a series of four dialogues—exemplifies a traditional pattern in Indian literature: the presentation of a text as an oral narration by a particular teller to a particular listener, within a carefully delineated context. Although hardly unique to India, this device has been used there with very striking consistency, even outside the realm of "story" literature; indeed many premodern philosophical, aesthetic, and scientific treatises were framed as contextualized dialogues. Even though it is not possible here to explore all the ramifications of the use of this kind of framing in Indian literature, a few relevant points may be raised. First and most obviously, the technique suggests an intimate and unbroken connection between oral and written literature, and a contin-

[53] See, for example, 7.92, which speaks of the "fathomless reservoir of Ram's qualities," and 7.113.9, where the theme of the title and its significance is again taken up.

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uing awareness of the former as a source and model for the latter. A second point involves the problematic but utilitarian notion of India as a "traditional" society—as contrasted to the equally problematic category "modern." A traditional society is generally held to be one in which norms of behavior established or thought to have been established in the legendary past are accepted as authoritative and frequently invoked in reference to present behavior, and in which "originality" that involves a radical departure from these norms is discouraged (although originality in the reassertion or even the reinterpretation of norms may be highly prized). In such a society, as Bauman has observed, an "appeal to tradition," often accompanied by a "disclaimer of originality" (at least as regards the content to be communicated) can serve as one of the most important "keys" to performance—a necessary cue to prepare listeners/readers to become an audience for a display of verbal art.^[54]

A perhaps more useful designation for India is as a "context-sensitive" society, in which people perceive much of their behavior against a background of social, religious, and historicolegendary contexts.^[55] Performances in such a society must be "keyed" by reference to traditional frames, because frames provide the contextual information necessary for the reception of a communication as a performance and thus become constitutive of the very nature of verbal art.

Like the society for which it was created, the Manas too is "context-sensitive," and one of its relevant contexts is the tradition of oral retelling of the Ram legend—a story that people invariably hear long before they ever (if ever) read it. Early in the first book, the poet tells how he came to hear it.

I too heard from my guru
that story, in Sukarkhet.
But I didn't comprehend it,
being but an ignorant child.
Teller and listener should be treasuries of wisdom;
Ram's tale is mysterious.
How could I, ignorant soul, understand,
a fool in the clutches of the Dark Age?
But then the guru told it again and again,
and I grasped a little, according to my wit.
That very tale I set in common speech,
that it may enlighten my heart.
1.30a,b; 1.31.1,2

[54] Bauman, Verbal Art as Performance, 21.

[55] This concept was first brought to my attention by A. K. Ramanujan; personal communication, February 1979.

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Tulsidas's "appeal to tradition" and "disclaimer of originality" goes beyond this bit of autobiographical detail, however, for his retelling of the legend of Ram is set within the context of no less than four narratives—the "four excellent dialogues" mentioned earlier. They are introduced in a passage immediately preceding the lines just cited (which themselves identify the fourth teller/listener pair: Tulsidas himself and his audience):

Shiva formed this beautiful story
and then graciously related it to Parvati.
The same he gave to Kak Bhushundi,
recognizing him as Ram's devotee, and worthy of it.
From him then Yajnavalkya obtained it
and he recited it to Bharadvaj.
1.30.3-5

The four frames thus implied may be diagramed as in Figure 2.^[56]

Such narrative genealogies are common in Hindu literature, and a large number of medieval religious texts, especially those of the tantric tradition, ultimately trace their teachings to dialogues between Shiva and Parvati. Tulsi was thus appealing to a well-established tradition in his choice of Shiva as the primal narrator; he was also buttressing one of his prime theological positions—the fundamental compatibility of Vaishnavism and Shaivism—by depicting Shiva as a model devotee of Ram. But Tulsi's sequence of narrative frames is not merely a textual genealogy, cited at the start of the work and not referred to thereafter; all four narrators remain actively present throughout, and at any given moment one of them is always speaking, addressing his respective listener. Even in straightforward narrative passages, the poet interjects frequent asides from speaker to listener, including a vocative identifying the latter (such as "O Best of Birds!"—an epithet of Garuda—or "O Uma!"—another name for Parvati) and hence, by extension, the narrator as well. The transition from story to frame and back again is often abrupt and may strike the Western reader as a gratuitous interruption of the tale. Yet the device occurs with such frequency that one must assume it to be an important element in the poet's strategy; evidently Tulsi expected his audience to remain continuously aware of all four narrative

[56] The diagram postulates a "chronological" transmission, but in fact the exact sequence is a matter of debate. The ambiguity in my translation reflects that of the original: does "him" in the third verse refer to Shiva or to Bhushundi? Other passages confuse the issue further—at one point Shiva is described as hearing the story from Bhushundi (7.57), who in turn is said to have learned it from the sage Lomash (7.113.9,10); the unraveling of such enigmas is among the special tasks of traditional expounders. All commentators agree, however, that Shiva's narrative is the archetype, and Tulsi's its most removed descendant.

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Figure 2.
Narrative framing in the Manas

frames. A good example is the passage in Sundar kand^[*] (5.41.6-8) describing Ravan's abuse of his brother Vibhishan, who has advised him to return Sita to Ram:

It seems appropriate that the frame diagram presented earlier should resemble a telescoping box-lens, or a pool set below a series of descending steps. These metaphorical images suggest the poet's strategy in periodically shifting his focus: now placing listeners in the midst of the story, now withdrawing them to a desired distance in order to call their

[57] See also 1.124a,b, in which a single doha/soratha^[*] pair includes comments from Shiva, Yajnavalkya, and Tulsi.

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attention to contextual material in light of which he desires them to. interpret it; of alternately immersing them in the depths of his lake and lifting them back to its peripheral ghats. Tulsi thus weaves a series of "commentaries" into the very fabric of his text.

Another frame is implied as well: just as Tulsi is relating the story and commenting on it to his listeners, so they in turn may become tellers of and commentators on his story through the performance genres that have developed around its recitation. It is worth noting here that the tradition of oral and written commentary on the Manas discussed in chapters 3 and 4 came to regard the four dialogues precisely as contexts or "approaches" (as a ghat is an approach to a body of water) according to which the Ram story might be interpreted. The diagram favored by most commentators disregards the chronological element of story transmission and assigns to each dialogue and ghat a cardinal direction, setting them equidistant from the lake/narrative, as shown in Figure 3.^[58]

A brief account of the interrelationship between the epic's narrative frames will serve both to suggest how the poet uses them to emphasize various aspects of the story, and to acquaint the reader with some of the distinctive features of Tulsi's retelling. The opening of Book One places the listener at the outer rim of the first diagram; speaking in his own voice, Tulsidas invokes the blessings of all beings in the mighty labor he is about to undertake and presents his allegory of the mystical lake. Stanza 43 concludes this introduction and begins the account of the meeting between the sages Yajnavalkya and Bharadvaj in the latter's hermitage at Prayag. Bharadvaj presses Yajnavalkya to tell him the story of Ram, feigning confusion over the question of whether the legendary prince of Ayodhya could be the same transcendent Ram whose name "the immortal Shiva eternally repeats" (1.46.3). Here Tulsi introduces one of his major themes: the reconciliation of the nirgun^[*] (quality-less) and sagun^[*] (endowed with qualities) conceptions of divinity. Yajnavalkya relates how a similar confusion once arose in the mind of Shiva's wife, Parvati, in her former incarnation as Sati. This leads to a lengthy retelling of the Puranic story of Sati's suicide at King Daksha's sacrifice; her rebirth as Parvati, daughter of Himalaya; and eventual reunion and marriage with Shiva (1.47-1.103). Tulsi's exuberant retelling of this popular myth runs to nearly six hundred lines—about one-seventh of Balkand^[*] .^[59]

[58] The diagram is adapted from one given by Sharan in Manas piyus^[*] . 1:583. I have heard similar diagrams "drawn" by oral expounders.

[59] Tulsi makes one of the motivating factors in Sati's suicide Shiva's renunciation of conjugal relations, due to her having once taken the form of Sita in order to test Ram's omniscience and having thus become in effect his own "mother" (1.54.1-1.64.8).

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Figure 3.
The four ghats

With the conclusion of this tale, Yajnavalkya recounts a dialogue between the reunited Shiva and ' in which the god accedes to his wife's request that he relate the entire story of Ram. Shiva thus takes over as narrator from stanza 112 onward, bringing the listener to the innermost frame of the diagram. Yet he too does not begin the story at once but instead sets the stage for Ram's advent with a series of Puranicstyle tales involving curses and boons—the plot devices par excellence of traditional Indian fiction—that will precipitate the births of the principal characters.^[60] It is only with the conclusion of the lengthy tale of King Pratapbhanu (some 240 lines) and at a point nearly midway through the first book that Shiva's actual narration of the Ram story begins—with the birth of the demon Ravan, his austerities and attainment of sovereignty over the world, and the gods' plea to Vishnu that he

[60] The stories of Jay and Vijay (1.122.4-123.2); Kashyap and Aditi (1.123.3,4); Jalandhar and Vrinda (1.123.5-124.3); Narad's intoxication (1.124.5-139); Svayambhu Manu and Shatrupa (1.142.1-152); and King Pratapbhanu (1.153.1-176).

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take human form to destroy their enemy. Following the birth of Ram in stanza 191, the traditional narrative proceeds without major digression through the six succeeding books, concluding with Ram's triumphant return to Ayodhya and a glowing description of his idyllic reign.^[61]

The central narrative concludes in stanza 51 of Uttar kand^[*] , but the Manas continues for another eleven hundred lines. This lengthy epilogue focuses for the first time on the second narrative frame: the dialogue between the crow Kak Bhushundi and the divine eagle Garuda (Vishnu's symbolic vehicle), the special theme of which is the saving power of bhakti in the Dark Age. Like each of the earlier dialogues, it begins with a query. Garuda is confused by his master's apparent helplessness when in the human form of Ram. To enlighten him, Shiva sends him to meet one of the most unusual characters in the epic—an immortal being in lowly form (for the crow is said to be the "untouchable among birds"), who endlessly narrates the story of Ram to an audience of fowl on the summit of the mysterious Blue Mountain (nilparvat ) and reveals to Garuda the salvific power of Ram's name.^[62]

The epic's concluding passages withdraw through the narrative frames to return listeners to the starting point. With the close of the Bhushundi-Garuda dialogue, Shiva delivers a final paean of praise to the story, ending with the famous dhanya (blessed, fortunate) passage, a ringing affirmation of the epic's values.

Blessed is the land where flows the Ganga,
blessed the woman faithful to her lord,
blessed the king who clings to proper conduct,
blessed the twice-born who strays not from his code,
blessed is wealth given in charity,
blessed intelligence grounded in virtue,
blessed the hour of companionship with the holy,
blessed a life of service to the twice-born.

O Uma, blessed and holy is that family,
revered in all the world,
in which is born a humble man
firmly devoted to Raghubir.
7.127.5-9, 7.127

[61] Tulsi chooses to omit the "tragic" episodes of Valmiki's Uttarakanda^[*] —the second banishment of Sita, the exile of Lakshman, and Ram's ultimate death. These are well known m his audience, however, and an eighth kand^[*] incorporating them is often appended to bazaar editions.

[62] Bhushundi (a.k.a. Bhushunda) was already known to the author of the c. twelfth-century Yoga vasistha^[*] ; see Venkatesananda, The Concise Yoga Vasistha^[*] , 276-87. Tulsi's introduction of this narrator, however, probably owes more to a postulated Sanskrit Bhusundi^[*]ramayana^[*] , a text of which has recently been published; see Singh, ed., Bhusundi^[*]ramayana^[*] ; for a grief discussion of this text, see Singh, "Bhusundi^[*] Ramayana^[*] and Its Influence on the Medieval Ramayana^[*] Literature."

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Parvati adds her own hymn of gratitude, whereupon—as in the beginning of the epic—Tulsi assumes his own voice to conclude.

By Ram's grace and according to my intelligence
I have sung this holy and beautiful story.
In this Dark Age there is no other expedient,
neither yoga nor sacrifice, formula, austerity nor ritual,
but to remember Ram, to sing "Ram,"
and to listen constantly to Ram's noble acts!
7.130.5-7

The Manas and the Western Audience

British orientalists of the colonial period, many of whom served in India as administrators or missionaries, found that the Ramcaritmanas embodied what seemed to them the noblest aspects of Hindu culture, which they contrasted to other "degenerate" tendencies—especially the tantric tradition and the devotional cult of Krishna. Even Sir George Grierson, who could at times be so sympathetic to the Hindu ethos, praised the role of the Manas in "Hindustan" by noting that "it has saved the country from the tantric obscenities of Shaivism . . . the fate which has befallen Bengal."^[63] F. S. Growse, who served as district magistrate of Mathura, urged the epic's adoption by the colonial Education Department, noting that "the purity of its moral sentiments and the absolute avoidance of the slightest approach to any pruriency of idea . . . render it a singularly unexceptionable text-book for native boys."^[64]

Drawn to the text by what they saw as its moral tone and influence, Western scholars devoted themselves to mastering its language and to making it accessible to other English readers through translations, grammars, and theological studies—the latter often couched in patently Christian terms. Having acquired an intimate knowledge of the epic, they expressed high appreciation for both its religious message and its literary worth. Grierson hailed Tulsidas as "the greatest of Indian authors of modern times" and called his epic "worthy of the greatest poet of any age."^[65] Vincent Smith, author of a biography of Tulsi's contemporary Akbar the Great, hailed the epic's creator as "the greatest man of his age in India, greater even than Akbar himself."^[66]

[63] Grierson, "Tulasidasa, the Great Poet of Medieval India," 2.

[64] Growse, The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , lv.

[65] Grierson, "Notes on Tul'si Das," 89, 260.

[66] Smith, Akbar, The Great Mogul, 417.

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The twentieth century has seen the publication of four English translations,^[67] French, German, Italian, and Russian versions, and a modest number of textual studies that view the epic in the light of religious and literary problems.^[68] More typically, however, the epic has been summarily treated by Western scholars as one of many "regional Ramayans" standing in the long shadow of the Valmiki epic. This attitude reflects the classicist bias of many nineteenth-century scholars, who viewed vernacular works as little more than late, vulgar paraphrases of India's "true" literature, which was in Sanskrit. Thus, even though Winternitz noted in his History of Indian Literature (1927) that the Manas had become "almost a gospel for millions of Indians," he nevertheless grouped it among Valmiki's "imitations and translations in the vernaculars"—these were dismissed in a single paragraph, while the Sanskrit text received a forty-two-page treatment.^[69]

By the middle of the twentieth century, however, anthropologists and historians of religion began to take a closer and less biased look at the vernacular devotional literature figuring so prominently in contemporary religious practice. The majority of studies that have emerged from this new perspective have focused on the cult of Krishna and its relevant texts,^[70] a preference that may in part reflect a reaction to the prejudices of earlier scholars who had condemned the erotic scenarios of the Krishna legend. In contrast, Tulsi's Ram—who was frankly admired by the Victorians—now appeared a tame and even prudish figure ("so good you can't bear him!" as a teacher of mine once remarked). Those twentieth-century scholars who continued to be attracted to the Manas often revealed an explicitly Christian orientation and put forward a view of the epic as a sort of potential meeting-ground of Hinduism and Christianity. Thus, Macfie declared that the concept of "incarnation" "found its highest and most spiritual expression in the work of Tulsidas. His hero is the worthiest figure in all Indian literature."^[71] Whaling's work reveals a similar concern for interreligious dialogue and compares

[67] In addition to that of Growse (Allahabad, 1887), those of Chimanlal Goswami (Gorakhpur, U.P.: Gita Press, 1949-51), W. D. P. Hill (London, 1952), A. G. Atkins (Delhi, 1954), and S. P. Bahadur (Varanasi, 1978).

[68] These include the studies by Vaudeville, Whaling, and Macfie cited in nn. 13, 14, and 3; Carpenter, The Theology of Tulasi Das; and Babineau, Love of God and Social Duty in the Ramcaritmanas .

[69] Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature 1:477.

[70] Prominent examples are Singer, ed., Krishna: Myths, Rites and Attitudes; Dimock, The Place of the Hidden Moon; Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura ; and Hawley, At Play with Krishna.

[71] Macfie, The Ramayan of Tulsidas, 252.

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Tulsi's concept of the divine name to the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit.^[72] Although such perspectives represent one legitimate approach to the Manas , they tend to set the text in a framework that may be unappealing to readers who do not share the authors' religious commitment.

If Western study of the Manas has suffered from the neglect of vernacular traditions in general and of Ram-bhakti in particular, it has been plagued by the additional fact that the epic comes across badly in translation. While we may accept the dictum that "poetry is that which is lost in translation" (a maxim brought to my attention by A. K. Ramanujan), we might add that not all poetry gets "lost" to the same degree. Tulsi's rhyming verse is highly musical and makes frequent use of alliteration; since, as will be seen, the Manas is normally chanted or sung, its rhythmic patterns and rhymes contribute a great deal to its effect. Even if such patterns could be reproduced in English, they would tend to sound contrived or even ludicrous.^[73] Consider, for example, the following line from a chand in Book Six in which retroflex and dental t/t^[*] sounds are used to suggest the explosive cacophony of battle:

Needless to say, such alliteration, far from sounding ludicrous in Hindi, appears to be a conventional key to a poetic mood of enhanced emotional texture.

Whereas early Western scholars were often lavish in their praise of the Manas as literature, the authors of the two most influential English translations have been more equivocal in their judgment. Both Growse and Hill readily concede that the epic is a great work of art "from the Oriental point of view," but they warn readers of features of the poem that may prove "irritating to modern Western taste."^[75] Both cite the epic's repetitiveness and use of stock epithets and metaphors: for example, "lotus feet" and "streaming eyes." Growse concedes that some

[72] Whaling, The Rise of the Religious Significance of Rama , 292. Note that the author of a recent rhyming-verse translation, A. G. Atkins, served in India as a Protestant minister. The Austrian Jesuit Camille Bulcke was also among Tulsi's admirers and noted the utility of quoting from the Manas in his sermons; "Ramacaritamanasa and Its Relevance to Modern Age," 61.

[73] See, for example, Growse's effort quoted above. Atkins's translation is similarly unfaithful and stilted.

[74] 6.49.13; Hill renders this "The formidable monkey warriors closed; they were cut to pieces but gave no ground though their bodies were riddled with wounds"; The Holy Lake of the Acts of Rama , 389.

[75] The first phrase is from Hill, The Holy Lake of the Acts of Rama , xx; the second appears in Growse, The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , lvii.

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Western epic poetry is equally repetitious, and recent research on oral and literary epic should make scholarly readers, at least, more sensitive to the typically "formulaic" flavor of the genre. But there is another dimension to Tulsi's apparent "repetitiveness" that neither Growse nor Hill mentions: the fact that some of it reflects more on the deficiencies of the English lexicon than on the formulaic expedients of the Hindi poet. I have counted, for example, twenty-nine different Sanskrit and Hindi terms for "lotus" in the Manas , including such lovely expressions as jalaj (born of the water), saroj (born of the lake), vanaj (born in the forest), nalini (long-stemmed one), rajiv (blue-streaked flower), and tamras (day-flower). For any of these, given considerations of space and syntax, the English translator has little choice but to insert "lotus"—thus obliterating all the subtle shades of meaning the original terms can convey.

For example, in one of the epic's opening sorathas^[*] , the poet invokes Vishnu in the following words:

nilasaroruha syama | taruna aruna varijanayana ||
1.0c

A near-literal translation would be:

Dark one [resembling a] blue arising-from-the-waters [lotus],
[with] eyes [resembling] newly blossomed dawn-red born-from-the-waters [lotuses].

Here it might appear that Tulsi is merely invoking the well-worn convention of Vishnu's "lotus-eyes" and "blue-lotus-colored" body; yet the poet's choice of the words saroruh and varij highlights the relationship of the flower to its watery environment and thus subtly invokes the mythological image of Vishnu reclining on the cosmic ocean. This is underscored in the second line of the couplet:

karau so mama ura dhama | sada chirasagarasayana ||

Make my heart [your] abode,
[you who] eternally recline [on] the milk-ocean.

The above translations also suggest another feature of Tulsi's poetry that is lost in translation: its great compression, resulting from the frequent ellipsis of various syntactic elements. To avoid burdening the text with bracketed explication, the translator must reinsert all such deleted elements, producing a result—whether in a prose or verse format—that is "prosaic" in the extreme. Moreover, every translation implies an in-

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terpretation, and this destroys the ambiguity that highly compressed lines often contain—their susceptibility to expansion from a variety of interpretive viewpoints. It is this very quality that renders the Manas eminently suitable for exposition and commentary and is thus germane to all the varieties of oral performance that are examined in this study.

On Poetry and Performance

In everyday usage the most common associations evoked by the word "performance" are the ones relating to conventional Western entertainment forms such as the theater and concert hall, the cinema and electronic media. In recent years, however, scholars in a number of disciplines—notably anthropology, folklore, and sociolinguistics—have begun to apply the term to a wider range of human activities. Although ethnographers have long been interested in such "cultural performances" as folk dances and dramas and the recitation of folktales by professional bards, recent studies have found the notion of performance equally useful in examining such activities as the telling of parables and jokes in everyday situations, the formulation and delivery of religious sermons, and even the construction of "street speech"—such as the humorous boasts and insults exchanged by urban American black youths.^[76]

The direction of such studies has been toward viewing performance as "a mode of language use, a way of speaking"; this in turn has led to efforts to develop a comprehensive theory of performance as "a species of situated human communication."^[77] Both the above phrases are taken from an essay by Richard Bauman that makes an important contribution to the development of such a theory. Bauman first points to the increasingly encompassing use of the term "performance," to convey a dual sense of artistic action —the doing of folklore—and artistic event —the performance situation, involving performer, art form, audience, and setting.^[78] He emphasizes the need to identify the features that distinguish performance from other "interpretive frames" for communication, and then offers a "very preliminary attempt" to specify the interpretive guidelines set up by the "performance frame":

Fundamentally, performance as a mode of spoken verbal communication consists in the assumption of responsibility to an audience for a display of

[76] See, for examples, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "A Parable in Context"; Rosenberg, The Art of the American Folk Preacher (for further discussion of Rosenberg's work, see below Chapter 4, The Nature of Katha ); Labov, Language in the Inner City.

[77] Bauman, Verbal Art as Performance, 11.

[78] Ibid., 4.

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communicative competence. This competence rests on the knowledge and ability to speak in socially appropriate ways. . . . From the point of view of the audience, the act of expression on the part of the performer is thus marked as subject to evaluation for the way it is done, for the relative skill and effectiveness of the performer's display of competence. Additionally, it is marked as available for the enhancement of experience, through the present enjoyment of the intrinsic qualities of the act of expression itself. Performance thus calls forth special attention to and heightened awareness of the act of expression and gives license to the audience to regard the act of expression and the performer with special intensity.^[79]

Bauman's analysis suggests two criteria for identifying an act of expression as a performance. The first relates to the performer's "assumption of responsibility" and so might be termed a "formal" criterion; it accords well with one of the dictionary definitions of performance as "execution in a set or formal manner or with technical or artistic skill."^[80] The second criterion relates to the potential effect of a performance on participants—its ability to enhance or intensify experience—and so might be termed "affective." Performance events, then, are demarcated by both formal and affective boundaries from ordinary events and communications.^[81] They "break through" into the mundane context, signaling their presence by formal cues but justifying their existence by their ability to transform and enhance life, often by reference to impersonal values and experiences.^[82]

One of the underlying concerns of Bauman's essay is to free scholars of verbal art from a text-centered orientation. He urges that "it is no longer necessary to begin with artful texts, identified on independent formal grounds and then reinjected into situations of use, in order to conceptualize verbal art in communicative terms. Rather, in terms of the approach being developed here, performance becomes constitutive of the domain of verbal art as spoken communication."^[83] This insight reflects a sea change in folklore studies from the period of the nineteenth-century folktale collectors who regarded oral performances as just another category of texts and the performers (if they noted them at all) as mere channels—often annoyingly imperfect ones—through which such

[79] Ibid., 11.

[80] Webster's New International Dictionary, unabridged, 2d ed. (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam Webster, 1960), p. 1818.

[81] Bauman is careful to point out, however, the difficulties inherent in any attempt to define "ordinary" speech (Verbal Art as Performance, 10). It may be more useful to speak of a continuum of communicative frames, some of which have a higher "performance density" than others.

[82] Cf. Hymes, "Breakthrough into Performance."

[83] Bauman, Verbal Art as Performance, 11.

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texts were transmitted.^[84] The realization of the unique, emergent qualities of oral performances came as something of a revelation and perhaps inevitably led to a reaction against the text-centered approach. Albert Lord's study of Yugoslav bardic poets, The Singer of Tales (1960)—a work of such originality and vigor that it still tends to be invoked, Ganesh-like, at the beginning of any major study of oral performance—conveyed an infectious enthusiasm for bardic recitation and gave recognition to the previously unknown art of "oral-formulaic composition." It also gave rise to an "oral-formulaic school" of literary critics who, in a sort of retroactive revenge on textualists, set out to dissect various literary classics in order to demonstrate that they were, in effect, imperfect records of "lost" oral performances.^[85] Ironically, although The Singer of Tales grew out of Millman Parry and Albert Lord's research on the Homeric epics, its author came to take a negative view of the relationship between oral and written literature, suggesting that the latter was parasitic on the former and that its dissemination would inevitably result in the decline and disappearance of oral traditions.^[86]

Perhaps influenced by this view, much recent folklore research has focused on nonliterate cultures with vigorous oral traditions—often small communities located in remote areas of the globe. Such studies appear to transport us to a "pure" realm of oral communication, untainted by the written word. Bauman writes confidently of the possibility of creating an "ethnography of verbal art" for such cultures as the Plateau Malagasy of Africa, the Ilongot of the Philippines, or the Quechua speakers of Bolivia—a project that would involve the cataloging of all the "major speech styles" in the community.^[87]

Scholars interested in the verbal art of North India, however, face a more complex situation: a society possessing a literary heritage dating back three millennia, but much of which has always been orally transmitted and performed; a mixed literate and illiterate culture that supports an extraordinarily broad range of performance genres and an intricate text/performance relationship that should rarely be excluded from any comprehensive study of either text or performance. Thus, for example, it has recently been observed with regard to certain oral tradi-

[84] Thus, for example, the British scholars who recorded the Alha cycle in North India patronizingly regarded their bards as the imperfect preservers of what they mistakenly assumed to be a "lost" twelfth-century epic; see Grierson's introduction to Waterfield, The Lay of Alha .

[85] For an appraisal of the school's contribution, see Finnegan, Oral Poetry, esp. 69-73.

[86] Lord, The Singer of Tales, 137.

[87] Bauman, Verbal Art as Performance, 12, 13, 20.

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tions that the modern proliferation of printed texts has not put an end to performances (as Lord's prognosis would suggest) but has in some cases encouraged them or has led to the development of new performance styles.^[88] On the other hand, scholars of classical Indian literature are finding increasingly that they must come to terms with reflections of "performance" in their texts.^[89] For the study of performance in the Indian setting, then, it may sometimes be necessary "to begin with artful texts," because many oral performances in this culture do precisely that. As we shall see, a religious epic like the Manas has for its audience an inherently "emergent" quality: it is a means rather than an end, a blueprint rather than an artifact.

The strength of Bauman's contribution lies in its emphasis on a broad and inclusive vision of performance as "a unifying thread tying together the marked, segregated esthetic genres and other spheres of verbal behavior."^[90] This vision of performance as a mode of communication with both formal and affective dimensions serves here to relate such seemingly disparate activities as the solitary chanting of the Manas by an individual in his own home and the presentation of a drama based on the text by a large ensemble of costumed actors before an audience of fifty thousand people.

The identification of performance as a distinctive communicative frame sets it in contrast to other such frames, and despite the difficulty in defining what is "normal" or "ordinary" speech in a given society, most speakers would identify some such category as their "standard" form of communication.^[91] In the realm of literature there is an equivalent dichotomy between prose and poetry; the former, albeit bound by its own formal conventions, represents the written equivalent of "ordinary speech" and hence is the medium of choice for the description of the "prosaic" world of everyday life. Yet what separates poetry from prose is not merely the formal conventions (such as meter and rhyme) by which a poet "assumes responsibility for a display of communicative competence" but also poetry's potential to provide "enhancement of experience" and "heightened awareness."

The intimate relationship between poetry and oral performance is

[88] See, for example, Karine Schomer's work on the Alha tradition; "The Audience as Patron." A close parallel with the Indic situation is the oral-textual interaction in Malay, richly explored in Sweeney's A Full Hearing.

[89] E.g., the growing interest among Sanskritists in the oral-performance context of the Puranas; see Rocher, The Puranas^[*] , esp. 53-59; also Bonazzoli, "Composition, Transmission, and Recitation of the Puranas^[*] ."

[90] Bauman, Verbal Art as Performance, 5.

[91] E.g., the "everyday talk" of the Malagasy; the "stylistically unmarked 'straight speech'" of the Ilongot; Bauman, Verbal Art as Performance, 12-13.

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underscored by the fact that the spread of literacy and print technology does not necessarily increase the appreciation of poetry. In the modern West, near-universal literacy has been accompanied by the gradual eclipse of poetry by other written entertainment forms to the point that literature instructors have become accustomed to hearing students complain that they "like to read but hate poetry." Of course, students in literature classes continue to dutifully read the writings of poets; some may even have the chance to hear these writings recited by an inspired teacher—which is much better. But few today have the kind of repeated exposure to poetry that causes it to be, as our idiom so appropriately puts it, "learned by heart"—internalized to the degree that it can become self-performing within us. This is an essential part of the experience of poetry, and without this experiential/performative dimension it is hardly surprising that the popularity of the art has suffered.

Poetry has suffered too in its association with the act of "reading," which has become largely a private and silent experience.^[92] But although it is relatively easy to "read" a prose narrative or nonfiction work, it is (as has often been observed) more difficult to "read" a poem. Subjected to the kind of silent scanning normally given to prose literature, poetry tends to remain opaque and unrewarding, to seem either too obvious or too obscure. Of course, poetry of a sort retains mass popularity through one specific genre: the popular song. Here technology on a mass scale—but in an oral rather than a print medium—has tremendously enhanced the popularity of poetry, whatever one may think of its quality or predominant themes.

The Ramcaritmanas was the product of a culture that lacked a strong prose tradition, widespread literacy, and the technology for mass dissemination of texts. All of these factors have, in the modern West, given rise to a style of appreciation of literature known as "reading," which despite its undoubted merits, does not appear to be well suited to the appreciation of poetry. That the Manas was not meant to be "read" in this sense—that it was always intended to be performed—is repeatedly emphasized in the text itself. Although a verb meaning "to read" (bancna ) occasionally occurs at appropriate moments when written communications are "read,"^[93] this verb is used nowhere in reference to the "reading" of religious truths or of the Manas itself. Instead, the

[92] For an excellent summary of recent research on the technological and cultural transformations associated with this development and their impact on the experience of sacred texts, see Graham, Beyond the Written Word.

[93] E.g., King Dashrath reads (to himself) the letter from King Janak telling of Ram and Sita's marriage (1.290.4); Ravan receives a letter from Lakshman and "has it read" to him (bancvana , a causative form of bancna ) by one of his ministers (5.56.10).

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verbs commonly used are "to recite" (kathna ), "to tell" (kahna ), "to sing or chant" (gana ), and "to listen" (sunna ). These verbs occur especially in the concluding verses of each book, which are known as "hearing the fruits" (phalsruti ) because they describe the benefits that the text offers to devotees. Sundar kand^[*] concludes:

Singing the virtues of Raghunayak yields all blessings.
Reverently listening, one crosses the ocean of existence without a boat.
5.60

The closing chand of Kiskindha^[*]kand^[*] declares:

Whoever hears, sings, recites, or meditates on this story,
attains the highest state.
4.30.15

Such verses are found in many Hindu texts. They are not simply a convention, but a reflection of an ancient belief in the efficacy of hearing, reciting, and memorizing the sacred word—a belief reflected in the traditional categories of literature, which are conceptualized not as read but rather as "heard" (sruti ) and "remembered" (smrti^[*] ).^[94] The Manas grows out of a religious milieu in which oral performance is both the basic medium for the transmission of religious truths and a ritual act and discipline possessing inherent virtue and power.

If the Manas was not intended to be read, we may add that it is not "read" in the modern sense—except perhaps by Westerners who labor through it out of cultural or historical curiosity or by a somewhat larger number of Indian students who dutifully digest excerpts from it in college literature courses, much as their Western counterparts "read" Milton and Shelley.^[95] Such readers make up one audience for the text, but they are hardly its prime constituency. The latter is composed of the many millions of Hindi-speaking Hindus for whom the Manas is both

[94] Tulsidas also advocates the memorization of his epic. The phalsruti of the final book (7.130.15) urges one to memorize (literally, "place in the heart") a specific number of verses; the numerical terms (sat panccaupai ) can be interpreted in several ways. Hill translates "five or six' (The Holy Lake of the Acts of Rama , 498) but most traditional commentators favor "105" or even "500." Some have attempted to identify which verses the poet had in mind, and published anthologies exist for the convenience of devotees who wish to memorize the "essence" of the epic.

[95] I was fortunate in that the teacher with whom I first read the Manas , Kali C, Bahl, encouraged me from the beginning to chant it aloud and taught me melodies to which each of its meters could be sung. I found my comprehension and appreciation of the text greatly enhanced by this practice. I also began memorizing verses that pleased me especially; this too proved helpful, as each newly acquired line became an internalized paradigm that helped me to understand other passages. I am convinced that both recitation and memorization (however unpopular the latter may be with Western students and educators) are vital to the appreciation of poetry.

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an epic song to be savored aesthetically and a liturgy that plays an important role in everyday life—with the added observation that these two forms of "appreciation" generally cannot be separated.

It has often been noted that the popularity of the Tulsidas epic crosses the boundary between educated and illiterate. In discussing the appeal of folk dramas based on the epic, Kapila Vatsyayan observed, "There is no question of making demarcation between the literate and the illiterate in this sphere, for many times a seeming illiterate will know the story and the words better and with a greater understanding of its value than one who reads it only as an intellectual exercise."^[96] If people who cannot read know not only the story but also "the words" of a text, then the question arises as to how they have learned them—obviously by hearing them performed. But when, how, and by whom is the text performed? A researcher interested in these questions will find only a few intriguing clues in scholarly sources. Thus Allchin, in the introduction to his translation of Vinay patrika , cites the popularity of the Manas and mentions "generally accepted schemes of division so that the whole work may be completed in either nine or thirty parts. Such public recitations are one of the strongest parts of Vaishnavite religious education. They are also supported by a vast body of private readers or reciters who regularly read the story of Ram in their own homes, often completing a whole reading each month."^[97] Vatsyayan mentions another kind of performance—that of a professional reciter and singer "who recites the theme either as pure recitation or as the sung word. This Kathakara is known to all parts of India. Sometimes he is called just a Kathakara , sometimes a Rama-Kathakara or a Hari-Kathakara . He is a professional singer, an artist who is a reciter, singer, musician, mono-actor and instrumentalist, all at once."^[98]

Allchin's and Vatsyayan's observations suggest two performance genres that utilize the epic, neither of which has been systematically studied. A third genre that has received some attention is that of Ramlila dramas, although in this case most of the research has focused on theatrical and staging conventions rather than on the role of the epic text in the performances. These three genres—simple recitation, recitation plus exposition, and full dramatic enactment—may be ordered in a sequence proceeding from simpler to more complex, and so the structure of this study may be visualized as shown in Figure 4.

The recitation of the Manas (Manas-path^[*] ) can be carried on by a

[96] Vatsyayan, Traditional Indian Theatre, 111.

[97] Allchin, The Petition to Ram , 65.

[98] Vatsyayan, Traditional Indian Theatre, 111.

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Figure 4.
Schema of Manas performance

single person and there need be no listeners; this is clearly the simplest way to perform the text and is represented by the inner frame of the diagram. Even though one might suppose that in this case there is a performer but no audience, it would be more correct to say that performer and audience are the same; for both the criteria of performance noted earlier are present here, although reflected in a solitary activity. This kind of performance is discussed in Chapter 2. Recitation's more complex variant, in which there is an outside audience and the reciters assume a professional status, is examined in the same chapter, along with a special style of group singing of the epic (Ramayan^[*]gana or dhun ) that is popular in the Banaras region.

The exposition of the text (Katha or pravacan ) necessarily involves both performer and audience. The latter may be of any size, and today the use of electronic media has brought this art to huge audiences. The performers in this tradition are largely professionals; the patronage relationship thus implied contributes to the further complexity of the genre, which is treated in chapters 3 and 4.

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The third and, technically speaking, most complex genre is the one in which the text serves as the basis for a full-scale enactment of the Ram legend (Ramlila ), requiring the cooperative efforts of large numbers of people—reciters, prompters, actors, costumers, prop makers, and musicians—and aiming to present the text and its story to the widest audience. This genre is discussed in Chapter 5.

Just as my diagram of the epic's narrative "genealogy" had an implied outer frame—the performance and interpretation of the text by Tulsi's own hearers—so the present diagram has an encompassing matrix: the social and cultural context within which these performances unfold, which influences them and is influenced by them in diverse ways. This context and these influences are considered in the concluding chapter.

Banas: City of Tulsidas

The genres of Manas performance outlined above may be found throughout a large geographical area, including not only the Hindi-speaking states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and Rajasthan—a composite region with a total population of roughly three hundred million persons—but also adjacent states where Hindi is not the predominant language. Thus, the Manas has long been popular among Hindus in the Punjab and among certain Vaishnava communities in Gujarat, as well as among transplanted Hindi-speaking groups in other regions. Some influence of the epic is said to extend eastward into Orissa and southwestward into the Kannada-speaking state of Karnataka.^[99] A more detailed survey of the geographical extent of Manas performances would be interesting, but it is beyond the scope of the present study.

Although the kinds of performances I have studied occur regularly throughout the above-mentioned region (and I have included some data from a variety of locations—e.g., Delhi, Ayodhya, and Chitrakut), I have chosen to focus my research on a single locale in order to acquire

[99] Kali C. Bahl described to me his childhood exposure to the Manas in Amritsar and has documented Katha programs there. It is also noteworthy that a major nineteenth-century commentary on the epic was composed in mixed Punjabi-Hindi dialect by Sant Singh, a Sikh (see Chapter 3, The Manas-Katha Tradition). The popularity of the Manas in Gujarat is attested to by Gandhi's early exposure to the text in Kathiawar (see Chapter 6, The Politics of Ramraj ), and a number of prominent contemporary expounders are Gujaratis. In recent times, Calcutta and Bombay have developed into major centers of Manas performance, because of the presence of wealthy Hindi-speaking patrons (see Chapter 6, People of the Book). On the popularity of the epic further to the east and south, see Induja Awasthi, "Ramcaritmanas and the Performing Tradition of Ramayana," 507-8.

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Figure 5.
Banaras: bathers at one of the city's many ghats

a greater familiarity with the range of the performances that occur there and to develop closer relationships with the people who create and patronize them. This locale is the city of Banaras, located on the western bank of the River Ganga (Ganges) in eastern Uttar Pradesh—a city that occupies a special position in the Hindu world and in the Manas tradition.

The city is commonly known by three names—Banaras, Kashi, and Varanasi—each used in a different context. "Varanasi," the least commonly used name, appears in formal writing and on government maps and signboards. "Banaras" is favored in everyday usage to refer to the city as an economic and cultural unit.^[100] "Kashi" is used in religious contexts to refer to the city as a holy place (tirth ), the boundaries of which are strictly defined and do not correspond to the urban limits of modern Banaras. The distinction is important; when I asked one religious scholar whether he lived in Banaras, he replied pointedly, "No, I live in Kashi," adding, "Banaras is only a city, but Kashi is a sacred abode [dham ]."

The praises of Kashi/Banaras have been sung by countless poets, mystics, and theologians and more recently by a number of anthropologists and historians of religion interested in the rites and institutions of popu-

[100] Diana Eck points out that this name is not, as is often claimed, a recent Anglicization of Varanasi, but a vernacularization with a long history; Banaras, City of Light , 26.

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lar Hinduism.^[101] Diana Eck's notable study presents a vivid and sensitive account of the city as a sacred complex and attempts to convey to Western readers the experiences and associations it evokes for Hindu pilgrims. Drawing heavily on Sanskrit mahatmya literature glorifying the city, this study understandably presents a somewhat idealized view of its subject, and although it also offers much information on the contemporary religious life of Banaras, this is slanted toward the Shaiva sites and institutions for which the city is famous. Yet Banaras today epitomizes the multiform synthesis of Vaishnava and Shaiva outlooks that, partly as a legacy of Tulsidas himself, is characteristic of popular Hinduism in North India.^[102] Since my own study will be concerned with performances that unfold within the context of everyday life in Banaras, it seems appropriate to present here some additional data on the city's contemporary ambience and ethos and on its special relationship to the Manas and the Ram devotional tradition.

During the two decades prior to the period of my field research (1982-84), Banaras grew from a city of some five hundred thousand people to an urban complex of more than one million. Little substantial modification was made to the physical layout of the older sections of the city to accommodate this increased population, and although new suburbs sprang up on three sides, their growth was largely unplanned and placed a further strain on the city's already-overburdened road network, as well as on its water, electricity, and waste disposal systems. A particularly serious crisis developed because of the discharge of enormous quantities of sewage into the Ganga—which is the source of the city's water supply, its principal bathing place, and the embodiment of its special sanctity. In earlier times, lower population and traditional methods of waste disposal (involving the daily transport of nightsoil to outlying fields) had kept river pollution at lower levels; the advent of flush toilets and sewage mains precipitated an ecological crisis, reflected in a high incidence of gastrointestinal problems and a high infant mortality rate in the region. In the early 1980s, a grass-roots campaign was organized, headed by a traditional religious leader, to educate the city's residents about the gravity of the pollution problem and to urge the local government to take remedial measures. Despite official indifference and

[101] E.g., Sukul, Varanasi down the Ages ; Vidyarthi et al., The Sacred Complex of Kashi ; Eck, Banaras, City of Light .

[102] Although Eck presents data on a number of Vaishnava sites (e.g., the Bindu Madhav Temple) and festivals, she sometimes accords them rather peremptory treatment. Thus her account of Dashahra, which climaxes the Ramlila cycle, labels the event a "Kshatriya festival" and conveys the impression that the lila is restricted to the royal production at Ramnagar; Banaras, City of Light , 269.

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continued popular belief in the inviolability of Ganga water, the campaign had a modest impact and attracted world attention to the city's plight.^[103]

Banaras is certainly not unique in its pollution problems, although its inhabitants' intimate relationship with the river that is their city's most powerful symbol makes the problem particularly visible. The overcrowding of the central city in recent years and the resultant traffic problems (it is sometimes literally impossible to move, even on foot, in the downtown area at peak traffic periods), as well as increasing levels of air and noise pollution, are all common to much of urban India—indeed to urban centers throughout the world. The fact that, despite such problems, Banaras retains its magnetic appeal for Hindu India and continues to evoke the fervent pride of its own citizens invites us to consider just what it is that is so special about this city.

Most residents would probably sum it up with the word Banarsipan —"Banarsiness"—an allusion to the city's characteristic ethos, which is thought to combine spirituality and worldly pleasure, sanctity and satisfaction.^[104]Banarsipan is held to manifest itself in a carefree life-style characterized by such qualities as "passion," "intoxication," and "joy" (mauj, masti , and anand ) and in the cultivation of "passionate engagement" (sauk ), especially in religious or cultural activities. Educated Hindu Banarsis often allude to the city's unique "culture" or "civilization" (samskrti^[*] )—a term that, to Western readers, may suggest universities, museums, libraries, and concert halls. All these institutions exist in Banaras—most in varying degrees of dilapidation—but the culture-specific sense of "culture" here may be better understood in terms of smaller and less centralized units: neighborhood temples that stage oratorical and singing programs; merchants' associations that sponsor neighborhood fairs; ethnic social clubs that mount elaborate puja rites, accompanied by processions and musical performances; families that sponsor annual poetic competitions or music recitals in honor of a revered ancestor's death-anniversary; aged pandits who live in tiny rooms off dingy alleys but carry whole libraries of Sanskrit and Hindi texts in their heads; household-oriented schools of music and dance under the

[103] The Svaccha Ganga Abhiyan (Clean Ganga Campaign) was led by Dr. Virbhadra Mishra, who was both the mahant (hereditary head) of the popular Sankat Mochan Temple and a professor of hydraulic engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University. Partly as a result of this campaign, in 1986 Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi cited the cleanup of the Ganga as one of his government's priorities.

[104] The concept of Banarsipan was first brought to my attention by Nita Kumar, whose excellent study of urban recreational activities includes much insight into its implications; The Artisans of Banaras, 8.

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tutelage of renowned gurus; groups of migrant laborers from the hinterland who gather on street corners to sing their village folksongs for hours. The city's annual festival cycle is complex;^[105] its cultural performance cycle is beyond cataloging. On one particularly busy weekend in October 1983, for example, there were some forty Ramlila pageants running concurrently in various neighborhoods, along with thirty (Muslim) Muharram processions and more than a hundred elaborate Durga Puja tableaux mounted by Bengali cultural associations^[106] —not to mention the usual assortment of nautanki^[*] folk plays, all-night concerts, annual temple srngar^[*] festivals, wrestling competitions, and semi-public functions such as marriage celebrations with their bands, processions, and fireworks.

For a visiting student of cultural performance no less than for a resident Banarsi, such events help to compensate for the inconveniences of everyday life in the City of Light—for the fact that shops, schools, and offices rarely open on time, function indifferently, and occasionally close without warning; for the fact that water and electricity supplies sometimes fail and telephones are dead more often than they are alive. But if cultural programs are what help to make Banarsi life worthwhile, they may also contribute to making it difficult. If the bureaucrat one needs to see is not at work yet at 11:00 A.M. (or is present but nonfunctioning), it is possibly because he was up all night at a Ramlila , srngar^[*] , or nautanki^[*] program. Where else in the world could thousands of people routinely take a month's leave from work each year to attend the all-engrossing lila cycle at Ramnagar? It happens in Banaras.

The words Banarsipan and samskrti^[*] suggest music and ceremony, dance and decoration. They also evoke a range of atmospheric associations: temples, Brahmans, and even cows are part of "culture" here, and so are cacophonous gongs, bells, and conch-trumpets at 4:00 A.M. , awakening the deities to the accompaniment of loud cries of "Har Har Mahadev!" (two names of Shiva, uttered in his praise). Banarsi culture is also, quite literally (borrowing Richard Bauman's phrase) "a way of speaking," for apart from the many kinds of performances that occur in the city, Banarsi speech itself has a high "performance density," manifested in the speaker's ability to shift artfully between vocabularies and dialects appropriate to various contexts—for example, from a highly Sanskritized suddh ("pure" or "refined") Khari Boli Hindi used for for-

[105] For a partial festival calendar, see Eck, Banaras, City of Light , 257-78.

[106] This information is courtesy of Linda Hess, who interviewed the harried Superintendent of Police; personal communication, October 1984.

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mal speech, to the Bhojpuri dialect associated with the city's rustic hinterland, or the Urduized Hindustani preferred by the city's Muslims—and also to ornament his speech with folk maxims and quotations from poetry and popular songs.

The Banarsi ethos manifests itself too in a certain plucky cynicism, an urbanity that is at once worldly-wise and otherworldly, and a simultaneous local self-deprecation and intense pride. One frequently hears complaints of "our wretched eastern U.P.," where everyone is poor, the authorities are corrupt, and nothing functions as it should. Then one is reminded, "Look here, brother, this is Kashi!"—the Center of the World, or rather, not in the world at all, since it is balanced atop the trident of Lord Shiva, and all who live and die here, whether religious or not, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, even (as someone told me) "flies and mosquitoes," are guaranteed liberation from further rebirth by the grace of Shiva and the power of the name of Ram. This embarrassment of spiritual riches becomes itself a source of verbal humor, as when cycle-rickshaw drivers teasingly hail one another: "He guru-ji! He mahatma-ji!"—"O Master! Great-souled One!"

It is well known that Banaras is the City of Shiva, who is adored here in many forms and under many names: as Rudra and Bhairav, awesome lords of ghosts and spirits; as the transcendent and resplendent Mahadev of the Puranas, husband of Parvati and father of Ganesh, with his trident, serpent necklace, and long matted locks from which the River Ganga pours forth—a slayer of world-threatening demons and a dancer who beats out the rhythm of the aeons on his double-headed drum. He is also the Bhola Nath of folklore—the "mad" or "simple" god—intoxicated both with divine wisdom and with bhang (a cannabis preparation much consumed in Banaras), a wandering ascetic who is also a storehouse of erotic energy and fertility. For Banarsis he is especially Vishvanath—the Lord of the World—who is all these things and also a smooth, dark stone, roughly the size and shape of an ostrich egg, set upright in a gold-plated recess in the inner sanctum of the city's most famous temple, which lies at the heart of a maze of narrow, congested lanes near the riverfront. In everyday speech this deity is affectionately known as "Baba Vishvanath"—Papa Vishvanath—the city's benign and paternalistic ruler as well as its supreme preceptor, who imparts the liberation-granting mahamantra to all who leave their bodies within his special jurisdiction. This "great mystic utterance" is widely held to be the name Ram, which is inscribed on countless walls and doorways in the city. Shiva Vishvanath is thus a special patron of the Ram bhakti tradition as well as the original narrator of its great epic.

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It is said that Tulsidas came to Banaras for his religious education and studied for fifteen years under the guidance of the Vedantic scholar Shesh Sanatan at Panchganga Ghat. The story is not improbable, since Tulsi was clearly familiar with a good deal of Sanskrit religious literature and Banaras was then, as it is today, a leading educational center. He is thought to have returned to the city sometime in the fifth decade of his life and to have remained in it, apart from periods of travel, until his death in 1623. Today, numerous sites in the city are associated with him. There is a house at Prahlad Ghat, near the northern limits of the sacred area, where an image of the poet has been placed and where, neighborhood people say, "Goswami-ji lived when he was writing the Ramayan." A plaque on an old building near Gopal Mandir, a Vaishnava temple in the Chowkhambha area of the central city, identifies the room in which Tulsi is supposed to have composed his Vinay patrika . Some two kilometers to the south, almost on the Assi creek forming the southern boundary of the holy city, stands a riverfront house in which the poet is believed to have spent his last years. Tradition holds that it was built by Todar Mal, a local landowner who was Tulsi's intimate friend and admirer. The tiny room that the poet is supposed to have occupied has been made into a shrine, and objects of veneration include a pair of wooden sandals and an image of Hanuman—one of roughly a dozen believed to have been established by the poet within the city.

More must be said concerning Tulsi's—and the city's—association with this deity, the "monkey god" whose vermillion-daubed images are among the most ubiquitous of Banarsi icons. A divinity who surely rose out of the "little" or folk tradition, Hanuman is a dispenser of power and potency. As a martial hero and Ram's victorious general, he is the patron deity of wrestlers (pahalvan )—young men who practice body-building and martial arts in gymnasiums or clubhouses (akhara^[*] ) situated along the ghats, most of which incorporate his shrines.^[107] But Mahavir, the "great champion," is also the patron of grammarians and students, fervently invoked before annual school exams and in the face of problems in general; the deity to repair to on "dangerous" days like Tuesday and Saturday, associated with malefic planetary influences. In this capacity he is primarily an intercessor figure, a middleman. The Hanumancalisa hymns:

You are the guardian of Ram's door,
there is no access without your leave!

[107] On the akhara^[*] culture of North India, see Alter, "Pehlwani. " Hanuman is discussed on pages 399-438.

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In the influence-conscious society of eastern Uttar Pradesh, such connections can make all the difference. I have heard oral expounders exclaim jokingly that there are more temples to Hanuman in Kashi than to Ram himself; this may well be true, and on a little reflection, it seems only appropriate. For as every U.P. politician knows, the key to getting the Great Man's ear is knowing the right person in his entourage. If Tulsi's Ram, in his endless perfection, seems distant and unattainable at times, his monkey servant is earthy and accessible. The fact that Hanuman is divine and can, like all divinities, be invoked in the most exalted terms (as "the ocean of wisdom and virtue" and "illuminator of the three worlds")^[108] never entirely obscures the fact that he is also a monkey, or rather a god in monkey form. Accounts of Hanuman's deeds often feature comic episodes arising out of his simian simplicity, crude strength, and occasional destructiveness. To laugh at these things is, for Hindus, in no way incongruent with reverence, and retellings of Hanuman's heroic mission to Lanka to find Sita—celebrated in Tulsi's Sundar kand^[*] —can alternately evoke laughter and tears.

A further point needs to be made concerning Hanuman. I have noted that a major theme of Tulsi's epic is the compatibility of the worship of Ram/Vishnu with that of Shiva. In this sphere too, Hanuman plays the role of intermediary and "bridges" the two traditions, even as, in the narrative, he leaps the sea separating the mainland from Lanka (where Ravan and his cohorts, like most Puranic demons, are devout Shaivas). It is said in the Manas that at the time when Ram was born in the house of Dashrath, "all the gods" took the form of monkeys and went into the forests to wait for him, to assist him in the war against Ravan (1.188.2-5). A popular tradition, widely current in the Banaras region, holds that Shiva became Hanuman and thus that the Son of the Wind (an epithet of Hanuman, whose father is usually said to have been Vayu, the wind god) is none other than a special avatar of the Great Lord himself. This idea, which was already current in Tulsi's day,^[109] remains a favorite theme of Manas expounders, who support it with their interpretations of certain verses.^[110] Such readings offer additional evidence of the syn-cretizing influence of the epic: Shiva, the primal knower of Ram's mysterious carit , does not merely enter the story as its original narrator but also becomes one of its best-loved characters.

[108] Hanumancalisa , 1.

[109] See Vinay patrika , 25.3 and 26.1.

[110] E.g., when Ram praises Hanuman on the latter's return from Lanka, the poet suddenly interjects, "Recalling that state, Parvati's lord was overcome with bliss" (5.33.2,3). The choice of participle is often cited to support the view that Shiva was "recalling" his own former experience.

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Further evidence of the commingling of the cults of Ram, Hanuman, and Shiva in the Banaras religious complex is provided in succeeding chapters, but one shrine needs special mention here. The Sankat Mochan (Liberator from Distress) Hanuman Temple is located in the southern section of the city and outside the traditional limits of the sacred area. Although far less ancient than the Vishvanath Temple, it can be said today to complement it in popularity, drawing worshipers from throughout the city and its environs. Most of the structures in the Sankat Mochan complex have been built within the past few decades (and the site appears to owe its popularity in part to the southward expansion of the city following the construction of Banaras Hindu University), but the main shrine encloses a stone image of Hanuman—now barely discernable as such beneath heavy layers of vermilion—believed to date to Tulsidas's time and linked to an important episode in the poet's legend.

Like Elijah and Khwaja Khizr in the Jewish and Sufi mystical traditions, Hanuman possesses physical immortality, for Ram is thought to have granted him the boon that he might retain his body "as long as my story is current in the world."^[111] The circumstances of the boon suggest the special association of Hanuman with the Ram-narrative tradition, for he is said never to tire of hearing the creative retelling of the deeds of his lord and thus is the special patron of oral expounders; it is still widely believed that he is present (albeit usually disguised) at every Manas performance. A well-known legend, first recorded in the Bhaktirasbodhini of Priyadas (c. 1713), concerns Tulsi's own encounter with the god.^[112]

It is said that Tulsidas was in the habit of retiring for his morning ablutions to a spot in the woods outside Banaras, taking with him a water pot with which to cleanse himself. On his return to the city, he would pour the small amount of water that remained in the pot at the foot of a certain tree. As it happened, this tree was the abode of a bhut (a type of ghost), who was greatly pleased with the daily water-offer-ing—for ghosts are always tormented by thirst and are happy to receive even impure water. One day the ghost appeared to the poet, thanked him for his longtime service, and offered him a boon; Tulsi replied that his life's desire was to obtain a glimpse of Lord Ram. "That's out of my league," said the ghost, "but why don't you ask Hanuman to arrange it?

[111] Shastri, trans., The Ramayana^[*] 3:516.

[112] For the original text and an English translation, see Growse, The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , xliii. The version given here is based on oral accounts and differs in some details from Priyadas's version.

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He comes every day to hear your Katha . He is disguised, but you may know him by the fact that he is always first to arrive and last to leave."

That evening when Tulsi took his seat on a ghat along the Ganga to recite and expound his epic of Ram, he observed that the first listener to arrive was an aged leper, who positioned himself unobtrusively in the rear of the enclosure. When the Katha was over, Tulsi quietly followed this old man, who led him out of the city and into a thickly wooded area—to the very spot where Sankat Mochan Temple stands today. There Tulsi fell at the leper's feet, lauding him as Hanuman and imploring his grace. "I know who you are. Help me! I want to see Ramchandra!" At first the old man pretended annoyed incomprehension: "Go away, you're mad! Why are you tormenting an old, sick man?" But the poet held firmly to the leper's feet and at last the Son of the Wind revealed his glorious form—

With golden-colored body shining with splendor,
like another Sumeru, the world-mountain.
4.30.7

The god blessed Tulsidas and instructed him to go to Chitrakut, the place of Ram's forest exile; there he would have his desired vision.^[113] Later, Tulsi showed his gratitude by causing an image of Hanuman to be erected at the spot where the god appeared to him—or rather, devotees believe, he used the power of his holiness to draw forth the image as an eternal saksat^[*] (visible to the eyes) manifestation of his beloved guide.

Although urbanization has in recent years engulfed the Sankat Mochan complex, some eight and a half acres of land remain as a preserve around the temple, and most of this has been left in a semi-wild condition: a mass of bamboo thickets and towering trees, appropriately infested with troops of chattering monkeys. Easily the most pleasantly situated temple in a city where green space is at a premium, Sankat Mochan has literally become a refuge for the urban population—for worship, prayer, and even for family outings on Sundays. It is also an important center for Manas performances. On any morning or evening people sit before the main shrine, reciting the epic—especially the beloved Sundar kand^[*] , which celebrates Hanuman's exploits—and every afternoon professionals expound the poem in the temple courtyard. In addition, there are twice-yearly exposition festivals, and on Hanuman's birthday (the full moon of Chaitra—March/April) there is all-night Manas singing by groups from all over the city. The temple also spon-

[113] The manner in which the instruction bore fruit is celebrated in another story; see Hill, The Holy Lake of the Acts of Rama , xi-xii.

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sors a Ramlila troupe, which stages an eighteen-day production of the epic during the Dashahra festival season. Thus, the temple serves as a locus for many of the performance genres to be discussed in this study.

One other shrine may be mentioned here; even though it is more a museum than a temple, it has become one of Banaras's biggest attractions and is revealing in its own way of the status of Tulsi's epic in this city. Tulsi Manas Temple, an enormous marble-faced edifice that stands in an ornate garden on the main road linking the city with the university, was built by a wealthy Calcutta merchant and opened by the president of India in the mid-1960s. The fact that the two levels of its inner walls bear the entire text of the Manas inscribed in white marble is but one of its curiosities. It also contains a life-sized mechanical image of Tulsidas, perpetually reciting his epic via an extremely scratchy recording; a library of Ramayan-related literature; and a sort of religious penny arcade where, for fifty paise (four cents), one may view a series of electrified dioramas of mythological scenes. Each year during the rainy season month of Shravan (July/August), the temple's expansive grounds become the setting for an outdoor fair that draws huge crowds, the centerpiece of which is a vast exposition depicting, through similarly motorized dioramas, every major episode in the Manas . This Disneyesque approach to the beloved Hindi epic—in an architectural setting that causes art historians to shudder—has scored a great popular success, and today hardly a pilgrim leaves Banaras without a visit to the Manas Temple.^[114]

To this brief sketch of Banaras as a setting for the life of a text I would add one small but telling vignette, which surprised and delighted me when I first became aware of it. Anyone who has traveled in South Asia has seen the ubiquitous "public carrier" trucks plying the countryside and noted the garish and grandiloquent folk art with which their carriages are usually adorned. In the Banaras region many of these trucks bear an additional touch: a half-caupai from the Manas painted on their sides. Several verses are in current use, but the most common one is drawn from Sundar kand^[*] and again has associations with Hanuman. As he is about to enter Ravan's fortress city, the monkey is challenged by a female demon who serves as its gatekeeper. When he knocks her down, she recognizes him as Ram's messenger and as the fulfillment of a

[114] Its fame has now inspired imitation; not to be outdone, an Ayodhya mahant in the 1970s solicited funds to erect a more-Sanskritic-than-thou "Valmiki Bhavan" similarly enshrining the 24,000 slokas of the Sanskrit Ramayana^[*] . This structure is roughly the size of an airplane hangar and has already become a great tourist attraction. Ironically, it is frequently used for Manas recitation performances.

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prophecy she heard long before concerning Ravan's eventual doom. Overcome with emotion (in Tulsi's world, even demons may become Ram devotees), she gives her blessing to Hanuman—and now to countless lorries, scooters, rickshas, pedestrians, and even an occasional foreign researcher:

Enter the city and carry out all your work,
keeping in your heart the Lord of Koshala!^[115] 5.5.1

[115] I.e., Ram; Koshala is another name for Ayodhya.

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Two
The Text in Recitation and Song

Whoever recites this with love,
utters, hears, or ponders it,
becomes enamored of the feet of Ram,
free of the Dark Age's stain, a sharer in auspiciousness.
1.15.10-11

The Varieties of Recitation

The recitation of Tulsidas's epic is one of the most visible—and audible—forms of religious activity in Banaras. It forms a part of the morning and evening worship of innumerable households, is broadcast by loudspeakers from the spires of many temples, and periodically, at the time of major public programs, echoes for hours each day through large sections of the city. Similarly, the singing of the text to musical modes with instrumental accompaniment is a popular evening pastime, and recently, the playing of a commercially recorded version of the sung epic has become a virtually predictable background to functions ranging from annual temple srngars^[*] to family mundan^[*] and marriage ceremonies.^[1] In order to understand the presence and role of the Manas in these

[1] Srngar^[*] (ornamentation): an annual ceremony in honor of the presiding deity of a temple or shrine, for which the shrine is lavishly decorated and a variety of cultural events are sponsored. Some data on these festivals are given in Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras , esp. 141-49; mundan^[*] (tonsure) is the ceremony of the first cutting of a child's hair. While many other childhood rituals have come to be rarely performed, mundan^[*] has grown in importance and, especially among middle-class families, is often the occasion for elaborate celebrations.

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varied activities, it is first necessary to examine some of the implications of the indigenous notion of "recitation" (path^[*] ) itself.

Whereas the term puja is generally applied to the most common form of worship in popular Hinduism (the veneration of a deity with offerings of flowers, incense, and lights, accompanied by prayers or hymns of praise), the term more often used for personal worship is the compound puja-path^[*] . The linking of these two terms is indicative of more than just the Hindi speaker's fondness for alliterative compounds. Path^[*] is a Sanskrit word meaning "recitation, recital, reading, perusal, study, especially of sacred texts";^[2] its presence in the compound reflects the importance of the oral/aural dimension of ritual and the notion that it should ideally include recitation of the sacred word. Since path^[*] can refer to recitation from memory as well as to reading aloud, it is an activity in which the illiterate as well as the literate can engage.

In principle, texts for recitation can be drawn from a vast field of sacred literature, much of it in Sanskrit: the Vedas, Upanishads, epics, eighteen major and countless minor Puranas, and numerous sectarian works. Certainly there are individuals whose daily path^[*] is taken from some of these works, such as the Bhagavadgita and the Valmiki Ramayana^[*] . But in practice, access to Sanskrit literature is restricted to a small segment of the Hindu population, and most path^[*] selections of any length tend to be taken from vernacular religious works, of which the most popular is the Manas .

Since the Manas is a narrative, the most logical way to recite it is sequentially from beginning to end. This is referred to as parayan^[*]path^[*] —"complete recitation"; most Manas reciters are engaged in a parayan^[*] of one kind or another. But because the text is of epic proportions and the amount of time most people can devote to daily recitation is limited, it becomes necessary to divide the book into segments that can be conveniently covered in daily installments. A common approach is to read a fixed number of stanzas daily, such as five, seven, or ten. At the charitable trust known as Chini Kshetra, near Dashashvamedh Ghat in central Banaras, the Manas is chanted each morning from 8:00 to 8:30 by some thirty small boys—Brahman students who have come to the city for religious studies—who proceed at the rate of five stanzas per day. Their parayan^[*] takes about seven months to complete, whereupon they begin another. Other people have told me that they recite "ten stanzas each morning and evening," "thirty-six stanzas a day," or some similar regimen. One young man, an aspiring vyas , or expounder of the

[2] Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary , 580.

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text, told me that he read the Manas for "one to two hours" every afternoon when he came home from college. When I asked how much of the text he covered during this period, he replied, "Generally only one or two lines, and never more than a stanza." Clearly, this man's path^[*] was not just recitation but involved (as he further explained) a careful study of the text with the aid of a commentary. His parayan^[*] , he said, would take five years to complete.^[3]

Individuals may proceed through the text according to some such regimen of their own choosing, but two formalized types of recitation are currently widely practiced: navah parayan^[*] , or "nine-day reading," and the thirty-day masparayan^[*] . (month's reading), Most printed editions of the epic contain annotations indicating stopping points for each of these sequential readings and also include detailed instructions in their introductory matter for accompanying ritual procedures. A third form of recitation is akhand^[*]path^[*] , or "unbroken reading"—the recitation of the entire Manas within a twenty-four-hour period.

Although there are various systems of dividing the text for sequential recitation, those in common use today are featured in the ubiquitous Gita Press editions of the epic, and they have some notable idiosyncrasies. The system of navahparayan^[*] , for example, is based on a purely mathematical division of the epic's 1,074 stanzas into daily installments of 119 or (on three of the days) 120 stanzas. But since the stanzas are of varying lengths, the length of the daily installments (and of the time required to recite them) varies accordingly, although the numerical count of the stanzas remains constant. In one nine-day program that I attended, for example, the amount of time devoted to the daily reading varied from about four to six hours.

The nine-fold division is, of course, quite independent of the epic's narrative structure. Thus, the third day of recitation concludes with the 358th stanza of Balkand^[*] (120 + 119 + 119 = 358), even though only three stanzas remain in this kand^[*] and so it might appear reasonable to finish it and be ready to begin Ayodhyakand^[*] the following day. More important to devotees, each day's reading is dominated by a key episode in the narrative. Thus, Day One is particularly associated with the story of the marriage of Shiva and Parvati, which forms part of Tulsi's "introduction" to the Ram story and occupies about 70 of the 120 stanzas recited that day. The high points of Day Two are the birth of Ram and the first meeting of Ram and Sita in King Janak's flower garden. Day Three is dominated by the marriage of Ram and Sita, and so forth. The

[3] Vidyabhaskar Tripathi, interview, July 1983.

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importance of these narrative focal points for nine-day recitation programs will become clear when I examine several programs in detail.

A mathematical division of the text into thirty parts for masparayan^[*] yields a daily installment of thirty-six stanzas; this is known as "balanced" or "even" reading (santulit path^[*] ).^[4] The Gita Press scheme, however, is anything but balanced—daily passages vary from as few as sixteen to as many as ninety stanzas—which is puzzling, since the system is presumably meant for the convenience of people with limited time for daily recitation. In any case, it is commonly held that undertaking a masparayan^[*] requires "an hour a day."

"Unbroken" recitation is, as the name implies, uninterrupted. The specific rites and rigors of this type of path^[*] are discussed below, in the context of a description of such a performance.

Spreading the Word: The Puranic Recitation Model

Although belief in the power of the oral sacred word dates back to the earliest period of Indo-Aryan culture, the notion of the social role of sacred text has changed considerably during the past two millennia. The preservation of the Vedic corpus was insured by an elaborate system of education within Brahman lineages, by the notion of the text as an efficacious mantra that could never be altered, and by the evolution of the spoken language, which fossilized and fixed the Vedic forms. The result was the extraordinary oral preservation of much of Vedic literature. But preservation and transmission need not imply propagation and dissemination. Oral performances of Vedic texts were not, apparently, fully public occasions; large segments of the population—notably, all women and Shudras—were forbidden ever to hear the sacred words. Indeed, the insistence on oral transmission in the Vedic educational system (which continued even into the period when writing had become commonplace and other religious texts were being written down) presupposed the view that texts such as the Rg^[*] veda were not merely too sacred to be written down but also too powerful to be made generally available. Access to the texts had to be restricted not only to specific persons but also to persons in specific conditions—to twice-born males who had entered a ritually pure state. Thus, even though Vedic literature was an "oral tradition," it was not, within historical times, a "popular" one.

[4] Reported by Pandit Ramkumar Das of Mani Parvat, Ayodhya, interview, April 1984.

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With the rise of devotional cults centered on post-Vedic divinities, the prevailing view of the accessibility of the sacred word underwent a profound change. The words of the scriptures—the newer epic and Puranic texts as well as the Vedic corpus—were still viewed as potent and efficacious. But in contrast to the generally elitist focus of the Vedic tradition, the devotional cults emphasized a relative spiritual egalitarianism and put forth the view that ultimate salvation lay within the reach of everyone, for it depended on the grace of a supreme deity—usually Vishnu, Shiva, or the Goddess—whom devotional theology placed far beyond the hierarchies of this world and whose primary relationship with humankind depended on bonds of love and compassion. Equally important, the medium through which people learned of this god was the "old story," the Purana.

The Puranas catalog the epithets and attributes of their chosen deities and detail instances of the god's compassionate intervention in cosmic affairs. They also announce—frequently and often at considerable length—their own efficacy and the many benefits to be derived from listening to, reciting, or copying them or causing others to do so. These texts emerged during the period when Brahmanic Hinduism was sustaining a severe challenge from the "heretical" sects of the Buddhists and Jains, who actively proselytized among occupational and ethnic groups deprived of status by the Brahmanical establishment. The response to this challenge involved not merely a restatement of the orthodox position but a new synthesis, which absorbed many aspects of the heterodox critique. Puranic Hinduism itself became proselytizing, and the fact that the primary media of its message of salvation were written collections of stories necessitated a new attitude toward the preservation and dissemination of text.

In the absence of printing, manuscripts had to be copied frequently in order to preserve them from the perils of the climatic cycle and from (in Anjaninandan Sharan's words) "his majesty the white ant."^[5] Communicating such texts to a predominantly illiterate audience necessitated frequent public recitation, and listeners were encouraged to memorize and repeat sections of them. All of these objectives are reflected in the texts, especially in the phalsruti verses, which detail the rewards attendant on hearing, reciting, or copying a Purana.

Examples of such built-in textual promotion appear in the c. tenth-century Bhagavatapurana^[*] , which became one of the most influential

[5] The phrase appears in his essay "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," in which he laments the disappearance of many old manuscript commentaries on the epic; in Poddar, ed., Kalyan^[*] : Manasank , 908.

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Vaishnava scriptures. The mahatmya of this text—a panegyric in six chapters—details the merits to be obtained from reciting or hearing it or from presenting a copy of it to a devotee. For example, it declares,

That house in which the recitation of the Bhagavata occurs daily, becomes itself a holy place, destroying the sins of those who dwell there. He who recites daily one-half or one-quarter of a verse of the Bhagavata , secures the merit of a rajasuya and asvamedha sacrifice.^[6]

But although grandiose rewards are said to attend upon even minimal involvement with the Bhagavata , the meritorious activity prescribed most often and in greatest detail is the hearing of the entire text over a period of seven days. The benefits of this procedure are emphasized repeatedly: it cancels out even such cardinal sins as the murder of a Brahman (4.13), bestows certain liberation (1.21), and is, in fact, superior to every other kind of religious activity (3.51, 52). The third chapter of the mahatmya explains the origin of this procedure as a concession to the constraints of the present Kali Yuga, or Dark Age.

Since it is [now] not possible to control the vagaries of the mind,
to observe rules of conduct,
and to dedicate oneself [for a long period], the hearing [of the Purana]
in one week is recommended.^[7]

The sixth chapter of the mahatmya is devoted to instructions for undertaking a recitation program, covering such details as the selection of an auspicious date and time for the program, the preparation of the site, and the dietary restraints and other vows to be observed by reciter and listeners. Such prescriptions suggest the ritual nature of the performance, which is further revealed by the repeated identification of the program as a "seven days' sacrifice" (saptahayajna ).^[8] However, although the sponsorship of this "sacrifice" is a matter of individual initiative (and the sponsor, like the Vedic patron, or yajamana , can expect to reap personal benefits from the performance), the program is to be a public rather than a private event. The instructions detail even the wording of invitations and announcements to be sent out, recommend that people attend "with their families," and specifically urge the program to be brought to the attention of women and Shudras—the very groups excluded from hearing the recitation of the Vedas.^[9]

Similar instructions can be found in other Puranic texts; they serve to remind us that the Puranas, in Giorgio Bonazzoli's words, "are not

[6] Srimadbhagavatamahapurana^[*] 1:17; mahatmya 3.29, 3.38.

[7] Ibid. 1:18; mahatmya 3.47.

[8] Ibid. 1:22; mahatmya 4.10-4.14.

[9] Ibid. 1:36; mahatmya 6.5-6.6.

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private books, but rather 'liturgical' texts. . . . They are public religious books, which are often used for specific public rituals."^[10] Puranic passages prescribe recitation programs of varying lengths, but seven and nine days are the most commonly recommended durations. The former, as noted, has become standard for the Bhagavata ; the latter for its apparently later rival, the Devibhagavata , which glorifies the exploits and theology of the Goddess. Given the composite nature of the Puranas and the likelihood that they were repeatedly rewritten over the course of centuries, it is difficult to determine when such rituals came into use; Bonazzoli notes that the most detailed prescriptions appear to belong to the "most recent" strata of the texts and hence may date back no further than a "few centuries," although this does not preclude the possibility that they describe procedures already in use at an earlier period.^[11]

The current systems of nine- and thirty-day recitation of the Manas seem to derive, in turn, from this Puranic tradition, though it is unclear at what point the vernacular epic acquired for its audience the kind of status that allowed such ritualized performance. Some scholars question whether either system much predates the nineteenth century and point out that instructions for systematic recitation are notably absent from older (pre-1800) manuscripts of the epic.^[12] We can surmise that the recitation of the Hindi epic was conducted in the beginning along less formal lines and only gradually became ritualized.

Popular belief, however, attributes the origin of the practice of nine-day recitation to Tulsidas himself, citing a well-known legend recorded in the hagiography Mulgosaim^[*]carit , which was allegedly composed seven years after Tulsi's death by one of his intimate circle, Benimadhav Das (d. 1643). The discovery of a manuscript of this work in a village in Bihar in 1926 occasioned much excitement—and also much skepticism—from literary scholars, several of whom have pronounced it a late nineteenth-century fabrication^[13] Such criticisms notwithstanding, the

[10] Bonazzoli, "Composition, Transmission, and Recitation of the Puranas^[*] ," 273.

[11] Ibid., 270.

[12] Such was the finding of C. N. Singh, who examined a large number of manuscripts in the course of his work on the Kashiraj Trust edition (interview, July 1983). Ramkumar Das likewise questions the antiquity of the practice of masparayan^[*] (interview, April 1984). The earliest published edition known to me to contain annotations for a month's recitation is the one edited by Madhav Das (Banaras, 1862); it contains breaks after every thirty-five or thirty-six stanzas (an example of the santulit , or "even" scheme).

[13] The criticisms of such scholars as Shridhar Pathak, Pitambardatt Barathval, and Mataprasad Gupta are summarized by Kishorilal Gupta in Gosaim^[*]carit , 4-5,.53-60. They include traces of the Khari Boli dialect, the suspicious abundance of names and dates, and the use of the phrase satyam^[*]sivam^[*]sundaram^[*] , which Barathval asserts is a translation of the English "the true, the good and the beautiful." For a rough translation of the Mul , see Gopal, Tulasidas: A Literary Biography , 87-112.

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biography, issued in an inexpensive edition by Gita Press as early as 1934, has helped shape the popular conception of Tulsi's life. It abounds in miraculous incidents glowingly reported (i.e., Tulsi at birth possesses a full set of teeth, is the size of a five-year-old, and immediately utters the word Ram ). The miracle relevant to the present discussion is alleged to have occurred when Tulsi was en route to Delhi. The beautiful daughter of a certain nobleman was, through a deception, betrothed to a person of her own sex.^[14] When the truth became known after the marriage, the families of the couple appealed to Tulsi to save them from disgrace.

They approached him; compassion filled the saint's heart.
For their sake he performed a nine-day recitation. . . .
The woman became a man when the recital was completed.
Thrilling with delight, Tulsi cried, "Victory! Victory to Sita-Ram!"^[15]

Apart from asserting the origin of nine-day recitation in Tulsi's own practice, this story suggests the power that such a performance can release. This theme is echoed in other legends and highlights the fact that, as in the case of seven-day recitations of the Bhagavata , nine-day Manas recitations are usually undertaken to achieve some specific material or spiritual end.

Whereas navahparayan^[*] . recitation frequently occurs in the context of public performances, the daily discipline of masparayan^[*] . is more typically an individual or family activity, and its present popularity thus has two preconditions that have been met only in recent times: the existence of a significant audience of literate devotees and the ready availability of copies of the text. The current vogue for masparayan^[*] thus appears to be historically related to the advent of both mass education and popular publishing in North India.^[16]

[14] Two noblemen had agreed to marry their unborn children, but when daughters were born to both, the mother of one of the girls concealed the truth until after the betrothal. The motif of miraculous change-of-sex is common in folktales, and this story has a clear precursor in the Mahabharata tale of the princess Shikhandini, who was changed into a prince after a similar deception; see van Buitenen, trans., The Mahabharata 3:521-28 (Udyoga parva 60.189-93).

[15] Gupta, Gosaim^[*]carit , pp. 298-99 (Mulgosaim^[*]carit, soratha^[*] 18, doha 78). Significantly, the Gosaim^[*]carit (a hagiography attributed to one Bhavani Das and probably composed in the middle of the eighteenth century) contains the change-of-sex story as well, but the transformation is effected simply through sanctified food (prasad ) given by Tulsidas; there is no mention of a nine-day recitation. Gupta regards this text as the likely model for the Mulgosaim^[*]carit; Gosaim^[*]carit , 185-86.

[16] A survey of the early publishing history of the Manas would make an interesting study in itself. For present purposes, I assembled a preliminary list drawn from J. F. Blumhardt's catalogs of the India Office Library and British Museum, from Dr. Mataprasad Gupta's survey of Hindi publishing (Hindipustak sahitya ), and from a few private collections. The combined data from these sources, though impressive (more than 125 editions of the Manas during its first century in print), hardly furnish a complete picture, and I have no doubt that a careful examination of the regional records kept after 1867 under the provisions of the Registration of Books and Press Act would provide data on many other editions.

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A published edition of the Manas emerged as early as 1810 from Calcutta, the city in which, partly because of the presence and patronage of the College of Fort William, popular publishing in Hindi as well as Bengali had its start. The editions issued during the next five decades document a westward movement of publishing activity into the heartland of the Hindi belt, with editions appearing from Kanpur (1832), Agra (1849), Meerut (1851), and Banaras (1853). The real explosion in Manas publishing, however, occurred only after 1860; during the next two decades more than seventy editions of Tulsi's epic appeared from large and small publishing houses located in cities as widely separated as Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, and Lahore and from numerous smaller centers in between. Notable during this period was the steadily growing size of many editions as they came to include greater amounts of front and back matter as well as line-by-line prose translations and longer commentaries on the text.^[17] Some of the appended features—such as glossaries of "difficult words" and explanations of mythological allusions in the text—suggest that the audience for the Manas was growing beyond the boundaries of the epic's linguistic and cultural homeland.^[18] The authors of the paraphrases and commentaries offered in these expanded editions, like the editors of the earlier generation of simpler mul editions (containing the Manas text alone), were scholars known in their home regions for their oral exposition on the epic; their reputations, as well as the influence of their interpretations, were greatly enhanced by their being featured in such widely sold editions as those of Naval Kishor Press of Lucknow and Shri Venkateshvar Steam Press of Bombay. Thus, the availability of mass-printed editions contributed not only to increasing the reading and recitation of the Manas but also to creating new patrons and audiences for the art of oral exposition.

An important development in the modern dissemination of the Manas was the founding in the early 1920s of the Gita Press in Go-

[17] Complete editions in the 1860s were typically of three hundred to five hundred pages, whereas those issued from the 1880s on frequently contained eight hundred to eleven hundred pages.

[18] Editions in Gurumukhi script began appearing from Lahore and Delhi in about 1870; editions transliterated into Bengali script and accompanied by Bengali commentaries began appearing from the 1880s; the succeeding decade saw the publication of similar editions in Gujarati.

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rakhpur, a small city in northeastern Uttar Pradesh. The activities of this press constitute a significant chapter in North Indian cultural history and are especially relevant to the rise of the Sanatan Dharm (Eternal Faith) movement, of which the founder and editor of the press, Hanuman Prasad Poddar, was an influential spokesman. In 1926 the press began issuing a handsomely printed monthly called Kalyan^[*] (Beneficence), which was intended to present the Sanatani message to a mass audience. Each year, this journal appeared in eleven ordinary issues and one book-length special issue that focused on a chosen theme. Because the journal rapidly became a household word among pious Hindus and its issues were treasured and shared among relatives and friends, its relatively modest printing figures belie the extent of its impact.

One of Poddar's early objectives was to make available on a mass scale a "critical edition" of the Manas ; to this end Kalyan^[*] issued an appeal for early manuscripts, in the hope of obtaining a complete one in Tulsi's own hand. This hope was not realized, and in the 1930s Poddar, with the help of Anjaninandan Sharan, a scholarly sadhu of Ayodhya, began to assemble an edition based on the oldest available manuscripts. The fruit of his labor—and a milestone in popular Hindi publishing—was the long-awaited Manasank (Manas special issue) of Kalyan^[*] , which appeared in August 1938. More than nine hundred pages long and lavishly illustrated with specially commissioned paintings embellished with gold and protected by waxed slipsheets, it looked less like a journal than like a family heirloom—and such it became for thousands of North Indian families. It contained the complete Manas text accompanied by Poddar's verse-by-verse prose translation, as well as extensive front and back matter. It had an enormous (by Indian standards) first printing of 40,600 copies and became the basis for the many editions subsequently issued by Gita Press—which range from tiny "pocket" (gutka^[*] ) versions containing only the basic text to huge folio-size volumes with commentary, appendixes, and illustrations. The popularity of these editions, which are seen all over North India today, may be gauged from the example of the pocket version, which by late 1983 had gone through seventy-two printings for a total issue of 5,695,000 copies, with two printings of 100,000 copies each in 1983 alone.^[19]

The advent of modern-language publishing was a phenomenon with

[19] Information taken from the title page of the 1983 edition; Poddar, ed., SriRamcaritmanas , mulgutka^[*] . Such figures must be appreciated in light of the still-low literacy rate in Hindi-speaking regions and the comparatively high cost and modest sales of most books.

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profound consequences. The expensive and time-consuming process of manuscript copying was rendered obsolete, and literature suddenly came into the hands of both the urban and the rural middle classes. This development meant that all literate persons acquired the potential for a kind of participation in sacred literature that had formerly been the domain of a specialist elite. Books could be read, of course, for private enjoyment and edification, but sacred books could now also be recited by nonspecialists. The meritorious activity of path^[*] , rooted in the immemorial belief in the potency of the recited sacred word and encouraged by the Puranic tradition, was now facilitated by the ready availability of revered texts.

When people acquire the ability to read, what do they choose to read? The observations of nineteenth-century British scholars and administrators confirm that, by their time at least, the Manas had become established in North India as the religious text and cultural epic par excellence and had come to permeate and influence Hindu society as its very archetype of literature: its Book. Growse reported that the epic, "is in every one's hands, from the court to the cottage, and is read, or heard, and appreciated alike by every class of the Hindu community, whether high or low, rich or poor, young or old."^[20] And while their Indologist colleagues devoted themselves to the study of the Sanskrit classics, British administrators and missionaries, out of expedience, studied the Manas . Grierson was to recall:

Half a century ago, an old missionary said to me that no one could hope to understand the natives of Upper India till he had mastered every line that Tulasi Das had written. I have since learned to know how right he was. . . . Pundits may speak of the Vedas and Upanishads, and a few may even study them . . . but for the great majority of the people of Hindustan, learned and unlearned, the Ramayana^[*] of Tulasi Das is the only standard of moral conduct.^[21]

Vibhuti Narayan Singh, present maharaja of Banaras and heir to a family that has patronized the Manas for more than two centuries, told me that among the nineteenth-century aristocratic and landowning families of eastern Uttar Pradesh, the ability to read the epic was virtually the criterion of literacy: "When they were considering a girl's qualifications prior to marriage, then the question would come up as to whether

[20] Growse, The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , lv.

[21] Grierson (source not identified), quoted in Gopal, Tulasi Das , x; Growse also notes that a knowledge of the Manas was considered essential for a civil administrator; The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , lvi.

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she could read. If she was literate, then they would say proudly, 'Of course, she reads the Manas .'"^[22] His younger brother recalled the role the epic played in their own education—as the means by which their mother taught them the alphabet: "She would form letters for us out of snippets of paper—a line, a circle, a hook shape—to make the various characters ka, kha , and so forth. Then she would say, 'Now go look in the Ramayan and find one like this,' and we would find a caupai that had that letter. Then Mother would recite that to us. In this way we learned our whole alphabet from the Manas ."^[23]

Before leaving the subject of the various systems of path^[*] and their origins, something must be said about the numerical divisions used. Why seven days to read the Bhagavatapurana^[*] and nine or thirty for the Manas ? Clearly all three numbers are expressions of completeness or totality, corresponding to basic divisions of time and space in the Hindu worldview. Seven not only represents a full week (called "a seven"—saptaha —in Sanskrit) but is also used to express many kinds of completeness—the seven oceans, seven divisions of the world, seven mystical steps to heaven, and so forth. Similarly, thirty days—one lunar month—represents a complete unit of "light" and "dark" fortnights. This paradigmatic light/dark dualism gives rise to a variety of religious associations; for example, the worship of celestial deities is performed during the bright half of a month (suklapaksa^[*] ), whereas the dark fortnight (krsna^[*]paksa^[*] ) is more suited to the worship of autochthonous fertility deities and the souls of departed ancestors. Each lunar cycle is also a microcosm of the greater cycle of the year, which is similarly divided into "light" (devayan ) and "dark" (pitryan^[*] ) halves.^[24]

Because they encompass such fundamental dualities, the lunar months of the Hindu calendar are complete units of time in a ritual sense, as the "profane" (for Hindus) months of the Christian calendar—used for government and business purposes—can never be. To undertake a parayan^[*] —a ritual "completion"—of a sacred text within such a time span is to achieve a kind of heightened completeness. Of course, devotees do not necessarily time their recitations to correspond to calendar months. More commonly, they choose an auspicious date to begin their reading—often a date associated with an incident in the story, such as the fifth of the bright half of Margshirsha (November/December), the

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

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

[24] For a brief introduction to the North Indian Hindu calendar, see Freed and Freed, "Calendars, Ceremonies, and Festivals in a North Indian Village."

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traditional wedding anniversary of Ram and Sita. Dating systems have been published for the epic, which match a specific lunar date to virtually every incident in the narrative.^[25] Besides satisfying the scholasticism of Ramayanis—traditional epic specialists—such systems provide devotees with an enhanced sense of identification with the characters and incidents of the text and permit them to select auspicious days for their own undertakings based on its archetypal chronology.

Even though the number nine does not correspond to any basic calendrical unit, it too represents a cosmological totality, its prime association being with the nine planets (nav grah : i.e., the sun, moon, the five planets known to ancient Indian astronomy, and the asterisms Rahu and Ketu). It is used in other contexts to connote completeness, as in the "nine portals" of the body and the "nine precious gems" found in the earth.^[26] But whereas the number nine has cosmological significance, it does not appear to have the same positive connotations as the number seven; the nine planets are each characterized by specific attributes, and two of them, Mangal and Shani (Mars and Saturn), are predominantly malevolent while two others, Rahu and Ketu, are demons associated with dangerous cosmic phenomena—eclipses of the sun and moon. These are cosmic entities from which one seeks protection—for example, by wearing rings and bracelets containing the metal or gem associated with the dangerous planet or by worshiping powerful protective deities (as in the modern worship of Hanuman on Tuesday and Saturday).

Although nine-day recitation appears to have become merely a formalized standard for the Manas , its adoption may be rooted in the popular conception of Ram as a beneficent and protective hero. As already noted, nine-day recitations of the Manas are usually associated with a specific objective such as gaining a boon or averting danger (e.g., Tulsi's legendary use of the ceremony to save a family's honor). A modern pamphlet on the ritual uses of the Manas includes an account of a navah

[25] An example is Vijayanand Tripathi's "Manas ki tithi talika," in Tulsigranthavali , ed. Shukla, 3:29-35. Tripathi calculates, for example, that the first meeting between Ram and Sita occurred on the fourteenth of the bright half of Ashvin; that the cutting off of the demoness Shurpanakha's nose occurred on the thirteenth of the bright half of Magh, and so on. Some popular editions include similar tables.

[26] Nine may also have special significance within the structure of the Manas . Ramayanis are fond of numerological speculation, and one has used the argument that nine is the "ultimate" number (because the addition of the integers of its multiples always results in nine) to explain Tulsi's presentation of his doctrine of the divine name in nine stanzas (1.19.1-28.2); Din, Manasrahasya , 91-109. I am grateful to Kali C. Bahl for bringing this text to my attention.

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performed by a sadhu in order to save the life of a critically ill (and unbelieving) English boy.^[27] One of my Banarsi acquaintances, an enthusiast for the thirty-day recitation of the epic, mentioned two occasions on which she had undertaken navahparayan^[*] : each was an emergency involving the serious illness or injury of a close family member. The successful outcome of both crises had, she said, greatly deepened her faith in the power of the text. The persistent associations of the Ramayan with protection and succor may be reflected in its ritualized recitation over a period associated numerologically with powerful and dangerous cosmic forces.

A second observation about the number nine likewise concerns the calendar and the appeasement of dangerous divine beings, in this case the mother goddesses, whose mythology reflects a paradoxical relationship between fertility/nurture and destructiveness. The two most important festivals for the worship of these goddesses occur over periods of nine days—or rather, "nine nights" (navratra ); both fall in the bright halves of months and have important associations with the Ramayan story. The Navratra festival in Chaitra (March/April) climaxes on the ninth lunar day of the bright half of the month, which is also the birthday of Ram (Ram Navami). Its counterpart in the month of Ashvin (sometimes called mahanavratra , or "great nine-nights") is immediately followed by the "victorious tenth" (Vijaydashami), which commemorates the goddess Durga's slaying of the buffalo-demon and is also the festival of Dashahra, celebrating Ram's defeat of Ravana. This conjunction of festivals is seen as no coincidence, for it is commonly believed that Ram himself worshiped the goddess for nine nights to obtain the power (sakti ) necessary to slay his demon foe. Moreover, his awakening of this destructive power during the month of Ashvin is held to have been "untimely" (akalbodhan ) and hence to have required special protective measures.

In this connection, it is noteworthy that the first printing of the Gita

[27] Sarasvati, Mantra ramayan^[*] ., 60-68. A hardy perennial of the religious bookstalls, this text includes many of the same ritual prescriptions given in the 1938 Manasankof Kalyan^[*] . The navah story is original, however, and concerns "Marsh Sahab," who as a boy of ten fell ill and was given up as hopeless by his doctors. His father, the collector of Dacca, allowed one Mahant Ramdas to perform a navah on behalf of the boy, who was placed in a room with five reciters and periodically given spoonfuls of caranamrt^[*] (the water with which the feet of the deity had been washed). The samput^[*] (see below, p. 69) was a special one "for averting untimely death" (5.30, a doha that tells how Sita kept her life-breath from departing while she was held captive in Lanka). According to Sarasvati, Marsh not only recovered fully and lived to become the commissioner of Aligarh, he remained a lifelong brahmacari (celibate) and devotee of the Manas ; his grateful father "took care of" a land dispute for Mahant Ramdas.

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Press pocket edition of the Manas was specifically for an "All-India" parayan^[*] recitation during the Chaitra Navratra observances in 1939, a performance that had been promoted for months in the pages of Kalyan^[*] .^[28] The encouragement by the journal's publishers of mass reading of the Manas during the "nine nights" of goddess worship again suggests the role of the epic as a synthesizing element in North Indian religion, specifically as a mediator between the traditions of Vaishnava devotionalism and Shaiva/Shakta worship. Both as a cultural epic and as the most accessible religious text of the region, the Manas becomes the text of choice for filling any vacuum in popular religious practice. Since the "nine nights" are explicitly devoted to worshiping the mother goddesses, one might expect to hear a recitation of the Devibhagavatapurana^[*] , which indeed has a history of association with this festival.^[29] But since this text is in Sanskrit, it is not suitable for mass recitation. Now that a need is perceived for a mass path^[*] to complement the puja conducted over the nine nights, the Manas is enlisted to fill the void.

In my fieldwork, I found a similar line of reasoning used to explain the sponsorship of Manas recitation programs by Devi temples in the Banaras area, such as Kamaksha Devi in the neighborhood known as Kamacha, a shrine revered as a localized manifestation of the famous tantric center at Kamrup in Assam. A nine-day recitation and exposition festival is sponsored by this temple annually during the month of Paush; in structure, it is a scaled-down version of some of the large navah programs described later in this chapter. When I questioned a devotee of the temple as to why a text dealing specifically with the Goddess was not selected for performance in this setting, I was told, "Yes, of course they could recite the Devibhagavata or some other Purana, but in that case, few people would come to the program. So they choose the Manas , because it appeals to everyone—rich and poor, literate and illiterate—and is sure to bring in a crowd."^[30] If the Manas is the best choice for logistic/promotional reasons, its use can be justified equally easily on theological grounds. A college student remarked to me in connection with the same program, "In the Manas is found the story of the marriage of Shiva and Bhavani, and so many other stories. So we feel that in it all the deities are honored, and it can be recited in praise of any of them."^[31]

[28] Information taken from the preface to Poddar, ed., Sri Ramcaritmanas , mulmajhli , 3-4.

[29] Rocher, The Puranas^[*] , 168-72. Certain shorter Devi texts are indeed commonly recited during the period, notably the Durgasaptasati .

[30] S. Shrivastav, interview, January 1983.

[31] Om Prakash, interview, January 1983.

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In this example, as indeed in the whole phenomenon of nine-day recitation, we see the Manas both conforming to the model of the Puranas and eclipsing them as the preeminent text for public performance.

The Rites of Recitation

The preceding chapter introduced two basic criteria for regarding a verbal act as a performance: criteria termed "formal" and "affective." In performances where ritual is important, the formal criterion often reflects culture-specific notions of personal purity and of sacred space and time. Formal elements in ritual help to achieve the affective purpose of the performance—for example, the "sense of peace" that devotees say they derive from reading the Manas or even the miraculous benefits that they believe can result from certain types of recitation.

Bathing is an essential preliminary to nearly all Hindu ritual, and few people would dream of opening, much less reading, their Ramayan without first having bathed and put on clean clothes. In Banaras, the daily routine for many people begins with a sunrise bath in the Ganga followed by a round of visits to favorite temples. Morning Ramayan path^[*] is often incorporated into the latter activity and carried out within a temple, especially one dedicated to Sita-Ram or Hanuman.

Considerations of space are also important; many regular reciters favor a special seating mat (asan ) made of kus , a grass believed to have auspicious qualities, which has figured in rituals since Vedic times. The early morning equipage of the devout Banarsi may be considerable, what with a set of fresh clothes, a rolled-up mat for puja-path^[*] , a brass pot for Ganga water, a basket of flowers and vermilion powder, and a toilet kit for grooming and for applying a mark (tilak ) to the forehead. Once the asan has been spread, other items may be unpacked: small framed pictures of deities or even tiny statues installed on portable shrine stands, an incense burner and an oil lamp for ceremonial worship, pamphlet versions of hymns and invocations, and of course, the Book itself. Most devotees honor and protect the Manas by keeping it in a neatly sized bag made of ocher or crimson cloth. Others wrap it in an ocher shawl block-printed with Ram's name (Ram-namdupata^[*] ). As a preliminary to path^[*] , the book may be placed on a wooden stand and worshiped with flowers and incense. The ritual typically includes an invocation of Ganesh, the "remover of obstacles," and of Hanuman, the special patron of the Ramayan—the Hanumancalisa is the most popular text for this purpose.

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The melodies to which the epic is chanted include several common ones in wide use today, as well as numerous regional and local—and countless individual—variations. In my fieldwork I was struck by the variety of melodies and singing styles used by devotees in their impromptu recitations. The distinctiveness of a given style would sometimes be noted with pride, as by the man who sang to me during a ferry ride across the Ganga, saying, "In my place in Bihar we don't sing the Ramayan like they do here; we have our own way" and then launching enthusiastically into a passage from Balkand^[*] . Katha programs also afford opportunities to hear varied styles of chanting, since each expounder typically has a preferred melody to which he or she intones all quotations from the epic.

In Banaras, two melodies dominate Manas performances. One is used in most of the local Ramlilas and is commonly called lilavani^[*] (the "voice" or "melody" of lila ). The Ramayanis who sing at the Ramnagar Ramlila say that this is the melody to which the epic is sung by the divine sage Narad. They contrast it to what they call Tulsivani^[*] , the melody used for most public recitation outside lila performances. In Ayodhya, some 150 kilometers northwest of Banaras, I found other melodies in use; one was identified to me simply as Avadh dhun —"the style of singing [dhun ] of Avadh [Ayodhya]."

Anyone who has spent time in Banaras in recent years can hardly have escaped hearing Tulsivani^[*] Given the frequency and (with amplification) audibility of Manas recitation programs, it forms a regular and unmistakable motif in the daily urban cacophony, and thanks to twenty-four-hour programs, it often echoes eerily through deserted bazaars and lanes during the midnight hours. Compared to lila -style chanting, which is strident and stylized and requires the antiphonal alternation of two groups of singers, Tulsivani^[*] is simpler and more lilting, does not alter the text, and may be rendered by a single performer. It is, so to speak, more "recitative." It appears to have become the standard melody for major public performances, and I heard it not only in the Banaras area but also in Ayodhya and New Delhi.

The Samput^[*]

The most distinctive formal feature of all forms of parayan^[*] citation is the insertion, after each stanza, of a refrain that serves as an invocation or benediction. This is known as a samput^[*] terally, a "wrapper"—and indeed it serves as an enclosure or frame for each unit of recitation.

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Just as Tulsivani^[*] now dominates public recitation, so a single samput^[*] has gained wide acceptance. Taken from Book One, it is a supplication to Ram in his child-form, uttered by Shiva as he commences his narration to Parvati:

mangalabhavan amangala^[*]hari | dravahu so Dasaratha ajira vihari ||

Abode of auspiciousness, remover of inauspiciousness,
may He who plays in Dashrath's courtyard be merciful!
1.112.4

The chanting of the samput^[*] is considered essential to the successful completion of a ritual recitation. In performances in which I participated, one of the reciters would occasionally neglect to include the refrain after a stanza; other participants would immediately stop the recitation and correct this mistake. Clearly the samput^[*] is (in Bauman's terms) one of the formal "keys" by which a reciter "assumes responsibility" for an act of Manas recitation-as-performance.^[32]

Although most public performances use the samput^[*] given above, reciters sometimes prefer other refrains. At the Kanak Bhavan Temple in Ayodhya, a nine-day program is held at the time of Ram's birthday each year under the direction of the temple's resident Ramayani, Ramsahay Surdas.^[33] Blind from birth, Ramsahay has committed the entire Manas to memory, and his chosen samput^[*] —a line spoken by King Manu when his penance is rewarded with a vision of Ram's transcendent form—seems touchingly appropriate for a blind singer in the bhakti tradition.

Lord, having seen your lovely feet,
now all my desires are fulfilled.
1.149.2

When recitation is undertaken to achieve some desired end, the choice of samput^[*] depends on the goal of the ritual, for it is well known that certain refrains can produce such desired effects as the cure of an illness, the birth of a son, or success in obtaining a job. The specialized uses of the epic are prescribed in the front matter of popular editions or in separate manuals sold in religious bookstalls. The special Manas issue of Kalyan^[*] , for example, includes a section on ritual uses aimed at securing both "supreme" or "spiritual" (paramarthik ) and "worldly" (laukik ) goals; the latter, incidentally, outnumber the former by nearly three to one. Most of these procedures involve the use of special refrains,

[32] Bauman, Verbal Art as Performance , 21.

[33] "Surdas," the name of the blind poet of the Krishna tradition, is used as a title of respect for any blind person.

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appropriately chosen from among the thousands of possibilities offered by the text. Thus, a devotee craving jnan , or spiritual wisdom, should conclude each stanza of his recital with the line

Earth, water, fire, wind, and atmosphere—
the body, composed of these five elements, is utterly base.^[34] 4.11.4

The significance of this line lies in more than just the familiar pañcatva (five-fold nature) doctrine it expresses, for the devotee would be aware (or would become aware in the course of the recitation) that these words, spoken by Ram to the grieving widow of the monkey-king Vail, "gave [her] jnan and removed delusion [maya ]" (4.11.3). Similarly, a person seeking "detachment from the illusory world and love for the Lord's feet" is directed to use as a samput^[*] the concluding couplet of Ayodhyakand^[*] :

The discipline of Bharat's conduct—
Tulsi says, whoever sings and hears of this
surely gains love for the feet of Sita and Ram
and indifference to the pleasures of this world.
2.325

The "worldly" applications of Manas recitation detailed in the same text range from such general objectives as the "removal of sorrow" to more specific ends: matrimony, the begetting of a son, even the production of rain. The effects of poison can be negated by a recitation using the following samput^[*] :

The power of the name is well known to Shiva;
[through it] the searing venom became as nectar to him.^[35] 1.19.7

For the much-desired boon of a son, a variant procedure is prescribed. The devotee is to commence a complete recitation from the 189th stanza of Balkand^[*] , beginning,

Once, King Dashrath, reflecting inwardly,
"I have no son," became sorrowful.
1.189.2

The reciter should then proceed to the end of the story, recommence it,

[34] Instructions are given in Poddar, ed., Kalyan^[*] :Manasank , 18.

[35] The reference is to the myth of the churning of the milk-ocean, which yielded both the nectar of immortality and a world-destroying venom; to save the cosmos from the latter, Shiva swallowed it; Tulsi attributes the god's ability to neutralize the poison to his knowledge of the Ram mantra.

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and conclude with the line immediately preceding the above half-caupai . In this ritual one might say that the entire epic is used as a samput^[*] to frame the cherished wish of the devotee.

The Arti

If special observances mark the beginning of a systematic recitation and a ritual frame encloses each of its constituent units, some symbolic act would seem equally necessary to mark its end. The usual concluding event in devotional worship is the arti ceremony, in which the deity is offered lights, incense, and other gifts while a devotional hymn (itself called an arti ) is sung. Popular editions of the Manas include a standardized arti written not to Ram but to the Manas itself, and this is normally sung at the conclusion of each installment in a path^[*] . Like Tulsi's own narrative frames, its lyrics depart from the story in order to emphasize its eternal retelling; they cite each of the epic's divine narrators, placing Tulsidas himself in the position of honor. An opening refrain is repeated at the conclusion of each verse.

(refrain:) [We sing] the arti of the holy Ramayan,
which tells the lovely fame of Sita's lord.

Sung by Brahma and many others, by the sage Narad,
by Valmiki, learned in holy wisdom,
by Shuka, Sanak and his brothers, by Shesh and Sharada,
the fame of which is narrated by the Son of the Wind.

Sung by the Vedas and the eighteen Puranas,
containing the essence of the sastras and all holy books,
a treasure to sages; to good people, their all-in-all,
the quintessence of truth, with which all are in accord.

Eternally sung by Shambhu and Bhavani,
by the profound sage Agastya,
recounted. by Vyas and all the great poets,
dear as life to Kak Bhushundi and Garuda.

Removing the Kali Age's stain, dulling the taste of material things,
the lovely adornment of the Lady Liberation,
the herb of immortality destroying worldly afflictions,
father, mother, and in all ways, all to Tulsi!^[36]

[36] The version translated here is the one included in Gita Press editions. The same hymn is found with minor variations in editions issued by other publishers.

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Practitioners Of Mas Parayan^[*]

The thirty-day recitation of the Manas is typically an individual activity; unlike other forms of recitation to be discussed shortly, it does not involve the services of professional reciters. It usually takes place in the morning as part of the devotee's daily puja-path^[*] , conducted either at home or in a favorite temple. Each neighborhood Hanuman temple has its regular clientele; the most devoted reciters are apt to be older men and women who have leisure to spare for devotional activities. They are usually educated, middle-class householders with grown children, who have entered the third phase in the classic Hindu scheme of life: a vanaprastha that involves not physical departure for the forest but rather a psychological withdrawal from worldly activities and a dedication of more time to religious aims. Such people represent an important category of participants in Manas- related activities, for which they have both the time and inclination; devoting their mornings to recitation, they spend their afternoons in attendance at Katha programs, listening to expounders narrate the epic.

But lest I give the impression that Manas recitation is popular only among the elderly, I would cite the example of Rita, a young Banarsi woman. The youngest daughter of a prosperous business family, Rita had steadfastly pursued an advanced degree, worked as a teacher, and resisted her elder brother's efforts to "marry her off" (indeed, she once remarked acidly to my wife, "Here, when you get married, your life is finished"). She was approaching the age of thirty, and her brother, who despaired of ever finding a match for her, could only shake his head ruefully and remark upon "the problem with too much education for the ladies." This woman's closest friend was another unmarried woman of similarly "liberated" views and a life-style—including her own motor-bike and pilot's license—unusual for her provincial city.

Given that the Manas is not celebrated, these days, for its liberated views on the role of women,^[37] it had not occurred to me that either of these young women might be an avid reader of the epic. In fact, they both were. During a nine-day recitation at a popular Hanuman temple, I was surprised to find the two of them in daily attendance with well-worn pocket editions in hand. In a subsequent interview, Rita told me that she had acquired the habit of daily path^[*] from her parents, who were lifelong Ramayan devotees. As a child, she had recited simple texts like the Hanumancalisa , but as she grew older her love for the Manas stead-

[37] See Chapter 6, Cracks in the Mirror.

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ily increased, to the point that she was now nearly always engaged in one or another kind of parayan^[*] and could state that "such mental peace as one gets from Ramayan path^[*] cannot be gained from any other book."

Although this woman's conventional reverence for the Manas seemed to present a contrast to her independent attitudes on other matters, her remarks suggested that she regarded her personal involvement with the text as itself contributing to her feeling of independence. Thus, when I asked if she felt any special devotion toward the highly revered Ramanandi leader who had sponsored the nine-day program she attended, she brushed aside the question: "I myself do so much puja-path^[*] , what need do I have of any guru?" Similarly, when asked who among modern expounders of the Manas she considered noteworthy (a question that usually elicited from devotees a ranked list of personal favorites), she forthrightly remarked that, since she herself was constantly reading the Manas , she saw no need to listen to other people's views on it, adding, "My mother respects these people, but I don't bother with them." Her greatest encouragement in Manas recitation, she said, had come not from her family but from her female friend, who was likewise devoted to the text; she mentioned several other young women in the neighborhood who also recited the epic regularly.^[38] For these women, as for many other private reciters, the Manas and the structured discipline of parayan^[*] recitation provides a highly valued means of personal access to the transforming power of the sacred word. Paradoxically, the affirmation of faith in the cultural epic can even foster, as in Rita's case, a feeling of personal independence from the authority structures of joint family and organized religion—the very structures that the epic is often seen as upholding.

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.

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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.

A Family Celebrates Divali

My first exposure to twenty-four-hour path^[*] came soon after I had set-tied into a flat in a middle-class neighborhood in the southern part of Banaras. While walking to the corner shop one morning, I heard the unmistakable strains of Tulsivani^[*] wafting from a side street and followed the sound to a modest one-story house set in a small garden. It was the home of Mr. Sharma, a retired Banaras Hindu University ad-

[39] Rameshvar Prasad Tripathi, interview, November 1982.

[40] Cf. the Christian monastic discipline of lectio divina: "Of John of Gorze it was claimed that the murmur of his lips pronouncing the Psalms resembled the buzzing of a bee"; Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 73.

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ministrator, who told me that the path^[*] was an annual affair organized by his family on the eve of Divali, the Festival of Lights, which falls on the moonless night of the month of Karttik (October/November): "My son comes from Delhi for the holidays, and he and his friends arrange it." Sharma invited me to join in at any time and added that I must be sure to come the following morning for the conclusion of the ceremony, when there would be a big crowd and also a distribution of sweets.

While the Sharmas' path^[*] was primarily a family affair, it was hardly a private one. There was the obligatory loudspeaker, rented from a local caterer and mounted on a corner of the roof to announce to the neighborhood that a Manas recitation was in progress. Inside, the front sitting room had been cleared of its modest furniture. The stone floor was spread with cotton carpets covered by white sheets, and a ghee-fed lamp burned brightly before a shrine alcove. In the center of the room was a low, cloth-covered table on which stood a microphone, some flowers and incense, and numerous well-worn copies of the Gita Press edition of the Manas . There was a holiday atmosphere in the house, as relatives, friends, and neighbors came and went throughout the day. The visitors would sit for a while listening to the recitation or, if they wished, take up a copy of the text and join in. A minimum of two hired reciters—priests from a nearby Hanuman temple—were always chanting; they were sometimes joined by others. The priests, who would receive a modest payment at the end of the ceremony, were expected to see that all ritual aspects of the path^[*] were carried out properly.

My most vivid memory of this particular path^[*] is of its midnight shift, to which I returned after spending the evening with my family. At first I thought that the program had been halted, for no sound of amplified chanting echoed through Sharma's lane and I had difficulty, in the pitch dark, locating the proper house. The silence, it turned out, was due to the loudspeaker's having been shut off at 10:00 P.M. , a remarkable and (in my experience) unparalleled act of consideration for the neighbor-hood—as the sleep requirements of nonparticipants are not normally taken into account by the organizers of Banarsi religious events. The interior of the house presented a contrast to the morning's scene of bustling activity. Several cotton mattresses had been added to the nearly empty front room, and a few young people were sleeping on them. At the central table, the hired reciters were still seated on either side of the now-extinguished microphone, working their way sleepily through the latter part of Book Three. At about midnight there were sounds of stirring in the next room, and four young people—two boys and two

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girls—emerged. Four more copies of the Manas were quickly passed around and the new arrivals joined in. At about 1:00 A.M. one of the priests left off reciting, crawled over to a nearby mattress, and woke another youth, who immediately sat up, yawned once or twice, quickly positioned himself at the table, and began to recite; the other replaced him on the mattress, pulled a sheet over himself, and (to judge from the snoring sounds that almost immediately emerged from the sheet) fell asleep. An hour or so later Mr. Sharma himself appeared, beaming and looking refreshed, and took up a position at the table. Thus, the relay continued through the night.

The twenty-four-hour performance was completed on schedule at about 8:30 the following morning, after a pell-mell chase through Uttar kand^[*] that slowed down only for the final verses of the epic, which were intoned with a certain solemnity, perhaps as a signal to members of the household that the great task was coming to an end. Upon the completion of the final benedictory sloka , the chanters launched into namsahkirtan —the singing of the name of Ram to harmonium accompaniment. This continued for more than an hour, while the room gradually filled with family members and neighbors. The ladies of the household appeared with brass platters heaped with fruits and sweets, and Mr. Sharma garlanded the numerous images in the family shrine. By 10:00 A.M. the room was packed with people. Incense and a small brass oil lamp were lit, all the copies of the Manas were stacked together on the central table, and a daub of vermilion was applied to the topmost volume. Everyone rose to sing the usual arti while one of the priests waved the flickering lamp before the books. The hymn concluded with shouts of "Raja Ramcandra-ji ki jay!" (Victory to King Ramchandra!), followed by the distribution of prasad .

Afterward, most of the male guests remained in the front room, chatting and munching their sweets, but the ladies quickly disappeared into the inner courtyard. A few minutes later the sound of a double-headed drum and finger cymbals could be heard, joined by female voices singing and laughing. I quickly gathered from the broad smiles on the men's faces that the songs contained galiyam^[*] —ribald and abusive terms, usually dealing with joint-family relationships—such as are sung at North Indian marriage celebrations. The whole atmosphere became light-hearted as the infectious gaiety of the singing women in the courtyard was caught even by the men in the front room. The music seemed a joyous release of pent-up energy and a female response to the male-dominated solemnity of the twenty-four-hour path^[*] (although women

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had also, at times, joined in the recitation); the offering of such a thematic counterweight on ceremonial occasions is one of the characteristic roles of women's folksongs in North India.^[41] When I asked Sharma about the singing, he remarked good-naturedly that, in his family, the path^[*] was not considered really complete until the women's songs were sung.

Path^[*] as Protection/Propitiation

Another unbroken recitation in my neighborhood was held to mark the birth anniversary of the eldest son of one of four brothers in a prosperous joint household. The path^[*] , which began at 10:00 A.M. on the morning before the birthday, was conducted almost entirely by hired reciters, and family members showed little interest in the progress of the recitation. The performance concluded the following morning with a Vedic fire ceremony (havan ) conducted by another hired specialist, with the father of the boy whose birth was being celebrated serving as yajamana , spooning oblations of ghee and rice into a fire kindled in a metal receptacle in the living room. This was followed by the usual Ramayan arti and the distribution of prasad , whereupon each reciter was given twenty-one rupees and a cotton shawl. After the Brahmans were dismissed, the living room was rearranged in preparation for a Western-style birthday party complete with balloons, gifts, and refreshments for invited guests, including many business associates of the boy's father.

Although the parents stated only that they were conducting the path^[*] to observe the birthday of their son, I noted that no such ceremony was held to mark the birthdays of the other sons in the family. Eventually I learned that prior to the birth of this boy, two children of the couple had died in infancy. The third pregnancy had naturally been an occasion of much anxiety, and although the whole subject was now avoided by family members, it appeared that the annual ceremony was a reflection of this stressful episode in family history. To have merely "celebrated" the birthday in modern style, without some gesture in the direction of larger powers, would have been unacceptable, and so a sponsored akhand^[*]path^[*] with all the trimmings—loudspeakers, priests, and a high-class Vedic finale—was the most appropriate way for people of their status and level of education to mark the occasion.

[41] For examples, see Henry, "The Meanings of Music in a North Indian Village," 60, 74.

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Such ceremonies provide another illustration of the prestige of the Manas and its adaptability to the needs of popular religious practice. They offer educated, middle-class families an opportunity to engage in socially sanctioned, merit-bestowing religious activities that require a minimum of personal involvement and to give patronage to Brahmans, who are of course happy to offer such prepackaged programs. This is not to suggest, however, that the sponsors of such programs lack a personal involvement with the Manas ; the sponsor of the program just described was actually a devoted reader of the epic. Nor does the fact that sponsors hire outsiders to recite the text and themselves refrain from participation in all but the most obligatory parts of the ritual indicate a disregard for the Manas . The mechanical recitation of sacred scripture on hire is one of the things that Brahmans are supposed to do, and the act, it is thought, automatically diffuses benefit to all, just as the jasmine creeper diffuses scent regardless of whether one takes any special notice of it.

There is another reason for the choice of professionals for such recitations: akhand^[*] path^[*] is not something that one sponsors simply because one likes the Manas —there are simpler and more enjoyable ways to read the epic. Unbroken recitations are rituals aimed at procuring results. The more potent the ritual, the more onerous the "assumption of responsibility" for its correct performance, and the more hazardous the risk of error. What was true of Vedic sacrifices is also true of Vedicized Manas recitation: both become the domain of specialists who increasingly assume custodianship not merely of the ritual but also of the text.

The sponsorship of an akhand^[*]path^[*] bestows not merely blessings but also prestige, especially if the sponsor can afford the conspicuous trimmings common to these events. The ceremony places the sponsor in a patronage relationship with local priests: a new variation on the traditional jajman reciprocity;^[42] the orientation of the ritual around the Hindi cultural epic makes the ceremony more comprehensible and accessible to patrons. The implications of the popular view of the Manas as "Hindi Veda" are discussed in the concluding chapter, but we can already recognize the Veda-like role of the text in important household observances. Its corresponding role in great public ceremonies—an-other domain of ritual specialists—is taken up in the next section.

[42] This term, a vernacularization of the Sanskrit yajamana (sacrificer), refers to the mutual service obligations of specialist castes, and especially to the relationships of puro-hits, or family priests, to their clients.

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The "Great Sacrifice" of MANAS Recitation

Some three weeks after the conclusion of most of the annual Ramlila cycles in Banaras, there is another major public spectacle centered on a performance of the Ramcaritmanas . The venue of this program is the area known as Gyan Vapi, an L-shaped plaza located near the Vishvanath Temple, the city's most celebrated shrine.^[43] The area takes its name from a sacred well located in one corner of the grounds, the water of which is drunk by pilgrims as a form of prasad from Shiva. The adjacent plaza is one of the few large public spaces remaining in the congested heart of Banaras; most of the surrounding area consists of a dense concentration of houses and narrow lanes, the latter usually crowded with pilgrims en route to or from the temple. At Gyan Vapi there is room to breathe, to relax in the shade of an ancient pipal tree (also sacred to Shiva and itself an object of veneration) growing near the well platform, and to recover from the pushing and shoving that, these days, is often an inescapable part of a visit to Baba Vishvanath. But the existence of this open space is significant in other respects as well. All Banarsis know that, although Vishvanath has been the patron deity of Kashi since time immemorial, his present temple is not especially old and is not in its original location. The shrine was destroyed in 1669 by order of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and a mosque built in its stead.^[44] The present-day plaza is bordered on two sides by this mosque, which is elevated on a high plinth—actually the ruined foundation of the old temple, carved traces of which remain visible beneath the austere white walls of the mosque compound. The whole Gyan Vapi complex including plaza, mosque, well, and relocated temple, has come to represent, for Hindus, a controversial and disputed memorial to the perceived atrocities of Muslim rule, and for Banaras authorities, a source of potential communal trouble.^[45] Thus, by virtue of its size, location, and emotional associations, the Gyan Vapi area is an appropriate site for the staging of large-scale Hindu religious performances. Among the best-

[43] The name is a popular romanization of the modern Hindi pronunciation of jnanvapi , "the well of knowledge."

[44] In fact, the shrine's location has changed several times and even the mosque site is not the oldest; see Eck, Banaras, City of Light, 120-35.

[45] Hindu claims to the area sparked rioting as. long ago as 1809 (ibid., 127); an anticipated Hindu attempt to "liberate" the mosque in the immediate post-Independence period was forestalled by the placing of troops there, but the issue was not laid to rest and emotional calls for the reclamation of the site continue to be raised, most recently in connection with the Hindu claim on a similar site in Ayodhya, where a mosque occupies the alleged birthplace of Ram.

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known of these is one that begins each year on the seventh of the bright half of Karttik (October/November), when a mercantile organization known as the Marwari Seva Sangh (Marwari Charitable Society) sponsors its annual SriRamcaritmanas navahpath^[*] mahayajna —a "great sacrifice of nine-day recitation" of the Manas .^[46]

The commencement of the program is heralded by handbills and a large banner displayed on the main road between Godowliya and Chowk. They give the timings for daily recitation (mornings from 7:00 to 11:00 A.M. ) and for expositions on the epic by "renowned scholars" (evenings from 7:00 to 11:00 P.M. ). Meanwhile, workmen transform the dusty plaza into a festive enclosure by erecting a huge multicolored canopy (mandap^[*] ), its bamboo posts festooned with chains of marigolds and auspicious asok leaves. At its southeastern corner they erect a dais, on which they arrange an elaborate tableau of life-size images of Ramayan characters. These are made of unfired clay sculpted over a framework of wood and straw, brightly painted and adorned with appropriate costumes, jewelry, and weapons. These temporary "likenesses" (pratima ), consecrated by a priest with the prescribed life-giving prayers, become as suitable for worship as more permanent images of stone or metal, even though they will only be worshiped for a fixed period and will then be desanctified and consigned to water. In Banaras such images are produced for a number of festivals, most notably for Durga Puja, which is lavishly celebrated by the city's Bengali population. Durga images are displayed in elaborate tableaux depicting the Goddess, adored by a host of subsidiary deities, in the act of slaying the buffalo-demon, Mahishasur. Since the Manas recitation festival at Gyan Vapi is of recent origin, it is likely that its use of a tableau reflects the influence of the Durga Puja observances.

The tableau offers a representation, immediately familiar from religious posters and calendars, of the culminating scene in the Ramayan story as recounted in the Manas , in which the victorious Ram is enthroned beneath a royal umbrella with Sita at his side, flanked by his three brothers, by Hanuman, and by his family guru, Vasishtha. Throughout the nine days of the festival, this tableau will be attended by a priest. It will receive the worship and offerings of devotees and will be the focus of arti ceremonies at regular intervals. At the conclusion of the program, the images will be taken in procession to Dashashvamedha Ghat for their "dismissal" (visarjan ) in the waters of the Ganga. To the

[46] The account given here is based on the festival I witnessed in November 1982.

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Figure 6.
Copies of the epic rest on a harmonium during a break in a public
recitation program

right of the tableau is a raised seat spread with golden cloths; this is the vyaspith^[*] , or "seat" of the Ramayan expert who will serve as master reciter and also of the invited scholars who will discourse during evening sessions. Before it is a wooden stand likewise covered with glittering cloths, upon which rests an enormous copy of the Manas . Like the adjacent images, it too is an object of worship; devotees bow to it as they file past and place offerings of flowers and money on its pages.

Near the entrance to the plaza is a small tent housing the equipment that controls the sound and lighting system. Festive illumination and powerful amplification are indispensable parts of religious events in India these days, and the arrangements for the Gyan Vapi program are typically elaborate. The entire mandap^[*] is wired for light and sound, with tube lights and loudspeakers mounted on every post, a flickering, multicolored marquee around the images, and hanging microphones to pick up the chanters' voices. The broadcast range of the festival does not end at the boundaries of the plaza, however; a tangle of wires emerging from the sound tent activates a network of some three hundred loudspeakers installed throughout several square miles of surrounding neighborhoods in central Banaras. As I cycled to the program each morning from the southern part of the city, I encountered the first loudspeakers at the

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Godowliya crossing, more than a kilometer from Gyan Vapi. From that point on I could follow what was going on in the mandap^[*] .

Such large-scale broadcasting of a religious event struck me as rather unpleasantly intrusive, particularly as I supposed the installation of loudspeakers was imposed on the community by the wealthy organizers of the festival. My conversations with shopkeepers and residents in adjoining neighborhoods altered this impression, however, for no one complained about the loudspeakers and in fact the majority of the comments that I heard were positive. "You don't have to leave your shop to go to the program," remarked one merchant, "you can just listen whenever you feel like it." Moreover, I learned that most of the speakers were set up at the request and expense of groups of residents themselves. According to a bank officer who lived near the Vishvanath temple, the cost of installing each speaker (about seventy-five rupees) was met by taking up a collection (canda ) among area residents. "Then it is going from 5:30 in the morning till 11:00 at night," he said with apparent satisfaction, "and you can just listen whenever you feel inclined to give your attention."

Although the two daily sessions that constitute the Gyan Vapi festival—morning recitation and evening exposition—are thematically linked and form a cohesive event in the minds of participants, they are structurally quite distinct. The kinds of performance that occur in the two sessions are discussed separately. Here I confine myself to the morning sessions and make only passing reference to the exposition programs, as these are treated in detail in Chapter 4.

The Reciters

The daily program begins with early-morning arti to "awaken" the images; this is the responsibility of the attending priest and is of little public interest. Preparations for the program really get under way between 6:30 and 7:00 A.M. , when the hired reciters begin assembling in the enclosure. During this time, a group of Muslim musicians dressed in brocaded coats and caps take their seats on a small dais near the entrance and begin playing a morning raga. The sound of shehnai and tabla drifting over the misty ghats and through the bazaars of the awakening city announces in a most elegant fashion the approaching start of the program. A goldsmith from the nearby jewelers' bazaar pointed out to me with satisfaction the presence of the musicians and the absence of blaring Hindi film music, so common at public events; "You see, here they want to create a religious and cultural atmosphere."

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Figure 7.
One hundred eight uniformed Brahmans chant the Manas at the
Gyan Vapi festival

Just as the musical overture betokens the good taste and largesse of the organizers, the number of reciters confirms the grandeur of conception of this "great sacrifice." There are to be, as the banner on the main street announces, 108 Brahmans chanting the Manas , and the morning activities of workmen in the plaza include the setting up of nine rows of low platforms, on each of which, as at a banquet table, places are set for twelve reciters—with woven mats, wooden bookstands bearing uniform Gita Press editions, and copper vessels and spoons for ritual oblations. On the first day, reciters are also presented with yellow dhotis and Ram-nam shawls; these are to be their costume throughout the program. The number 108 is auspicious, and so determined are the organizers to maintain it at all times that they station two "spare" reciters on a side platform, ready to assume the place of any who may need to attend to nature's call.

Participants are selected six days before the program in an examination conducted by the chief reciter. The criteria for selection are simply that one be able to read and be sufficiently conversant with the Manas to be able to chant it at varying speeds. However, admission to the examination is restricted to persons possessing an official entry form, and there is brisk competition to obtain these—one reciter told me that they are sometimes sold for as much as one hundred rupees. Although

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the Gyan Vapi program is the oldest and best known of the growing number of Manas- recitation festivals held in Banaras each year, it is not for prestige alone that Brahmans vie to participate in it. Nor is it for the official payment (daksina^[*] ) given by the organizers—in 1982 a token fifteen rupees plus the tangible gratuities (dhoti, shawl, etc.) already mentioned. The great material benefit of participation in this program comes in the form of gifts in cash and kind, received from the public in the course of the recitation. The giving of gifts to Brahmans has always been regarded (especially by the Brahman authors of legal texts) as a meritorious and purifying activity, and legends celebrate the generous gifts that ancient kings gave their ritual specialists on the completion of Vedic sacrifices. In the same way, the patrons of this "sacrifice," the householders and widows of the Marwari business community, expect to gain merit by conferring gifts on the reciters, visible and publicized merit, one may add, since the giving is done in front of spectators and is announced over the far-flung audio system.

This gift giving can occur at any time, and some of the more humble sort takes place every day; elderly ladies, heads respectfully covered, thread their way down the long lines of chanting Brahmans, placing a banana, sweetmeat, or ten-paise coin in front of each, and then "taking the dust" of his feet on their foreheads. But the most lavish giving occurs on days when the recitation is dominated by a joyous event: Ram's birth (Day Two), marriage to Sita (Day Three), victory over Ravan (Day Eight), and enthronement (Day Nine). On these days the reciters come equipped with cloth bags to carry home the "loot" they are sure to receive.^[47] This includes, by the end of the program, as much as four hundred rupees cash, as well as such practical items as wool blankets, cotton scarves, and stainless-steel bowls—all donated by local merchants. Each presentation is announced by the chief reciter, who interrupts the chanting at the end of a stanza to read, from a slip of paper handed to him by a member of the organizing committee, some such message as "Shrimati Nirmala Devi, in memory of her heaven-gone husband, Seth Raghunandan Lal-ji, presents to the gods-on-earth on the auspicious occasion of the Lord's royal consecration a daksina^[*] of two rupees each." The announcement is greeted by a loud cheer from the assembled "gods," who then resume their recitation. Gift giving reaches such a pitch during the description of Ramraj on the final day that the

[47] The Brahmans themselves jokingly use the word lut^[*] (spoils), which has come into English from Hindi.

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reading is interrupted after virtually every stanza by an announcement of this sort.

The Brahmans are honored in other ways as well. On their arrival each morning, their feet are ceremoniously washed by a member of the organizing committee, an elderly merchant known for his exceptional piety. And each morning's session is broken by a forty-five-minute rest period during which reciters are served a substantial snack of tea, savories, and fruit. A different family undertakes the provision of refreshments each day, and the name of the host is duly announced before the break.

Beginning Each Day's Program

The reciters come from all over the city and from as far away as Ramnagar—roughly ten kilometers distant, on the other side of the Ganga. All are supposed to be present and ready to begin by 7:00, but the program rarely starts on time -and many participants straggle in between 7:30 and 8:00. It is autumn and there is a misty chill in the air, but here and there shafts of sunlight stab through openings in the mandap^[*] . While the musicians play and the washing of feet goes on near the well platform, reciters stand around chatting or slowly change into their festive uniforms. The unhurried atmosphere changes to one of feverish activity, however, at the arrival of the chief reciter, the sternly venerable Shiva Narayan. A dignified man of perhaps seventy-five years, whose association with the festival dates back more than a quarter of a century, Shiva Narayan slowly enters the enclosure, pausing at intervals to receive the homage of the many who come forward to touch his feet. He then prays silently before the diorama while late arrivals scurry to their places to avoid incurring their leader's displeasure. For in this most unpunctual of cities, Shiva Narayan is known to be a stickler for punctuality, at least where Manas recitation is concerned.

This trait is forcefully demonstrated on the third morning of the program, when the leader takes his seat on the podium somewhat earlier than usual, to discern a less-than-full complement of reciters filling the neat rows in front of him. Waiting extras are delegated to fill two of the empty places and the preliminary rituals are begun. Meanwhile, several of the offending Brahmans straggle in and attempt to make their way as unobtrusively as possible to their assigned places. None escapes the leader's stern gaze, however, and the ritual is periodically interrupted by a humiliating exchange such as the following (all, of course, broadcast to the city at large):

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Figure 8.
Shiva Narayan, the chief reciter at Gyan Vapi in 1982 (note the
places set for two "spare" reciters to the right of the dais)

This little exercise has the desired effect, and all reciters are in their places well before Shiva Narayan's arrival on subsequent mornings.

The daily recitation is preceded by a complicated ritual of self-dedication and purification, performed in unison according to instructions printed in Gita Press editions of the Manas .^[48] Following invocations of Tulsidas, Valmiki, Shiva, and the principal characters in the epic, each Brahman pours a few drops of Ganga water on his right palm, utters a

[48] The interpretation of the ritual given here is based on an interview with Shivdhar Pandey (February 1984), a priest in the service of the maharaja of Banaras, who had taken part in the Gyan Vapi program for seventeen years.

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Figure 9.
Reciters at Gyan Vapi

prayer in praise of Manas recitation, and lets the water fall to the ground—thus affirming his "resolve" (sankalp^[*] ) to complete the parayan^[*] in the prescribed fashion. The next stage of the ritual purifies the body by the sprinkling of drops of water over the head, the taking of a ritual breath (pranyam^[*] ), and the making of various ritual gestures (mudra ), such as passing the right hand over the head and then clapping loudly ("to remove all impediments"). A whole sequence follows of "impositions" (nyas ) of divine powers on various limbs of the reciter's body, each accompanied by an appropriate mudra and the recitation of a verse from the Manas , which here serves as the mantra to effect the desired "imposition."^[49] The final phase of the ritual is meditation on the Lord (dhyan ), accompanied by the recitation of a hymn to Ram sung by Narad in Uttar kand^[*] (7.51.1-9). The leader then commences the day's recitation.

Although the general purpose of these preliminary rites, which occupy about half an hour, seems clear enough—the purification and

[49] Thus, in part of the ritual entitled "imposition on the heart, etc.," the reciter chants the verse "The praises of Ram effect the welfare of the universe / and bestow liberation, wealth, virtue, and beatitude" (1.32.2). This is followed by the Sanskrit phrase hrdayaya^[*]namah^[*] (salutation to the heart) and the placing of the right hand, tips of fingers joined, over the heart. The whole mudra and nyas sequence closely follows the liturgy prescribed in the Agastya samhita^[*] , a c. twelfth-century Ramaite text, which itself appears to reflect older pancaratra practices. See Bakker, Ayodhya , 92-93.

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sacralization of the reciter—what is more interesting is the contrived complexity of the Sanskritized ritual. The text consists of a mélange of Manas verses framed by Sanskrit formulas, but the fact that even the accompanying instructions are given in Sanskrit is a clear indication that this procedure is not meant for everyone. When I asked a non-Brahman acquaintance who frequently engaged in parayan^[*] recitation whether she carried out these preliminaries, she replied, "No, the words are too difficult for me, and I am afraid of mispronouncing them, so I just say the Hanumancalisa ." It is well known that the mispronunciation of a mantra can have serious consequences,^[50] and one can hardly escape the conclusion that the intent of the elaborate procedure described above is to enhance the role of the ritual specialist.

The chanting itself is to the melodious Tulsivani^[*] with the usual refrain (mangalabhavana amangala^[*]hari , etc.) and is performed antiphonally, with each half-line first being sung by the leader and then repeated by the assembly. The tempo is changed frequently according to a slow-to-fast cycle, each change being signaled by the rate at which the refrain is sung before the start of a stanza. The slowest tempo is solemn and majestic, and listeners can easily follow the recitation. After a stanza or two the pace is gradually increased until the reciters are literally racing through the text, and whole lines seem little more than a blur of sound. Then abruptly, the leader reverts to the slowest speed and the cycle begins again. The structural pattern of antiphonal singing and repeated slow-to-fast cycles is shared with other genres of Indian musical performance—for example, seasonal folksinging, devotional kirtan , and the chanting of the Manas in Ramlila .^[51] This progression from meditative opening to frenzied climax, lapsing back again into quiescence, is characteristic of much Indian classical music as well—and not of Indian music only, of course (cf. Ravel's "Bolero"), although the pattern may predominate more on the Subcontinent than elsewhere. A sexual metaphor is one obvious level of interpretation, but the pattern may resonate

[50] A classic example is the myth of Tvashtri's yajña undertaken to produce a hero capable of killing Indra. At the crucial moment, Tvashtri pours an oblation into the fire while declaring his wish, and Vritra is born. But because of a mispronunciation, the one who should have been "the slayer of Indra" becomes "[one] having Indra as his slayer"; see Eggeling, trans., The Satapatha Brahmana^[*] 1:166 (1.6.3.10). I am grateful to Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty for assistance in locating this reference.

[51] Cf. Henry's observation: "Like phagua , harikirtan consists of a series of cycles, each beginning at a slow tempo and moderate volume and accelerating to the verge of frenzy, when . . . the climax is abruptly terminated and the singing and playing resumed at a slower tempo and lower volume, to begin the cycle anew." "The Meanings of Music," 155.

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with other equally primary cosmic cycles. At Gyan Vapi the aural effect of the unison chanting of 108 voices is most impressive, both within and beyond the enclosure; the words of Tulsidas literally resound through the city.

Equally impressive is the spectacle of long rows of identically dressed chanters, all facing the gaudily decorated dais. While they recite, other activites go on around them. A steady stream of worshipers passes through the enclosure, many of them bathers returning from the ghats. Most proceed directly to the front for the darsan of the divine tableau and to offer a coin or flower and receive a spoonful of sanctified water from the officiating priest. Some then proceed to adjacent seating areas where they listen to the recitation or pull out their own copies of the Manas and join in. Others engage in a meritorious circumambulation of the reciters (parikrama ), using a wide track left for this purpose; throughout the nine days it is in heavy use by tireless devotees intent on benefiting from the merit generated within its holy quadrangle. By mid-morning on most days, the walk is thronged with a shuffling mass of humanity: bent old ladies clutching brass vessels of Ganga water; businessmen dressed for work; college students with bookbags, apparently en route to school; packs of children racing playfully around the periphery, convinced (as Banaras children always seem to be) that it is all a wonderful game—a spiritual Caucus Race. No one seems to do just one rotation; everyone goes around repeatedly. I guess that many do some fixed, auspicious number (1087), but always lose count trying to keep score. The uniforms of the Brahmans and the bright-colored saris and shawls of the devotees create a striking effect: an ocher grid framed by a rotating wheel of colors.

Other Perormance Elements

Each day's installment requires about five hours to complete, but it is interrupted periodically to introduce elements of participatory drama that help bring the story to life for the assembled devotees. On the occasions of Ram's birth, marriage, and enthronement, when huge crowds pack the mandap^[*] , Shiva Narayan halts the reading just before the crucial passage to address the people briefly regarding its significance and give instructions for their participation. Flowers are distributed to the spectators and the recitation resumes slowly while an arti of the images is performed under a rain of blossoms, cherry bombs explode outside the enclosure, and the plaza echoes with thunderous cries of

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"Bolo Raja Ramcandra ki jay!" Appropriate rituals are performed: the images of Ram and Sita are "married" by the priest's tying a silk shawl between them; vermilion is placed on the part of Sita's hair, and so on. There are moments when the reciters too assume a role in the story. During the enthronement scene when they come to the half-line "The Brahmans then chanted Vedic mantras" (7.12.4), they stop reading and, true to their training, intone a Vedic chant, while the priest on the dais applies the royal tilak to the forehead of the Ram image.

The killing of Ravan (Day Eight) occasions a unique performance. As the moment of victory approaches, the circumambulatory track is cleared, and excitement grows as spectators crane forward to see what is going to happen. While the Brahmans slowly chant the account of the final combat, a strange figure enters the enclosure and begins to circumambulate them. It is a hooded man dressed in a black robe, bearing on his head a large clay pot garlanded with marigolds. Seeing him, I thought at once of a death figure from a medieval mystery play; and of course, he is Death—Ravan's doom, now approaching in a fatal orbit. Again and again he circles, until the reciters describe Ram's release of thirty-one deadly arrows.

One arrow dried up the nectar pool in his navel,
the others furiously severed his arms and heads.
Carrying them away, the arrows flew on;
the headless, armless trunk danced on the earth.
6.103.1,2

Suddenly breaking its orbit, the black-clad figure flees the arena, mounts the ruined plinth of the old temple, and shatters his pot against the stones, while fireworks explode and the crowd cheers Ram's victory.

Other Nine-Day Programs

One indication of the success of the Gyan Vapi festival, in its twenty-seventh year in 1982, was the number of imitations it inspired. During my stay in Banaras I observed ten such annual programs, and I was aware of the existence of others. I witnessed similar programs in Delhi and Ayodhya and collected handbills for others from places like Kanpur and Bhopal. The practice is apparently on the rise, with new programs being added each year. There is considerable variety in the sponsoring institutions: a Sanskrit college, a school for the blind, a Devi temple, a businessmen's association, and—in one case—a hotel, as well as many

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Hanuman temples. All these programs postdate the one at Gyan Vapi and most are of recent origin. The Sankat Mochan festival, said to be the city's second oldest, was in its seventeenth year in 1982, while the Vighna Haran Hanuman Temple's program was in its tenth, the Kamaksha Devi Temple's was in its fifth, and that of the Lakshmi-Narayan Lodge (a hotel near the Banaras railway station) was in its third year. Although the sponsors of such programs are apt to emphasize Manaspracar (promulgation of the Manas ) as their primary motive, it is clear that a further aim is often to attract patrons and publicity.

A case in point is the Kamaksha Devi program, sponsored by a small temple near the Central Hindu School on Annie Besant Road. A nearby resident told me that only twelve years earlier the locality had been an unfrequented section of the city's outskirts and the temple itself in ruins. A sadhu, Swami Dhiraj Giri, settled there to pursue his sadhana and his reputation for holiness, combined with the increasing southwestward expansion of the urban area, gradually led to the temple's acquiring a steady clientele, appointing a full-time priest, and undertaking repairs and embellishments. By 1982 Kamaksha Devi presented the appearance of an up-and-coming religious complex in a rapidly urbanizing area.^[52] Yet because the temple was located on a back lane, it did not attract as many passersby as might be desired. The Manas recitation program, for which a large banner and loudspeakers were erected along the main road, seemed to be an additional attempt by the priest and his patrons to help put this temple on the religious map of Banaras.

The basic pattern of all nine-day programs is the same: Manas recitation in the mornings by a fixed and auspicious number of Brahmans and commentary on the text in the evenings by invited speakers. The number of reciters is a prime indication of the largesse of the sponsors: the Vighna Haran Hanuman program employs fifty-two, whereas tiny Vankati Hanuman features thirteen, and Kamaksha Devi, eleven. At least one of the programs—that of the Sankat Mochan Temple—is comparable in scale to that of Gyan Vapi. Here too the sponsorship of the program may be viewed as one element in the rise to prominence of a temple that—though now among the city's most venerated—even a few decades ago consisted of only a small shrine surrounded by mud walls, located in a "wild" (jangli ) area that many Banarsis considered unsafe to visit.

[52] Ironically, Swami Dhiraj Giri, who left to found an ashram in Uttarkashi in the Himalayas, was said to have returned for a visit and observed that the changes had ruined the atmosphere of the place, rendering it unsuitable for sadhana .

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Figure 10.
In a temple diorama, Hanuman appears to fly through a firmament
of colored lights

Like the program at Gyan Vapi, many of the newer ones incorporate visual or audience-participatory elements into the bare recitation. One of the most remarkable efforts is by the Vighna Haran (Remover of Obstacles) Hanuman Temple, located in a small lane near the Mazda Cinema in the area known as Laksa. This temple has also come to prominence only recently, under the leadership of Mohini Sharan, a local perfume merchant who became the disciple and spiritual successor of a revered Ramanandi sadhu and now commands a wide following in the city. The temple itself is a recent structure, but it enshrines a huge stone image of Hanuman that, like many others in Banaras, is popularly held to date from Tulsidas's time. Below its conventional spire, the boxlike temple presents the appearance of an outdoor stage, with its open front wall exposing a deep-set rectangular interior, at the rear of which stands the Hanuman image. A prosceniumlike platform extends in front of the temple, which faces an empty lot. For the Manas recitation program, the theaterlike features of the site are fully utilized: the empty lot is carpeted and covered by a mandap^[*] ; the front platform serves as a dais, with the vyas seat placed on one side of it; and the brilliantly illuminated interior of the temple forms a natural backdrop and visual focus. To this already attractive setup, Mohini Sharan has added a further theatrical touch,

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which has brought particular renown to his program: the daily mounting of an elaborate tableau (a jhanki , or "glimpse") of a scene from the Manas .

The themes of the nine tableaux represent high points in the recitation. Day One's jhanki of the marriage of Shiva and Parvati, for example, depicts the wedding procession of Shiva and his grotesque attendants moving across a heavenly landscape of cotton-wool clouds, while off to one side a bejeweled Parvati, holding the marriage garland, waits with her parents before an illuminated cardboard palace. The shimmering lights and doll-like figures remind me of a Christmas window in an American department store, and the viewing area in front of the temple is often thronged with smaller darsan seekers, gazing at the scene in wide-eyed delight—and, of course, learning the Ramayan at the same time.

Each day's tableau is on display from 7:00 A.M. till the closing nighttime arti at about 10:30 P.M. ; a curtain is then drawn across the front of the temple while the work of changing the scene goes on throughout the night. Subsequent tableaux are no less spectacular than the first; for the phulvari scene on Day Two, the interior of the temple is transformed into a garden with masses of potted flowers and shrubs, a canopy of leaves and tiny electric bulbs overhead, and geometric designs of grass clippings and crushed stones on the floor. But the undoubted pièce de résistance in the view of festival goers is Day Four's tableau of "the crossing of the Ganga": a low glass wall is cemented into place at the front of the temple and the whole building is flooded with a foot of water, on which lotuses float and in which some forty live fish swim, while a wooden rowboat (inscribed with the name of a local paint store) bears the figures of Ram, Sita, Lakshman, and their devoted ferryman.

In other respects, the program follows the pattern of Gyan Vapi, although on a more modest scale. The sponsoring patron adds another kind of performance on the afternoon of the final day, taking the program into the heart of the city with a nagar sankirtan^[*] procession^[53] that includes two elephants, the fifty-two uniformed Brahmans, and boys on caparisoned horses dressed in the conventional manner of Ramlila players representing Ram, his brothers, and Sita.^[54] When the procession returns to the temple in late afternoon, an elaborate wedding ceremony of the divine couple is staged.

[53] "Chanting the Lord's name through the town"—a practice popularized by the fifteenth-century Bengali mystic, Chaitanya.

[54] The term svarup (literally, "form" or "likeness") is applied to Brahman boys who impersonate and are believed to incarnate deities.

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Figure 11.
For the tableau of Ram's crossing of the Ganges, the temple's inte-
rior is flooded

Recitation as "Sacrifice"

The evidence of the various nine-day programs illustrates how readily the comparatively new phenomenon of festive public recitation of the Manas lends itself to embellishment with a variety of popular religious and folk-performance forms: circumambulation, almsgiving, tableaux, Katha and kirtan programs, processions, and lila -like dramatizations. Yet sponsors characteristically style such programs yajñas, and in structure they do indeed resemble the large-scale Vedic sacrifices revived in recent years under the sponsorship of religiocultural organizations.^[55] To the contemporary Hindu public, these ceremonies have a certain novelty value, but since Vedic ritual in fact plays little part in religious life, some pretext must usually be found to integrate them into the popular ritual cycle. Thus, in Jaipur in 1980 a Hindu organization conceived the idea of celebrating Mahashivaratri (the Great Night of Shiva—a pan-North Indian festival) with a fourteen-day Rudra mahayajna (a great sacrifice to Rudra, the Vedic precursor of Shiva) held in a specially constructed pavilion (yajnasala ) in one of the public courtyards of the City Palace, where eleven fire altars were continuously fed by priests chanting verses

[55] For an account of the 1976 Agnicayana in Kerala, see Staal, Agni: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar.

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honoring Rudra. The public was encouraged to attend, but since most people evidently had little idea of the significance of the ceremony, signboards were erected to explain what was going on, while loudspeakers urged viewers to circumambulate the enclosure and to make cash donations to defray the cost of the many expensive ingredients being offered into the fires.^[56]

Although such events continue to be held periodically, they are more like cultural museum pieces—restorations of behavior, to borrow a phrase from performance theorist Richard Schechner^[57] —than reflections of living traditions. Interestingly enough, the inspiration for the first Manas-mahayajna is said to have come from Swami Karpatri, a Dasnami ascetic leader and vociferous advocate of Brahmanical orthodoxy, who was himself involved in the promotion of Vedic sacrifices in Banaras during the 1940s.^[58] What Karpatri and his mercantile patrons hit upon at Gyan Vapi—undoubtedly influenced by the tradition of public recitation of the Puranas—is a "sacrificial" ritual that borrows some of the time-honored forms of older rites but reorients them around a popular text with which people can identify. The ritual specialists are still present in their serried rows, properly purified by a concocted Sanskritic liturgy, but the place of the fire altar is now occupied by the Manas itself and the mantras filling the air are its verses, the Very recitation of which is deemed a merit-releasing act. The sacrificial format, the auspiciousness of the chanted word, the giving of gifts to pious Brahmans: these age-old traditions are publicly reaffirmed not through the medium of the Sanskrit Veda but through a vernacular text that has eclipsed it in popularity and perhaps even equaled it in prestige.^[59] Clearly the whole symbolic structure and validity of this "great sacrifice" rests on public acceptance of the sanctity and authority of the Manas .

[56] A similar yajña with a Vaishnava orientation was organized by the mahant of a temple in Ayodhya to coincide with the Vivah Panchami observances (celebrating the anniversary of Ram and Sita's wedding) in December 1982. The event was held near the banks of the Sarayu in the usual thatched yajnasala; in the midst of the tumultuous wedding festivities in the city, it attracted little notice.

[57] Schechner, Performative Circumstances from the Avant Garde to Ramlila, 164-237. Schechner does not use this term in a necessarily pejorative sense, although he is critical of what he sees as media manipulation in the staging of the Agnicayana rite.

[58] Karpatri's Ramayan-related activities are further discussed in Chapter 6, The Politics of Ramraj .

[59] Such an "eclipse" is characteristically perceived as an additive act rather than a usurpation; the Veda remains, though, as in the Tamil Vaishnava tradition its chanters may now be placed behind the Lord's chariot while the singers of Nammalvar's "Tamil Veda" lead the procession; Ramanujan, Hymns for the Drowning, 126-34.

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The Pleasures of Manas Singing

The performance genre I am about to describe was not among those I had originally proposed to include in this study, for before coming to Banaras I had no idea of its existence. If the popular traditions of Manas recitation and exposition are little known in the West, the folk tradition of Manas singing is, as will be seen, virtually a nameless art even within its own culture and is little appreciated or even acknowledged outside the circles of those who actually participate in it. Indeed, some of my initial inquiries about the genre turned up only disinterested reports of its demise; "Maybe the village people used to sing like that," one man told me, "but now of course they have radios."

I knew to inquire about this style of singing because of an experience I had on one of the final nights of the monthlong Ramnagar Ramlila in October 1982. The performance on the night of Ram's enthronement is unique in that its concluding arti ceremony is delayed until sunrise the following morning, and the entire night is given over to a mela , or fair. The streets of Ramnagar swell with thousands of Banarsis and villagers who pour in for the auspicious sunrise ceremony. They wander about enjoying the gaudy illuminations that transform the fort and city, sampling treats from dozens of open-air restaurants that spring up for the occasion, haggling over trinkets at tiny stalls, and taking rides on hand-operated ferris wheels. Such diversions, common to any rural fair in North India, are not the sole means of passing the long and chilly night, however, and the devotional flavor of the pageant that occasions this particular fair is reflected in numerous all-night kirtan programs in temples, storefronts, and private homes.

As I walked around savoring the excitement and anticipation of this special night, my attention was attracted by a crowd of men packed into the narrow courtyard of the tiny Hanuman temple that, in the lila , represents Nandigram, the ascetic retreat of Ram's faithful brother, Bharat. In the center of the courtyard was a low, cloth-covered table with a large, well-worn copy of the Manas at each end. Around the table clustered musicians—players of the harmonium, double-headed drum (pa-khavaj ), and finger-cymbals (manjira )—and two singers who were interpreting the text. The passage being sung was one of the ones that had been chanted during the dramatic performance a few hours before, but now the style of rendition was completely different and unlike anything I had heard before. Each stanza was treated as an independent "song,"

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Figure 12.
Two sadhus in the pilgrim town of Chitrakut sing the Manas to
musical accompaniment

performed antiphonally to haunting melodies. Individual lines or half-lines were repeated many times with an emotional intensity that seemed to draw out their full meaning; they were also supplemented with words and phrases not found in the text, but which contributed to the richness of the interpretation. The all-male audience listened with rapt attention, punctuated only by frequent exclamations of wonder and delight. A singer would perform one or two stanzas, then another would come forward, instruments would change hands, and the new singer would take up where the preceding one left off. Certain singers appeared to be well known to the crowd, and when they came forward there would be a visible ripple of excitement as friends nudged one another and murmured the name of the new arrival: "Rama Guru," "Jugal Kishor," "Parasnath."

The crowd around the singers was so dense that at first I could approach no closer than its periphery and had to strain to hear the unamplified singing, but over the course of several hours I worked my way in closer to the charmed circle around the table. During this time several singers had performed—one of them a blind sadhu who, despite his lack of sight, likewise took up the text from where the preceding singer had left off and sang for nearly an hour in a high, clear voice. Whenever he

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appeared ready to stop, listeners would entreat him to sing one more stanza and he would go on, while men whispered admiringly that this blind bard was one who had the entire epic "in the throat."^[60]

When I left this ongoing performance at about 2:00 A.M. , I carried with me a powerful impression of its beauty and appeal. I was also impressed by its lack of commercialism; at "Nandigram" no money changed hands and no singer received anything but the approbation and admiring looks of the crowd. Despite the high regard in which certain singers were clearly held, there was an unpretentiousness about their performances, and they appeared to be enjoying themselves as much as listeners were. The intimacy and spontaneity of this gathering was in striking contrast to the formal and hierarchical structure of the pageant that had preceded it. Intimate, too, was the singer's relationship to the text: the loving way in which he drew forth its meanings and evoked its images. Lines such as the entreaty spoken by the monkey Angad when Ram is about to send him away,

You are my lord, teacher, father, and mother—
abandoning your lovely feet, where will I go?
7.18.4

seemed particularly to suit the singers' style and would be repeated again and again in an emotional manner that reminded me of Sufi qawwali singing.

The performance at Nandigram whetted my appetite to hear more of this fascinating and, by all appearances, widely appreciated style of Manas interpretation, yet for a long time I experienced only frustration in my efforts to locate additional examples of the genre. Middle-class Banarsi friends seemed scarcely aware of its existence or at best would smilingly tell me that it was an "old-time village custom," now fast dying out even in rural areas. Traditional scholars of the epic seemed to know what I was talking about but appeared incomprehending of my interest in the genre: "It is nothing special; only uneducated people do it." Since Manas singing programs were not electronically amplified, I was unable to "track" them by sound as I often did with formal recitation programs. Consequently, I began to wonder whether the vibrant performance I had witnessed was not perhaps an anachronism peculiar to Ramnagar on coronation night.

Then one evening in early spring there appeared on my doorstep an

[60] Kanthasth^[*] ; another expression used to denote memorization is "to place in the heart" (hrday^[*]mem^[*]dharan^[*]karna ).

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old man known as Rama Guru—the first of the singers I had heard perform at Ramnagar. I had spoken with him briefly of my appreciation for the singing and had given him a card with my Banaras address—a fact that I had quite forgotten. Fortunately he had not, and had come to tell me of a singing program to be held that very evening—the full-moon night of the month of Chaitra—at the Sankat Mochan Temple. On his traditional "birthday" night, Hanuman would be serenaded until dawn with his favorite form of entertainment: the singing of the Ramayan. I followed Rama Guru to Sankat Mochan and found the temple compound echoing with the simultaneous performances of groups from all over the city; in all, I was told, some twenty groups would perform during the night.

My educated neighbors' reports of the demise of Manas singing had definitely been premature. Although perhaps less popular today than it was a generation ago, this style of singing remains an important recreational activity of Banarsi Hindu males. Its vitality is attested to not by the existence of formal institutions or publicized programs but by the presence, in virtually every muhalla , or neighborhood, of the city, of small groups of singers who meet regularly to pass a few hours enjoying each other's company and singing from Tulsi's epic. The total number of such groups can only be guessed at, but an estimate of one hundred is probably on the conservative side.^[61]

My reference to this type of performance as "Manas singing" is not a reflection of any indigenous term. When questioned as to what name they attached to their activity, most people said that it had no special name or referred to it simply as "folksong" (lok git ) or Ramayan-dhun^[*] (Ramayan singing or chanting). Nita Kumar, who also investigated this genre, found that group members would often identify their activity simply as something they did "for pleasure," or with reference to its place and time—"We get together every Monday at the Shiva Temple."^[62] One reason for the absence of a consistent terminology is that the melodic styles to which the epic is sung by these groups vary with the seasons of the Hindu calendar—the style known as Holi, for example, is sung in early spring, Chaiti in late spring, and Kajli during the rainy months. The music itself is thus not conceived of as a constant; what is

[61] I personally came to know of eight such groups, widely scattered through the city. Kumar, who also studied this genre, collected data on a number of others and is convinced that their total number—based on the number of muhallas in Banaras—may be as many as several hundred; Nita Kumar, personal communication; November 1984.

[62] Kumar, "Music and Popular Culture in Banaras," 14; The Artisans of Banaras, 154-64.

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unchanging about a group is its constituency, place and time of meeting, and of course, the Manas .

Each of the seasonal styles has its own body of folksong texts, whose subject matter evokes the characteristic "mood" of the season. Thus, the lyrics of many Kajli songs express virah , or the anguish of separated lovers, an emotion thought to be felt with particular poignancy during the monsoon months. Such seasonal songs are popular throughout much of Uttar Pradesh and may be performed quite independent of any association with the Ramayan.^[63] The singing groups with which I am concerned, however, use the Manas as the primary text on which to build performances in seasonal styles, embellishing the text with lines from folksongs to create an improvised composite piece that is at once expressive of the epic story and evocative of the seasonal mood.

It is not clear how Kajli and the other seasonal genres came to be associated with the Manas text or how widespread this association is. Two recent studies of village music in Uttar Pradesh make no mention of Ramayan singing,^[64] yet I was told that this type of singing remains popular in rural areas. A number of the singers whom I met in Banaras had come to the city in search of work and had joined Manas singing groups because, they said, they reminded them of similar ones in their home villages. It thus seems clear that Manas singing goes on outside Banaras, and it is possible that its popularity may be localized in regional pockets that have thus far escaped the notice of ethnomusicologists. It is also clear that the seasonal styles readily lend themselves to creative adaptation; Kumar has noted the use of Kajli melodies and themes by literary poets, sometimes to express satirical or even political themes. Earlier in this century, prominent intellectuals like Madanmohan Malviya (the founder of Banaras Hindu University) used to compose Kajli verses for pleasure, and there were public contests at which poets vied to create the most clever or poignant Kajli. In the 1920s the genre was used by nationalist poets as a vehicle for political sentiments.^[65] Although many seasonal songs exist purely in the oral tradition, inexpensive booklets of Kajli lyrics still appear in the bazaars each monsoon season and are used by literate singers to expand their repertoire. One may speculate that at some point the seasonal genres became

[63] Henry gives examples of lyrics of village Holi and Kajli songs; "The Meanings of Music," 119-60.

[64] Henry, "The Meanings of Music," and Tewari, "Folk Music of India: Uttar Pradesh." Tewari's research focused primarily on villages in central U.P.; Henry's fieldsite, however, was only thirty-five kilometers from Banaras.

[65] Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras , 149-51.

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associated with the seasonless, ongoing performance of the Tulsidas epic to create a hybrid singing style that gradually grew in popularity. The rhyming verses of the Manas , which readily lend themselves to musical elaboration, had probably always been sung and chanted for entertainment as well as for religious instruction; the advent of printed editions in the late nineteenth century—cited earlier as a factor in the popularization of ritualized recitation—also facilitated recreational use of the text.

Manas singing groups tend to be small, often with no more than five to ten regular participants, although the presence of particularly gifted singers may attract listeners from the surrounding neighborhood. The core of every group consists of people who perform regularly, either by singing or by playing an instrument. Even though much of the singing is an antiphonal exchange between two soloists, some groups also sing certain passages in a choral style in which anyone may join. Most groups meet on a weekly basis, and since participants are often artisans, laborers, and petty merchants, they tend to gather at night, after shops and businesses close. Many groups have been meeting for years and participants refer proudly to the fact that their fathers or grandfathers sang in the same group. Groups in the Brahmanal and Khojawan neighborhoods, for example, are said to have been meeting for some sixty years, while the little group that gathers each Monday night at 10:00 P.M. in the neighborhood known as Khari Kuan claims to have been in existence "for three generations." Such impressive continuity is a reflection of the dedication of the core members who attend regularly and transmit the heritage of this form of singing to their sons.

Many of the groups meet in temple compounds, especially temples dedicated to Hanuman, the patron deity of Manas recitation of all kinds. In Visheshvar Ganj, for example, a group meets every Sunday evening in a small, dilapidated temple known as Ram Bhakta Hanuman—"Hanuman the devotee of Ram"—and the group's instruments and copies of the Manas are stored in a locked cupboard in the temple. A similar group, dating back about half a century, meets and stores its supplies in the temple of Bare Ganesh, in the hardware bazaar known as Lohatiya.^[66] Other groups meet in houses, on rooftops, or even at crossroads.

A striking feature of the singing groups is their heterogeneous composition, which cuts across caste and occupational lines. The Khari Kuan

[66] On the importance of this temple, see Eck, Banaras, City of Light , 188-89.

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Figure 13.
Ramayan singers meet weekly in a small room in the Banaras neigh-
borhood of Khari Kuan

group, for example, includes among its regular members two brothers who own a small tailoring business, a barber, and a Brahman who works in a machine shop. Nita Kumar has likewise observed of the singing groups she studied, "Brahmans and Chamars sing together with no awareness of doing anything unusual that needs explanation. Similarly, informants do not find it worth commenting on the fact that woodworkers and merchants sing together, although, apart from being of different castes, most of the latter easily earn four to five times as much as the former."^[67] One generalization that can be made about participants in such groups today, however, is that the majority represent the strata of society relatively unaffected by modern secular education and the attendant cultural process sometimes referred to as Westernization, which is often accompanied by a shift in artistic tastes. Kumar has found, for example, that, whether by choice or economic necessity, few Ramayan singers are regular film-goers, and their tastes in entertainment continue to reflect a preference—more universal a generation ago—for personal participation in localized and intimate groups rather than for the passive consumption of modern mass entertainment.

[67] Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras , 156.

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Kajli in Visheshvar Ganj

The temple of Ram Bhakta Hanuman is situated on a back lane of a commercial district, amid warehouses and cowsheds. A participant in another singing group told me about a program held at this temple every Sunday at 5:00 P.M. , although when I arrived soon after the stated time I found only one old man present, engaged in the methodical and leisurely process of tuning the dhol^[*] , or double-headed drum. He continued for nearly an hour, affording plenty of opportunity for conversation and for me to learn that the elderly drummer had been coming to this program for "about fifty years." During most of that period, the group had met at the more prosperous Bara Hanuman Temple, about a block away on the main business street. But about five years before, a dispute had occurred between the singers and a group of sadhus connected with the temple, and the program had shifted to its current location.^[68]

By 6:00 P.M. other participants had begun to arrive. A locked cupboard was opened and the familiar paraphernalia produced: harmonium and cymbals, a low table, and two oversize copies of the Manas . The table was placed in the middle of the room and covered with an orange satin cloth. A young man took the books and, after reverently touching each to his forehead and placing them at opposite ends of the table, laid a garland on each. Sticks of incense were lit, waved in the air in blessing above the books and instruments, then placed on a stand in the center of the table. Later some participants would bring packets of milk-sweets and pan , and these too would be placed on the table to be shared among the group during breaks in the singing.

There were still only a handful of men present when my elderly acquaintance began the program by singing the first two lines of the Sanskrit invocation that opens the Manas :

To the creators of letters and their significance,
of poetic moods and meters,
and of auspicious invocations,
To Sarasvati and Ganesh, I do homage.

[68] According to the drummer, the sadhus were holding an akhand^[*]kirtan (unbroken chanting of the divine name), which continued during the time when the singing normally took place. When the singers requested the sadhus to turn down their loudspeakers, the sadhus refused and angrily told the singers to "go sing on the roof." This hurt and annoyed the singers. "If it was a matter of singing on the roof," the old man observed, "then we could have sung anywhere. I also have a roof at home, everyone has a roof. But we liked to sing in front of Hanuman-ji." When the sadhus continued to refuse to share the temple space, the singers left the premises and shifted to the less pretentious nearby temple. Its priest died about two years later, leaving no son to succeed him, and since then the temple had fallen into disrepair, although neighborhood people, especially of the Ahir or milkman caste, continued to revere the small vermilion-daubed image enshrined there.

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This was followed by the opening couplet of Ayodhya kand^[*] —universally known, as it is also the first verse of the Hanumancalisa :

Having corrected, with the dust of the guru's feet,
the mirror of my heart,
I narrate the stainless glory of Ram,
which bestows the four blessed fruits.
2.0

In other groups in which I participated, the performance began with unison singing of the opening stanzas of Balkand^[*] (1:0a-e); the effect in each case was the same: the Manas was being begun anew.

The singers then opened their books to the passage in Book One describing the arrival of Ram, Lakshman, and their guru Vishvamitra in Janakpur^[69] to attend the contest for the hand of King Janak's daughter, Sita. This passage includes the profound remarks made by Janak when he meets the brothers for the first time and the excited and amorous comments of the women of the city as they watch the boys from their balconies; it concludes with the scene of Ram and Sita's first meeting in a flower garden (phulvari ). The many romantic themes in the passage seemed particularly suited to Kajli, the folksong style of the rainy months, when this performance took place. The singers told me that their practice was to sing at least five stanzas every week, but these might be chosen from any part of the epic. The phulvari scene was a favorite of many of them, especially during the month of Shravan. Their practice of choosing a new passage to sing each week, not necessarily following in sequence the one of the previous week, is shared by many singing groups, although some others, I was told, proceed sequentially through the epic.

Kajli literally means "lampblack" and suggests the dark clouds that drift across the sky during the months of Asharh, Shravan, and Bhadon (June to October), creating a mood that, for Indians, is neither ominous nor depressing but softly sensuous and fecund. The earth, scorched by the heat of the preceding rainless months, suddenly erupts into brilliant green life; a cool, moist breeze blows; lightning flickers across the dark skies; and peacocks dance and cry. The first rains draw people outdoors rather than driving them in; families picnic in damp meadows, and

[69] The city is also known as Mithila or Videha.

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young people hang swings from the trees and sing the playful and erotic Kajli songs that contribute to the special seasonal mood. The genre term identifies both the melodies—which are distinctive—and their predominant themes, which typically deal with the sufferings of separated lovers.^[70] The songs often make reference to the legend of Radha and Krishna, the emblematic lovers of the North Indian folk tradition. The singer may take the role of Radha and describe the agony of separation from her Shyam—"the dark one" (Ram is also of dark complexion and may be addressed by this epithet)—whose body is of the same hue as the rain-bearing clouds. Sometimes the lyrics simply dwell on the lush beauty of the season or describe girls playing swinging games in flowering bowers—although the girls are just as likely to be identified as Radha and her companions. One occasionally encounters Kajli verses with no thematic connection to either the season or its romantic conventions; Kumar cites an example of a song in praise of Shiva's generosity.^[71] Such songs are labeled Kajli on melodic grounds and by virtue of being sung during the monsoon.

By 7:00 P.M. the little room was nearly full, but singers and listeners continued to arrive and somehow space was made for them. Regulars were greeted with warm smiles and if a newcomer was known as a singer of good caliber he was quickly urged to the front and given the harmonium. The August night was hot and humid and the men in the tiny room perspired profusely, while an old-fashioned pankha^[*] fan of preelectricity days, activated by rhythmic tugging on a suspended rope, gave some measure of relief. The intensity of the performance developed slowly, but by 8:00 P.M. the atmosphere in the temple was charged with excitement and all the window openings were filled with the craning heads of listeners who could not get into the room.

The overall structure of each song/stanza was the same: a brief introduction on the harmonium followed by an improvisation on a single word or sound, often a phrase containing a name of God, such as "Hari Om." This opening improvisation, corresponding to the alap in classical music, might be developed to considerable length. It was followed by the slow singing of the opening doha in the stanza, the two lines being divided between the two singers.^[72] With the completion of the couplet,

[70] For a description of Kajli singing in a village near Banaras, see Henry, "The Meanings of Music," 142-50.

[71] Kumar, "Music and Popular Culture," 11.

[72] Note that in this style of singing, a doha is treated as the beginning of a stanza rather than its end (as in my notation system).

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drum and cymbals came in and accompanied the singing of succeeding caupais^[*] , which gradually increased in tempo. An individual line might be sung only once in fairly straightforward fashion, with its two halves divided between the two singers, or it might be elaborated on, with certain words or phrases repeated or combined with phrases not found in the written text. These might be relatively simple, such as the exclamation "He Rama!" added at the end of each line.^[73] More often, however, they would consist of full lines of an entirely independent Kajli song interwoven with the lines of the stanza and including a periodic refrain. The ever-increasing pace and emotional intensity climaxed in the final lines of the stanza—terminating in a sudden silence broken by sighs and exclamations of delight. A short break followed, during which participants chatted softly while pan was passed around. Then with no formal signal but as if by consensus, the harmonium started up again and the leader launched into the next Manas stanza.

To give the reader a sense of how the two texts—Manas verses and folksong lyrics—are combined in performance, I offer a translation of one of the passages sung that evening. The Kajli text here consists of only four lines; two of these alternate with every two verses of epic text. In the performance, however, individual words and phrases were often repeated and elaborated on in a manner impossible to convey in print. Thus a single half-caupai might be sung for several minutes; the passage translated here lasted about twenty minutes in performance. The lines of the Kajli are italicized to distinguish them from Tulsi's text, which describes the reception of Vishvamitra, Ram, and Lakshman by Janak and his court (1.214-215.8).

O Hari! Hari! Hari!^[74]

Accompanied by wise ministers, numerous warriors,
noble Brahmans, and family members,
the king went forth
to meet the king of sages.

The rains have come—to my eyes ,
without you, my darling .

The king did homage, bowing at Vishvamitra's feet.
The lord of sages, well pleased, gave his blessings.

[73] The final long vowel may be added for metrical purposes; it can also be construed as a feminine form, making this an invocation of Sita.

[74] Here one of the Lord's names was musically elaborated on as an opening.

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The whole company of Brahmans was reverenced
by the delighted king, realizing his good fortune.

The frog, the peacock, the sparrow hawk cry ,^[75]my soul writhes in pain, without you, my darling .

Repeatedly asking after his well-being,
Vishvamitra bade the king be seated.
Just then came the two brothers,
who had gone off to see the gardens.

The rains have come—to my eyes ,
without you, my darling .

One dark, one fair, in the bloom of young manhood,
they delighted the eyes and stole the hearts of all.
Everyone rose when Raghupati entered;
Vishvamitra had him seated close by him.

The rains have come , etc.

Beholding the two brothers, everyone was entranced,
tears welled up and bodies thrilled with emotion.
Seeing that sweet and captivating form,
the King of Videha became truly bodiless.^[76]

The rains have come , etc.

The juxtaposition of epic text and folksong refrain may appear mechanical or even inappropriate, since the Kajli verse seems to bear little relationship to the passage with which it alternates. The effect in musical performance, however, was more emotionally cohesive. The repeated refrain expressing conventional sentiments of romantic longing, with its often repeated phrase "my darling" (bare^[*]balama —an intimate term for a young husband or lover) acquired a special resonance when juxtaposed with the descriptions of Ram's captivating beauty and its effect on beholders. The combined song "made sense" musically in a way that it does not in print.

[75] The cries of these three creatures are associated with the rainy season, and that of the papiha (sparrow hawk) is thought to especially torment unhappy lovers, as it resembles the word piyu (darling, beloved).

[76] This half-line (1:215:8) makes a pun on one of Janak's epithets, Videha—the name of his kingdom—which literally means "without a body." Seeing Ram's beauty, the poet says, Videha became "in a special sense" bodiless (bhayau Videhu videhu visekhi ); i.e., he lost all awareness of his physical being.

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In groups in which the singing of the Manas is not carried on sequentially, singers may select passages that are particularly well suited to both the mood and the lyrics of Kajli or other seasonal genres. The Khari Kuan group, for example, is especially devoted to the romantic phulvari scene, with its description of newly awakened passion and longing in young lovers. In its performance of one stanza from this episode (1.228), the juxtaposition of a Kajli refrain with the description of Ram's appearance by one of Sita's girlfriends seems particularly appropriate.

The other companions saw her condition,
her limbs flushed with delight, tears in her eyes.
They all softly asked, "Tell us the cause of your joy."

The arrow of your eye bas struck, dark youth ,
Your smile has pierced my heart, dark youth .

"Two princes have come to see the gardens,
robust youths, handsome in every way,
One dark, one fair; how can I describe them?
Speech lacks eyes, and eyes lack voice to speak!"

The arrow of your eye bas struck, dark youth ,
Your smile bas pierced my heart, dark youth .

The group that meets every Wednesday night at the Bare Ganesh Temple was singing from Sundar kand^[*] during the month of Shravan. This book includes the description of Sita's anguished longing for Ram during her imprisonment in Ravan's citadel as well as a description, recounted to Sita by Hanuman, of the similar agonies that Ram is enduring (5.15.1-5); these passages, again, seem particularly well suited to the virah theme of many Kajli verses:

Ram says, "In your absence, Sita,
everything in the world has turned against me.
New buds on the trees burn me like embers,
night is the apocalypse, the moon like the sun,
lotus ponds are forests of spears,
rain clouds shower hot oil,
well-wishers only cause pain,
cool, scented breezes are like serpent's breath.
By speaking of pain, pain is lessened.
But whom shall I tell? None understands my condition."

The dark rain clouds have gathered ,
but my cloud-dark one hasn't come .

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In each of the above examples, the added Kajli verses offer an emotive folk commentary on the epic lines, linking them to an idealized seasonal mood and its constellation of evocations.

The performance at Ram Bhakta Hanuman continued until 10 P.M. It was, performers agreed, a good group and a good session, and considerably more than five stanzas were sung. When it was over, the singers, their faces flushed with exhilaration, performed the arti of the Manas and of Hanuman before dispersing into the moonlit and deserted streets.

Holi Singing

Like the music of the rainy season, that of the early spring months of Magh and Phalgun (February/March), known as Holi or phagua , has its distinctive melodies and mood.^[77] The seasonal weather, characterized by a gradual warming of the climate after the short North Indian winter, is thought to be brisk and healthy, and the music is merry and irreverent, anticipating the intoxication of the Holi festival (the full-moon day of the month of Phalgun), when normal social etiquette will be temporarily suspended amid the frenzied throwing of colored dyes and powders, a heavy consumption of bhang, and general license. The songs of this season often have romantic/erotic themes, but without the emphasis on separation so prevalent in Kajli; instead they emphasize the passion and coquettishness of young lovers, their teasing and pranks. In songs containing mythological motifs, again the reference is often to the Krishna cycle. Many songs describe Krishna's amorous pranks with the gopis and his throwing of colors with them on Holi itself; however, there are also phagua songs with a Ram-related theme.^[78] In any case, as already noted, in Manas singing groups the apparent relevance of the folksong refrains to the text of the epic passage being sung seems of little concern to the singers—or perhaps it is more correct to say that the aesthetics of this genre permit the meaningful and effective juxtaposition of material that, on the surface, appears to be thematically disparate.

The strongest impression I carried away from my attendance at

[77] As I did not have the opportunity to study Holi singing in Banaras, I draw on the general description of this style in Henry, "The Meanings of Music," 119-42, which gives an extensive treatment of this genre and includes translations of song texts.

[78] For Krishna themes, see Henry's songs numbered 55 and 56, pp. 129-31; see also song number 54 (pp. 128-9), which describes Ram's breaking of Shiva's bow to win Sita's hand in marriage. Kumar likewise cites a song describing Ram's Holi-play in Ayodhya; "Music and Popular Culture," 12.

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Manas singing programs was of the infectious joy of the performers—their delight in each other's company and in bringing their beloved Ramayan to life. Such singing is above all a recreation, both in the sense of an activity that affords relaxation and pleasure and of one that reconstitutes and celebrates a mythic reality. Although recitation performances serve many functions for the individuals and groups that conduct them, they clearly involve a self-conscious effort at religiously efficacious behavior aimed at securing long-term spiritual dividends as well as, in many cases, more immediate and tangible rewards. In contrast, Manas singing as I heard it in the back lanes of Banaras is so totally without commercial or institutional-religious associations that one may be tempted to label it, in Western terms, a "secular" activity. This label might seem further justified by performers' explanations of why they participate in this kind of singing: "We do it for pleasure" (for khusi or anand ), or "We get a feeling of intoxication" (masti or mauj ). But "pleasure" and "intoxication" are not, for Banarsis, categories to be excluded from the realm of religious experience, and the imposition of a sacred/ secular dichotomy here only tends to obscure the real nature of the experience. The brief puja and arti performed at the beginning and the end of singing programs, the reverent touching of foreheads to books and the garlanding of their pages, are not mere ritual formalities bracketing the "secular" pleasures of male comradeship, gossip and jokes, and the sharing of pan ; to participants the experience is more unified. One of the young singers at Khari Kuan put it very simply when he answered my query as to why he and his friends participated in the program every week: "This is our worship."

The religious dimension of the performances is suggested by another term used by participants in reference to these groups: satsang^[*] , or "companionship with good people." In the bhakti tradition, the discipline of keeping satsang^[*] is regarded as spiritually efficacious; it is also said to be easy and enjoyable—like salvation in Kashi. The importance of satsang^[*] reflects a belief in the active, participatory nature of "being present" at religious performances as well as the notion that intangible but positive "impressions" (samskar^[*] ) accrue to one from the companionship of like-minded devotees.

A comparison can indeed be drawn between the use of the Manas in singing groups and its use in public recitation programs—but not along the lines of a secular/sacred dichotomy. Recitation festivals implicitly underscore the hierarchical patterning of society; they reinforce the au-

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thority of the priestly caste as ritual specialists and interpeters of the Manas -as-scripture and display the wealth and piety of upper-class patrons. In contrast, the informal singing of the epic temporarily dissolves caste and economic boundaries, with the Manas functioning as a sort of "everyman's book of songs for all occasions." The measure of a participant is less his voice than his enthusiasm, but it is certainly not his jati .

What is common to both kinds of programs is, of course, their choice of text for performance, a choice that reflects the central role of the Manas in North Indian society. In the path^[*] festivals the epic serves as a vehicle for the reinstitution of large-scale sacrificial rites and for conspicuous gift giving to religious specialists; in the singing groups it promotes intercaste fellowship and provides a framework for the performance of seasonally appropriate musical genres and for the expression of related concepts of sensual and romantic mood. The presence of Tulsi's epic on its decorated stand gives to informal entertainment gatherings, no less than to highly formalized public rituals, a focus of meaning and beauty.

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Three
The Text Expounded: The Development of Manas-Katha

Infinite is the Lord, endless his story,
told and heard, in diverse ways, by all good people.
1.140.5

The Telling and Its Milieu

The preceding chapter discussed the dissemination, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, of printed editions of the Manas , and the related phenomenon of the rise of ritualized public recitation. Yet even today, when inexpensive printed editions are readily available, the major part of the epic's vast and devoted constituency does not gain exposure to the text primarily through reading or even through recitation. Adult male literacy in Uttar Pradesh state, the heartland of the Hindi-speaking region, remains less than 40 percent; female literacy, less than 15 percent. At the beginning of this century the percentages were far lower, and we may conclude that in earlier times literacy was confined to a very small minority of the region's population.^[1]

Ritualized recitation may be widespread today, at least in urban areas, but it appears to be more an effect than a cause of the epic's popularity; moreover, it is usually executed in too cursory a fashion to impart much knowledge of the text to listeners not already familiar with

[1] According to the 1981 census, male and female literacy in Uttar Pradesh was 38.87 percent and 14.42 percent, respectively; Gupta, Census of India, 1981 , Series 22, Uttar Pradesh; Paper 1, Provisional Population Totals, 38. The 1901 census of the United Provinces (which correspond roughly to present-day U.P.) reported male and female rates of 5.7 percent and .02 percent; General Report of the Census of India, 1901 , 160.

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Figure 14.
Baba Narayankant Tripathi discoursing to the faithful at Sankat
Mochan Temple, 1983

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it. Such rituals celebrate the sanctity of the Manas and capitalize on its fame, but we must look elsewhere for an explanation of how the vast majority of devotees, urban and rural, literate and illiterate, have for the past four centuries come to know and love the epic. They must, of course, have learned it through "recitation," but recitation of a different kind than any we have thus far examined: slow, systematic, storytelling recitation, interspersed with prose explanations, elaborations, and homely illustrations of spiritual points. This kind of systematic recitation-with-exposition is known as Katha .

Although the noun Katha is often understood to mean simply "story," this English translation tends to overly nominalize a word that retains a strong sense of its verb root. In India a story is, first and foremost, something that is told , and the Sanskrit root kath , from which the noun is derived, means "to converse with, tell, relate, narrate, speak about, explain." Katha might thus be better translated as "telling" or narration; Monier-Williams gives the most archaic meaning of Katha as "conversation . . . talking together,"^[2] and as we shall see, a dialogical milieu is fundamental to Katha performance. To tell a story implies that there must be someone to hear it, and in Hindu performance traditions the role of the hearer (srota ) is participatory rather than passive.

The term Katha has a specialized, derivative meaning as well. When someone announces, "I am going to listen to Katha ," he refers to the telling of not just any story, but of a moral or religious one, generally by a professional storyteller and within the context of a devotional gathering. Katha is associated particularly with Vaishnava bhakti —with the cult of the deity who, in his various earthly incarnations, is the archetypal actor in our midst and the hero of endless narrative. Since at least the time of the composition of the Puranas, the hearing of Katha has been regarded by bhakti teachers as one of the most efficacious ways to cultivate a love for Bhagvan and to learn of his sportive acts—his lilas . Although a Katha performance might in theory be based on any of the epic or Puranic texts and one can find examples of contemporary performances utilizing such texts as the Mahabharata , the Valmiki Ramayana^[*] , and the Padma purana^[*] , at present only two texts continue to be widely performed in Katha style in Hindi-speaking areas: the Bhagavatapurana^[*] and the Manas . The older Sanskrit text may have provided the model for the exposition of the Hindi epic, as it seems to

[2] Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary , 247.

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have done for its ritualized recitation, but its performance tradition appears to be in decline, while that of the Manas continues to flourish.^[3]

There is another area of contemporary religious practice in which the term Katha is commonly used, seemingly in a very different context. A vrat Katha is a story connected with a vrat , or disciplined observance, generally involving a full or partial fast kept in fulfillment of a vow. Such fasts are commonly observed on specific days of the week (such as the Friday vrat in honor of Santoshi Ma, which has become popular with women in recent years, or the Satya Narayan vrat observed on Thursdays), or of the Hindu religious month (such as the Vaishnava ekadasivrat on the eleventh of a lunar fortnight); they involve, along with abstemious practices, the recitation of a relevant vrat Katha . These stories, together with instructions for the fast and its accompanying rituals, are contained in booklets widely sold in religious bookstalls.^[4] Yet in this context too the term Katha does not. refer primarily to a text or even to a story but rather to an interactive performance. Instructions for a vrat usually require that its Katha be recited to someone, and only when the story has been "told" can the requirements of the vrat be considered to have been fully met.^[5]

Katha is virtually a pan-Indian term, as the act of religious storytelling is a pan-Indian phenomenon, but the specific performance genres to which it refers vary from region to region. In Maharashtra and Karnataka there is the tradition of harikatha , in which a performer known as a kathakar narrates religious and didactic stories, often to musical accompaniment and with interludes of congregational singing.^[6] In Telugu-speaking regions one finds the tradition of burrakatha , and audiences in Tamil Nadu patronize kathakalaksepam^[*] (passing time through story) and a related folk genre known as piracankam^[*] (from the Sanskrit prasangam^[*] , or "episode"). For the Hindi-speaking region, Norvin Hein has documented the nearly lost kathak tradition of singing and storytelling accompanied by stylized gestures.^[7] All of these genres have arisen

[3] Even though storytellers of the Mathura region used to be known for their exposition of the Bhagavata , the demand for Manas-katha has grown so much in recent years that many Braj performers have either added the Tulsi text to their repertoires or switched over to expounding it exclusively. During my stay in Banaras, one major Bhagavata-katha program was organized featuring the Maharashtrian expounder Ramchandra Keshav Dongre, who is noted for his interpretation of this text.

[4] A typical example of the genre is Saptavarvrat Katha , which contains stories and instructions for a vrat on each day of the week.

[5] See, for example, a typical vrat Katha , "Brhaspativar^[*] ki kahani," in Gupta, Khari^[*]bolikilok kathaem^[*] , 47-49.

[6] See Damle, "Harikatha."

[7] Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 31-53.

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out of the Vaishnava narrative tradition and share similar conceptions of the religious efficacy of storytelling and of the importance of the devotional assembly. Further documentation of these styles must await the research of scholars knowledgeable in the various regional languages; my concern here is with the performance art of Katha as currently practiced in Hindi-speaking areas.

The term Katha and the performance tradition it reflects is of special relevance to the Manas text. For although Tulsidas sometimes uses a term that may be translated "book" (granth ), speaks of "good books" (sadgranth ), and mentions Puranas, sastras , and other classes of revered texts, he never refers to his own work as a "book"; the Manas itself is always styled a Katha . Moreover, like any Katha it has, at every point in its long narration, a teller (vakta ) and a listener (srota ), and—quite in keeping with the ancient sense of Katha as "conversation"—the narration unfolds in the course of a dialogue (samvad ) between these two. Thus the Katha narrated by Yajnavalkya to Bharadvaj is transmitted to us by Tulsi in the form of a samvad between the two sages.

The beautiful Katha that Yajnavalkya
told to the great sage Bharadvaj—
that very samvad will I relate.
Let all good people listen with delight.
1.30.1,2

Likewise, in the stanza that recounts the chain of transmission of the Manas-katha , Tulsi emphasizes the importance of the roles of both speaker and hearer and describes how he himself first heard the story from his guru.^[8]

From such passages and numerous others of a similar nature (Tulsi uses the word Katha some 180 times in the course of the epic, very often in reference to his own narrative)^[9] it is clear that Tulsidas conceived of the Manas as a Katha —that is, as a "telling" of the story of Ram with emphasis on the active, performative sense of this term. Further, in numerous phalsruti verses he encouraged his own listeners to become future tellers of the Katha and to "sing" it to others, thus continuing the chain of transmission.

He wins his heart's desire and all spiritual powers
who, abandoning hypocrisy, sings this Katha .

[8] See page 24.

[9] This count is based on Suryakant's word-index to the epic, Tulsiramayan^[*]sabd suci , 67-68.

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He who tells it, listens to it, and praises it
crosses the sea of illusion as if it were a cow's hoofprint.
7.129.5,6

Yet the poet also implies that his Katha may not be readily understood by all who hear it, as he himself did not grasp it at first hearing. Ram's Katha , Tulsi says, is gurh^[*] : mysterious, profound, enigmatic. The listener must be a "treasury of wisdom" in order to grasp and explain its deeper meaning (1.30b). This is emphasized again in the allegory of the Manas Lake.

Those who heedfully sing these acts
are the skilled guardians of this lake.
1.38.1

Those who sing, Tulsi says, sambharkar —carefully, heedfully, with understanding—are to be understood as "guardians" of the Katha . The notions both of singing the poem "with understanding" and of guarding it (i.e., protecting it from incorrect readings and interpolations) have, as we shall see, acquired special significance for the Manas exegetical tradition.

Just as a Katha must always have a speaker and a listener, so must it have a milieu or environment; or rather, the environment is itself constitutive of the act of Katha . That environment is satsang^[*] , "association with the good," a term that in the Vaishnava context refers specifically to attendance at devotional assemblies and participation in their activities: bhajan, kirtan , and Katha . Such assemblies of sants (good or saintly people; i.e., devotees of Vishnu) are the milieu in which Katha arises. In a verse in Balkand^[*] , Tulsi likens the fellowship of virtuous people to the milky ocean, out. of the "churning" of which arises Katha in the form of the goddess Lakshmi, beloved of Vishnu (1.31.10). In a couplet in the final book, however, he is even more explicit about the relationship of satsang^[*]to Katha and of Katha to the devotee's goal:

Without satsang^[*] there is no Hari-katha
and without that, delusion will not flee.

Without delusion's flight, there can arise
no firm love for Ram's feet.
7.61

The relationship of satsang^[*] and Katha , and of both to the promulgation of the Manas , was often brought home to me in conversations with devotees. Once on a long train ride, a young man noticed me reading the Manas and at once began to hum the famous refrain "Mangala bhavana

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amangala^[*] hari. . . ." Soon we struck up a conversation, which became (as conversations with Manas devotees often did) a kind of impromptu Katha , with the young man speaking enthusiastically about the epic and quoting verses to support his points while fellow passengers crowded around and added their own comments and approbation. The speaker, as it happened, was like myself engaged in writing a dissertation on the epic and was an avid devotee of daily recitation (five stanzas each morning, preceded by the gayatrimantra and the Hanumancalisa ). But when I remarked on how well he seemed to have learned the text and how much of it he had memorized, his response was revealing. Real knowledge of the Manas and learning its verses by heart, he told me, does not come from recitation, but from satsang^[*] . "You sit down and listen, and then it really comes to you. That's how you memorize it: by listening." So great was his passion for Katha , he added, that whenever he heard of a program by a famous expounder he would "drop everything" and rush off to attend it.^[10]

If even a literate, scholarly devotee can affirm that his knowledge of the Manas comes from hearing it expounded rather than from reading it, what of the illiterate ones who still make up the greater part of the epic's audience? At a village in Madhya Pradesh, near the pilgrim town of Chitrakut, I talked with an elderly farmer. Our talk was initially of water, for lack of which his village was suffering greatly, but when the subject of the Ramayan came up, his face brightened: Hanuman, of course, had been on this very spot; Ram's feet had walked the surrounding hills; the whole area was powerful and holy—and each point that the old man made was supported by a caupai or doha from the Manas . As I listened to this performance with growing admiration, I asked the old farmer how he came to know so much of the Manas . Had he ever read it? He smiled and gestured self-deprecatingly; clearly, the reading of books was not among his skills. Then he added proudly, "It is by the grace of satsang^[*] that I know all this, only by satsang^[*] ."

Epic and Puranic Exegetical Traditions

The composition of the Manas-katha in a poetic dialect based on one of the spoken dialects of the time was itself an act of mediation between the Ram devotees of Tulsi's day and such revered Sanskrit sources as the Valmiki epic and the Adhyatmaramayana^[*] . Yet we should not presume that this written Katha , even at the time of its composition, was intended to stand by itself without further mediation or that its early "telling"

[10] M. Singh, interview, February 1984.

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consisted only of reciting its text. The poem itself offers evidence to counter this assumption. As we have seen, it describes itself as "mysterious" or "enigmatic" and implies that not every hearer can fathom its deeper meaning. Although its language is not especially difficult, neither is it transparent; as poetry, it departs from spoken language not merely in the irregularities of its word order but also in its great compression, reflected in the frequent elision of pronouns, prepositions, and even verbs. One result is that many verses can be understood in a variety of ways, a feature that in itself invites comment and interpretation.

Moreover, like many retellings of the Ram legend, Tulsi's Katha assumes the audience's awareness of other versions of the story, especially the Sanskrit epic of Valmiki, and chooses to omit or merely allude to many incidents presented in detail in the earlier text. Often the allusions are so cursory as to be fairly opaque without some accompanying explanation. For example, in the poet's opening obeisance to Ayodhya, there is a line suggesting Ram's great love for the city and its people:

He purged the manifold sins of Sita's slanderers
and freeing them of remorse, established them in his world.
1.16.3

No further explanation is offered—the next line praises Kaushalya, Ram's mother—and the epic makes no other allusion to this theme. The first reference is, however, to the imputation of infidelity to Sita by certain men of Ayodhya, resulting in Ram's ultimate banishment of his innocent wife, and the second is to the final departure from earth of Ram and all his subjects. These incidents are described in Valmiki's Uttara kanda^[*] ;^[11] as already noted, the Manas prefers to end its central narrative with a description of the joys of Ram's earthly rule.

Similarly, when Ram, Lakshman, and Vishvamitra, en route to Videha, reach the shores of the Ganga, the poet makes another one-line reference—this time to a famous myth that occupies fully ten chapters of Valmiki's first book:^[12]

Gadhi's son [Vishvamitra] related the whole story
of how the divine river came to earth.
1.212.2

[11] The allegations of infidelity occur in 7:43 of the vulgate edition; Ram's mahaprasthana ("great setting forth," i.e., from earth) occurs in 7:109,110. See Shastri, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki 3:521 (allegations), 3:633-636 (mahaprasthana ).

[12] Sargas 34-43; Goldman, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki : Balakanda^[*] , 189-208.

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Sometimes he alludes to clusters of legends, as in Ayodhyakand^[*] , when the people of Ram's city bewail Kaikeyi's harsh demands. The poet makes a brief reference to three classic tales of kings who had to suffer in order to keep their word:

The stories of Shivi, Dadhichi, and Harishchandra
they told one to another.
2.48.5

Religiophilosophical doctrines and categories (such as the "three kinds of pain," "six flavors," and "four kinds of liberation") are frequently referred to as well. Such allusions are like citations of other strands of the great tradition on which Tulsi draws.^[13] Thus, without necessarily being difficult from a linguistic point of view, the Manas is often terse and enigmatic, dense and allegorical, and full of references to the epic, Puranic, and scholastic traditions that preceded it; it invites not merely retelling and recitation but also expansion, elaboration, and commentary. We may therefore ask what tradition of lector/expounders of religious texts existed before Tulsidas's time.

Although the Indian tradition of the oral performance of a sacred text dates back at least to the time of the Rg^[*]Veda , the poets of which are referred to as "singers,"^[14] it is in the later Vedic texts—the Brahmanas and Upanishads—that we first find evidence of a performance milieu involving oral expansion on a sacred text by storytelling and systematic exegesis. In the case of the Brahmanas, the milieu is presumed to be a Vedic school in which students are learning the techniques and mysteries of the sacrificial rites.^[15] In the Upanishads, the setting is often identified as a forest hermitage and the text is presented as an oral discourse or a dialogue between teacher and pupil. Another common setting is that of the sacrifice, especially the important royally patronized rites that spanned many days or even months, for which special structures were erected and large numbers of ritual specialists engaged. During breaks in the ritual, it became customary for the Brahmans and their

[13] Volume 4 of the Tulsigranthavali contains a 165-page section entitled "Subsidiary Stories" (avantarkathaem^[*] ), which explains some two hundred mythological and philosophical references in the Manas ; see Shukla, Tulsigranthavali 4:173-340.

[14] The Vedic hymns themselves are dense with mythological references, many to stories that can now be reconstructed only hypothetically; one may speculate that when their language was still close to the spoken tongue, they too may have served as the basis for oral exposition. Note the presence of dialogue and narrative in the well-known akhyana hymns.

[15] Eggeling, The SatapathaBrahmana^[*] 1:xxii-xxiii.

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patrons to pass the time discussing metaphysical questions arising out of sacrificial procedures or listening to the narration of ancient lore.

Thus, the essential components of the Katha tradition were already present by about the sixth century B.C. : the milieu of the religious assembly of "good people" and sages, the presentation of religious truth by storytelling and exposition on older and revered utterances, and the interactive nature of the performer/audience relationship—the unfolding of the exposition as a kind of dialogue. The milieu of the sacrificial session continued to be important for storytelling in the age of story literature proper, the period of the epics and Puranas, and indeed to the present day.^[16]

The epics introduce a new class of storyteller, the suta : "a charioteer, driver, groom . . . also a royal herald or bard, whose business was to proclaim the heroic action of the king and his ancestors, while he drove his chariot to battle, or on state occasions, and who had therefore to know by heart portions of the epic poems and ancient ballads."^[17] The bard's social status appears to have been relatively low, at least in the eyes of Brahman legalists;^[18] yet it is clear that the narrative powers of a talented suta could win respect even from ritual specialists. The opening verses of the Mahabharata describe the arrival of such a storyteller—one Ugrashravas—at a hermitage where a twelve-year sacrificial cycle is in progress. The assembled sages "crowd around" the bard and, with many courtesies, prevail on him to recount his "tales of wonder . . . that ancient Lore that was related by the eminent sage Dvaipayana," which Ugrashravas had himself heard during King Janamejaya's snake sacrifice; the bard consents and the narration of the epic begins.^[19]

The Valmiki Ramayana^[*] unfolds in a similar bardic context, though without the mediation of a narrator of the suta class. The bards in this case are the twin sons of Ram, Lava and Kusha, who have committed

[16] Note the combining of "sacrificial" recitation and artful storytelling in the contemporary yajñas described in Chapter 2, The "Great Sacrifice" of Manas Recitation.

[17] Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary , p. 1241.

[18] Legal texts commonly depict the suta as the result of a proscribed union between a Kshatriya male and Brahman female; see, for example, Manu 10:11; Buhler, trans., The Laws of Manu , 404. Shashvata classified the bard as a Shudra; Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary , 1241. Even Brahmans who made their living as expounders of religious texts were looked on as belonging to the lower strata of their varna^[*] and could not approach the status of those who dealt exclusively with the ritual applications of the unwritten sruti . Hein's study of the kathak tradition shows that a member of this class of reciters was, at the time of the Mahabharata , regarded as "one of the least of Brahmans," unworthy to receive gifts at a sraddha ceremony, and grouped together with other impure professions; Mahabharata 17:13.24.16; cited by Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 51.

[19] Van Buitenen, The Mahabharata 1:19.

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the epic to memory while living in Valmiki's ashram and are ordered by their teacher to sing it during the intervals in Ram's horse sacrifice. The princes sing the poem, we are told, with sweet voices, to musical accompaniment and to excellent effect; "When the sages heard it, their eyes were clouded with tears and filled with the greatest wonder; they all said to the two, 'Excellent! excellent!"^[20]

Although the suta appears originally to have been a low-status performer of martial epic, the Mahabharata bears witness to a revaluation of the role of the text and a corresponding transformation in the status of its performer. Instead of driving a prince's chariot and bolstering battlefield morale with a recitation of past exploits, the suta is occupying a place of honor in an assembly of sages, entertaining and edifying them with stories that are not merely heroic adventures but have come to be regarded as powerful religious narratives. When the Mahabharata declares itself to be "a Holy Upanishad," a "Grand Collection [samhita^[*] ], now joined to the Collections of the Four Vedas," and advertises the efficacy of its own recitation ("A wise man reaps profit if he has this Veda of Krishna recited. . . ."),^[21] it gives evidence of a process analogous to what anthropologists have termed "Sanskritization": the acquisition of status by an appeal to established standards of orthodoxy or, in the case of texts, by the emulation of the oldest and most authoritative models.

When a text is sanctified, its mediators are similarly transformed. The Mahabharata provides evidence of the involvement of Brahmans with the epic, not only as its appreciative listeners but as its memorizers, performers, and, most significant in the present context, elucidators:

There are Brahmans who learn-the Bharata from Manu onward, others again from the tale of The Book of Astika onward, others again from The Tale of Uparicara onward. Learned men elucidate the complex erudition of the Grand Collection; there are those who are experienced in explaining it, others in retaining it.^[22]

Such Brahman storytellers and expounders are sometimes identified by more specific labels; another Mahabharata passage states that when Arjuna went to the forest for twelve months in fulfillment of a vow, his

[20] Goldman, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki : Balakanda^[*] , 133. Goldman observes (p. 73) that the boys' names appear to be derived from the title of a perhaps more ancient class of bardic singer, the kusilava .

[21] Van Buitenen, The Mahabharata 1:30, 20, 31.

[22] Ibid. 1:22.

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entourage included "great scholars of the Veda . . . sutas and pauranikas^[*] , kathakas as well . . . and Brahmans who gave sweet voice to celestial tales."^[23] The forest ashram, as we have noted, was one of the preferred settings for the performance of religious narrative, and this passage highlights the rhetorical skills of the men Arjuna took with him to help pass the time during his year-long vow.

The titles introduced are significant for later traditions of textual mediation. The term suta eventually went out of common use, although the suta role reappeared in the caran^[*] and bhat^[*] of the Rajput tradition—a professional bard, panegyrist, and genealogist whose duty was to praise the king in court and on the battlefield and to sing versified genealogies on state occasions.^[24] More relevant to the present study are the terms kathaka (storyteller) and pauranika^[*] (specialist in the Puranas). Hein has shown that by at least the tenth century the former term was considered synonymous with granthika —a "book specialist"—and that the "book" in question was probably a Vaishnava Purana.^[25] By the eighteenth century, however, the term kathak had come to refer to a type of storyteller, whose oral renditions of devotional texts were accompanied by gesture and dance and whose art eventually moved from the temple to the royal court, where it influenced the development of a dance style. Today the name of the dance is nearly all that is left of the older art—although many song texts used in the abhinay , or mimed portions of kathak dance, continue to be drawn from Vaishnava devotional literature.^[26]

The importance of the other category of performer, the pauranika^[*] , grew as the spread of bhakti -style Hinduism created wider audiences for the telling of stories that aroused devotional feelings. Bonazzoli has observed that among the many terms used by the Puranas to refer to their reciters—such as pauranika^[*] , vyakhyatr^[*] , and vyasa —two basic categories of performers may be distinguished: those who simply recite texts with little or no elaboration and those who translate texts into the

[23] Ibid. 1:400; Mahabharata 1:16.206.1,2; cited by Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 51.

[24] Shah and Shroff, "The Vahivanca Barots of Gujarat," 42-45.

[25] See Hein's citation of Kaiyata, a tenth-century commentator on Patanjali; both Kaiyata and Patanjali mention oral performers who narrated stories of Krishna, Kamsa, and Bali; The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 52.

[26] At the time of his fieldwork in 1949-50, Hein found in Vrindavan only one kathak who exemplified the older school. This man had no pupils and spoke of the imminent extinction of his art. Hein concluded that there were "very few practicing kathaks in Uttar Pradesh" (p. 46). My fieldwork revealed no examples of the type of performance Hein described.

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vernacular or otherwise comment on them.^[27] The role of the latter performers—for whom the title vyakhyatr^[*] is commonly used in the older Puranas, to be replaced by vyasa in some of the later ones—appears to have grown in importance as the Puranic congregation came to include increasing numbers of lower-class and uneducated persons. Derived from the verb vyakhya , "to explain in detail," vyakhyatr^[*] may be translated "expounder" or "commentator." A passage in the Padma purana^[*] (c. 750 C.E. ) praises the vyakhyatr^[*] in exalted terms and directs his patrons to honor him with gifts of clothing, scent, and flowers. It attributes the indispensability of such an expounder to the exigencies of the present Kali Yuga, in which even Brahmans are not as knowledgeable as they formerly were and ancient texts are no longer properly understood.^[28] That the audience's ignorance is largely linguistic is suggested by other verses, which describe the vyakhyatr^[*] as translating into local languages the Sanskrit of the Puranic sages. Another verse describes the manner in which such an expounder is to approach the text: "Let the wise [man] read slowly and slowly comment on it, having divided the reading of the sloka and having established a meaning in his mind."^[29] The use of the gerund vivicya (having divided, or having split) is significant, particularly in view of the later replacement of the term vyakhyatr^[*] with vyasa , which likewise means one who "separates" or "divides." Given the conventions of written Sanskrit—the absence of word breaks, the freedom of word order, and the joining of words into compounds—"division" can of course refer literally to the process by which the reader disassembles a sloka in order to decode its meaning. But the notion of "dividing" has additional significance and can help us to understand the nature of the expounder's work, which is not merely translation but "elaboration."

The term vyasa naturally recalls the legendary sage Krishna Dvaipayana, or Veda Vyasa, who is said to have divided the one Veda into four in order to make it more readily comprehensible to the people of this dark age. His creativity did not end there, however; he is also credited with the authorship of the hundred thousand couplets of the Mahabharata and the narration of many of the Puranas themselves, and it is often asserted that this voluminous story literature was in fact another recasting of the Veda to suit the needs of the time. The fact that

[27] Bonazzoli, "Composition, Transmission, and Recitation of the Puranas^[*] ," 273-75.

[28] Ibid., 274.

[29] Ibid.

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"division" appears to be linked, in Hindu thought, with "elaboration" and "expansion" becomes clearer if we recall that in many Indic cosmogonic myths the act of creation is accomplished by means of a primordial separation or division.^[30] To "divide" can thus mean to creatively elaborate, and in contemporary usage a vyas^[31] is one who artfully elaborates on a sacred text, generally focusing on a small part of it (and then often systematically "dividing" it into its components—a type of exposition that is still called vyakhya ) in order to bring out its profound or hidden meaning. Such a performer is viewed as a spiritual descendant or even a temporary incarnation of Veda Vyasa, who was himself an incarnation of Vishnu.^[32] A verse in the Bhavisya^[*]purana^[*] (c. 1200 C.E. ) describes the vyas as expounding from a special elevated seat (vyaspith^[*] )—a position of honor and authority in the assembly of devotees.

That the Puranas for the most part lack commentaries is very striking and has often been remarked on.^[33] Bonazzoli suggests that this may be due to the fluid nature of the texts, which were continually being rewritten according to the interpretations of sectarian groups (sampradayas ). According to his view, "commentary" was continually incorporated back into "text."^[34] We can further observe, however, that the tradition of public exposition provided an ongoing, living commentary in which not only expounders but also audience members might participate. A passage in the Padma purana^[*] depicts a recitation program beneath a street-corner mandap^[*] in which a listener closely questions a pauranika^[*] , who is then obliged to elaborate on his commentary. Similarly, the Bhavisya^[*]purana^[*] mentions "manuals of explanations" (vyakhana-samgraha^[*] ) that may have been prepared to assist the less prepared ex-

[30] For example, the purusa^[*] myth in .Rg^[*]Veda 10:90; the creator in Brhadaranyaka^[*] upanisad^[*] 1:2:3, who "divided himself threefold"; and the "golden embryo" (hiranyagarbha^[*] ), which divides to form heaven and earth (Manu 1:12,13). Bruce Sullivan has argued that the character of Vyasa in the Mahabharata is symbolic of Brahma, the creator god; "The Seer of the Fifth Veda," esp. 160-201.

[31] This spelling, based on the Hindi pronunciation, will be used henceforth except when referring to Veda Vyasa.

[32] Vyasa is numbered eleventh among the twenty-four avatars listed in the fifth stanza of the Bhaktamal of Nabha Das. This list is not chronological, however; the ten primary incarnations are given first, and avatars 11 through 24 are considered "minor" or "partial"; see Rupkala, ed., SriBhaktamal , 47.

[33] See Coburn, "'Scripture' in India," 453.

[34] Bonazzoli, "Composition, Transmission, and Recitation of the Puranas^[*] ," 275-77. A similar idea has been expressed by Hawley with reference to the Surdas tradition; i.e., that the voluminous Sursagar of today incorporates much commentary or elaboration on the original corpus of Sur's poetry, composed in a similar style and even introducing Sur's poetic "signature" in the final verse of each poem; SurDas , 52-63.

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pounder.^[35] Such examples remind us that the Puranic congregation was not a mere passive audience but played its own role in the explication of scripture. The privilege of audience members to question, raise doubts, and "comment" on the text in their own fashion remains an important feature of Manas exposition, and even the "manuals" referred to above have their counterparts in the sankavalis^[*] (collections of "doubts" or "problems," together with their solutions) assembled for the assistance of expounders of the Hindi epic.

In a recent essay Thomas Coburn attempts a "typology of the Word" in Hindu life, distinguishing several classes of religious utterance that all tend, in Western scholarly studies, to be subsumed under the generic term "scripture." First, he notes the existence of "frozen" texts (such as the Rg^[*]Veda ), which are "intrinsically powerful . . . and worthy of recitation, regardless of whether they are 'understood.'" These he contrasts with texts that are important primarily because of their stories—for example, the Ram and Krishna legends in various literary versions. Coburn also identifies other categories, but in the second stage of his analysis he reduces them all to two, for which he offers the labels "scripture" and "story." The former is "eternal and immutable," the latter "dynamic . . . spawning all manner of elaboration."^[36] The Rg^[*]Veda would certainly seem to belong to the former category, and the Puranas to the latter; but the Manas —along with other seminal bhakti works that have acquired a kind of canonical status within their traditions—seems to belong in both categories. On the one hand, the epic early acquired a fixity that resists interpolation and a status that makes possible the kind of ritualized recitations already described, in which the text is important more as mantra than as story. On the other hand, the meaning of this text is important to its audience; that meaning is elucidated primarily by oral performance forms that are inherently dynamic and allow for and indeed encourage the introduction of much contextual material. Coburn's two categories highlight the dual role that, as we shall see, oral expounders have historically played in relation to the epic: of guarding the purity of the mul (root, or Ur-) text, the text as scripture; and of creatively retelling and expanding on it in oral performance, once again bringing it to life as story.

[35] Both passages are cited in Bonazzoli, "Composition, Transmission, and Recitation of the Puranas^[*] ," 275-76.

[36] Coburn, "'Scripture' in India," 454.

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The Manas-Katha Tradition

Tulsi the Singer

Although there is no reliable documentation of performance of the Manas in Tulsidas's time, it seems reasonable to assume that as the fame of the work spread, it came to be systematically expounded in Vaishnava devotional assemblies. The hagiographic tradition describes Tulsidas as performing his own works, and even though the authenticity of some of these sources (such as the Mulgosaim^[*]carit , discussed earlier) may be questioned, the portrayal of Tulsi as a devotional singer seems plausible, particularly in light of certain references in his poetry. In some of the introspective and confessional songs of the Kavitavali and the Vinay patrika , probably composed late in the poet's life,^[37] Tulsi complains of his own hypocrisy, lamenting that, though inwardly a sinner, he "fills his belly" by singing Ram's praises.^[38] Such verses suggest that, like many contemporary sadhus, he may have derived a meager livelihood from the offerings made by devotees at the conclusion of bhajan or Katha programs.

Another glimpse of Tulsi as a performer is supplied by the Gautamcandrika , a work purportedly composed within a year of Tulsi's death by Krishnadatt Mishra, the son of one of Tulsi's intimate companions and ostensibly an eyewitness to many of the events he records. One passage describes Tulsi's performance of a Visnupad^[*] (the reference may be to Vinay patrika , which is an anthology of pads , or short lyrics) and its popular reception:

One night many sadhus came
and Tulsi sang a new Visnupad^[*]
to drive away intellectualism and establish bhakti .
The night passed, but no one noticed.

Tulsi went to the temples,
prayed and sang the Visnupad^[*] .

[37] The Kavitavali alludes to the poet's sufferings due to the infirmities of old age and mentions a plague in Banaras, believed to have occurred in c. 1615. On the dating of these two works, see Allchin's introductions to his translations; Kavitavali , 63; The Petition to Ram , 34-35.

[38] E.g., Vinay patrika 158:5,6, "I rattle on like a pandit about the secrets of supreme detachment; moreover I let myself be called your servant"; 171:4, "Calling myself your servant, I fill my belly"; 185:5, "I preach to others that saints are boats to cross illusion's stream." Similarly, Kavitavali 7:61, "I fill my belly by singing your praises, Ram!"; 7:63, "I call myself yours, Ram, and sing your virtues, and from respect of you I obtain my daily bread."

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Having listened with devotion to this new song
men and women began singing it everywhere.
On every ghat, in houses, lanes and squares,
the Visnupad^[*] spread throughout Kashi.
The conceited traditionalists became offended,
[as did] the hypocritical goswamis of the city.^[39]

Other hagiographic works depict Tulsi as both a singer and a kathavacak . A famous story of Tulsi's meeting with Hanuman in the context of a Katha performance is found in Priyadas's commentary on the Bhaktamal , composed some ninety years after Tulsi's death.^[40] The relevant verses, in which a ghost addresses Tulsi, read:

Your Ramayan Katha is elixir to Hanuman's ears.
He comes first and departs last, though in repugnant guise.^[41]

During the four lunar months of the rainy season (caturmas ), when travel became difficult, mendicants would traditionally remain in an ashram or religious center, where lay devotees would provide for their maintenance. Among the favored activities for these months were satsang^[*] and the hearing of Katha . The Mulgosaim^[*] carit describes Tulsi's activities during one caturmas as follows:

He stayed there for the rainy season
and daily told the Ram-katha with a glad heart.
The saints who dwelt in that forest listened daily
and listening, experienced great delight.^[42]

The First Retellers

I have noted that a Katha always has a principal srota , or listener, who should be one "worthy of receiving the Katha " (katha-adhikari ), as Tulsi himself suggests in Uttar kand^[*] :

[39] Mishra, "Gautamcandrika mem^[*] Tulsidas ka vrttant^[*] ," 8-9. This article included excerpts from the Gautamcandrika that Mishra had obtained from one Chaudhari Chunni Singh of Ramnagar, who claimed to have copied them from a (subsequently lost) manuscript of the complete work. A rough translation of the relevant passages (arranged in a different order from the one in which Mishra published them), is given in Gopal, Tulasidas: A Literary Biography , 69-86.

[40] See pages 49-50.

[41] Rupkala, ed., SriBhaktamal , 762 (kavitta 638). As explained earlier, Hanuman appears in the guise of a leper.

[42] Mulgosaim^[*]carit , passage after doha 21; in Gupta, Gosaim^[*]carit , 281. In contemporary Maharashtra, Damle notes that harikatha is still popular during caturmas and that well-known performers are often engaged by a temple or patron for the full four-month period; "Harikatha," 70.

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A listener who is wise, virtuous, pure,
a lover of Katha and servant of the Lord—
O Uma!—finding such a one,
a good man reveals even the most secret things.
7.69b

The chief listener's qualifications are important because he can become another link in the chain of transmission of the Katha ; hence the hagiographic tradition's concern with the identity of Tulsi's first hearers. The Mulgosaim^[*]carit identifies four original srotas , one of whom is then said to have recited the epic "over the course of three years," which suggests the kathavacak style of exposition in daily installments. Other traditional accounts of the early performance of the epic paint a similar picture of extended recitation in the satsang -assemblies of Vaishnava holy places. A twentieth-century Prasnottari (question-and-answer manual) on the propagation of the Manas lists nine early "tellings" and reveals, if not historical exactitude, at least the tradition's characteristic concern with place and occasion of narration as well as its concept of the extended and elaborate nature of Katha .

Question: Who was the first Manas expounder?

Answer: (1) Swami Nandlal of Sandila and (2) Swami Ruparun of Mithila. These two swamis had the good fortune to hear the recitation of the Ramcaritmanas from Goswami at Tulsichaura, Ayodhya. One of them recited the Manas-katha over the course of three years to Raskhan at Vrindavan, on the banks of the Yamuna, and the other recited it to Sabhal Singh Bhumihar on the banks of the Bagmati.

(3) At Chitrakut on the banks of the Mandakini, a second Tulsidas and (4) his pupil Kishoridas, in the midst of an assembly of saints, completed the entire Katha of the Manas in twelve years.

(5) In Kashi on the banks of the Ganga, Baba Raghunathdas told the Katha of the Manas in seven years and (6) in Panchavati on the banks of the Godavari the poet Moreshvarpant told it in nine years.

(7) In Ayodhya on the banks of the Sarayu, Benimadhav Das . . . and (8) at the confluence at Varahkshetra his pupil Keshavdas systematically related this Katha in ten years to Manas lovers. (9) At Soron on the banks of the Ganga, Mahatma Tulsidas Gosai and his son Janaki Gosai together told the Katha in five years during a sacrificial session.^[43]

[43] "Mahatma Tulsidas" is not the author of the Manas ; "Tulsidas" was not an uncommon name among Vaishnavas (note the "second Tulsidas" mentioned in no. 3). To prevent confusion, the author of the epic is often referred to as "Goswami." The Prasnottari was compiled by Baba Lakshmandas Ramayani and Chakrapani Shastri; it is cited by Sharan in "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 909.

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Such traditional accounts and the guru-disciple lineages offered by later expounders to assert their direct link with Tulsidas are among the few extant clues to what must have been a flourishing tradition of Manas performance during the first century and a half following the poet's death. From the latter part of the eighteenth century, however, it becomes possible to trace the development of the Manas-katha tradition, in part through manuscript commentaries on the epic composed by eminent Ramayanis. Substantial collections of these works may be found, for example, in the palace library at Ramnagar (Banaras) and in religious establishments in Ayodhya, but they have largely been ignored by academic scholars. Probably the most substantial treatment of the commentarial tradition (which, as will be seen, is synonymous with the Katha tradition) is an article by Anjaninandan Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] " (Early commentators on the Manas ), which appeared as an appendix to the special Manas issue of Kalyan^[*] in 1938. The author, a scholarly sadhu of Ayodhya, was the compiler of the twelve-volume Manaspiyus^[*] (Nectar of the Manas ), an encyclopedic commentary that incorporated the insights of many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ramayanis and about which more will be said shortly. Although the Kalyan^[*] article contains many gaps, it is still a rich source of historical and legendary material.^[44] The account presented here necessarily relies heavily on Sharan's article, supplemented when possible by material from other sources.^[45] But before I embark on this folk history of Manas commentary, some clarification of terminology is useful.

Indigenous Exegetical Terms

Although it is hardly possible to avoid using the term "commentary" in reference to written works in the Manas tradition, the reader's understanding of this term should be tempered by reference to the Sanskrit/

[44] Sharan apologizes to his readers that, "of late due to a certain indifference in my mind toward reading and writing, all my books and papers have been given away, and at present there is not a single Manas -related book in my possession"; "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 909. His memory must have been prodigious, however, and many dates and citations in his article can be verified through other sources. Even without his books, Sharan seems to have known more than anyone else about the development of the Katha tradition. I am indebted to C. N, Singh for having brought this valuable article to my attention.

[45] These include Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , which includes brief biographies of sixty-eight prominent Ram devotees. Another pertinent (but less substantial) source is Jhingaran, "Ham sevak," which deals with the Katha tradition in Banaras. Also useful is Chaube, "Ramcaritmanas ," which mentions a number of nineteenth-century commentaries. These written sources have been supplemented with material drawn from interviews with devotees and scholars, among whom Pandit Ramkumar Das of Mani Parvat, Ayodhya, and C. N. Singh of Banaras have been especially helpful on historical questions.

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Hindi terms for which it is only a partially adequate substitute. Both tika^[*] and tippani^[*] , for example, can mean "annotation" or "note," and many commentaries originated in the kharra , or "rough notes," made by expounders in the margins of their manuscripts of the Manas —notes intended as aids in interpreting difficult lines in oral exposition. Such annotations could rarely be understood without a teacher to expound them, and this was true even in the case of some nineteenth-century published "commentaries."^[46] Another word often translated as "commentary" is tilak , and here a primary meaning is "ornament" or "embellishment." Indeed, both tika^[*] and tilak also refer to the auspicious, often sectarian symbols with which Hindus adorn their foreheads. The purpose of a written tilak —at least within the bhakti tradition—is often as much "ornamental" as it is explicative; it is primarily an embellishment and expansion on the text rather than an intellectual explanation of it.

The interpretation of a given Manas verse by an individual expounder is usually referred to as a bhav —a "mood" or "feeling," an indicator of its essentially affective nature. A vyas in performance may cite the interpretations of a number of earlier expounders, introducing each somewhat as follows: "Concerning this verse, Pandit Ramkumar-ji had this bhav . . . ." The bhav of another vyas may then be presented in turn; the fact that it differs greatly from Ramkumar's or even contradicts it will not disturb either performer or audience. Conflicting "feelings" can still be savored by listeners, even though they may find that one bhav comes closer to their own feeling about a line than another does.

This tolerance for conflicting interpretations extends even to the basic structure of the narrative, since the Manas is an authoritative but

[46] Note Coburn's observation: "The guru-student relationship may well take a written document^[*] as its starting point, but so intimate and personal is that relationship, and so essential is it to the correct understanding of the written (or orally preserved) word, that there exists the widespread custom that if a teacher does not find a student worthy of inheriting his manuscripts, he will, in his old age, simply discard them by throwing them into a river—as one would ashes that had been cremated. Written documents, unvivified by personal relationship, are lifeless"; "'Scripture' in India," 444. Similarly (in a lecture delivered at the University of Chicago, April 1985) Francis Zimmerman has noted the tendency of commentaries on verses of Ayurvedic texts to end with the word adi (etc.), indicating that the line is incompletely expounded and that the student should refer to his teacher for further explanation.

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not a definitive text of the Ramayan tradition and since people typically know many Ramayan-related stories that are not recounted by Tulsidas. I once heard the Banarsi vyas Shrinath Mishra digress while expounding the Manas to relate an incident from Krittibas's Bengali version of the story concerning a long conversation between Ram and Ravan on the battlefield, where the latter lay dying from his wounds. This incident not only has no parallel in the version of the story best known to Shrinath's audience but seriously contradicts its narrative and chronology. It depicts Ravan, just before his death, as a devotee of Ram, and their conversation as extended and tender; in Tulsi's account Ravan remains an enemy to the last (although his soul wins final salvation by Ram's grace) and his death in battle is instantaneous. In retelling this story, the vyas advised his listeners not to worry over the narrative details but to "just savor Krittibas's bhav a little!" Moreover, it is understood that there is no limit to the number of bhavs that can be drawn from the epic or even from one of its verses, as some expounders have tried to demonstrate by presenting a stupefyingly vast number of interpretations for a single line.^[47]

If we understand the terms tilak and tika^[*] , at least in the context of the Manas , to refer essentially to emotionally flavored "re-presentations" of the text, we can better explain the wide range of works that may be grouped under these terms—ranging from brief verse-by-verse glosses in modern Hindi prose, offering no elaboration (although interpretation is necessarily involved in any transposition from poetry to prose), to multivolume works such as the Vijayatika^[*] of Vijayanand Tripathi, in which each verse is followed by an extended analysis that may fill several pages.^[48] In the same way, Katha performances may consist of little more than a recitation of the text with a brief prose explanation for each line or may involve elaborate and extended exposition in which, for example, a single line is discussed for many consecutive days.

The Rise of Royal Patronage

Although the tradition of oral exposition of religious texts—notably of the Vaishnava Puranas—had developed in northern India before the advent of Islamic rule, the establishment of Muslim hegemony created

[47] Baldevprasad Mishra mentions one Ramayani who is said to have expounded 1,675,186 interpretations of a single verse; Tulsidarsan , 320. See also the account of Ramkumar's performance before the Raja of Rewa, below, p. 142.

[48] Tripathi, ed., SriRamcaritmanas , vijaya tika^[*] .

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conditions favorable to its spread. The congregational expression of religious feelings through bhajan, kirtan , and Katha required no elaborate superstructure of temples and shrines, which could become targets for the iconoclasm of the new rulers. Vaishnava storytellers and expounders were often wandering sadhus, whose activities were likewise difficult for the state to regulate. Moreover, the religious philosophy of Katha tended to emphasize spiritual egalitarianism and hence appealed to people of low social status; it served to counter the social appeal of Islam and may have encouraged the patronage of wealthier, caste Hindus alarmed at the conversion of low-caste and untouchable groups.^[49]

The development of present-day styles of Manas exposition can be dearly traced only from the period of the define of centralized Muslim rule in northern India—that is, from the eighteenth century. The rapid dissolution of the Mughal empire following the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 led to the rise of many independent and semi-independent kingdoms, some under Hindu rulers. Even though Hindu courts of the period remained heavily influenced by Islamic cultural models, they also sought to express their identity and independence by affirming Hindu traditions of kingship and social order. This need to reassert a Hindu identity became more acute in the nineteenth century, when the Mughal imperial mantle passed to a far more self-assertively foreign regime, which engaged in an increasingly harsh critique of Hindu religion and culture—the British Raj.

The Vaishnava devotional tradition had for centuries been a major source of religious inspiration throughout the Hindi-speaking regions. The cult of Krishna had developed a spiritual center in the Braj region as well as important connections with Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Bengal; the cult of Ram had its geographical locus in the area today comprising eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and northern Madhya Pradesh, the legendary heartland of the narrative. Geography plays its part in bhakti —one expects to find a preponderance of Krishna worship in Vrindavan and of Ram worship in Ayodhya—and so it may seem only natural that the Hindu dynasties that arose in the eastern Ganges valley in the eighteenth century were inclined to patronize Ram-related traditions. But an additional reason for this preference may lie in the fact that the theology of Krishna bhakti had, during the centuries of Muslim rule, come to be almost exclusively focused on the pastoral and extrasocial myth of the

[49] Damle makes this argument with reference to the harikatha tradition in Maharashtra, which he feels became systematized during the period of Muslim rule; "Harikatha," 64.

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divine cowherd of Vrindavan and so no longer presented a model of kingship for this-worldly rulers.^[50] In contrast, the Ram tradition had preserved a strong sociopolitical strand, expressed most clearly in the vision of Ramraj and in Ram's role as the exemplar of maryada , a term that implies both personal dignity and social propriety. The accessibility of the tradition was enhanced by the expression of these ideals in a brilliant vernacular epic that had already won a vast following throughout the region. Accordingly, it was to Ram and the Manas that many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Hindu rulers turned for a validating model of temporal authority.

From the limited evidence available, we may speculate that the early propagation and patronage of the Manas was primarily the work of sadhus and middle-class people—merchants and petty landowners—and that Tulsi's epic did not initially have a strong appeal for the religious and political elite. Beginning in the latter half of the eighteenth century, however, there was a great surge in the royal and aristocratic patronage of the Hindi epic, reflected in the collection and copying of manuscripts at courts such as Rewa, Dumrao, Tikamgarh, and especially Banaras and in the encouragement of oral expounders and the commissioning of written commentaries by the most influential among them. Not surprisingly, royal patronage appears to have had the effect of awakening greater interest in the epic among Brahmans, so that the work of exposition and commentary came increasingly into the hands of religious specialists.

The chronology of the Banaras maharajas, who were the most influential patrons of the Manas during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, provides a convenient time line against which to view other developments in the tradition. The founder of the dynasty, Mansaram Singh, came to power in 1717 and ruled until 1740. By all accounts he was an ambitious local chieftain of doubtful pedigree, although his descendants claim the status of Bhumihar Brahmans (Brahmans "of the land"). The family conformed to the classic pattern of the nouvel arrive^[*] in Indian politics: rising from obscure beginnings to a position of temporal power and securing social and ritual status by patronizing a validating religious tradition. Mansaram's son, Balvant Singh (1714-70), oversaw the con-

[50] David Haberman suggests that the deemphasis on the heroic and royal aspects of the Krishna myth in favor of pastoral and erotic themes may in part have been a consequence of the establishment of Muslim suzerainty, the resultant disappearance of royally patronized temple cults, and the loss to Hindus of a channel for the active expression of religiopolitical ideals; Acting as a Way of Salvation , 40-45.

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struction of the Ramnagar fortress, across the Ganga and slightly upstream from Banaras city, on bluffs rising to the south. Besides occupying a strategic location safe from the annual floods that inundate the low-lying areas to the north, the fortress is popularly believed to mark the site at which Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa, the legendary "divider" of the Veda and author of sacred literature, performed austerities and composed his Mahabharata . A small temple on the western rampart overlooking the river enshrines a Shiva linga said to have been consecrated by Vyasa himself. Legend holds that Balvant Singh constructed the palace around this shrine. This temple has for many generations remained in the custodianship of a family of Ramayanis in the service of the maharaja. The male members of the family chant the Manas during the annual Ramlila ; some also expound the epic at other times of the year and thus fulfill the role of vyas in the special sense explained earlier. It seems fitting that the Vyas Temple, which claims a direct link with the archetypal mediator of sacred text, should serve as the symbolic cornerstone of a palace whose occupants have long affirmed their royal status through the mediation of the Manas epic.

The great flowering of Manas patronage at the Ramnagar court began in the reign of Balvant Singh's grandson, Udit Narayan Singh (1783-1835), who commissioned the massive Citra ramayan^[*] (a lavish illuminated manuscript of the epic) and reorganized the local Ramlila into an elaborate month-long performance cycle. His son, Ishvariprasad Narayan Singh (1821-89), was himself the author of a commentary on the epic and made the court the preeminent seat of Manas patronage and scholarship; his reign has been called the "Golden Age of the Manas ."^[51] The legendary Ramayani-satsangs he sponsored were graced by the "nine jewels" of the court—the most renowned Manas scholars of the day. Ishvariprasad's successor, Prabhu Narayan Singh (1855-1931), arranged for the publication of the great three-volume commentary commissioned by his father. By his time, however, the availability of printed editions had begun to create new audiences and patrons for Manas exposition, and the importance of royal patronage was starting to decline, although the family-sponsored Ramlila remained the most prestigious of Manas stagings. The proliferation of printed editions of the epic, many of which appeared with tikas^[*] composed by contemporary Ramayanis, helped spread the fame of influential expounders and contributed to the growth of an audience that was both more knowl-

[51] Chaube, "Ramcaritmanas ," 121.

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edgeable with respect to the text and more discriminating with respect to oral exposition.

Even though no other court could match the luster of Kashi, with its ancient sacral status and its intimate associations with both the principal narrators of the epic—Tulsidas and Shiva—other princely states were also active in Manas patronage. Of special note was the court of Rewa (on the Uttar Pradesh-Madhya Pradesh border) under Vishvanath Singh (1789-1854) and his son Raghuraj Singh (1823-79), both of whom were poets. The former is credited with thirty-eight works, nearly all on Ram-devotional themes, including a commentary on Tulsi's Vinay patrika ; the latter, who was a close friend of Raja Ishvariprasad of Banaras, was only slightly less prolific, with thirty-two poetic works to his credit.^[52] Another center of Manas patronage was the court of Dumrao, near Baksar in Bihar. Its ruler, contemporary with Udit Narayan of Banaras, was Gopal Sharan Singh, who patronized the legendary expounder Shivlal Pathak and himself composed a tika^[*] on the Manas in the 1830s.

The cultural challenge presented by British rule was undoubtedly one factor in causing these nineteenth-century princes to turn to the study and promotion of their cultural epic. It is also worth noting, however, that it was the "Pax Britannica" that relieved these small kingdoms of the sovereign Kshatriya responsibility of engaging in incessant internecine warfare and permitted their lords the leisure to compose poetic commentaries, make pilgrimages to Ayodhya and Chitrakut, and identify with one another not as enemy sovereigns but as fellow devotees, defenders of the faith, and patrons of an emerging "Hindu renaissance."^[53]

The Tulsi-Parampara

The guru-sisya^[*] (teacher-disciple) relationship is as central to the art of Katha as it is to other Indian performance traditions, and most expounders conceive of themselves as belonging, however symbolically, to a parampara (chain, or succession) that ultimately extends back to the very sources of the tradition. Anjaninandan Sharan identifies two main

[52] Biographical sketches of both men, including lists of their writings, are given in Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday ; that of Vishvanath Singh is on pages 431-36; that of Raghuraj Singh is on pages 469-74.

[53] A similar observation has been made by Peter van der Veer, who attributes the upsurge in royally patronized temple building in Ayodhya to the leisure and security provided by British overlordship; Gods on Earth , p. 39.

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Figure 15.
The Tulsi-parampara according to Anjaninandan Sharan.
Source: Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 910. Names followed by an asterisk are
those of famous expounders to whom additional reference is made in the text.

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"schools" of Manas interpretation, which may be labeled the "Tulsi" and the "Ayodhya" traditions respectively. The first traces itself back to Tulsidas (and ultimately to Shiva, the first narrator of the Manas ), but historically it can be most clearly traced through its two branches, which represent the traditions of Shivlal Pathak and Ramgulam Dvivedi, influential expounders of the early nineteenth century. Banaras was the most important center for this tradition, and most of its major figures enjoyed, at one time or another, the patronage of the Ramnagar kings. The Ayodhya parampara , on the other hand, was the Katha tradition of the various Ramanandi ascetic lineages that had their base in Ram's holy city; Sharan, himself an Ayodhya sadhu, did not attempt to trace this tradition back to the time of Tulsidas, but each of the sadhu lineages has its own chain of transmission, usually leading back to Ramanand and sometimes including Tulsi, if the sadhus claim him as a member of their order.^[54] In the pages that follow, I discuss figures from both traditions as well as a number of commentators who do not seem to belong to either; the majority of names that I introduce, however, belong to the Tulsi-parampara . Accordingly, it is useful to begin with a chart of this tradition (fig. 15), based on one in Sharan's 1938 article but with a few additions to bring it up to date.

This diagram cannot be taken as a historical or even a strictly chronological schema; rather it is a symbolic representation of a tradition as some of its practitioners conceive of it. In certain cases, successive figures on the chart were indeed connected by a teacher-disciple relationship that spanned many years of intensive instruction in Manas interpretation. In other cases, a pupil's contact with a given teacher may have been fleeting; he may have had the darsan (auspicious sight) of the guru, perhaps heard him expound on several occasions, and received (or felt that he received) his blessing (asirvad ). The situation is complicated by that fact that a pupil may have several gurus: a siksa-guru^[*] , who imparts teachings; a diksa-guru^[*] , who initiates and bestows a mantra; and additional gurus for specialized instruction. He may choose to place himself in the lineage of any or all of these.

In this context, it is important to understand that it is not primarily intellectual knowledge of empirical information that is communicated through the teacher-pupil succession, but rather authority (adhikar )—the authority to practice a particular sadhana and repeat a mantra, or to interpret and expound a particular text. Such authority may also be the

[54] Charts of these lineages are given in Singh, Rambhaktimem rasik sampraday , 333-56.

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outcome of "grace" (krpa^[*] ), and the guru who imparts it may not be a human being at all; many expounders attribute their understanding of the Manas to the grace of Hanuman, the special patron of their tradition, bestowed in an extraordinary spiritual encounter.

Mahant Ramcharand as and Jnani Sant Singh

It is said that the first "commentary" on the Manas was a Sanskrit translation of the poem made in about 1603 by a disciple of Tulsi, Ramukar Dvivedi.^[55] The first complete Hindi tilak on the epic, however, is not thought to have been composed until nearly two centuries later and is credited to Ramcharandas of Ayodhya (not included in figure 15), a Ramanandi sadhu. Born in a Brahman family in the area of Pratapgarh, U.P., in about 1760, Ramcharandas is said to have been in the service of a local raja for some time; but a spiritual experience caused him to renounce the world and go to Ayodhya,^[56] where his humility and service to other sadhus earned him the title Karunasindhuji—"the ocean of mercy." Eventually he rose to a position of authority as mahant , or leader, of his own gaddi (literally "couch" or "throne" but by extension a religious establishment that contains the "seat" of a powerful mahant ) on Janaki Ghat, where he gave Manas-katha daily to great numbers of sadhus and lay devotees. It is said that Asaf ud-Daula, the Muslim nawab of Oudh, made a gift of several villages for the maintenance of Ramcharandas's establishment. Raja Vishvanath Singh of Rewa was so taken with his Katha that he urged the mahant to commit it to writing and provided twelve pandits to assist in this task. Their labors, it is said, occupied twelve years and resulted in the tilak entitled Ramanandlahari (Waves of the joy of Ram), which was completed in

[55] Jhingaran, "Ham sevak," 20. Interestingly, the second complete tika^[*] was a Persian translation by Devidas Kayasth, of which a manuscript dated 1804 is in the British Museum; Mishra, ed., Ramcaritmanas , 575.

[56] According to Singh, he worked in a palace office and was charged with overseeing royal documents. One morning he became so absorbed in worship that he failed to go to work at the appointed time. Later he hurried to court and confessed his oversight, only to find his listeners uncomprehending; he had, they said, been there all along. They even showed him documents prepared that morning, bearing his signature. Realizing that the Lord, in his compassion, had appeared in his place, Ramcharandas immediately submitted his resignation and set out for Ayodhya; Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , 418-19. The theme of the Lord's standing in for a devotee is common in Vaishnava hagiographies; in Maharashtra in 1975, I was told an almost identical story concerning a twentieth-century Krishna devotee who had worked in a railway office.

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about 1805 and published many years later.^[57] It divides the epic into episodes, each of which is referred to as a "wave" (tarang^[*] ); the image is of course derived from Tulsi's theme-allegory of the Manas Lake. According to Sharan, it is composed in rustic dialect and does not provide commentary on "easy" or straightforward verses but only on those that are poetically or theologically complex. He adds that when the book was completed, "its Katha was expounded from beginning to end, on Janaki Ghat in the assembly of saints, over the course of three years."^[58] Thus, the tilak , like its source text, became the basis for expanded oral exposition; as we shall see, this has remained a primary function of Manas commentaries.

A further point of interest regarding this early commentary is that Ramcharandas claimed, in his opening verses, to have before him a manuscript in Tulsi's own hand. Such an "authentic" or autograph (pramanik^[*] ) manuscript remains to this day the Holy Grail of Manas scholarship;^[59] early expounders and commentators, not yet influenced by Western textual criticism, put great emphasis on obtaining the earliest and most authentic manuscripts so as to identify the mul text and purge it of any "interpolations" (ksepak^[*] ).^[60] As I have already suggested, these scholars were only carrying out what they regarded as Tulsi's injunction that they serve as "diligent guardians" of the Manas Lake.

Another early nineteenth-century figure who does not appear on the parampara chart—who indeed seems to have been something of an anomaly in the Manas tradition—was Jnani Sant Singh, known as Panjabi-ji, a Sikh who was the mahant of an establishment known as Nanakshahi in the vicinity of Amritsar. According to his own account, he was ordered by Hanuman in a dream to compose a tilak on Tulsi's

[57] Mahant Ramcharandas, Ramayan^[*] Tulsidaskrt^[*]satik^[*] , 7 vols. (Lucknow: Naval Kishor Press, 1882).

[58] Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 914.

[59] At present there exist three manuscripts for which such claims are made, but all are incomplete: the Shravankunj (Ayodhya) MS. of Balkand^[*] (1604); the Rajapur Ayodhyakand^[*] (undated); and the Dulhi Sundar kand^[*] (1615). See Poddar's introduction to Kalyan^[*] : Manasank , 4; also Mishra's introduction to the Kashiraj edition, 11-12.

[60] Concern with the authenticity of manuscript sources is expressed on the title pages of some of the earliest printed editions; see Chaube, "Ramcaritmanas ." As early as 1846 the maharaja of Banaras initiated a project to assemble a "critical edition" of the epic based on fifteen of the most authentic manuscripts, which were to be entered on grid-patterned sheets to display variations on each line. The project, though never completed, testifies to the sophistication of Manas scholarship in the middle of the nineteenth century. Two sample sheets are shown in Mishra's introduction to the Kashiraj edition (plate opp. p. 10), and the project is described on pages 5-6.

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Ramayan: "I replied that I didn't know that language [Avadhi] at all. Then the order came to recite it 108 times. 'From the power of that, you'll gain much knowledge of the language, and the bhav of the text will dawn on you; that you must set down in the form of a tilak .'"^[61] The mahant carried out the order, and the result was the commentary known as Bhavprakas (effulgence of feeling), composed in the early 1820s in mixed Panjabi/Hindi dialect and eventually published by Kadgavilas Press of Bankipur, Bihar (1897). Sharan gives high praise to this tilak , and his comments reveal a Manas connoisseur's point of view, especially with regard to the importance of originality: "In the presentation of interpretations and in the resolution of doubts, this commentary is in a class by itself; no one else's influence is to be found here."^[62] That Panjabi-ji should have composed this work at all is evidence of the growing influence of the Manas in the northwest by the late eighteenth century.

Shivlal Pathak and Ramgulam Dvivedi

Roughly contemporary with Mahant Ramcharandas and Jnani Sant Singh were Shivlal Pathak and Ramgulam Dvivedi; with these men the two main branches of the Tulsi-parampara enter the historical record. Each had an extraordinary impact and came to be regarded as the founder of a tradition of Manas interpretation. Pathak's tradition eventually died out, but Ramgulam's, which branched further into two "schools," remains very much alive and represents the dominant tradition of Katha in contemporary Banaras.

Shivlal Pathak was born in a village in Gorakhpur District in 1756.^[63] Because of an unhappy relationship with a stepmother, he left home at the age of nine and went to Banaras, where he worked for some time in a sweetseller's shop. Unusually bright and studious, he was eventually accepted as a student by a renowned pandit; in due time he too became famous for his knowledge of Sanskrit literature and acquired students of his own. There is a tika^[*] on the Valmiki Ramayana^[*] composed by him, dated 1818. As a Sanskrit pandit he was, according to Sharan, initially opposed to the Manas . "His attitude was the same as that of the great Sanskrit pandits of Goswami's time. He was an enemy of the Hindi language and never read or listened to Tulsi's Ramayan. But the Lord

[61] Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 917.

[62] Ibid.

[63] This biographical information is drawn primarily from Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , 422-23.

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had other plans [as Pathak later wrote]—'In my mind was one idea; in God's, quite another.'"^[64]

His "conversion" came suddenly, through the influence of one of his own students. Paramhams Ramprasad was a sadhu who had come from Ayodhya to seek training in Sanskrit literature, the better to enrich his Katha with quotations from appropriate Puranas and sastras . Knowing Pathak's attitude toward the Manas , he was careful to conceal his intent from his guru, but on holidays he would expound to his fellow students in some private place. Sharan offers his own vivid Katha on this famous story:

One day, the guru went off to Ramnagar, and Paramhams-ji, knowing that Pathak would not be able to return that day because of heavy rains, gave Katha in the school itself. It was such a Katha and such an assembly that all the students, intoxicated with love, forgot themselves in the hearing. No one even noticed that the sun had gone down. Pathak returned and, seeing everyone lost in devotion, stood by the doorway and watched and listened. After a little while the Katha ended and everyone rose to go home. Seeing their guru leaning against the wall in the doorway, the student audience fled in terror, supposing that now that he knew, he would fly into a rage. But Paramhams-ji guessed something of his condition. He fell at Pathak's feet and saluted him, saying, "At the urging of some devotees, the Lord's Katha was started here. You came and modestly remained standing outside. A great wrong has been committed; kindly be merciful!" Hearing this humble entreaty, Pathak threw himself full length at Paramhams-ji's feet and clutched them fervently, crying, "This head that has never bowed to anyone, has today become a bee on your lotus feet; this is the result of that elixir of Ram that you dispense." Paramhams-ji lifted him up and embraced him. . .. Guru became disciple and disciple, guru.^[65]

At Ramprasad's order, Pathak is said to have undertaken 108 nine-day Manas recitations, as a result of which the hidden meanings of the epic were revealed to him and he became an accomplished kathavacak . Another tradition holds that when he first expounded in Banaras, the effect on the audience was so powerful that 75,000 rupees were offered at arti time, all of which Pathak placed at his guru's feet. It is certain that Pathak enjoyed the favor of Raja Udit Narayan Singh of Banaras and Raja Gopal Sharan Singh of Dumrao, in whose court he stayed for some time. He composed several works on the Manas , all in verse; the most famous is Manasmayank^[*] (Moon of the Manas ), which consists of 1,968 couplets, each attached to a verse in the epic. The style of these verses

[64] Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 911.

[65] Ibid., 911-12. Singh offers a less melodramatic version in which Pathak's acceptance of the sadhu as his guru occurs in the same way, but it is stated that Pathak had already long been an admirer of the Manas ; Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , 423.

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has been described as "enigmatic" or "riddling" (kut^[*] ); they cannot be readily understood. Like many premodern "commentaries," Pathak's was actually an outline for oral exposition to his own students and audiences. Sharan records a tradition that Pathak was able to expound each kut^[*] verse from five different perspectives: Vedic or "scriptural" (vaidik ); yogic; logical or rational (tarkik^[*] ); metaphysical (tattvik ); and worldly or practical (laukik ). Some of Pathak's interpretations were beyond the grasp even of his own students, however, and in Sharan's view many of his most profound ideas "went with him" when he died. Nevertheless, some later expounders continued to reckon themselves in his tradition, and a published version of Manasmayank^[*] appeared in 1920, with a prose tika^[*] by Indradev Narayan that attempted to unravel some of Pathak's riddles.^[66]

Even more renowned than Shivlal Pathak was Ramgulam Dvivedi of Mirzapur; the extent to which popular tradition associates him with the Manas is suggested by a folk saying, "Valmiki was reborn as Tulsi, Tulsi as Ramgulam."^[67] I have been able to find no birthdate for him, but he was active c. 1800-1830 and like Pathak was associated with the court of Udit Narayan Singh; a manuscript of the Manas copied by him in 1818 is in the palace library at Ramnagar. Like Jnani Sant Singh, he is said to have become a kathavacak through Hanuman's intervention, which came at a time when he was working as a manual laborer to support his family. Sharan and Singh recount essentially the same story:

About two miles outside Mirzapur and on the other side of the river was a Hanuman temple; a daily visit there was his firm practice. One day by chance he forgot to go. At night when he remembered, he immediately jumped up and set out. It was raining hard, and the Ganga was in spate. There was no ferryman on the bank. Bravely resolving to swim across, he threw himself into the torrent. Halfway across, as he was sinking, Hanuman seized his arm and saved him, he gave him darsan right there, brought him to the bank, and bestowed his blessing: "In your Katha , ever fresh and original interpretations will pour from your lips."^[68]

[66] Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 912; Sharan is incorrect in calling this the first published edition, however. The Mayank^[*] was issued at least fifteen years earlier, by the same publisher, Khadgavilas Press of Bankipur, Bihar; Gupta, Hindi pustak sahitya , 466.

[67] Jhingaran, "Ham sevak," 20. Ramgulam is not the only figure to be honored with this formulaic saying, however; Singh quotes the same line, substituting "Ramprasad" for "Ramgulam," in reference to Ramprasad Bindukacarya (1703-1804), a legendary sadhu of Ayodhya; Rambhaktimem^[*] rasik sampraday , 416.

[68] Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] , 920. The motif of the hazardous river crossing is not uncommon in bhakti legends. It occurs in the traditional biography of Tulsidas (see Mulgosaim^[*]carit , passage following doha 16, in Gupta, Gosaim^[*]carit , 280), and also in the legend of Bilvamangal (see Rupkala, ed., Sri Bhaktamal , 368-71, kavitta 211-15).

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Singh adds the interesting detail that Hanuman expressly forbade Ramgulam to compose any written commentary; the extraordinary interpretations (bhav ) were to come strictly "from his lips." Later, when Ramgulam discovered that some of his students were taking notes on his Katha , he is said to have cursed the writings, declaring that anyone who read them would go blind; some eighty years later, the great expounder Ramkumar Mishra, grand-pupil of Ramgulam, attributed his failing eyesight to the fact that, in his ceaseless quest for deeper insight into the Manas , he had dared to consult the forbidden notebooks. In any case, it is certain that no major tika^[*] ever appeared under Ramgulam's name. However, he assiduously assembled the best available manuscripts of Tulsi's works. An edition of the Manas prepared by him and published by Sarasvati Press, Banaras, in 1857 was considered by Grierson (writing in 1893) to be the "most accurate" then available.^[69]

Ramgulam is the first expounder of whom we note claims concerning a very extended elaboration of small passages of the text. One story tells of a meeting between the expounder and Maharaja Vishvanath Singh of Rewa at the Kumbha Mela festival in Prayag (Allahabad). When Ramgulam graciously offered to speak on any topic of the king's choosing, the raja immediately quoted the first line of the "praise of the divine name" (nam-vandana ) section of Book One.

I venerate Ram, the name of Raghubar,
the cause of fire, sun, and moon.
1.19.1

The vyas agreed to expound on this verse the following day from 3:00 to 6:00 P.M. ; but then, according to Sharan,

he went on for twenty-two days, expounding this one line with ever-new insights; and whatever bhav he would put forth on one day, he would demolish the next, saying that it was not right. Finally on the twenty-third day the raja, filled with humility, said, "You are indeed a fathomless ocean of this Manas , and I am only a householder, with all sorts of worries on my head. It is difficult for me to stay on here." Then with much praise he requested leave to depart and returned to Rewa.^[70]

Other stories link Ramgulam with his contemporary Ramcharandas of Ayodhya. It is said that the two expounders became so fond of each other that they made a pact to depart from the world at the same time. When he felt that his end was near, Ramcharandas repaired to his seat

[69] Grierson, "Notes on Tul'si Das," 129.

[70] Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 921.

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on Janaki Ghat and gave a last katba in the midst of a great assembly of devotees. Just as he was finishing, a messenger arrived with a note from Ramgulam, also on his deathbed, asking if he remembered their agreement; the mahant smiled with pleasure at his friend's punctiliousness and peacefully breathed his last.^[71]

Raghunath Das and Kashthajihva Swami

Two other illustrious expounders of the first half of the nineteenth century need mention here, even though they do not find a place on the parampara chart. Raghunath Das "Sindhi" (fl. c. 1835-55) was the author of Manasdipika (Lamp of the Manas ), one of the most popular and frequently reprinted of nineteenth-century commentaries.^[72] His was one of the first editions to feature extensive accessory material, including a glossary and notes on mythological references, such as are standard in modern popular editions. The tika^[*] itself was brief and essentially a gloss on the verses.

Raghunath's contemporary, Kashthajihva Swami (also called Dev Tirth Swami, died c. 1855), holds a place of importance in Banaras tradition and brings us into the period of Ishvariprasad Narayan Singh (1821-89), his patron and pupil. There are various explanations of how this sannyasi got his peculiar name ("wooden-tongued" swami);^[73] in any case, it is certain that he was an influential figure at the Ramnagar court. An accomplished poet with a unique style, he composed some fifteen works as well as more than fifteen hundred songs, several hundred of which concern interpretive problems in the Manas .^[74] Like many other nineteenth-century Ram devotees, he was a srngari^[*] (a practitioner of the mystical/erotic approach to bhakti )^[75] and was closely involved in

[71] Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*] rasik sampraday , 420. This legend would place Ramgulam's death in 1831, the date given by Grierson; others place it as early as 1827 or as late as 1848; see Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 921n.

[72] An early edition appeared from Banaras in 1853 (publisher unknown); subsequent editions included Delhi in 1868 (Hasani Press); Banaras in 1869 (Ganesh Yantralay; two editions); Lucknow in 1873 (Naval Kishor; two editions); Delhi in 1878 (publisher unknown); and Banaras in 1880 (publisher unknown).

[73] Sharan claims that the swami defeated a famous scholar in debate, and the latter, in disgrace, took his own life. To atone for this, the swami affixed a kind of wooden stopper in his mouth; "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 918. A similar story is told by Chaube; "Ramcaritmanas ," 132. Singh, citing Misrabandhuvinod , states that the swami took his vow of enforced silence after a disagreement with the raja; Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , 450.

[74] Singh gives a list of the swami's writings and praises his language in the following terms: "The khicri^[*] ["mixture"—literally a dish of mixed rice and dal] of Bhojpuri, Khari Boli, and Avadhi in his dialect produces an extraordinary sweetness, not found in the speech of many devotees these days"; Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , 451.

[75] See Chapter 5, Ramlila and Devotional Practice.

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the development of the Ramnagar Ramlila pageant, the performance script of which still contains a number of his songs. At Ishvariprasad's urging, he wrote a short tika^[*] entitled Ramayan^[*]paricarya (Service of the Ramayan), which the maharaja then expanded with his own Parisist^[*] (Appendix). These texts, however, like Shivlal Pathak's verses, were little more than notes for oral exposition and were written in an obscure style; to clarify them, Baba Hariharprasad, a nephew of the maharaja, who had become a sadhu, composed an additional appendix entitled Prakas , or "Illumination." The complete tilak with its grand composite title (Ramayan^[*]paricaryaparisist^[*]prakas ) was eventually published in two volumes by Khadgavilas Press (1896-98) and was held in high regard by Ramayanis of the period.

Vandan Pathak, Chakkanlal, and Ramkumar

The next generation of expounders brings us into the twentieth century and includes the "founding fathers" of contemporary Banaras Katha , all represented on the parampara diagram. Vandan Pathak was born in Mirzapur in about 1815 but spent most of his long life (according to Sharan, he died c. 1909) at Ramkund, in the Banaras neighborhood known as Laksa. He composed a dozen works, including a Manassankavali^[*] (collection of epic-related "problems" with their solutions or explanations). Most of his writings were based on the copious jottings he made in the margins of his own Ramayans, including one he had personally copied from the manuscript of his guru's guru, Ramgulam. He used the title Manasi (Manas specialist) and won great fame for the brilliant ingenuity of his Katha . He was frequently called to Ramnagar to expound before the maharaja, and on one occasion, the poet Bharatendu Harishchandra is said to have presented him with two hundred gold pieces in appreciation of his Katha on the flower-garden episode. Later critics, however, have been inclined to temper their praise with criticism of some of Pathak's more far-fetched interpretations. According to Sharan, "many of his interpretations were sheer rhetorical display; he indulged in much twisting of words; yet many of his bhavs on various episodes are of the highest order and filled with the flavor of bhakti. "^[76] Another author has characterized Pathak's performance style as follows:

Vandan Pathak created an entirely new style of Katha performance, which was distinct from Ramgulam's tradition. He would playfully attribute new meanings to Manas verses. Breaking apart words and compounds, he put

[76] Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 923.

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forward unusual interpretations which were quite new to listeners. . .. He possessed an extraordinary gift for formulating meanings and establishing correspondences [i.e., between verses]. If a novice uses this technique, the result will appear merely bizarre.^[77]

Another venerable nineteenth-century expounder was Munshi Chakkanlal, a member of the Kayasth, or scribal, caste and a disciple of the great Ramgulam. Chakkanlal flourished in the latter half of the nineteenth century, contemporary with Ishvariprasad Narayan Singh, whose court he frequented and who provided him with a regular stipend to pursue his Ramayan studies. Chakkan was famed for his keen intelligence and prodigious memory, qualities that endeared him to Ramgulam. It is said that the latter came to consider Chakkan his principal "hearer" (srota ) and would not begin expounding until he had arrived, a show of preference that irritated other regular listeners. Sharan relates that once when the Katha was resumed after a lapse of some days, Ramgulam pretended to have lost his place and asked the audience to tell him where he was in the text. In the whole assembly, there was not one who could remember precisely, but when Chakkan arrived and was told the problem, he immediately gave the date on which the Katha had last been held, the episode then being expounded, and the last sequence of interpretations presented. "You see?" Ramgulam smilingly told the embarrassed crowd, "That is why I never begin without him, for even among all these listeners one cannot find a single katha-adhikari to equal him."^[78]

This story underscores the notion that the principal listener at a Katha should rightfully be its adhikari —a term for one possessing "mastery" or "authority"—and again suggests the transactional nature of the performance. Listeners do not constitute merely a random and passive audience for a rhetorical display but ideally are accomplished devotees capable of receiving in its full depth and import the fruit of the expounder's intellectual and mystical discipline and of integrating it into their own devotional practice. In more secular artistic terms, an adhikari is also a connoisseur, and his presence is necessary to bring out the best in the performer. For whereas an amateur or poor expounder may hope for an audience that is ignorant of his art, the more easily to impress it with tricks and hide shortcomings, a great expounder will desire just the opposite: a group of discriminating listeners who will be adhikaris of his Katha .

[77] Jhingaran, "Ham sevak," 20.

[78] Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 924.

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Like his guru Ramgulam, Chakkanlal seems to have composed no written commentary on the Manas ; but he did train a pupil, the great adhikari of his own Katha , Ramkumar Mishra (c. 1850-1920), who came to him, it is said, when Chakkan was ninety-five years of age. A native of Bundelkhand, Ramkumar was a learned Brahman whose childhood love of the Manas was supplemented by the study of Sanskrit literature; this led him to develop a style of Katha utilizing abundant quotations from Sanskrit texts as "proofs" (praman^[*] ) of Manas verses. Throughout his career, Ramkumar assembled notes (kharra ) on sheets of foolscap; Sharan remarked that the early notes, which he had seen, were heavily influenced by older written commentaries: "It is dear from them that his Katha in those days was merely based on tikas^[*] ."^[79] Later, Ramkumar moved to Banaras and began to attend the legendary Ramayani-satsangs organized by Maharaja Ishvariprasad in Ramnagar. It was there that he first heard Chakkanlal and decided that none other than the aged Kayasth should be his own Manas-guru . Although Ram-kumar was living and working in Banaras, he made the long and tiring journey across the Ganga to Ramnagar each evening and devoted his nights to a systematic study of the epic under Chakkan's direction. An affectionate relationship developed between the two men. Because of the pains of old age, Chakkan had become addicted to opium, and despite the old teacher's protests Ramkumar would fill his pipe and perform other menial tasks. Sitting by Chakkan's bed, he would recite from a pocket edition of the Manas and then fill its margins with notes as the teacher expounded each line in turn.

Sometimes Lala-ji [Chakkan] would become unconscious, but Ramkumar would remain seated and go on writing and pondering and wouldn't waken him. After some time, when Lala-ji opened his eyes again, he'd see him still sitting there and say in a very sweet and humble voice, "Oh, Pandit-ji, are you still here? I must have dozed off—it's old age. Very well, write . . . where were we?" Then he would resume dictating. In this way—reading, listening, writing—sometimes the whole night would pass.^[80]

According to Sharan, Chakkan would often express regret that his best student had come to him only in his old age.

"Pandit-ji, have you come to study at my deathbed? If only you'd come sooner, then I could have given you a real taste of this nectar! Now I can only offer a peep into the treasurehouse." At this Ramkumar would say, "Lala-ji,

[79] Ibid., 925.

[80] Ibid., 925-26.

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such as it is, it's more than enough. With these small jewels you've given me, I will become a millionaire! And in the future, with more effort along this same path I'll uncover still more treasure."^[81]

This assessment was shared by Ramkumar's contemporaries and the later tradition, for he became unquestionably the preeminent vyas of the turn-of-the-century period. Like Vandan Pathak, he developed a new style of Katha , which influenced many later expounders—the nonsequential style now associated with urban festival performances. Ramkumar differed from most other expounders in that he performed very little—according to Sharan, for no more than one or two months out of a year. The remainder of the year was spent preparing the topic by reading, thinking, and drawing up detailed notes. Sharan describes his intense manner of working:

He always lived by himself and didn't socialize. If someone came by, he would straightaway put his sacred thread over his ear and announce that his stomach was upset and he needed to relieve himself.^[82] Then the moment the visitor had departed he would plunge back into thought. When he went out to bathe or shop for necessaries he carried pencil and paper in his shirt pocket. While walking he'd always be pondering some episode or other, and if a bhav occurred to him, he'd immediately sit and write it down and only then continue on. Even while attending to the call of nature and so forth, he remained engaged in his work.^[83]

The episode thus prepared would be presented to the public in a series of daily installments, often lasting a month, and as Ramkumar's fame grew, his annual Katha series became a celebrated event. Connoisseurs from other cities would flock to Banaras and hire accommodations for the duration, just as some devotees still do for the Ramnagar Ramlila . So great were the crowds that organizers were forced to make arrangements for people to reserve space in advance, to insure getting a place to sit. The audiences included many aspiring Ramayanis, and the effect of Ramkumar's performances on them is illustrated by another of Sharan's anecdotes:

Among the listeners there was one Ramayani, Baba Ramdas of Ayodhya, who always came to Kashi and stayed at Chauka Ghat. He would go every day to hear the Katha and afterward would stay on in the hall, pondering and digesting it all, and then late at night he'd go back to his place and make notes:

[81] Ibid., 925.

[82] The janeu , or sacred thread, of the twice-born is hooked over the ear when going to the latrine, to protect it from possible pollution. The gesture would suffice to get rid of a visitor.

[83] Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 926.

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on it. Many indeed were the expounders who memorized these notes and then sat on the vyas seat and presented them as Katha , and they guarded these notes like life itself and kept them secret.^[84]

By all accounts, Ramkumar's performances were highly original, as he is said to have considered it a waste of listeners' time to repeat what others had already said. At the same time they were free of the kind of tortuous and contrived interpretations ascribed to Vandan Pathak. Rupkala of Ayodhya reported that Ramkumar presented each phrase from the Manas along with parallel quotations from Sanskrit literature and not only skillfully demonstrated their commonality of meaning but also convinced listeners that, in each case, Tulsidas had conveyed the idea better. Sharan adds that the great vyas eschewed mere rhetorical tricks and that his Katha was always "sparse, to the point, and very powerful."

Another cause for the high regard in which Ramkumar is held was his refusal to make personal profit from his Katha . Although the offerings at some of his mass programs reportedly amounted to thousands of rupees, he would turn all but a nominal portion over to some pious person with instructions that it be used for charitable work, such as the feeding of sadhus. His personal life-style was summed up by the formula "Wear coarse cloth, eat coarse food; you are entitled to only enough [of the offering] to keep this body alive."^[85] To explain his attitude (since in his day Katha was already becoming a profitable business for performers who did not share Ramkumar's taste for the simple life), he would sometimes quote the verse in which Katha is compared to the goddess who arose from the churning of the primordial ocean.

Like Lakshmi, born from the ocean of the saints' assembly. . . .
1.31.10

From this he reasoned that Katha was the expounder's "daughter" and that it would be a sin to "sell" her for money.^[86]

Once, at the invitation of prominent sadhus, Ramkumar went to Ayodhya and gave Katha in the great plaza of Kanak Bhavan Temple, expounding the whole of Sundar kand^[*] in two months to a daily audience of thousands. It is said that the maharaja of Tikamgarh, chief patron of the temple, had planned to attend the program on the final day but was delayed in transit and sent a telegram announcing that he would arrive one day late. It was assumed that Ramkumar would extend his program for the extra day, particularly in view of the handsome gift that the

[84] Ibid.

[85] Ibid., 926-27.

[86] C. N. Singh, interview, July 1983.

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maharaja was certain to bestow on him; however, the vyas refused to alter the schedule, despite the pleadings of the organizers. Quoting a line spoken by Ram in Book Seven,

Calling himself my servant, if he depends on any man,
tell me, what sort of faith does he possess?
7.46.3

Ramkumar argued that as the duration of the program had been fixed and announced in Ram's own darbar (his "court" in Kanak Bhavan, which is supposed to mark the site of Ram and Sita's palace), it could not be changed to suit the convenience of a mere earthly king.^[87]

Although printed commentaries on the Manas had already become commonplace, none appeared in Ramkumar's name during his lifetime. The reply he is said to have given to admirers who urged him to write a tika^[*] is eloquently expressive of the emergent nature of Katha : "My tika^[*] would be endless, because whenever I repeat myself, some new bhav always begins coming to me."^[88]

Among Ramkumar's students were three young men, Rajaram Nagar and the two brothers Purushottam and Dharmdatt, all of whom had played the role of Ram in the Ramnagar Ramlila . It is said that Ramkumar never forgot Dharmdatt's lila -persona and, even though he was the boy's guru and much senior to him, would always prostrate himself at Dharmdatt's feet when the boy came to study with him. Both Dharmdatt and Rajaram died young and their loss caused much grief to the old vyas . Another disciple was a poor Brahman youth named Devipalat Tivari, who was accepted as a student only after he had carried out the familiar command to complete 108 Manas recitations. He became a vyas in his own right, and Sharan, who had heard him, describes how he used to perform in Ayodhya on Ram Navami day. The account is richly suggestive of the tour-de-force quality of some vyas oratory.

All day until sunset he would sit by the birthplace, in the shade of a tree near Sita's well, and listeners, curiosity seekers, and devotees alike would be continually drenched by the steady and torrential downpour of bliss [i.e., his Katha ]. Indeed, I had never before witnessed such a torrent. A tongue? No, it was a "machine"! He went on speaking and never tired, and whenever anyone raised a textual problem, he would immediately resolve it.^[89]

[87] Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 927.

[88] Ibid.

[89] Ibid., 928.

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The Manas Piyus^[*]

Before his death Ramkumar committed his voluminous notes to his student Purushottam Datt of Ramnagar. The latter, troubled by Ramkumar's relatives who wanted to obtain them in order to capitalize on the famous expounder's name, vowed that they would go with his own body to the funeral pyre. In 1926, however, Purushottam met Anjaninandan Sharan at the Ramnagar Ramlila ; the result was that Ram-kumar's student relinquished his vow and presented the notes to Sharan, who immediately began incorporating them into the encyclopedic Manas commentary he was then preparing.

Something must now be said about the fruit of Sharan's labors, the twelve-volume Manaspiyus^[*] (Nectar of the Manas ), which began appearing in 1925. Its compiler was a remarkable man, although his writings show a sadhu's typical reluctance to divulge personal details. Prefatory notes to the early editions are signed "Janaksutasharan Shitalsahay," but this too (like Anjaninandan Sharan) was an initiatory name.^[90] Yet he was once a householder and indeed a High Court lawyer; the preface to one volume contains a touching reference to a daughter named Mira, "who is connected to this physical body" and assisted him in editing work when his eyesight began to fail.^[91] After renouncing the world he came to Ayodhya and became a disciple of the scholarly Sitaramsharan Bhagvanprasad Rupkala, friend of George Grierson and author of the standard modern commentary on the Bhaktamal . It was Rupkala who suggested the task of assembling a great commentary on the Manas incorporating the insights of the most eminent commentators of the past culled from manuscripts and published works and arranged systematically after each verse. This would allow devotees to savor diverse interpretations and would provide an invaluable reference for expounders. The first edition (1925-32) was an immediate success and Sharan soon began work on a second. His task was compounded by enthusiastic readers who continually sent additional materials, such as more unpublished commentaries and notes on Katha sessions. The single greatest contribution was Purushottam's gift of Ramkumar's notes, but other famous expounders, such as Vijayanand Tripathi, Jayramdas Din,

[90] "He who has taken shelter in Anjani's son"; Anjani was the name of Hanuman's mother. On the use of the suffix "Sharan" to indicate initiation in the rasik tradition, see Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , 182.

[91] Sharan, Manaspiyus^[*] 1:6. In Ayodhya in July 1987 I had the privilege of meeting Mira, who graciously shared her memories of her father's last years—he died in 1970 at the age of nearly ninety—and presented me with a photo of the revered Manasi .

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and Ramkumar Das sent their own bhavs , and so the text continually grew. The commentary on Balkand^[*] grew to five volumes and went through four revisions; the other volumes through two. The Manaspiyus^[*] became an institution, and Sharan labored on tirelessly into his seventies. The introductions to later editions hint at endless frustrations—failing health and cataracts (undoubtedly not helped by countless fifteen-to-twenty-hour days of squinting at manuscripts and proofs), dishonest and recalcitrant printers, and even floods and white ants (which destroyed a substantial portion of one edition before it could be released!). After being out of print for some years, the Piyus^[*] was later reissued at popular demand by Gita Press in seven massive volumes.^[92]

Although the Manaspiyus^[*] is essentially a devotional rather than a scholarly work in the Western sense and although Sharan was often forced to work from poor-quality bazaar editions of older commentaries or to paraphrase what he had heard in live performance, his voluminous and impressively organized work is a masterpiece of traditional Manas scholarship. For more than half a century it was the standard reference work and training manual for aspiring expounders, and its very existence contributed both to the increase in their numbers and to the development of more discriminating audiences and patrons for their performances. But the fact that this commentary-of-commentaries itself became another performance script should by now come as no surprise. When Sharan wrote, in the introduction to one of the later editions, of various groups of people who would appreciate the Piyus^[*] , he concluded with a reference to what was undoubtedly his most important audience—"But to kathavacaks , truly this tilak is all-in-all."^[93]

The Later Tulsi-Parampara

According to Sharan's information, with Devipalat Tivari's death in 1932 the line of Ramkumar came to an end. Banaras tradition holds otherwise, however, and identifies Vijayanand Tripathi (1881-1955), one of the most renowned Ramayanis of the middle of the twentieth century, as another of Ramkumar's disciples. Thus, the numerous contemporary expounders who claim to be Tripathi's pupils can assert their

[92] This edition too has gone out of print, but so valued is the Piyus^[*] by connoisseurs that individual volumes, originally priced at Rs 7 or Rs 8, sold in 1984 for Rs 250-300.

[93] Sharan, Manaspiyus^[*] . 4:3.

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continuity with a parampara that stretches back through Ramkumar and Ramgulam Dvivedi to the very roots of the tradition. Tripathi himself has written that he was blessed to be able to study Sundar and Kiskindha^[*]kands^[*] systematically at Ramkumar's feet and that he studied certain other episodes with Devipalat Tivari. His guru for Ayodhyakand^[*] was the Ramayani Bhushan-ji, another famous twentieth-century expounder.^[94]

Vijayanand Tripathi was born on Vijaydashami day in 1881 and was named in honor of the auspicious festival of Ram's victory. His first exposure to the Manas was hearing the famous Atri-stuti from Aranya^[*]kand^[*] (3.4.1-24), a hymn to Ram that his father used to recite while holding the boy on his lap; the epic soon became, he says, an "addiction" for him. As a youth, Vijayanand was attracted to the Hindu "fundamentalism" of the Sanatan Dharm movement and was powerfully influenced by one of its leaders, Swami Karpatri.^[95] For six years (1936-42) he served as editor of Karpatri's monthly magazine, Sanmarg (The true path), and he also wrote a number of polemic works on Sanatani themes. Katha was his real love, however, and as he was the son of a wealthy landowner, he was spared the necessity of pursuing another trade. He owned a large house near Tulsi Ghat and on its broad stone terrace he gave daily Katha for more than thirty years, to an audience that included many of the leading men of Banaras, as well as a great number of aspiring Ramayanis who regarded themselves—with or without official sanction—as his students.

Vijayanand's Manas -related publications conform to a pattern already familiar to us from the lives of earlier expounders. His first concern, characteristically, was to bring out his own edition of the basic text (published by Leader Press, Allahabad, 1936); this established, so to speak, the credentials of his Katha by asserting the purity of its source. Much later, at the urging of his pupils and admirers (including Babu Baijnath Prasad, a retired judge, and Bankeram Mishra, mahant of the Sankat Mochan Temple), Vijayanand began work on his own tika^[*] , which was published posthumously in 1955. Comprising three volumes of more than nine hundred pages each, this Vijayatika^[*] was based on the notes used by Vijayanand in his daily Katha and included both a brief prose translation and an elaborate exposition of each epic verse.

Vijayanand's high status is suggested by the exalted title Manas

[94] Tripathi, SriRamcaritmanas , vijayatika^[*] 1:16.

[95] See below, Chapter 6, The Politics of Ramraj .

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rajhams^[*] (royal swan of the Manas Lake), which is commonly prefixed to his name. This padvi (honorific, or rank) was first given to him by a sadhu, Brahmachari Sacchidanand Gitanand, and is representative of similar titles either bestowed on or assumed by other expounders. A rostrum of renowned orators—for example on a handbill announcing an exposition festival—may include such titles as Manasratna (jewel of the Manas , often applied to Dr. Shrinath Mishra), Manasmarmajña (knower of the mysteries of the Manas ), and Manasmartand^[*] (sun of the Manas , a title given to Pandit Ramkinkar Upadhyay).^[96]

Many older Banarsis still remember the daily Katha sessions at Vijayanand's house, and the centenary of his birth was observed in 1981 with an All-India Manas Festival, at which many of his disciples performed. So numerous are the members of his "school" that Vijayanand's son, Nityanand Tripathi, complained to a journalist, "As a matter of fact, most of that whole crowd of kathavacaks who nowadays call themselves Father's pupils are people who never even saw him. They just use his name to promote themselves."^[97] One might observe, however, that even though the tradition still puts great value on personal instruction imparted through the satsang^[*] of a teacher, the modern phenomenon of mass-produced commentaries increases the likelihood of a teacher's acquiring students (and imitators) whom he has never seen.

Among Vijayanand's genuine students, mention should be made of Sant Choteji (d. 1983), a sadhu who gave daily Katha under the auspices of a group called Satsang Parivar (satsang^[*] family) and who was one of Banaras's most beloved expounders. Other students included Ramji Pandey, the chief Ramayani of the Ramnagar Ramlila pageant, and the late Baba Narayankant Tripathi and Ramnarayan Shukla, both of whom performed daily at the Sankat Mochan Temple and concerning whom more is said below. Vijayanand's most successful student is undoubtedly Dr. Shrinath Mishra, an "All-India" vyas whose performances are largely patronized by wealthy industrialists in major urban centers and who consequently is away from Banaras during much of the year. He maintains a large house in the Bhadaini neighborhood, however, and has numerous pupils of his own, who regard him as the chief disciple and successor of Vijayanand. Thus the Tulsi-parampara of the

[96] The use of such tides appears to be a recent vogue, perhaps reflecting the status of academic honors (M.A., Ph.D., L.L.B., etc.) earned by university-educated scholars. The list of nineteenth-century expounders on the title page of the Manas piyus^[*] includes no titles beyond the simple appellation "Ramayani" or Manasi.

[97] Jhingaran, "Ham sevak," 20.

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diagram continues to be a living tradition, still growing and extending its branches into the future.

The material presented in this section hardly represents a comprehensive history of Manas-katha . The few famous expounders concerning whom biographical and legendary information has been provided must be taken as representative of numerous others, known and unknown, whom it is not possible to treat here. That most of the data have concerned the tradition in Banaras is justifiable in that this city has always been a major center for the art, but it should not obscure the fact that great lines of Ramayanis have flourished elsewhere, particularly among the sadhu lineages of such important Vaishnava pilgrimage places as Ayodhya, Mathura, and Chitrakut. The Tulsi-parampara of Banaras and environs is representative of the tradition and, to some extent, an exemplar for it, but it is not definitive of it.

Changing Styles of Katha.

The fact that oral performers assert that they belong to a tradition with roots in the distant past should not lead us to conclude that their tradition has never changed or that all the performers of a given parampara display a homogeneous style. There is in fact a wide variation in the styles of individual expounders. Moreover, significant changes in Katha performance have occurred within the past few decades, and it is reasonable to suppose that the art will continue to change and evolve for as long as it remains popular.

Even from the limited data available regarding early expounders and their performances, it is possible to make generalizations about the style and technique of Manas exposition during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Undoubtedly the predominant mode of exposition during this period was the sequential narration in daily installments of part or all of the epic. The special time for such Katha was late afternoon from about 4:00 P.M. until the time of twilight prayers (sandhyapuja ). The venue was usually a public place, such as a temple courtyard, a ghat on the riverbank, or the open verandah of a prosperous home. The speaker, who occupied a raised seat, was usually called a kathavacak , or Ramayani, and would read from a manuscript or printed book, but his performance was not strictly confined to the words of the text or even to the story it told. He could elaborate on or digress from any line of it, and the extent and ingenuity of his improvisation was limited only by his knowledge and training. That even early nineteenth-century performances

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could feature a very extended exposition of single lines is suggested by the story of Ramgulam's twenty-two-day exposition before the Rewa maharaja, but such a tour de force must have been exceptional. The systematic exposition of a single episode, book, or when possible, of the complete epic seems to have been the rule.

Many expounders had interpretive approaches (darsans , or "points of view") for which they were famous. Baijnath Kurmi (c. 1833-85), for example, was a connoisseur of poetry and the author of a commentary on the poetic treatise Kavyakalpadruma as well as a srngari^[*] devotee. His exposition of the Manas relied heavily on the theories and categories of bhav (poetic mood), alankar^[*] (rhetorical devices), rupak (metaphor), and nayak-nayikabhed (type classification of romantic heroes and heroines).^[98] Similarly, the Kayasth expounder Sant Unmani (c. 1830-98), author of the tika^[*] entitled Manastattva vivaran^[*] (Explanation of the essence of the Manas ), interpreted the epic from the standpoint of yoga doctrine, and his Katha is said to have had special appeal for the practitioners of hatha^[*]yoga .^[99]

The economic rewards for such performances were usually modest. A kathavacak would be sponsored by a patron—either a landowner or merchant, or the mahant of a temple—who would provide nominal support in the form of meals and accommodations and would become the principal listener and beneficiary of the Katha , although performances would also be open to the public. In addition to the patron's support, the performer received offerings in cash and kind, which audience members placed on the arti tray during the ceremonial worship at the close of each performance. Many of the expounders were renunciants with little interest in financial gain; even those who were householders (like Ramkumar Mishra) are said to have considered it improper to derive undue profit from their Katha , and when, as sometimes happened, kings and merchant princes rewarded them with lavish gifts, they chose to offer the money for a sadhus' feast. Performers were often hired on a long-term basis—for example, for an exposition of the complete epic, which might easily require two or more years. The ultimate completion of such an extended performance would be the occasion for a special celebration sponsored by the principal listener, who would then bestow a generous gift on the kathavacak .

[98] Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 913; Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , 476-78.

[99] Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 918.

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Daily Katha tends to focus closely on the Ramayan narrative, and the performer may even choose to confine himself in his citations (praman^[*] ) entirely to the Manas or to the dozen attested works of Tulsidas, which have acquired a kind of canonical status for the tradition.^[100] One popular technique is to discuss each significant word in a verse in terms of its usage elsewhere in the epic. A gifted performer may delight listeners by quoting line after line in which a given word is used, showing the different shades of meaning Tulsidas gave it in various contexts, and creating in effect an "oral concordance." The appeal of this kind of exposition for listeners who know the Manas well and accept it as the highest religious authority is suggested by the following comments made by a regular katha -goer at Sankat Mochan Temple, where a sequential exposition of the epic is still presented each afternoon: "When a man comes to hear katba on the Manas , he wants all the citations to be from that, because that is what he knows. What is the use for him if the kathavacak shows off his knowledge by quoting from here and there? It will only confuse him. In the old days they used to use the Manas only, with maybe the Vinay patrika —enough! Now they like to quote this and that, Vedas and sastras ."^[101] The erudite quoting of "this and that," especially of Sanskrit texts, was, as we have seen, a technique particularly associated with Ramkumar Mishra, who has been called "the first vyas in the modern sense of the term."^[102] The advent of this style of exposition seems to have reflected an increasing concern among both performers and audiences to demonstrate that the teachings of the Manas are in accord with—approving of and "proven" by—the Sanskritic great tradition.

A significant change in the style of Katha began to occur at roughly the beginning of the twentieth century, and it is exemplified in Ramkumar's career. So great was his fame and so pressing the demand to hear him that he began to travel about and give Katha in various places, rarely staying more than a week or fortnight in each. In these brief performance-series, he necessarily confined himself to small sections of the epic, often to no more than a single episode, which he prepared months in advance. In time, regular "circuits" developed, frequented by other famous expounders who likewise began to give shorter programs.

[100] Cf. Damle's account of the nirupan^[*] style of harikatha in Maharashtra, in which a performer expounds on a verse taken from the works of one of five poet-saints revered by the Varkari tradition and is not supposed to quote from any other source; "Harikatha," 67.

[101] S. S. Singh, interview, February 1984.

[102] C. N. Singh, interview, July 1983.

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This affected the economic aspects of the art; since performers were no longer maintained by an individual patron or community on a long-term basis, they began to accept set fees for their performances, although these might still be supplemented by the traditional arti offerings. The patrons of this kind of Katha were drawn less from the rural landed aristocracy and increasingly from the urban merchant classes.

One consequence of the shift in patronage was that performances began to be held later in the evening, at 8:00 or 9:00 P.M. , after bazaars and grain markets closed for the night. The leisurely nitya Katha (continuous or daily Katha ) of the late afternoon, in which the performer was assured of a regular audience and a steady if modest income, was replaced by a more elaborate form of cultural performance, held on a few consecutive nights before a large crowd and requiring more complicated arrangements—such as canopies and lights—at which the performer's talent might be rewarded with a considerable sum of money. Whereas the daily kathavacak could develop a long-term relationship with his audience and might pause to respond to questions and "doubts" raised by listeners, the new-style performer—who was increasingly honored with the exalted title vyas —had only a few successive nights in which to display his talents and so establish his reputation and enhance the likelihood of his being invited to perform again. The focus of his performances tended to shift from the systematic exposition of the narrative to an elaborate improvisation on a very small section of the text—often a single line or half-line. The chosen excerpt became the basis for a dazzling display of rhetoric and erudition involving the Citation of numerous works, often in Sanskrit—a practice sure to win approval from the new class of connoisseurs. Alternatively, the performer might use a topical approach, basing his remarks on a single theme such as "Ram's compassion" or "the nine kinds of gurus in the Manas ." Such presentations, for which the performer typically prepared extensive notes in advance, came more to resemble modern academic lectures or sermons, although, like narrative Katha , they were still delivered extempore and liberally interspersed with verses from the epic, which were usually sung or chanted with considerable style. Storytelling survived largely in the form of anecdotes and digressions, and the Sanskrit term pravacan —"eloquent speech"—became the preferred label for such performances, rather than the more "story"-oriented term, Katha .

A subsequent and related development was the Katha festival (sammelan ), a large-scale performance that gave audiences the opportunity to hear, in one location, a selection of the most renowned expounders of

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the day. The first such festival in Banaras was organized in 1924 under the auspices of the Sankat Mochan Temple. The chief patrons were mahant Bankeram Mishra and Munnilal Agraval, a prosperous businessman. The auspicious occasion for the first program was the 350th anniversary of the composition of the Manas , and the birthday of Hanuman, which is observed annually on the full moon of the month of Chaitra. On that date there was an already-established custom of twenty-four-hour recitation at the temple as well as Manas singing throughout the night by groups from all over the city. The Katha program began the following evening and continued for three nights, with four or five speakers featured at each program. Even though there would have been no difficulty in filling the roster with local talent (since in Banaras it is sometimes said that "every other person is a vyas "), one of the intentions of the organizers was to expose the local audience to performers they would not readily have an opportunity to hear, and so two or three well-known out-of-town expounders were invited each evening. Their traveling and lodging expenses were met by the organizers, and they were also given a cash payment. The Sankat Mochan festival was a great success and became an annual affair as well as a model for similar programs held in other places.

Prominent performers of the middle of the twentieth century included Vijayanand Tripathi of Banaras; Premdas Maharaj, a sadhu of Ayodhya; Kapindra-ji, a Delhi-based vyas who was a favorite of Sankat Mochan audiences until his death in 1983; Bacchu Sur, a blind vyas who composed his own "signature" couplets and supplemented his Katha with improvised songs; and Binduji, who hailed from the Mathura area. Binduji enjoyed particular fame and his name is inevitably mentioned in any discussion of great performers of the past half-century. Trained as a singer, he worked for some time with the Alfred Theatre Company, a traveling dramatic troupe. His nationalist political views brought him into contact with Mahatma Gandhi, at whose urging he is said to have begun to study the Manas .^[103] He became renowned for his fine voice and usually accompanied himself on the harmonium in performance, a practice to which some Banarsi expounders objected.^[104] Many listeners,

[103] Jhingaran, "Ham sevak," 21; this is not unlikely, since Gandhi's love for the Manas is well attested.

[104] The use of musical accompaniment in Katha is said to be common in the Braj area (Mathura and Vrindavan), but many Banarsi performers frown on it; one reason, I was told, is that a harmonium contains impure substances (i.e., leather in its bellows), which should not be placed on the vyas seat. It is said that Binduji eventually gave up using it when performing in Banaras.

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Figure 16.
The dais and a section of the crowd at a Katha performance during the Gyan Vapi festival

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it is said, came to his programs primarily for the pleasure of hearing his melodious renditions of Manas passages. He eventually founded a sammelan of his own, the All-India Ramcaritmanas Festival.

The prestige of the Sankat Mochan festival made it an important platform for aspiring performers. To be invited to expound there and to make a favorable impression on the discriminating Banaras audience could represent a breakthrough into a successful career, and some popular performers today still recall their debuts there. The same combination of Sanatani leadership and mercantile patronage that supported this festival led in time to the mounting of even more elaborate programs, the Banaras prototype of which was the annual Gyan Vapi festival, begun in the mid-1950s at the instigation of Swami Karpatri and funded by the city's Marwari merchants' association. This program was organized around the nine-day recitation of the Manas by 108 Brahmans described in the preceding chapter. The evenings were given over to Katha and followed essentially the same pattern as that of the older Sankat Mochan festival.

In structure, the Katha sammelan has come to resemble a classical music concert or an Urdu musa'ira (poetry recitation gathering). As at these performances, the most highly respected performers invariably appear last each night, and prominent patrons and connoisseurs often do not arrive until just before the most famous vyas takes his place on the podium. The vyas seat is usually a high platform covered with rich brocades, and the performer's words are carried to the crowd—which may number in the thousands—by loudspeakers. Dress is formal and often opulent: both performers and major patrons appear in silk shirts and sheer, crisply pleated dhotis, display expensive rings and gold or diamond button-studs, and drape themselves with white Kashmiri shawls.^[105] The relaxed, ongoing relationship of the daily afternoon Katha is likewise replaced by a more formal atmosphere, and even though performer-audience interaction remains important, it is generally confined, on the audience's part, to approving exclamations (especially "Vah!") and gestures. Inevitably, there is an element of tension and competition among performers—especially younger ones who are still establishing reputations—since patrons can be expected to compare

[105] In an interview (October 1983), the popular vyas Shrinath Mishra spoke of the importance of wearing attractive clothing during performance, supporting his point with a Sanskrit verse to the effect that when the gods and demons churned the milky ocean for the nectar of immortality, the Ocean gave his daughter (Lakshmi) to Vishnu because he was wearing a beautiful yellow garment (pitambar ); Shiva, on the other hand, was naked (digambar , or "sky-clad") and so received only poison.

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the performances and a favorable response may lead to other lucrative engagements. It is said that the most prestigious festivals in Banaras—those of Gyan Vapi and Sankat Mochan—are the least well paying because performers, convinced of the value of the exposure that these forums provide, are willing to perform for lower fees than they might command elsewhere.

That "elsewhere" brings up the newest development in Katha performance: the increasing vogue among wealthy patrons for sponsoring private performances by the most renowed expounders, generally in the patrons' homes or institutions. Here too the expounders are invited for a limited engagement—such as seven, fifteen, or twenty-one days—and are not expected to narrate the text sequentially. Rather, they are free to structure their discourses loosely on some line or theme from the Manas and are expected to quote an impressive array of supporting texts. Audiences at private recitals are usually smaller than at festivals and consist of invited guests—relatives, friends, and often business associates—of the sponsor. From the performer's point of view, this new form of "princely" patronage is undoubtedly the most lucrative type of Katha and its growing popularity has had the effect of virtually removing some of the most famous expounders from the public circuit. Thus, top-ranking performers like Ramkinkar Upadhyay and Shrinath Mishra, both of whom hail from the Banaras area, can rarely be heard in that city today and indeed rarely appear at public programs at all, as most of their busy schedules are taken up with private performances in the homes and institutions of industrialists in Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, and Kanpur.

The art of Manas exposition, as we have seen, is rooted in ancient Indian traditions of the oral mediation of sacred text, but it has undergone significant changes within the past two centuries and is continuing to develop and change today. The tradition of written commentary on the Manas has been based on and for the most part accessory to this flourishing oral tradition. Additional information on the economic basis of contemporary performance and on the tradition's pedagogy, performance techniques, and religio-aesthetic aims, is provided in the next chapter.

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Four
The Art of Manas-Katha

The scriptures are the ocean, wisdom is Mount Mandar,
and saintly people are the gods.
Katha is the nectar distilled from their churning,
and devotion is its sweetness.
7.120a

The Economics of Katha

It is not uncommon these days to hear the complaint that Katha has become a business, that performers "sell" their exposition, and that the high fees they command reduce the art to just another commodity to be traded in the marketplace. A recent article in a popular Hindi magazine cynically observed that "no intelligent person will deny that now the whole affair is carried on solely as a livelihood." The prospect of financial gain is seen as a powerful lure and as itself explaining the great proliferation of performers in recent years. Again, to quote the same article: "How many expounders are there in Kashi nowadays? Even if one were to have a census taken by Hanuman, that energetic seeker who found the herb of immortality, perhaps for once even he would fail in his efforts! In every lane there is some establishment for Katha and in every neighborhood, a vyas ."^[1]

If contemporary expounders are faulted for their greed, their precursors are often idealized for their simplicity and disinterest in material gain. In the old days, one hears, the donation (daksina^[*] ) might have been big or small, but it was always given , never demanded or bargained for. The list of early expounders in Lakshmandas and Chakrapani's book concludes by observing that "all these kathavacaks were noncovetous;

[1] Jhingaran, "Ham sevak," 20-21.

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whatever was offered at puja time, they would always supplement with something of their own and then immediately spend on a feast for sadhus and devotees."^[2] Anjaninandan Sharan's account of early expounders mentions instances in which an especially brilliant Katha was lavishly rewarded by an appreciative patron, but the author is careful to note that the great Ramayanis were similarly disinterested in these gifts. Thus, the two thousand rupees that Ramkumar Mishra is said to have received for his month-long program at Kanak Bhavan—which would translate into a small fortune by the standards of today's devalued currency—were said to have been donated for a sadhus' feast.

Sharan himself was a sadhu and had definite ideas about the corrupting aspects of material gain. But this view of wealth is only one of several to be found in Hindu society, and expounders who are householders have been, at least in recent times, inclined to take a different view. For these people, unless they are fortunate enough to be independently wealthy, Katha is indeed a livelihood, a profession by means of which they maintain themselves and their families. In my conversations with expounders concerning the economic aspects of their art, I encountered little reticence about discussing earnings; most performers spoke willingly and even proudly of the fees they were able to command. The ability to earn an income from Katha seemed to be interpreted by them as a mark of professionalism, a sign of public recognition of their knowledge and profound study of the Manas . Moreover, I found general agreement among performers and patrons as to the fees normally commanded by what may be termed ordinary, middle-level, and top-ranking (or "All-India") expounders.^[3]

An ordinary vyas —that is to say, a local expounder who does not receive outside invitations or a young performer with limited experience—will generally receive less than Rs 100 for a one-hour performance. He may receive considerably less: as little as Rs 11 or Rs 21,^[4] and a small packet of sweets. Some daily kathavacaks perform on a monthly stipend of Rs 100 or Rs 200, supplemented by the (usually modest) offerings that their listeners place on the arti tray at the end of the performance. The middle range of performers consists of those who receive Rs 100 to Rs 300 for a performance. A considerable number of fairly well known expounders fall into this category; if they perform

[2] Quoted by Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 909.

[3] The fees detailed here are all as reported during the research period (1982-84); subsequent inflation has undoubtedly upped the ante in the world of Katha .

[4] Multiples of ten are considered unlucky, so an extra rupee is usually added to make the figure auspicious.

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regularly—as many of them do—their incomes may be substantial. Most of the major festivals held in Banaras, such as that of Gyan Vapi, pay their featured out-of-town performers at the rate of about Rs 200 per day plus travel and accommodation expenses. As already noted, this sum may be less than the performer would normally command, but the prestige and exposure provided by the festival compensates for the loss of money. The hourly fees of the highest-ranking speakers are on the order of Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 and up; these are the "All-India" expounders, so called because they are much in demand in major urban areas distant from the Hindi-speaking heartland—for example, in Bombay and Calcutta, where the most lavish patronage is now to be found. Money is no object to the wealthy industrialists of these cities, but prestige is important, so they patronize only the most famed expounders and reward them lavishly for their skills. Moreover, in private performances, the host's wealthy guests may, as a gesture of homage, offer their own gifts at the speaker's feet at the end of the performance, and it is not uncommon for a small pile of hundred-rupee notes to accumulate in this fashion.

A sense of how a moderately successful vyas rates his own and others' earnings may be derived from this excerpt from an interview with Ramnarayan Shukla, the resident expounder of the Sankat Mochan Temple.

It was the nearly unanimous opinion of my informants that the most successful contemporary vyas is Pandit Ramkinkar Upadhyay, whose name is a household word among Manas enthusiasts and whose clients include some of the wealthiest industrialists in India. Ramkinkar and I

[5] Ramnarayan Shukla, interview, December 1982. In this context, "sacrifice" (yajña ) refers to public recitation and exposition of the Manas , as described in Chapter 2.

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Figure 17.
Ramnarayan Shukla of the Sankat Mochan Temple, performing at
Gyan Vapi in 1982

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did not discuss his fees, but one of his students told me that Rs 1,000 was his minimum fee for a single discourse and that more commonly a patron would arrange a seven-to-fifteen-day program and offer Rs 20,000 or more. Shrinath Mishra, another "All-India" vyas , told me that while his own minimum fee was normally Rs 500, he had once received a daksina^[*] of Rs 20,000, and on another occasion one of Rs 25,000 for nine-day programs in the homes of wealthy patrons.^[6] Ramkinkar's income is also supplemented by earnings from published collections of his talks, which sell briskly at his major programs.

Do performers grow rich expounding the Manas ? By the standards of ritual specialists and traditional scholars and performers, the incomes of the highest-ranking Ramayanis are lavish indeed. Even the most successful classical musician does not have major engagements every night, whereas a revered vyas like Ramkinkar travels from one nine- or fifteen-day program to another and can be busy for as much of the year as he chooses. But even though audiences derive pleasure from hearing Katha , they regard its performers primarily as religious teachers rather than as entertainers, and some of the popular resentment of their earnings stems from the fact that high fees are considered inconsistent with the sacred status of the vyas . As highly visible religious spokespersons, expounders are expected to behave in an exemplary fashion: to wear traditional (desi , or "national" as opposed to "foreign") dress, to be strict vegetarians, and to avoid polluting activities such as eating in restaurants or attending cinema shows.

Even the highest-paid expounders, however, will on occasion accept a minimal fee or perform "for love" for a charitable organization or other sponsor with whom they feel a special connection. Thus, when Shrinath Mishra gave seven evenings of pravacan at Banaras Hindu University in 1983 under the auspices of the university's Tulsi Research Society (Tulsi sodhsansthan ), he accepted a token "honorarium" of Rs 700, far less than his normal fee, because he was an alumnus of the university and was invited by some of his former professors. Ramnarayan Shukla, who commands Rs 200 per diem when he performs outside Banaras, gives Katha twice and sometimes thrice daily when he is in the city as part of his duties as resident vyas at Sankat Mochan, for which he receives only a modest monthly stipend. One of the least commercially ambitious of contemporary expounders, Ramnarayan indeed prefers not to accept outside engagements, because of his personal devotion to Sankat Mochan Hanuman, the presiding deity of the temple.

[6] Shrinath Mishra, interview, October 1983.

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Qualifications of a Performer

Brahmans and Others

The majority of contemporary Ramayanis are Brahman males, a fact that reflects the priestly caste's traditional role in mediating and authoritatively interpreting sacred text. Whereas the suta , or epic bard, was explicitly identified as a non-Brahman, the expounder of the Puranic tradition—the pauranika^[*] or vyakhyatr^[*] —was normally a religious specialist by birth, and the special pith^[*] from which he held forth was a sacred seat that non-Brahmans could not occupy. Although it is certain that many great Ramayanis of the past were non-Brahmans, in recent years the question has again been raised as to whether such expounders are qualified to occupy the vyas seat. A Banaras informant recalled a controversy several decades ago over whether a certain Khatri (Kshatriya) who taught the boy actors in the Ramnagar Ramlila and also expounded the Manas should be allowed to occupy the vyaspith^[*] at the Sankat Mochan festival.

My interviewees were of two minds on this question. Shrinath Mishra and other Brahman performers advanced the position that, properly speaking, only Brahmans should be allowed to expound from the pith^[*] because the Manas itself, in their view, upholds the tradition of varna^[*] (social divisions based on birth) and the religious authority of Brahmans, and one who is expounding the text should do so in a manner consonant with its teachings. According to Shrinath, even Chakkanlal, the great Kayasth expounder of the late nineteenth century, did not presume to occupy the dais but discoursed informally, sitting on the ground in the midst of the "devotional assembly" (gosthi^[*] ).

One of the most venerable Ramayanis of Ayodhya, Pandit Ramkumar Das of Mani Parvat, expressed a different opinion. In his view, the right to sit on the vyas seat and narrate Katha depends not on varna^[*] status but only on capacity or ability (ksamta ). In support of his argument, he cited the case of Kak Bhushundi, the crow who narrates the Manas-katha to Garuda. A crow is regarded as untouchable—as the "Chandal among birds"^[7] —yet if Bhushundi can sit on one of the ghats of the Manas Lake (surely the most exalted of vyas seats) and narrate Ram's acts, then clearly any human being may be permitted to do so.^[8] A

[7] A Chandal is an untouchable who performs such tasks as the removal of animal carcasses and tanning of hides.

[8] Ramkumar Das, interview, April 1984.

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similar opinion was expressed by Sacchidanand Das, another Ayodhya Ramayani, who cited a mythological incident in support of his view.

Once a suta was expounding Katha from the vyas seat in the midst of an assembly of forest sages, when suddenly Balaram entered the group. Everyone rose out of respect for Lord Krishna's brother, but the suta remained seated and went on with the Katha . Balaram was seized with anger and beheaded the storyteller. The sages were horrified and told him that he had incurred the sin of Brahman killing, because even a suta becomes equivalent to a Brahman when seated on the vyaspith^[*] narrating Katha .^[9]

It is noteworthy that both Ramkumar Das and Sacchidanand Das are Ramanandi sadhus, and such men often express relative indifference to caste distinctions.^[10] It is also significant that they represent the Ayodhya Katha tradition and that Ram's city is today the principal base of the older style of exposition typified by daily afternoon performances in which the entire Manas is expounded sequentially, for which, as I have noted, the financial rewards to the performer are relatively meager. This practice stands in contrast to the lucrative pravacan style of the festivals and private performances patronized by status-conscious mercantile groups, for whom the presence of Brahman teachers—conferring ritual status in return for financial support—is highly desirable. Thus, the patrons of the newer style of Katha , by their "Sanskritizing" attitudes no less than by their lavish patronage, may be encouraging the predominance of Brahmans in the field of Manas exposition.

One controversial development of recent years has been the entry of women into the field, a number of whom have gained considerable renown. Shrimati Krishna Shastri, for example, who belongs to a family of kathavacaks , now performs widely at festivals and in private engagements.^[11] Another kathavacika (female kathavacak ) is Sunita Shastri, a student of Sitaram Sharan of the Lakshman Kila Temple in Ayodhya, who frequently performs during such festivals as Ram Navami. I have heard it said by Katha goers that women possess "the sakti [power] of Sarasvati," the goddess of speech, and hence make particularly good

[9] Sacchidanand Das, interview, April 1984. This story occurs in several Puranic sources, including Bhagavatapurana^[*] 10.78-79; see Rocher, The Puranas^[*] , 55-56. On the inviolability of a vyas in performance, see below, p. 183.

[10] In fact the Ramanandi attitude toward caste status is complex and variable and, despite a general attitude of "liberalism," is sometimes influenced by the more conservative attitudes of householder patrons; see van der Veer, Gods on Earth , 172-82.

[11] In 1982 she gave a fifteen-day program under the auspices of a Hindu organization in Amritsar, Punjab; the performance was documented by Kali C. Bahl, to whom I am grateful for this information. For a popular treatment of the subject of women's Katha , see Upadhyay, "Surile svar mem^[*] tairti Ram-katha ka guñj."

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orators. There also remains an element of novelty in hearing Katha given by a woman; hence, the sponsors of a festival are often eager to include at least one kathavacika on the performance roster. Only ever-conservative Banaras seems to lag behind in this regard. There the question of whether women possess the "authority" (adhikar ) to expound the epic remains a subject of debate, with most of the "learned men" of the city still arguing that they do not, according to a popular magazine article, which adds: "The ironic thing is this, that whether the Katha is on the Bhagavata , the Mahabharata , or on Ram, there will often be a preponderance of women among the listeners. So those who are opposed to women's Katha are clearly saying, 'Yes, of course you can listen to Katha , you can recite the Manas too; but you can never sit on the dais and give Katha !'"^[12]

The same article mentions a number of Banarsi women who were trained in Katha by Sant Choteji, a Ramayani known for his liberal views, who have begun to make careers for themselves despite the continuing opposition of conservative males. One of these women, Vijayalakshmi, described her choice of profession as the result of a childhood environment that was "Manas -permeated"; her parents' encouragement led her to commit the whole epic to memory by age fourteen. She had begun giving Katha even earlier, however, at age eleven.^[13]

An even more radical departure from orthodoxy is the "Muslim" vyas , Rajesh Muhammad—actually a Muslim convert to Vaishnavism, although he has provocatively retained a half-Islamicized name that clearly adds to his commercial appeal. I did not have an opportunity to hear him perform, but he is popular on the festival circuit and his name frequently came up when informants were asked to list leading contemporary expounders. In February 1984 he was the principal speaker at the prestigious eleventh annual Ramayan Mela in the pilgrimage town of Chitrakut, where he discoursed on Bharat-carit .^[14] According to Shrinath Mishra, he is permitted to sit on the vyas seat in many places. His flaunting of his background obviously poses something of a dilemma to the orthodox: on the one hand, he bears the indelible stigma of his Muslim birth; on the other, his conversion and the dedication of his life to the propagation of the Manas is viewed as an affirmation of the greatness of Hindu dharma.

[12] Jhingaran, "Ham sevak," 23.

[13] Performances by children have a strong appeal for Hindu audiences, as they combine charming innocence with a prodigious knowledge of scripture that seems to confirm listeners' belief in the potency of samskars^[*] , or "impressions" from previous lives. For a popular treatment of the subject, see Upadhyay, "Sri Ram Katha ke ye ba1 kathavacak."

[14] For an account of this festival, see Richariya, "Ramayan^[*] mela."

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Becoming a Vyas

Although the decision to pursue a career as a vyas may be prompted by a range of motives, including financial ones, most performers I interviewed described their choice of vocation as the result of spiritual experiences or as a response to an inner summons to dedicate their lives to the "propagation and promotion" (pracar-prasar ) of the Manas . The venerable Banarsi expounder Narayankant Tripathi recalled being chosen to play the role of Ram in the Khojwan bazaar Ramlila when he was about fourteen. His excitement over the role gradually awakened his interest in studying the Manas . One day as he was being made up for his part, some elderly sadhus began asking him philosophical questions, and he found himself answering them authoritatively, speaking from his heart. The listeners were astounded at his wisdom and eloquence, for his formal education had been meager. This display of verbal ability was the first indication that he should become a vyas .^[15]

A similar story was told by Rameshvar Prasad Tripathi of Allahabad, who had played the role of Ram in a thirty-night lila cycle patterned after that of Ramnagar. Because of his nightly participation in the drama, he began to fall behind in his regular studies; moreover, the world of the lila powerfully affected him and he felt drawn to recite the Manas and discourse informally about it to his friends. In his town there lived a wealthy merchant who was fond of Katha and sponsored an annual competition among Ramayanis; the winner would be engaged to expound the epic for a month. Rameshvar went to hear the competitors' discourses, but after they had all spoken, one of his friends told the patron, "Sir, this boy can do better," and pushed him forward. He spoke in his usual fashion and so impressed the merchant that he pronounced him the winner of the coveted engagement, the first of Rameshvar's career.^[16]

Ramnarayan Shukla attributed his decision to become a vyas to the influence of Vijayanand Tripathi, whose daily Katha he used to attend, and also to a near-fatal accident that occurred when he was about twenty-eight years old and left him with the conviction that the Manas had saved his life.^[17] But even though Ramnarayan had heard Vijaya-

[15] Narayankant Tripathi, interview, August 1983.

[16] Rameshvar Prasad Tripathi, interview, November 1982.

[17] He had just returned from a Katha at Vijayanand's house, the theme of which had been "fate versus endeavor"; as he reached to switch on the electric light in his room, a loose wire dealt him a tremendous shock, which hurled him to the floor. When he came to his senses he found that he still had the Manas clutched tightly in one hand and felt that its power had saved him "from the mouth of death." Since the book had altered his "fate," his "endeavor" now became to serve it (interview, December 1982).

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nand's Katha and later studied the notes of Shrinath Mishra, he attributed all his knowledge of the epic to having "read" it silently and repeatedly in front of Sankat Mochan Hanuman while simultaneously uttering the mantra "Sita-Ram" with his lips. This practice was undertaken on the advice of an aged sadhu, who said it would invite Hanuman's grace. "I read with the eyes only, I paid no attention, yet very quickly, the whole Ramayan came to me; I didn't have to recite it or memorize it."^[18]

Shrinath Mishra earned a medical degree at Banaras Hindu University while attending the daily Katha of Vijayanand Tripathi, in the course of which he heard two complete expositions of the Manas . As the eldest son in a middle-class Brahman family, he faced the difficult decision of whether to give up a promising medical career in order to take up a more uncertain one as a vyas . Ultimately unable to decide, he chose a course well known in Banaras: taking two slips of paper, he wrote "practice medicine" on one and "give Katha " on the other and placed them before Sankat Mochan Hanuman. After praying for guidance, he sent a small child into the sanctuary with orders to pick up one of the slips of paper; since the child was too small to understand the situation, Hanuman himself would "choose." In Shrinath's case he chose Katha .^[19]

Whereas the above examples all emphasize experiences of vocation, it should be noted that in the Katha field, as in other traditional professions, family background may also be a factor in the decision to take up a performance career. Many prominent expounders come from families that have pursued this line of work for several generations. Ramkinkar Upadhyay, for example, is the son of Pandit Shivnayak Upadhyay, who was likewise a popular vyas . Ramkinkar feels that his father's influence on him was slight, for he recalls having been a shy child who always fell asleep when listening to pravacan and was considered to have little promise as a speaker; yet the fact that his father was a successful performer was obviously no hindrance when he later did choose this career. The great vyas of Vrindavan, Binduji, had an adopted daughter whom he married to a younger vyas , Manas Shastri; the son born of this marriage, known as Piyush Goswami, is now one of the most successful of the younger generation of performers. Sometimes a generation is skipped, as in the case of the family of Narayankant Tripathi, whose son-in-law is a priest who performs life-cycle rituals for a hereditary clientele; he has trained both his grandsons as kathavacaks . Such stu-

[18] Ramnarayan Shukla, Katha , Sankat Mochan Temple, August 1983.

[19] Shrinath Mishra, interview, October 1983.

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dents not only have the advantage of constant training from a close family member but also receive special opportunities to gain practice and exposure. Narayankant's elder grandson, Vidyabhaskar, began performing at the age of eight in the company of his grandfather; and during my stay in Banaras Narayankant began permitting his younger grandson, then about sixteen, to sit on the pith^[*] at Sankat Mochan and discourse for half an hour each afternoon. Some family dynasties are even more impressive, especially where royal patronage is involved: Ramji Pandey of Ramnagar claims that seven generations of his family have served the maharajas of Banaras as Ramayanis.

Studentship and the Tradition

It has become commonplace among Katha aficionados to speak of one or another "style" (saili ) or "school" (parampara ) of Katha , but these terms must be understood in an informal sense, as applying to what has always been essentially an individual art for which there exists no prescribed curriculum or institutionalized training. Rather, as in other Indian performance traditions, the aspiring vyas normally attaches himself to some successful exponent of the art as a disciple or student (cela or sisya^[*] ), an arrangement that may be more or less formalized. Such a period of study should be viewed less as the completion of a prescribed curriculum than as the adherence to a particular way of life, combining personal religious discipline and study of the Manas with service to the teacher and the daily hearing of his and others' discourses on the epic. In time the practice of this way of life may lead the student—if he possesses the necessary talent and dedication—to a performance career.

As I have already noted, the term parampara refers primarily to a spiritual lineage, which transmits authority rather than information. This is underscored by the repeated observations of that great connoisseur of Katha , Anjaninandan Sharan, on the originality of interpretation of the greatest expounders.^[20] His comments suggest that although aspiring performers may study with teachers, the eventual aim of their training is to enable them to develop new and original insights into Tulsi's verses.

[20] Note such comments as "Kashthajihva Swami's points are uniquely his own; these interpretations cannot be found in any other books" and "Baba Haridas's extraordinary bhavs came entirely from his own heart; they are never seen in any other commentary"; "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 918, 919.

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Internalizing the Text

The first requirement of the professional expounder is an intimate familiarity with the text, not simply "knowledge of" or "knowledge about" the text in the modern sense, such as might be gleaned from two or three "close readings," but rather "knowledge through" the text—a process no longer advocated by modern secular education but still pursued by some Western religious communities and certainly akin to the kind of involvement with scripture cultivated in the lectio divina of medieval Christian monasteries.^[21] In the initial phase of this kind of "knowing" the text is internalized—often through apparently mindless repetition—to such an extent that it is not only memorized but its language, structures, and images come to permeate the mental processes so that there is no occurrence, word, or image encountered in life that does not immediately evoke in the devotee some parallel word, phrase, or situation from the text. Indeed, what some expounders do in performance might best be described as thinking through or by means of the words of the Manas . It is this kind of knowledge that makes possible the prodigious mental feats of certain expounders—their ability, for example, to function as living concordances of the epic, capable, given a single word from the text, of citing virtually every line in which it appears.

Thus, an important part of the training of all Ramayanis is the constant recitation of the Manas , a habit that many of them cultivate from childhood. Hari Narayan, an aspiring vyas whom I met at Sankat Mochan, where he had come to take notes on the Katha , told me that his daily practice was to read two masparayan^[*] installments and thus to finish a complete reading every fortnight. Even Shrinath Mishra, a fully accomplished performer, said that he continued to recite the epic daily, completing one reading every month. But the training phase for many expounders involves even more frequent and intensive repetition, especially utilizing nine-day and unbroken recitations. The preceding chapter gave examples of legendary performers who achieved a mastery of the epic by an auspicious 108 recitations; this procedure is well known and is thought to invite the grace of Hanuman, who can bestow both knowledge and eloquence on the teller of Ram-katha .

Written Sources

Apart from recitation and its goal—the internalization of the text—the training of a vyas may involve the study of other written materials,

[21] On the importance of lectio divina , see Graham, Beyond the Written Word , 128-40; and Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God , esp. 15-17, 71-74.

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including such well-known commentaries as the Manas piyus^[*] and the Vijaya tika^[*] . These days younger performers particularly value the published works of Ramkinkar Upadhyay, such as the four volumes of his Manas muktavali (Necklace of Manas pearls), which contain edited transcriptions of his performances.^[22] The ready availability of these written kathas (the Muktavali series alone contains 213 discourses, and there are more than half a dozen other volumes of Ramkinkar's talks on the market) coupled with the impressive commercial success of this vyas make it likely that Ramkinkar's style and ideas will exert an influence on the next generation of Ramayanis.

From at least the middle of the nineteenth century, expounders have also made use of anthologies of problems (sankavali^[*] ) concerning Manas verses, together with their resolutions (samadhan ). An early manuscript example is Vandan Pathak's Manassankavali^[*] (c. 1840), which was published in Banaras in 1875. Modern examples include the popular Manassanka^[*]samadhan of Jayramdas Din, published by Gita Press in 1942 and repeatedly reissued (a twenty-ninth printing was released in 1981), and the four-volume Manassanka^[*]samadhanratnavali of Pandit Ramkumar Das.

Another facet of the training of many contemporary expounders is education in a Sanskrit university, often to the level of sastri ("expert in the sastras ," an advanced degree). Such training acquaints students with a range of sacred texts from which they may quote in future discourses and is especially valued by expounders who want to emphasize Tulsi's fidelity to Sanatan Dharm "orthodoxy" as they perceive it. Among the Sanskrit texts most frequently cited in Katha are the Valmiki Ramayana^[*] and the Bhagavata purana^[*] . However, an erudite vyas need not confine himself to Ramayan-related or even bhakti -inspired works, or to Sanskrit-language texts, and some performers draw on whole libraries preserved in their memories. For example, in a single program I attended, Shrinath Mishra quoted repeatedly and often at length from more than two dozen sources. These included (in addition to the Manas ) Tulsi's Vinay patrika , Kavitavali , Gitavali , and Dohavali ; the Bhaktamal of Nabhadas; the Bhagavatapurana^[*] , Mahabharata, and Valmiki Ramayana^[*] ; compositions attributed to Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, and Shankaracharya; the works of the Hindi poets Kabir, Surdas, Mirabai, Bihari, Keshav, Chandravali, Rahim, Raskhan, Ghananand, Raghuraj Kavi, Padmakar, Kashthajihva Swami, and Bharatendu Harishchandra;

[22] Upadhyay, Manasmuktavali ; the title of this work, like those of many Manas -related texts, alludes to Tulsi's lake allegory; here the individual verses on which Ramkinkar expounds are likened to the pearls which grow in the Manas Lake.

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as well as numerous folksongs, proverbs, and quotations that Shrinath identifies only as "miscellany" or "oral tradition" (sphut^[*] ).

For students fortunate enough to have access to them, the performance notes of a revered expounder are another potential source, especially if the expounder is the student's own teacher and is available to clarify and expand on the often-obscure notes. Whereas earlier performers wrote in the margins of the epic manuscripts they carried with them into performance, the current style is of extemporaneous pravacan , delivered without the aid of either text or notes. The Manas is still present on an ornate stand, but it is wrapped in silk and garlanded with flowers—an object of worship rather than a text to be read. Reading is unnecessary in this context, because a good vyas is expected to have completely internalized the text—to have become the Manas personified, the human voice of the Ramayan tradition.

Preparing for Performance

In view of the sacred status of the vyas and the emphasis on extemporaneous delivery, I was not surprised to find performers reluctant to divulge details about their choice and development of a topic for exposition.^[23] In interviews, many expounders stressed the importance of spontaneity and of ideas that came to them only when they were actually before an audience. Some stated that they never prepared at all beforehand and that it was only by the grace of Ram or Hanuman that they were able to manifest eloquence when seated on the vyas seat. No doubt, as any lecturer knows, the inspiration of the moment does play its part in successful Katha ; yet when I had heard a good many performances, I found myself convinced that, as the old adage goes, perspiration must play at least as great a part as inspiration. This was confirmed in later interviews with expounders who were more candid regarding the practical techniques of their trade. Ramji Vyas, a pandit employed by the Kashiraj Trust in Ramnagar and a successful vyas until his retirement from performance due to ill health in about 1980, spoke frankly of his debt to the Manaspiyus^[*] and also of his habit of keeping notes on his own ideas and others' performances. At the conclusion of a festival

[23] Sharan has remarked on the secrecy with which some nineteenth century performers guarded their notes, especially if (as was often the case) some of their best ideas were borrowed from other expounders; "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 926.

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program, he would hurry home to record any striking bhav that he might want to use in the future. His forty-year career was represented, he said, by a pile of notebooks "several feet high."^[24]

Shrinath Mishra showed me stacks of notebooks wrapped in cloth and carefully numbered, some of which date back to the days when he sat at Vijayanand Tripathi's feet, taking notes on his daily Katha . Most of the notes consist of "settings" (i.e., treatments; Shrinath used the English term) of verses and episodes from the epic, written "in my own fashion"—that is, with abbreviations and reminders to himself. He compared their condensed style to that of sutras and said they would be meaningless to most readers, but his longtime students were permitted to study them. On one occasion when I came to Shrinath's establishment, Ramnarayan Shukla was seated on the floor, poring over one of the notebooks and making his own notes from it. When I asked Shrinath to identify the many sources from which he had quoted in a certain performance, he several times wished to check something in his notes. Each time, a student was dispatched into the next room to bring forth a particular notebook; Shrinath would then identify the section of the notebook in which the particular quotation was to be found, and the student would look it up and read the relevant notes to him. The "catalog" to this impressive library of notebooks is, of course, entirely in Shrinath's head—another indication of this fine expounder's prodigious memory—as the "settings" are entered in the order in which they were developed, which bears no relation to their order in the epic. Thus, despite the existence of the voluminous notes, the living presence and guidance of the teacher remains an essential ingredient in Shrinath's pedagogy.

The process of drawing up "settings" for performances is never-ending, according to Shrinath, and he continues to fill notebooks with ideas. Moreover, if a bhav of another expounder pleases him, he will write it down and consider using it himself. When I asked if he thought other performers would resent such "borrowing," he replied,

No, the good ones will never be jealous. The petty ones, those who have few ideas, they will be jealous and will want to prevent another from using their material. But those who possess a vast treasure, who have studied much, they will feel no regret. For "what one hears, one may say." Goswami-ji says,

Sants are like bees, who collect virtuous qualities.
1.10.6

[24] Ramji Vyas, interview, August 1983.

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Thus a wise man should be like a bee: a bee lands on many flowers, he sips their nectar, in this manner he collects it; just so, wise men, when they hear good things, should collect and savor them.^[25]

Other expounders expressed similar views on the subject of borrowing; indeed, even in my limited exposure to Katha performances I sometimes heard the same illustration or parable told by several different performers. Of course, it is also acceptable to cite another vyas by name, crediting him with the bhav ; this is sometimes done when citing legendary performers of the past, like Kashthajihva Swami or Ramkumar Mishra, whose names are themselves evocative for the audience of the depth and continuity of the tradition.

In another section of our interview, Shrinath described the process by which he "sets" or prepares a new topic for performance (he used the English word "set" throughout—by which he seemed to mean both "select" and "plan"—and turned it into a Hindi verb: set^[*]karna ); his remarks suggest the balance between preparatory work and inspiration.

In certain situations, however, particularly in small-scale and private Katha , a patron may at the last minute request the exposition of a particular line or raise a problem for the vyas to resolve. The prevalence of the topical style of exposition has given rise to the suspicion among audiences that many expounders, especially on the festival circuit, have only a limited number of preplanned and virtually memorized "lectures" that they are prepared to deliver and are unable to discourse, as the great Ramayanis of old were reputedly able to do, on every line and episode of the epic. I heard this complaint frequently both from audience members and expounders themselves—although, when voiced by the latter,

[25] Shrinath Mishra, interview, October 1983.

[26] Ibid.

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Figure 18.
Shrinath Mishra giving Katha at Janaki Mahal, Ayodhya, during
Ram Navami festivities, 1984

it was always in reference to other performers; every vyas claimed to be able to discourse on the complete Manas . Shrinath Mishra likewise agreed that many expounders today have a limited repertoire but added that, even in his own case, given a new topic at the last minute, some quick thinking would be necessary to "set" the approach he would take.

In contrast to Shrinath, Ramkinkar Upadhyay stated that he never prepared in advance for a performance. His method, he said, was to "enter into that inner state in which Hanuman-ji, by means of my voice, may express what he wants to express. And the greater my absorption in that state, the greater the flavor [ras ] in the Katha ." He downplayed the notion that his rhetorical gifts were the result of study or training and, when discussing his development as a performer, used the analogy of a lottery. "Now suppose there is a lottery, and someone wins it; and then someone else asks him, 'Tell me, what's the technique of winning a lottery?' Well, what technique will he describe?"^[27] Ramkinkar's annual pravacan series at Lakshmi-Narayan Temple in New Delhi is one of the most spectacular public Katha programs, attended by thousands of Delhi residents; moreover, the daily talks are recorded for later publication. Yet Ramkinkar told me that his 1983 topic, Kevat^[*]prasang^[*] (the episode of the boatman, Kevat—2.100.3-2.100) was chosen only about

[27] Ramkinkar Upadhyay, interview, April 1983.

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an hour before he was to mount the podium on the first evening, in the course of an informal discussion with his patroness, Sarla Birla, and other admirers. This insistence on spontaneity is part of Ramkinkar's public image as a consummate vyas , who is capable, without any special preparation, of discoursing for hours on any line from the Manas . Such self-assurance, indicative of a complete internalization of the text, is held in high regard in Katha circles.

Performance Structure and Techniques

Even though the performance styles of individual expounders vary considerably (examples of their diverse approaches are given later in this chapter), their performances follow a conventional pattern and share certain symbolic and ritual elements, which this section describes.

The Vyas Seat

A vyas preparing to perform first worships the pith^[*] on which he is to sit and on which the Manas is installed, bowing to it with joined palms and taking its "dust" on his forehead. The symbolism of the pith^[*] is subject to diverse interpretations; I was variously told that it represents Tulsidas and the Ramayani tradition, Veda Vyasa, and the Lord Himself. The word is used in popular Hinduism to refer to the abode of a deity; thus, 108 Devi piths^[*] are believed to mark the sites at which fragments of the goddess Sati's body fell to earth when it was cut to pieces by Vishnu's discus. Among Ram devotees, the Manas itself is revered as a divinity—as a "form" or "embodiment" (vigrah ) of the Lord. In Ramnarayan Shukla's words: "Sants and mahatmas even today revere the Ramcaritmanas as a deity. One must offer flower garlands to it, place food offerings before it, perform its arti . . . . Just as the Lord takes physical incarnation, just so this is his body in the form of speech [vanmaysarir ], that is, composed of language. So understanding it to be the Lord, we worship it."^[28]

But if a "seat" becomes a center of power because of the divine presence that it hosts, it also confers authority and divinity on a human "sitter," enabling him to put aside his mundane identity and assume a new persona. The monarch's throne and judge's bench are piths^[*] that, even in secular contexts, confer special dignity and authority. When a

[28] Ramnarayan Shukla, interview, December 1982.

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vyas , having worshiped the pith^[*] , takes his seat upon it, he himself becomes a suitable object for worship and is garlanded with flowers by the sponsoring patron. Similarly, it is understood that once an expounder is seated on the pith^[*] he should never be disturbed or interrupted, and he is excused from normal social obligations, such as rising out of respect for a more senior vyas or other dignitary who may arrive during his performance. I was told that, since the Manas is present on the pith^[*] and since Veda Vyasa was an incarnation of Vishnu, an expounder in performance is considered to be saksat^[*]bhagvan (the Lord made manifest).^[29]

The Mangalacaran^[*] and the Kirtan

Once seated, a vyas closes his eyes and composes himself in a brief meditation. Then, with eyes still closed, he begins uttering his mangalacaran^[*] : a benediction usually consisting of Sanskrit slokas interwoven with verses from the Manas . The mangalacaran^[*] . (literally, auspicious undertaking), also referred to as an "obeisance" or "salutation" (vandana ), is so common a feature of South Asian Hindu performance, both religious and "secular," that we may identify it as a characteristic "performance marker" for this culture—a sign to the audience of the moment of transition into the performance frame.^[30] A mangalacaran^[*] is both a benediction and an invocation. Deities are praised and, by being praised, are invited to be present, to assist in—or in some cases, to take

[29] Strict adherence to this practice can result in embarrassing situations, as was demonstrated one evening at the Gyan Vapi festival in 1982. Lakshman Chaitanya, an influential disciple of the late Swami Karpatri, had been invited to speak at 9:00 P.M. ; when he failed to arrive, the next scheduled vyas , Shitalprasad of Ayodhya, was asked to begin. But about twenty minutes later, the ascetic leader swept into the enclosure in a bevy of ocher-robed disciples, who urged the crowd to its feet to salute him with a rousing cry of "Har Har Mahadev!"—the invocation of Shiva always used to greet Karpatri. Shitalprasad appeared to take no notice and continued his discourse. Chaitanya seated himself on a tiger skin at the other end of the dais and appeared to go into meditation; when, after ten minutes or so, it became clear that the vyas had no intention of surrendering the microphone, the sannyasi could not conceal his annoyance and stalked out of the mandap^[*] , trailed by apologetic members of the organizing committee. Shitalprasad was unrepentant and later repeated the view that a vyas discoursing from the pith^[*] should never be interrupted. The incident was much discussed by audience members, particularly as it echoed a similar one some years earlier when Ramkinkar Upadhyay had offended Swami Karpatri himself by refusing to interrupt a Katha and rise for the obligatory "Har Hat Mahadev!" on the latter's arrival.

[30] Thus, bharat natyam^[*] and other classical dance performances begin with a mangalacaran^[*] praising Shiva as Lord of the Dance and invoking the earth's blessing. Sanskrit dramas likewise open with a prayer, and even martial and "secular" bardic recitations (such as those of the Alha cycle) begin with a vandana invoking Ganesh, Sarasvati, and other deities. On performance "keys" or markers, see Bauman, Verbal Art as Performance , 16-24.

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over—the performance. I have already noted Ramkinkar's conviction that while delivering Katha he becomes merely an "instrument" for Hanuman; thus, he rates the success of his performances by the degree to which "he" is not responsible for them. A similar view is expressed by Ramnarayan Shukla, another vyas whose performances are sometimes marked by the overshadowing presence of Hanuman: "You go and sit on that seat and you worship the deity. From that you form a link, you establish a connection. You meditate, utter a vandana , and then that deity will come. You make the connection, and he gives you facility [in Katha ], makes it happen. That's why we do it."^[31] It is clear that most expounders do not enter into a state of actual "possession"—indeed, their performances are characterized by a high degree of lucidity and control—yet we must note that the relationship between possession and folk performance is a complex one and even in Katha , as we shall see, the line demarcating the two is not always clear.^[32]

Each expounder has his own mangalacaran^[*] , with which he begins every performance. Part of it will have been given by his guru and part chosen by the performer himself early in his career; once selected, it never changes. The formulaic nature of this benediction—which may last five minutes or more—can of course be useful to the performer. It allows him additional time to review the sequence of themes he has previously chosen or even to redesign his talk to suit an audience member's last-minute request. The invocations of many expounders, especially those who are sadhus, include a formula identifying the performer's sampraday , or spiritual lineage. In Ayodhya, for example, the two principal Vaishnava sects are the dominant Ramanandi sampraday and its spiritual ancestor, the Ramanuja sampraday .^[33] A vyas of the Ramanandi sect usually includes in his invocation the following sloka :

Originating in Sita's Lord,
transmitted through the noble Ramanand,
and encompassing all our teachers—
that guru lineage I venerate.

[31] Ramnarayan Shukla, interview, December 1982.

[32] On the relationship between possession and performance, see Ramanujan, "Two Realms of Kannada Folklore," 68-73; for an example of possessionlike phenomena in Katha , see below, p. 199.

[33] According to Ramkumar Das (interview, April 1984), the term Srisampraday , often applied to the Ramanuja tradition, is used in Ayodhya only in reference to the Ramanandis. Note, however, Richard Burghardt's speculation that the Ramanandi sect was originally an independent development, which later sought legitimacy through association with the older and more orthodox Ramanuja tradition; "The Founding of the Ramanandi Sect."

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Initiation in the Ramanuja tradition, however, will be indicated by the substitution of "Lakshmi" for "Sita" in the opening line and of "Ramanuja" for "Ramanand" in the second. The distinction is not minor from the sadhus' point of view, for while the Ramanuja tradition worships Vishnu (Narayan) and Lakshmi as the primordial cause of creation, the Ramanandis adore Ram and Sita, of whom, in their view, Lakshmi-Narayan and all other gods are mere manifestations. Thus, the invocation establishes the doctrinal credentials of the expounder; at the same time, it facilitates the assumption of an impersonal identity as speaker for an ancient and atemporal tradition.

Apart from such doctrinal formulas, a mangalacaran^[*] may contain an invocation of the performer's own teacher and also of his patron deity (istadev^[*] )—most commonly Hanuman. The slokas recited are often taken from the mangalacarans^[*] with which Tulsidas begins each book of the epic; in this respect too, the text's structure mirrors and is mirrored by the structure of a Katha performance. When such familiar verses are used, audience members sometimes chant softly along with the vyas , but the performer appears to take no notice of their participation. His eyes remain closed and he seems to be engaged in an act of private dedication. Often, indeed, the mangalacaran^[*] is delivered so softly as to be barely audible to the audience. This may reflect a deliberate strategy, for by forcing his listeners to strain to hear him, the speaker captures their attention and creates a hushed and expectant atmosphere for his opening remarks.

Completing the invocation, the vyas opens his eyes and leads the crowd in a brief kirtan , or melodious chant of the name of Ram. This is performed antiphonally: the vyas sings a line and the audience responds by repeating it. A single simple paean of praise may be repeated several times, such as "Jay Sita-Ram, jay jay Sita-Ram," or the leader may introduce rhyming variations such as "sankat^[*] mocan krpa^[*] nidhan" (liberator from distress, treasury of grace—the former title is an epithet of Hanuman).

The mangalacaran^[*] and participatory kirtan give the speaker a measure of the audience's mood, which will be crucial to the success of his performance. If he senses that the crowd is bored or restless, the congregational singing offers him an opportunity to intervene and try to establish a more alert, responsive atmosphere for his talk.^[34] Occasionally, an

[34] Cf. Bruce Rosenberg's observation on American folk sermons, "When an audience is responsive the preacher catches its enthusiasm. The singing before the sermon begins is a sure indication of the congregation's emotional level"; The Art of the American Folk Preacher , 43.

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expounder will even interrupt the kirtan to chide a particularly listless audience, perhaps using a humorous approach in an effort to establish rapport with the crowd: "I hear nothing; are you all asleep? Remember, this is the Lord's name! You must sing it so that they hear you even on the other side of the Ganga! Come on, once more. . . ."

The Performance Cycle

There is a pattern typical of all Katha performance: a gradual progression from slowly paced delivery, through a growing involvement by the speaker in his topic reflected in louder and more rapid speech, to an emotional climax. Performers typically begin softly and slowly, seemingly in the meditative state that is the fruit of their preliminary devotions. Opening remarks at festivals often include a formal greeting of dignitaries and sponsors and then of the assembly as a whole. They may also include remarks on the sacral significance of the occasion, a deferential bow to preceding speakers, and a protestation of the performer's inadequacy (although as everyone knows, expounders are scheduled according to their rank, with the lesser invariably performing first). Such dignified and often formulaic openings provide time for the crowd to settle down. Thus, Swami Sitaram Sharan, addressing a huge crowd gathered on the eve of Ram's birthday in Ayodhya's Lakshman Kila Temple, commenced his Katha with a long paean to his audience and a citation of the auspicious place and time of the assembly.

O most worthy of reverence, fervently adored assembly of saints, high-minded ones intent on tasting the nectar of the Lord's lotus feet, and goddesses!^[35] By the grace of Shri Sita-Ram, on the bank of the teardrop-born Saraju, seated in the proximity of beloved Shri Lakshman-ji, having obtained the companionship of Ayodhya-dwelling saints and devotees, we have all been, for many days, savoring the Lord's auspicious, sweet, emotion-filled katha -nectar. And now the moment that has been awaited for a year, that moment—tomorrow, 12:00 noon—is approaching; that supremely holy instant in which will occur the celebration of the Lord's manifestation. This is the grace of the holy realm of Ayodhya!^[36] Just now you have heard from Sunita-ji and from Shriman Narayan-ji, on the subject of the Lord's incarnation, very sweet Katha .^[37]

[35] Deviyom^[*] —a polite reference to the women in the crowd.

[36] Avadh-dham : dham (dwelling or home) in Vaishnava tradition signifies a holy place so intimately associated with the Lord that it partakes of his being. Thus a dham like Ayodhya, Chitrakut, or Vrindavan is considered to be another divine "embodiment" (vigrah ).

[37] Sitaram Sharan, Katha , Lakshman Kila, Ayodhya, April 4, 1984.

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Noteworthy here is the speaker's parallelistic, additive style, which is characteristic of Katha and reflects both the exigencies of extemporaneous delivery and the performer's associative and expansive approach to his material. For what most expounders actually do within their hour-long performances—and what their patrons value highly enough to reward with the sometimes-lavish remunerations noted earlier—might best be described as a sort of free-form verbal meditation on a chosen word, line, or theme from the Manas . This excerpt becomes the warp for a rich tapestry of images, associations, quotations, and anecdotes, presented not as a systematic analysis of a literary work but as a celebration of the inexhaustible meaning of a sacred story. The associations made by the performer may seem brilliantly incisive; they may also seem farfetched and contrived—-although even these, if they can be buttressed by an appropriate citation (praman^[*] ) from the epic or some other revered text, can evoke exclamations of delight^[*] from connoisseurs. The aim of the performer is less the construction of logical argument than the evocation of bhav , or "mood" (as we have seen, his interpretations themselves are so labeled) from which listeners may derive ras —"juice" or emotional "flavor."

In listening to Katha performances I was reminded of the sequence of events in an Indian classical music recital: the progression from meditative alap to rhythmic tal , which gradually increases in intensity and rises to a series of crescendos. Within this structure the musician executes a set of improvisations on a melodic line, or raga. In Katha , an excerpt from the Manas becomes the raga on which the performer elaborates. The field over which the vyas -improviser ranges—his "scale," or the totality of musical tones at his disposal—is, first of all, the Manas itself. Some expounders pride themselves on drawing their citations exclusively from the epic, and there are stories that celebrate the facility with which legendary performers could defend any point with a quotation from the text.^[38] Additionally, a learned performer in search of pramans^[*] may range over the vast scriptural and poetic literatures of Sanskrit and Hindi.

[38] Vandan Pathak is said to have boasted that he did not concern himself with anything that was not mentioned in the Manas . Once while he was giving Katha an old woman presented him with a savory she had prepared. As Pathak eagerly pocketed this offering, someone in the crowd jokingly called out, "Maharaj, what does this have to do with the Manas ?" Pathak, who was renowned for his great presence of mind when seated on the vyaspith^[*] , instantly quoted a half-line from Book One—"He will become happy if he plunges into this lake" (1.35.8)—the last word of which, though a verb (parai , "plunges"), made a pun on the colloquial name for the clay bowl in which the woman had presented her gift, thus "proving" to delighted listeners that it was indeed mentioned in the Manas (recounted by C. N. Singh, interview, February 1984).

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Time is an important element in contemporary Katha ; the custom of limiting one's discourse to an hour has become virtually a rule, and rarely does a vyas exceed this limit. At the Gyan Vapi festival, two oversize electric clocks bracket the dais like huge, unblinking eyes, one of them situated directly behind the expounder's seat. An experienced performer, of course, is adept at tailoring his delivery to the prescribed period, even without such external reminders. As he nears the end of his allotted hour, he will raise the emotional pitch of his discourse and attempt a satisfying summation that may include a return to his opening theme. If he is going to be speaking for several days, he may offer a hint of the following day's topic to spark listeners' curiosity. When he finally concludes, it is with a sudden lapse into the slow, quiescent tone of his opening mangalacaran^[*] , for a last auspicious utterance that fades into inaudibility: "Siyavar Ramcandra-ji ki jay" (Hail Sita's bridegroom, Ramchandra). This may be followed by more rounds of kirtan in which, if the performance has been well received, audience members respond with particular fervor. As a revered vyas rises to leave, admirers rush forward to touch his feet or garland him.

The conclusion of a Katha may also be signaled by the appearance of a priest with an arti tray and lamp; this is especially the custom in daily programs in which a single performer is featured. The expounder remains seated while the assembly rises to sing the usual hymn to the Ramayan and the priest waves an oil lamp before the vyas and the book. Afterward, worshipers crowd forward to take blessings of the flame, sweeping their hands over it and then touching their foreheads, and place cash offerings on the tray. Many then come forward for the darsan of the expounder and to receive prasad in the form of tulsi leaves (sacred to Vishnu), which have been resting on the Manas during the talk.

Performer-Audience Interaction

Hindi discourse is highly interactive, with the speaker frequently soliciting expressions of comprehension and affirmation from his listener, often by means of the negative question particle na ? (Isn't it so?). Ramayan expounders, too, frequently pause to solicit affirmation and approbation, and they may seek listeners' responses by other means as well—for example, by posing rhetorical questions that someone in the crowd may answer or, when quoting from the epic, by reciting all but the last word or phrase of a line and then gesturing to invite listeners to complete it. Those who can (and the end rhyme helps) gain an opportunity

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to display their own knowledge of the text while deriving a satisfying sense of participation in the performance.

Almost invariably a vyas , again like an Indian musician, cultivates a special rapport with an appreciative and responsive individual in the audience. At large festivals, a special seating area is sometimes reserved for members of the organizing committee and their guests. These prominent listeners can usually be counted on to display their connoisseurship by frequent and fervent responses. 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 need not be viewed as manipulation on the performer's part; rather, it 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."^[39] When an elderly and respected connoisseur of Katha arrived late to one of Shrinath Misra's performances, the vyas interrupted the discourse to call him to the front of the hall, remarking tellingly,

Oh, Thakur Sahab! Please come forward! If a superior listener sits right in front, the pleasure will increase, won't it? My guru always used to say, when someone's going to give Katha , if you want to hear really good Katha , then carefully pick ten or twenty good men and seat them in the front. And if you want to wreck somebody's Katha , just get a few men of the sort who, as soon as the talk begins, will straightaway start to slouch and stare off into space. . .. (laughter)

If, as often happens, the expounder is personally acquainted with one of the listeners, he may even make personal asides to him and develop moments of actual dialogue that, if the respondent is clever and well chosen, may themselves become a source of pleasure to other listeners. Such sustained interaction, however, is more typical of the intimate atmosphere of daily, ongoing Katha , in which a core group of listeners may remain the same for literally years on end. This is the case, for example, in Ramnarayan Shukla's daily performances at Sankat Mochan Temple, at which one regular is a retired Sanskrit professor whom Ramnarayan treats with great respect and affection, calling him Kaka-ji (Uncle—although they are not related). Whenever the vyas quotes Sanskrit verses, he turns to the old professor with a deferential gesture,

[39] The sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar once remarked to an American concert organizer that if she wanted his performance to be excellent, she should fill the front row with connoisseurs of Indian music with whom he could develop an interaction (Joan Erdman, personal communication, November 1984).

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sometimes verbally soliciting his approval—"Isn't that correct, Kaka-ji?"—and the old man will smilingly nod, "Yes, quite so." At times, "Kaka-ji" even speaks up in the midst of the Katha , responding to a quoted sloka with one that it has brought to his mind. Such an interruption would be out of place in a large sammelan , but it is appropriate in the intimate milieu of daily satsang^[*] .

An audience's response is not always favorable, although Katha goers—mindful of being in a religious assembly—are usually polite and refrain from the musa'ira audience's practice of booing unpopular speakers off the stage.^[40] Restlessness and unresponsiveness are the usual methods of demonstrating disfavor; real disapproval will be reserved for postperformance discussion, but any criticism can influence a performer's standing and the likelihood of his receiving invitations to perform in the future. Real connoisseurs are not impressed by mere facile delivery; in the performances of the most successful expounders, rhetorical and interactive skills blend harmoniously with insight and creativity of interpretation to produce bhavs that are truly worth relishing.

The Language of Katha

The North Indian verbal artist can enrich his performance by drawing on a wide range of spoken and literary dialects. The parallel vocabularies of Sanskrit, Perso-Arabic, and regional dialects such as Bhojpuri, Avadhi, and Braj Bhasha offer the gifted performer terms and idioms appropriate to various rhetorical strategies. Since Sanskrit remains for pious Hindus the language of religious authority and prestige, the use of a heavily Sanskritized diction serves to underscore a performer's appeal to authoritative tradition. Similarly, the use of certain terms rarely encountered in ordinary speech (such as atah^[*] , "ergo"; and yatha , "that is to say") recall their use in the Sanskrit commentarial tradition and formal logic and thus lend extra weight and dignity to the orator's argument. However, should a vyas choose to recount an anecdote concerning the Mughal emperor Akbar or some other figure from the period of Muslim rule, he may adopt a more Urduized vocabulary, substituting Perso-Arabic for Sanskrit terms. And the same performer, retelling an episode from the Ramayan, may vividly evoke its humor or pathos by recasting it as a dialogue that he acts out, shifting into a regional dialect to make use of intimate forms of address and folk idioms.

[40] Cf. Naim, "The Poet-Audience Interaction in Mushairas."

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Decisions on appropriate vocabulary depend on the place and occasion of the Katha . When Ramnarayan Shukla speaks to his daily faithful at Sankat Mochan, for example, he delights them not only with his erudite quotations from Sanskrit texts but also with his use of slang expressions and Banarsi idioms, especially kinship terms and local names of foods and sweetmeats. The renowned "All-India" vyas Ramkinkar Upadhyay, however, most often performs in large urban areas before audiences that include people from many geographical regions; he eschews localisms and prefers instead a more Sanskritized diction, which carries a special appeal for his largely college-educated audiences.

Another way in which language may be "Sanskritized" is by the deliberate pronunciation of the normally deleted short vowel a . This suggests not only Sanskrit pronunciation but also traditional Hindi prosody, the meters of which require that all vowels be pronounced. The addition of the extra vowel seems to impart a "metrified" effect to spoken prose, calling special attention to it and enhancing, so to speak, its "performance density." Changes in rhythm and voice pitch can also metrify prose in performance; a common technique is to shift into what might be termed "liturgical chant"—the near-monotone style used by priests in the recitation of Vedic mantras. The effect is not unlike that of an English speaker suddenly delivering sentences in an imitation of a Gregorian chant; his intention would probably be to parody, and the vyas too sometimes uses the chant to comic effect. But more often the use of chanting is associated with the performer's assuming, however fleetingly, a different persona, especially that of a revered religious teacher. At such moments, the vyas uses short, parallel sentences to suggest a pattern typical of religious verse and a near-monotone chant evocative of mantras, which lends a special weight and dignity to the pronouncement.

Formulaic Epithets

Like many other oral performers, Ramayanis make use of epithets and stock phrases that they have memorized or create spontaneously by analogy to similar memorized phrases. Such formulaic phrases appear to be useful to the extemporaneous orator, since they allow him time to think ahead and develop his next sequence of ideas; for this reason, they are sometimes characterized as "stall formulas."^[41] In understanding

[41] Rosenberg, The Art of the American Folk Preacher , 53-54.

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their value to the traditional performer, however, we should not overlook the appeal that such phrases hold for his listeners. The katha -goer derives an evident satisfaction from the baroque accumulation of grandiose titles and the ease with which they are reeled off by the performer. The fixity of such expressions and the fact that they may have been heard hundreds of times before do not detract from their appeal. The use of stock epithets is a feature that the Katha tradition shares with the epic tradition on which it is grounded (which the epics, in turn, presumably borrowed from an earlier bardic performance tradition).^[42] The formal expectations of Katha audiences and their deep sensitivity to the epic tradition allow them to savor the appropriateness of formulaic epithets rather than to view them as tired clichés.

When Ramnarayan Shukla quotes from his teacher, Vijayanand Tripathi, he does not simply identify him by name but uses an elaborate formula including the guru's title (padvi ) and several other honorific terms: "Revered divine teacher, 'royal swan of the Manas Lake,' his eminence Pandit Vijayanand-ji Tripathi-ji always used to say. . . ." The same performer's frequent epithet for the author of the Manas is similarly elaborate: "Crown jewel of devotees, ornament of the lineage of poets, his eminence Goswami Tulsidas-ji." Equally glorious titles can be generated for all the major characters in the epic; even though the most elaborate ones may not be used constantly, they are always available to the performer to embellish his discourse while providing him with a few seconds in which to frame his next thought.

Katha in Context: The Contemporary Performance Milieu

Because audience and setting are crucial ingredients in the art of Katha , I would like to offer, as an introduction to the discussion of performance styles that follows, a brief description of some of the settings within which contemporary performances unfold. This section also supplements and updates the legendary and historical material presented in the preceding chapter.

[42] Cf. Goldman's observation on the Valmiki text: "A character in the Ramayana^[*] may be burdened with three or more epithets or patronymics in a single verse. In many cases, a single such term, such as kausalyananda-vardbana , or a term paired with a proper noun, such as laksmano^[*]laksmi-vardhana^[*] . . . will occupy a full quarter of a verse"; The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki : Balakanda^[*] , 99.

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Daily Katha an Afiternoon at Sankat Mochan

Despite the growing importance of festivals and private performances, nitya (continuous or daily) Katha remains an important oratorical tradition in North India. It is encountered especially in religious centers and ashrams, where there is a steady audience of sadhus and pilgrims intent on experiencing satsang^[*] and gaining insight into the sacred story. In Ayodhya, for example, most of the larger temples and monasteries have resident kathavacaks who perform daily in late afternoon. The audience of ashram residents may be supplemented by neighborhood people with a fondness for a particular speaker's exposition and by sadhus who are temporarily lodged in the establishment, for the daily Katha constitutes one of the important religious activities of the day.

The timing of daily Katha is obviously not based on the modern commercial day, but on an older pattern. Agricultural work as well as religious activity begins before dawn, and a midafternoon meal often marks the end of the workday. In the late afternoon, when the sun's heat is less intense, people gather in the shade of a tree or under a temple portico to pass an hour or two enjoying Katha . This pattern has been only partially replaced by the modern workday of factories and offices, and it continues to coexist with it in cities, especially the smaller ones, which retain a strong sense of traditional culture. Fashionable shops in New Delhi may open and close (more or less) by the clock, but the tiny establishments that line the lanes of Banaras adhere to a more erratic and individualized pattern, which is considered a part of the special ethos of the city, the sense of "Banarsiness" (Banarsipan ) of which residents speak with pride. One man, reflecting on the increasing pace of life in the city, compared the modern commercial atmosphere with what he recalled from his childhood: "In those days, brother, if a shopkeeper didn't feel like working in the afternoon, he'd just hang up some straw mats in front—not these steel shutters with locks like they have now, just mats (can you imagine, people were so honest!)—and then he'd go off and have a swim, or listen to some music, or attend a Katha , whatever was his pleasure. Nowadays the city is full of outsiders who don't understand the Banarsi way of life, and so it's just rush, rush, all the time."^[43] Despite the nostalgic tone of these comments, the life-style they describe is not altogether a thing of the past. The same person reported that he himself left work at the Banaras railway yard daily by 2:00 or 3:00 P.M. in order to join a group of friends for boating and swimming excursions

[43] P. L. Yadav, interview, October 1982.

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to the other side of the Ganga; during the month of Ramlila , he left work even earlier in order to carry out his practice of daily attendance at the Ramnagar production. Similarly, although it is said that daily Katha is not as widespread or as well patronized as in the past, such programs are still relatively common.^[44]

In some cases patronage is provided by a charitable endowment that pays a monthly stipend to the performer; this is supplemented by daily offerings. Such an arrangement is in effect at Chini Kshetra, a religious trust housed in an old-fashioned townhouse (haveli ) in a small lane close to Dashashvamedh Ghat, the main bathing place in the congested central city. The trust was endowed in 1874 by a prosperous merchant whose family later shifted to Calcutta, whence his descendants still administer it. The endowment provides for the upkeep of the building, the salary of a manager, daily meals for some thirty Brahman boys pursuing religious studies in the neighborhood, and a daily Katha program from 7:00 to 8:00 P.M. In 1983 the kathavacak was Vidyabhaskar Tripathi, a twenty-four-year-old law student at B.H.U. and grandson of Nara-yankant Tripathi of the Sankat Mochan Temple. Vidyabhaskar had been in the employ of the trust for six years, receiving, in addition to the daily offering, a stipend of Rs 150 per month, and was nearing the end of his second complete exposition of the Manas . The program attracted a steady audience of forty to sixty people, mostly older residents of the Dashashvamedh area.

Probably the best-known daily Katha program in the southern part of the city is the one at Sankat Mochan Temple. Here the program in the early 1980s featured two performers—Narayankant Tripathi and Ramnarayan Shukla—and the small audience of regulars was periodically expanded by crowds of darsan seekers who visited the temple, especially on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Narayankant, affectionately known as Baba-ji, was said to be the oldest expounder in Banaras and had long served as the temple's resident vyas ; he had now become, so to speak, its emeritus vyas , the official position having been passed on, about a dozen years earlier, to Ramnarayan.^[45]

One approaches Sankat Mochan through a lofty sandstone gateway, conveniently fronted by a parking area for bicycles, rickshas, and motor vehicles; the parking lot is a reflection of the growing fame of this temple and its astute promotion by a succession of influential mabants for,

[44] Jhingaran observes, "Thirty or forty years ago, Ram-katha and Ramlila were an essential part of the daily activities of nearly every Banarsi"; "Ham sevak," 21.

[45] Baba Narayankant Tripathi passed away in 1985.

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as Narayankant recalled to me, fifty years ago Sankat Mochan was no more than a tiny shrine in the forest, flanked by a few dilapidated mud-brick structures. Today a brick-paved path lined with trees leads the worshiper from the gateway through a shady park filled with chattering monkeys to the shrine itself, where two lofty temples lie within a complex of columned courtyards and whitewashed outbuildings.

Like all Hindu temples, Sankat Mochan has its busy and its quiet times, a reflection of the daily puja schedule, which in turn reflects the "day" of its patron deity. Hanuman, like most gods, rises early and has a busy morning. At 6:00 A.M. , for example, having already been bathed, dressed, and refreshed with an early breakfast, he is ready to enjoy an hour's recitation of the Valmiki Ramayana^[*] , presented to him by Ramnarayan Shukla as part of his own daily duties at the temple. Then from 8:00 to 11:00 A.M. he is entertained with kirtan of the name of Ram, sung by five Brahmans in the employ of the temple. In the meantime, as background to this official litany, numerous supplicants seated on the marble well platform that fronts his shrine or walking the circumambu-latory colonnade that surrounds it, are filling his ears with their own renditions of the Hanumancalisa and the Manas . At midday Hanuman enjoys another meal and retires to rest behind a red silken curtain embroidered in silver spangles with the message "Jay Sita-Ram." During the midafternoon when Hanuman is unavailable, the public side of temple life comes to a halt; vendors of sweets doze behind their leaf-covered wares and a loincloth-clad priest draws a bucket of water from the well and takes a leisurely bath in a corner of the courtyard. By 3:00 P.M. , however, things begin to pick up. The curtain will be reopened soon, and worshipers will again begin to arrive, first in a trickle but turning into crowds by evening.

It is at this juncture that Katha occurs, during the transition from drowsy afternoon to bustling evening when (especially on Tuesday and Saturday) people will wait in jostling queues for Hanuman's darsan and ringing bells and fervent cries of "Bajrangbali ki jay!" will echo through the complex.^[46] The expounders perform, as usual, in order of precedence, beginning with a "warm-up" pandit who performs occasionally at about 2:30, when there is practically no one in the compound, and discourses on the Bhagavatapurana^[*] . Katha on this text is still held in high regard in Vaishnava circles, although in practice it is comparatively rarely heard; in any case, this man is an uninspired performer. I remem-

[46] Bajrangbali ("the mighty one"—possibly derived from a Sanskrit compound meaning "one possessing adamantine limbs") is a popular epithet of Hanuman.

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ber him droning on in a soft monotone from an early section of the text, presenting, with almost no exposition, a catalog of names of sacred cities and rivers to an audience of two or three elderly men, one of whom appeared to be asleep. This too is Katha of a sort: textual exposition as spiritual Muzak—an auspicious background noise to which one may not give much attention but from which one absorbs merit (punya^[*] ) all the same.

The vyas seat at Sankat Mochan is a gaddi , or "couch," made of worn planks set on creaky, lathe-turned wooden legs—an object displaying no particular artistry and cracked and faded with age. Yet this seat is an object of veneration, for legend associates it with the time of Tulsidas. By the time Baba Narayankant approaches the gaddi at 3:30, the temple compound has begun to stir. An attendant appears with an ocher cloth to drape over the gaddi and a wooden bookstand to set at one end of it, and then carefully unwraps a large, ancient-looking copy of the Manas , its cover and pages stained from years of flower offerings. Baba Narayankant is an aged but wiry man in a stained caubandi (a tunic tied in four places and traditionally associated with Brahman teachers) who walks with a bamboo staff and gives his age as ninety-six. He has been giving Katha at Sankat Mochan, he says, for fifty years and has trained dozens of expounders. He needs help in climbing onto the high seat, and his voice is no longer as strong as it once was; moreover, he is quite toothless and his speech is sometimes difficult to understand. Yet despite these handicaps of old age, he has a warm presence and draws a small but devoted group of listeners.

Most of them are regulars and know one another; there are smiles and gestures of greeting as each arrives and much urging of the newcomer to sit near the front. Although this is apt to be a daily ritual, it never palls. The little gestures of modesty and civility are part of the charmed circle of satsang^[*] , an affirmation of both social decorum and devotional fellowship: "No, no, Maharaj, kindly deign to come forward, you must sit here, near Baba-ji." One old man always sits at Baba-ji's feet and listens intently, his face radiant with delight. The vyas turns to him after each well-made point, and the old man nods delightedly, as if to say, "Quite right, just what I feel myself! But how well you've put it!" This favorite listener hails from Bihar but now lives close to Sankat Mochan because, as he tells me one day, "What else is there to do but listen to the Lord's story?" Another, younger devotee is a technician in charge of the electron microscope in the physics department at the university. He praises Baba-ji's style as "the old style, using the Manas only."

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Baba Narayankant's Katha is straightforward and charming. He proceeds line by line through the text, sometimes paraphrasing rather than reciting a verse and drawing most of his citations from the Manas itself. If his speech is sometimes slurred, his expressive face helps to make up for this: alternately tender, compassionate, firm, it eloquently conveys the emotion of each line. Rendering poignant passages such as Laksh-man's petition to his mother for permission to accompany Ram to the forest, his voice breaks with emotion, and the elderly Bihari at his feet, ever in tune with the expounder's mood, fishes for a handkerchief to wipe away a tear.

Narayankant says that he will expound Ayodhyakand^[*] for at least one year and the complete epic in not less than three. Then he will start over again, as he has numerous times during the past half-century. His Katha is seamless, woven through the years. He begins each session where he left off the day before and ends abruptly at 4:25, sometimes breaking off in midsentence when a priest appears with arti tray and the small congregation rises to sing the praises of the story. Behind the priest is Ramnarayan Shukla, freshly bathed and dressed in an immaculate shirt and dhoti; people in the crowd greet him reverently, but he himself comes forward to touch his aged predecessor's feet and receive a tulsi leaf from him. Then, as Narayankant hobbles away on his staff, Ramnarayan bows to the gaddi and takes his place.

Narayankant's little group of regulars grows rapidly when the younger vyas takes over. The old man can no longer project his voice effectively, and the temple is not a quiet place; only those who sit directly in front of him can pick up what he says. Ramnarayan on the other hand has a strong, clear voice—the kind of voice that, in North India, attracts listeners like a magnet. People making the darsan round in the temple pass the little portico, just opposite the main shrine, where the Katha is being given and are drawn irresistibly to the periphery of the group. Some listen only briefly, just to see what the excitement is about, but many others, after listening for a moment, sit down and join the satsang^[*] . Village pilgrims from the Banaras hinterland come to Sankat Mochan in great numbers; they are readily identifiable, the men in their rough homespun tunics and mud-covered plastic shoes and the women in garishly patterned saris. Such rustic visitors often linger on the fringes of the group, listening intently with rapt expressions, their minds torn between fretting children clamoring for city treats and the magical web of the story into which they feel themselves drawn.

Such is the power of Katha , Vaishnavas believe, that even a chance hearing may transform one's life. Among the regular listeners at Ram-

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narayan's feet is a well-dressed young householder from the Bhadaini neighborhood who has taken initiation from the vyas and, like him, wears a double strand of tulsi beads around his throat. He is often seen around the expounder's quarters at the temple, assisting him in various ways, and from this I assume that he may himself be an aspiring vyas . When I question him one day, he laughs: "No, 1 am not like that! I serve him out of love and to gain devotion for the Lord. What's the good of rendering service if your motive is, 'Oh, I'll become a vyas and earn a hundred rupees an hour!'?" Then he tells me the story of his "conversion," itself a Katha about Katha . He first came to Sankat Mochan on the suggestion of a friend, just for darsan , but a Katha was going on, so he listened to it. Ramnarayan was telling a story:

A certain Marwari merchant and his wife, on a pilgrimage to Chitrakut, were en route to Atri's ashram when they lost their way.^[47] There were dacoits in the area, and as the couple had money and gold jewelry, they were terrified. Suddenly a dark-skinned tribal appeared, carrying a load of firewood on his head. Seeing their plight, he offered to guide them safely back to their lodgings. The Marwari gratefully promised him a reward of five hundred rupees. On arrival, the merchant went upstairs to get the money, but when he came down after a moment the tribal was nowhere to be seen. It seemed impossible that he could have walked away so quickly, and in fact, the road was quite deserted. The Marwari questioned the shopkeepers sitting nearby, but no one had even seen such a person.

Here my teller pauses to look at me probingly, "You understand, don't you, who it was?" Hearing this story, he continues, he was struck "right here" (pointing to his heart), and he has been coming to the daily Katha ever since.^[48]

Although Ramnarayan occasionally accepts invitations to perform outside Banaras, he does not like to be away from Sankat Mochan for long. He has a house in the Nagwa neighborhood and a son, Prahlad Narayan, who is an aspiring vyas , but for many years he has virtually lived in a small room in the temple compound and his devotion to its resident deity is an all-consuming passion. His health is poor and his discipline arduous; it is said that he is under treatment for bone tuberculosis and is in much pain. When he fell critically ill in the early 1980s, the doctors gave him up for lost; many of his listeners today vouch for that and for the miraculous nature of his recovery. Ramnarayan says simply,

[47] The site at which the sage Atri and his wife, Anasuya, entertained the brothers and Sita is located in a wooded valley about fifteen kilometers from Chitrakut, in an area said to be infested with robbers.

[48] M. Upadhyay, interview, July 1983.

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"My life was finished, but Sankat Mochan kept me in this body for the sake of all of you who come to hear the Katha ." Ramnarayan is unsparing of himself as a performer, and in addition to his daily afternoon program and his morning recital of the Valmiki text to Hanuman, he gives Katha each evening at 8:00 P.M. on Tulsi Ghat, about a kilometer away, and also a late-night program on Thursdays at the temple; moreover, he frequently performs at other functions in the city. Beyond this, he devotes several hours each afternoon to reciting Ram's name in front of Hanuman; indeed, it is to this practice that he attributes all his knowledge.

Ramnarayan's performances are intense and physically taxing. He is best known, understandably, for Hanuman Katha and for a certain extraordinary phenomenon that occurs sometimes in the course of it. Even though many expounders suggest that in performance they become "mouthpieces" for the Lord, Ramnarayan is the only performer I have observed to display physical signs suggestive of actual possession. On occasion—usually a Tuesday or Saturday—while he is discoursing on the wonderful carit of Hanuman, he enters a state of intense excitement and begins twisting his head from side to side with a whiplash motion, his long hair flying about him. His face turns bright red and the veins and tendons in his neck bulge from the strain. The blurred image of his oscillating features suggests a religious calendar vision of a multiheaded deity, and like the deity, he seems to be speaking out of many mouths at once: a fountain of sound pours from his lips, flashing with strings of couplets and highly alliterative verses abounding in staccato retroflex sounds, describing the monkey's exploits in battle. The atmosphere becomes electric and listeners gaze openmouthed with wonder. Then suddenly it is over; the motion of the head stops, and Ramnarayan, looking flushed but exhilarated, resumes his normal pace as if nothing had happened.

Although Ramnarayan's performances are always animated and intense, occurrences such as I have just described are rare and are not touted as special attractions of his Katha . His regular listeners simply know that this happens to him sometimes and understand it in their own fashion. "He has seen Hanuman; that's why it happens," one man told me and added, quite correctly, "You and I wouldn't even be able to speak if we were turning our heads like that!" Ramnarayan would say only that he does not consciously induce these phenomena and has, in fact, "no idea" what happens to him at such times.

While Ramnarayan discourses, the evening crowds pour into the tem-

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ple and his congregation grows, often numbering one hundred or more by arti time. The noise level also rises, and although the vyas has a powerful voice, sometimes the din in the temple becomes too much even for him and he must momentarily close his eyes and compose himself, muttering "Shri Ram!" Like Narayankant he does systematic exposition; this is part of his vow to Sankat Mochan, "to remain here and expound the whole Ramayan as long as he keeps me in this body." But he ranges further from the story than the older vyas does, quotes from an impressive corpus of texts, and introduces thematic topics appropriate to special occasions in the ritual calendar; thus, on Vasant Panchami, a day sacred to the goddess Sarasvati, he discourses on the power of speech, of which she is patroness. He frequently expounds lines word by word, and a single pregnant term, such as the name Kashi (in 1.6.8; "Kashi and Magadh, the river of the gods and the river of ruin"—part of a series of opposites listed by the poet in his opening invocation), may send him off on a thirty-minute paean to the glories of Shiva's city and its lord.

The end of Ramnarayan's daily Katha is signaled by a formulaic closing that incorporates one of his favorite couplets from the Manas :

The essential object of all Katha , all discourse, is this: to develop love for the Lord's feet and, adhering to one's own proper dharma, to constantly repeat the Lord's name.

Whose name is the antidote to illusion,
remover of the three kinds of anguish—
may that Merciful One, to me and to you
ever be well disposed!
7.124a

The Sammelan: an Evening at Gyan Vapi

When the Manas recitation at Gyan Vapi ends each day at about 1:00 P.M. , workmen clear away the platforms used by the reciters and spread cotton carpets over the floor to create a huge seating area. The crowd begins to collect at about 6:00 P.M. , although the program does not formally begin till 7:00. Early arrivals are entertained by a local devotional singing party (bhajan mandali^[*] ). What follows is a brief account of the sequence of performers at Gyan Vapi on a typical evening during the 1982 festival.

The first speaker, introduced shortly after 7:00 P.M. , is a young Banarsi expounder whose name does not appear on the posted schedule

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but is being given an opportunity to display his skills as a "warm-up" to the featured speakers. Naturally, he is given the least desirable time slot, for at this early hour the rug-strewn enclosure is only about a third full and the crowd is restless and inattentive. Nevertheless, this is Gyan Vapi—the Carnegie Hall of Banaras Katha —and no doubt the young vyas considers himself lucky simply to be here. He speaks for only half an hour and is followed by the first invited speaker, also a young and relatively unknown performer, Hari Mishraji of Barhaj, who likewise performs for only half the usual time. The strategy of the organizers appears to be sound, however, for although Hari Mishraji's Katha is unsophisticated—it consists almost entirely of a string of quotations from the Manas , each followed by a brief prose translation delivered in a strident, haranguing style—he has a fine voice and sings all the verses to an appealing melody of his own, vigorously snapping his fingers in time with the rhythm. This kind of Katha is not highly regarded by connoisseurs (one listener remarks pointedly to me about "those who merely shout and wave their arms"), but it is melodious and easy to follow and so seems a good choice for this part of the evening, when the mandap^[*] is slowly filling with a more serious crowd. Moreover, Hari Mishraji's clear, ringing tones and innumerable quotations sound especially good over the loudspeaker network and carry the unmistakable message of Manas-katha to anyone within its far-flung range.

A more senior expounder, Gokarna Nath of Mirzapur, ascends the dais at 8:00 P.M. and performs for an hour. His exposition is straightforward and narrative-based, and on each of the three nights that he performs he chooses an episode from that morning's recitation and works his way slowly through it, one line at a time.^[49] In addition to having a melodious voice, he is an expressive actor, and his performance has more subtlety than that of his predecessor. On the first evening of the festival, he expounds the episode of Sati's delusion (Satimoh ): the failure of even Lord Shiva's wife, in her incarnation as Sati, to understand how the unmanifest, eternal Lord could become incarnate as Ram, prince of Ayodhya, and her disastrous effort—against Shiva's warnings—to test Ram's divinity. The verses describing this episode are interspersed with Gokarna's translations and explanations. He is especially good at enacting dialogue, rendering it in colloquial household dialect while expressively miming Sati's willfulness and later embar-

[49] This is a common practice at programs organized around nine-day recitations. The speaker begins by reminding the audience of which day of the path^[*] it is and then bases his exposition on one of the episodes chanted that morning.

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rassed regret, Shiva's dismayed resignation, Ram's polite irony, and so forth. His Shiva and Sati sound (as they often do in folk performances) like a middle-aged village couple, and the humor of his retelling provokes laughter from listeners. His underlying theme, like that of the text episode itself, is the unfathomable nature of Ram's incarnate divinity, which confuses even gods.

The next speaker is Piyush Goswami of Vrindavan, grandson of the famous vyas Binduji Maharaj, whose name was particularly associated with the development of large-scale festivals. Piyush-ji begins by asking the audience's indulgence for his youth (he looks to be in his late twenties), calling himself a "mere child"; in fact, he is a polished performer with a melodious voice and an emotional style' of presentation that evokes a warm response from the crowd. His presentation is less narrative-oriented than that of Gokarna; he prefers to examine a small section of text from a variety of angles, quoting it repeatedly and holding it up for scrutiny, though always with the eye of faith. The mandap^[*] is full when he comes on, and several prominent members of the organizing committee arrive just before he begins and seat themselves directly in front of the dais, pushing back those of less prominence who arrived earlier but seem to accept this treatment without complaint.^[50] Piyush Goswami is clearly a respected performer, and his pauses are usually punctuated with a flurry of appreciative exclamations. His subject is the Book Two passage in which Lakshman responds to the forest-dweller Guha's grief at seeing Ram and Sita reduced to sleeping on the bare earth. This is a favorite passage with commentators, both because of the poignancy of the situation (and Piyush-ji's emotional comparison of the splendor of the divine couple's life in Ayodhya with their circumstances in exile evokes tears from some listeners) and because of the philosophical content of Lakshman's reply, which readily lends itself to interpretation from a variety of perspectives. Piyush-ji's approach (which is hardly original) is to hail it as the "Gita of the Treta Age," comparing the eighteen lines of Lakshman's discourse to the eighteen chapters of the Bhagavadgita .

The last featured speaker of the evening, who takes his seat on the dais about 10:00 P.M. , is Shrinivas Pathak of Mathura, a middle-aged

[50] I was sometimes surprised by the treatment meted out to Katha audiences by wealthy devotees and religious leaders. At Lakshman Kila in Ayodhya, Ram Navami pilgrims waited for hours to secure good positions to hear Swami Sitaram Sharan, only to be thrust out of the way at the last moment when the swami arrived with a coterie of wealthy admirers including the chief justice of Bihar, who pushed their way to the front of the packed crowd.

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vyas with a solemn demeanor and a cool, detached style, in marked contrast to Gokarna Nath's histrionics and Piyush Goswami's emotional interpretations. His pravacan has an unusually admonitory flavor, and he reminds listeners several times that it is not enough merely to recite or listen to the Manas but they must try to apply its teachings to their lives. At the close of his talk he leads the crowd in an extended kirtan , explaining, "Whether or not they liked the Katha , if you talk to most people a day or two later you will find that they remember, at best, maybe two percent of what the vyas said. But if one forms the habit of remembering God's Name, it will remain with one all one's life and give liberation at the moment of death."

The festival program concludes each night with a brief sermon by Shiva Narayan, the elderly local vyas who has been associated with this festival since its beginnings and leads the morning recitation. Citing the lateness of the hour and his own poor health, he discourses only briefly and then leads the audience in the usual Ramayan^[*] arti , at the end of which there is a great rush to take the blessings of the arti lamp and touch Shiva Narayan's feet. Then the crowd disperses rapidly, passing the booth of a lone tea seller who offers fortitude to face the chilly and deserted streets.

One-man Show: Ramkinkar at Birla Temple

Given the choice, any vyas would probably prefer a private engagement to an appearance as one of many performers in a sammelan . To be invited to speak alone is more prestigious and usually more lucrative, and it frees the expounder from the anxiety and sense of competition that is common in a festival situation. Individual engagements are usually sponsored by private patrons and may be presented in the patron's home to an invited audience; however, they may also be opened to the public as a form of religious philanthropy, which is obviously intended to reflect favorably on the sponsor.

There is virtual unanimity among my interviewees that the most renowned contemporary vyas is Pandit Ramkinkar Upadhyay, and his fame surely owes much to his longstanding relationship with the Birlas, a family of industrialists that controls one of the largest conglomerates in the private sector of the Indian economy. "Birla" is a household word in India, for the family has placed its imprint on everything from fabrics to heavy machinery. It has also been anxious to place its name on reli-

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Figure 19.
Ramkinkar Upadhyay being greeted on his arrival at New Delhi's
Lakshmi-Narayan Temple by Basant Kumar Birla and his wife, Sarla

gious institutions and has constructed and endowed imposing temples, dharmashalas, and ghats in major pilgrimage places. The family sponsors cultural institutions as well, and these too have a strongly religious character; for example, it is the Calcutta-based Birla Academy of Art and Culture that publishes the many volumes of Ramkinkar's pravacan and sponsors the public programs, held annually in Delhi and Calcutta, that generate these collections.

Ramkinkar hails from a village near Banaras and maintains a residence in the city, but he seldom performs there nowadays. Although one sometimes hears, in explanation, that the unorthodox nature of his interpretations earned him the ire of the late Swami Karpatri and other Sanatani leaders, an equally valid reason would appear to be economic. The springs of courtly and aristocratic patronage that nurtured the Katha tradition in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Banaras have dried up, and the most successful expounders have carried their art to the greener pastures of Calcutta, Kanpur, and Bombay, which are home to a new class of "princes."^[51] Such is Ramkinkar's popularity that, ac-

[51] Shrinath Mishra, whose textual interpretations I never heard criticized, likewise says that he spends "eleven out of twelve months" outside Banaras, catering to a wealthy clientele that also includes branches of the Birla clan.

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cording to an aide, his busy performance schedule—restricted somewhat by health considerations (he was roughly sixty years old in 1983)—is fixed three years in advance and includes a number of annual engagements that have remained constant for two decades or more.

One such stint is his appearance for nine evenings at the time of Ram Navami at New Delhi's Birla Temple, a masonry and marble colossus whose principal shrine honors Vishnu and his spouse (Lakshmi-Narayan) and is located about a kilometer west of Connaught Place, the commercial heart of New Delhi. The program is held in the garden behind the temple, where an open-air proscenium stage of red sandstone faces a vast lawn set among gardens, fountains, and religiohistorical monuments. On this stage, the sponsors erect an elaborate white podium with a velvet-fringed canopy, resembling one of the aerial chariots seen in religious calendar art. Other arrangements include metal balustrades demarcating men's and women's seating areas on the lawn, festive entrance gateways decorated with flowers, and a bookstall that does a brisk business selling Ramkinkar's many publications. Outside on the main street there are electrified signs announcing Manaspravacan . The crowd, which numbers in the thousands, is prosperous-looking and its male contingent seems dominated by white-collar workers, many with attaché cases, who have come from jobs in nearby high-rises and government offices. Quite a few carry "two-in-ones"—the ubiquitous cassette recorders-cum-radios—which they use to record the discourse. Such devices are an increasingly common sight at pravacan programs, and many expounders, no doubt flattered by their presence, allow them to be placed directly in front of them. It is said, however, that Ramkinkar's concentration is disturbed by these machines, and so the organizers have arranged a special area off to one side, complete with electrical outlets, where the owners of tapedecks may record from a nearby loudspeaker.

The daily pravacan is from 6:00 to 7:00 P.M. , the right time in downtown New Delhi to catch office workers on their way home. It is preceded by a professional bhajan singer who entertains the gathering crowd and leads it in Ram-namkirtan as the moment of Ramkinkar's arrival approaches. The atmosphere is electric with excitement as the small, rotund vyas steps through the ornamental gateway at the edge of the lawn and gravely makes his way down the central aisle, moving at a snail's pace to avoid treading on the innumerable heads and arms that poke through the side railings to touch his feet. At the end of the aisle, garland in hand, wait the principal listeners of this Katha , Basant Kumar Birla, chief executive of the Birla corporate empire, and his wife, Sarla.

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Mr. Birla, an international figure who spends most of his time in the world of corporate boardrooms and private executive jets, appears here in dhoti and kurta , looking very much the pious householder; he and his wife sit attentively on the lawn directly in front of the dais throughout each program.

While Ramkinkar is being greeted by the Birlas and other dignitaries, two of his students, part of the considerable entourage that accompanies him to Delhi, ready the dais for him, fluffing up pillows and unpacking a large tote-bag of personal items, including a richly robed statue of Hanuman and a small copy of the Manas , wrapped in red silk. There is also a silver tumbler, kept in readiness should the master's throat become dry. While Ramkinkar performs, a student remains crouched behind the vyas seat, ever ready to offer assistance.

From his high perch on the canopied dais, Ramkinkar surveys an audience of some five thousand persons spreading across the great lawn and beyond into the hilly rear of the temple garden. Even though this throng lacks the intimacy of the small group of listeners who gather around Baba Narayankant each afternoon at Sankat Mochan, it is no less devoted to its vyas , and there are many in the crowd who have been coming to these talks for years. Indeed, when Ramkinkar begins to utter his mangalacaran^[*] , there are some who murmur the slokas along with him, and when he concludes his invocation with the opening couplet of Ayodhyakand^[*] , the entire assembly joins in with one voice.

Ramkinkar's admirers are fond of pointing out that he possesses no "voice"; whereas expounders like Binduji were famous for their vocal ability, Ramkinkar is famous despite his lack of it. "His voice lacks every good quality," one man observed to me, "yet thousands of people sit spellbound. How else can one explain it except by grace?" In truth, Ramkinkar's delivery is flat almost to the point of being monotone, his pace and rhythm show little change over the course of an hour, and apart from a few restrained hand gestures—hardly visible to the better part of his huge audiences—he makes no effort to enliven his presentation. He is also unusual in that he makes only minimal use of quotations; sometimes he merely reminds listeners of Manas passages without actually reciting them. What he does quote is delivered in the same flat tone in which he speaks.^[52] Ramkinkar's dry, untheatrical delivery seems

[52] This type of delivery is common to some other Banaras expounders, however, and represents, according to Shrinath Mishra, a convict, on that the Manas should be presented without undue theatrics or embellishment. In this respect, the orators of Shiva's city strike a puritanical contrast to their more colorful counterparts from the Braj region.

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Figure 20.
The crowd at one of Ramkinkar's annual pravacan programs at
Lakshmi-Narayan Temple, New Delhi

to contribute to his image as the "thinking person's vyas ," whose discourse appeals particularly to the university-educated intelligentsia. Such people, perhaps because they themselves have been led to discover or rediscover the Manas by hearing it explained by this vyas (whose specific approach to the text is considered in the next section) often seem to regard him as without precedent in the oral-scholarly tradition. A Calcutta businessman attending the Delhi program told me emphatically that Ramkinkar had no precursors: "Earlier expounders like Binduji just sang the Manas , but they couldn't explain it. Now, thanks to Pandit-ji, people are finally beginning to understand its meaning." Needless to say, this view is hardly defensible; it is likely, however, that some of Ramkinkar's enthusiastic devotees have been exposed to relatively little Katha and may be unaware of their expounder's traditional antecedents.

Not everyone is spellbound, of course. At the festival in Ayodhya at which I first heard Ramkinkar perform, he had some difficulty in quieting the huge crowd, which included many country pilgrims perhaps accustomed to a livelier style of Katha . And since Ramkinkar is the most famous and, by all accounts, most commercially successful vyas , it is inevitable that he should have his detractors, especially among fellow

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performers. The most common complaints heard against him are that he has "turned Katha into a business" and that his interpretations of the Manas are "imaginary" (kalpanik ), doctrinally unsound, and contrary to the intention of Tulsidas. Although it is not my concern to enter into this controversy, it may in fairness be pointed out that the first complaint is often heard from other professional (and no less commercial) performers whose earnings happen to be far less than Ramkinkar's, while the second seems to reflect a particularly narrow, "fundamentalist" understanding of the Manas , not necessarily characteristic of the broadest tradition of the epic's interpretation.

It is worth mentioning in this connection that Ramkinkar's allegorical and bhakti -centered interpretations of the text rarely stress the ideal of varnasram^[*]dharm —a term used euphemistically nowadays to refer to caste-based social inequality—which some conservative expounders emphasize as one of the epic's primary themes. At Birla Temple, Ramkinkar devoted his 1983 pravacan series to Kevat-prasang^[*] , a thirteen-line excerpt from Ayodhyakand^[*] that highlights the exemplary devotion of Kevat, an untouchable who ferries Ram's party across the Ganga. Even though the drama of the passage depends to some extent on the audience's awareness of Kevat's base status, Ramkinkar's interpretation exalts Kevat to an unusual degree, emphasizing the timing of his encounter with Ram (just after the prince has left Ayodhya on his journey into exile) to suggest that Tulsidas has made Kevat not merely an exemplary outcaste devotee but in fact "the first citizen of Ramraj ." In subsequent discourses, he suggests that Kevat's love for Ram is beyond the understanding of the gods and even surpasses that of Dashrath for his son. Although none of this amounts to a radical political message—and Ramkinkar's audience, perhaps more than most Katha audiences, is squarely upper-middle class—it has a liberal, democratic tinge that may help to explain this speaker's popularity with the Birlas, who have sought to promote the glories of Hinduism while opposing, in principle at least, "backward" practices such as untouchability.^[53]

As Ramkinkar concludes his remarks, the evening arti ceremony begins in the adjacent temple; broadast by loudspeaker, it features a recording of the popular film hymn "Jay jagdis hare." Hundreds of devotees linger in the garden in the gathering dusk, forming a long queue for

[53] It is a matter of policy that Birla-built temples be open to all regardless of caste, and their walls are inscribed with Vedic and Puranic verses followed by Hindi translations in order to make the scriptures accessible to all literate people.

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the usual prasad of tulsi leaves; a few place cash gifts at Ramkinkar's feet. Then they too join the dispersing throng of Delhiites, many of them facing long commutes to distant suburbs by scooter or bus.

The Performer and the Text

The transcription of Katha performances produces, to my mind, disappointing results. Performances that I experienced and described immediately afterward in my notes as brilliant and exciting appeared flat and dull when "reduced to writing." Talks that had seemed highly cohesive, in which ingenious interpretations emerged one after another in a sparkling strand, seemed rambling and untidy in written form, lacking any principle of organization and filled with incomplete sentences and gratuitous digressions. All oral art, of course, has an inherently "emergent" quality, which results from its being the product of a unique context.^[54] Although specific aspects of a performance can be documented through various media (and film or videotape obviously provide a more complete record of a Katha performance than an audio recording and its poorer relative, a written transcription), the total atmosphere of the performance is a fleeting experience that can only be approximated by documentation. Transcriptions of one-hour Katha performances typically take up fifty to seventy pages and appear to contain much redundant and fragmentary material. Rather than offer a translation of an entire such discourse, I prefer to discuss a number of the characteristic approaches to the Manas used by oral expounders, illustrating each with excerpts from performance transcriptions.^[55] These are presented in a manner that adheres as faithfully as possible to the original performance (for example, the occurrence of ellipsis in an excerpt indicates that the performer broke off in midsentence, not that anything has been deleted from his remarks), with parenthetical notes on nonverbal aspects of the performance. Thus I hope to convey to readers something of the flavor of individual performances while focusing on the theme of greatest relevance to my study: the relationship of oral exposition to text.

[54] The term "emergent" is used by Bauman and other folklorists to highlight the qualities in a performance text that develop out of the specific circumstances of the performance itself; see Verbal Art as Performance , 37-45.

[55] Initial transcriptions were made by Chitranjan Dart of the Landour Language School, Mussoorie, U.P.; translations are mine.

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Vyakhya And Vyakaran^[*]

The term vyakhya , "full explanation or exposition," is used by many performers to refer to their handling of the text, but it can cover a range of approaches. As used in the Sanskrit commentarial tradition, the term often refers to a word-by-word gloss on a text, involving first the division of words joined by sandhi and then the substitution of synonyms for each. Vyakhya on the Manas , whether oral or written, is rarely this systematic. One reason, of course, is that the language of the epic is a form of the vernacular, and even though difficult passages exist, much of the text is straightforward narrative that can be understood by most Hindi speakers. The kind of tortuous constructions that abound in Sanskrit kavya , which require elaborate decoding, are not characteristic of Tulsi's epic. There is rarely a need for a commentator to analyze every word of a line, although certain key words may engage his attention and become the basis for extended exposition. As an extemporaneous art form, Katha is inherently digressive; one word under discussion will suggest another, and this may in turn suggest an anecdote that carries the vyas far from his original train of thought—although he will eventually return to it, usually by once more quoting the verse under discussion. In such vyakhya , the epic verse is used as a thematic anchor or frame for the speaker's verbal improvisation.

In the nineteenth century, some of the best vyakhya utilized the disciplines of grammar (vyakaran^[*] ) and poetics (alankar^[*] ) in analyzing the Manas . These approaches are rarely encountered in present-day Katha , probably because audiences lack the background to appreciate such analysis. Some connoisseurs mourn the decline of the older approaches. C. N. Singh told me, for example, that he is "still haunted" by a Katha he heard while visiting Ayodhya in his youth, in which the vyas began with the assertion of a "doubt" (sanka^[*] ) concerning whether the opening line of Sundar kand^[*] contains a grammatical error.^[56] The speaker offered extensive arguments both pro and con, involving erudite excursions into Sanskrit and Prakrit grammatical theory, all buttressed by appropriate citations. The question was not a small one, Singh pointed out, since it involved the imputation of error to a divinely inspired poet; moreover, certain rationalizations of the questionable construction might necessitate the reinterpretation of other verses. He concluded, "The question

[56] The line reads, "Jamavanta ke vacana suhaye, suni Hanumanta hrdaya^[*] ati bhaye"; literally: "Jambavan's pleasing speech, Hanuman hearing it, [his] heart was utterly delighted." The line appears to make incorrect use of the conjunctive participle (purvakalikakriya ; here, suni —"hearing" or "having heard") by making it refer to a different subject (Hanuman) than that of the main clause (Hanuman's heart).

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was never resolved and I have never since been able to settle it. But that was not really the point. These kinds of arguments were only devices used to create interest, to get you involved in the Manas ."^[57]

One style of vyakhya is still commonly used in Manas exposition. This is the practice, already mentioned, of defining each key word in a line in terms of its use in other epic passages. An example of this—as well as a theoretical statement on the practice—may be seen in the following excerpt from one of Ramnarayan Shukla's discourses at Sankat Mochan. The expounder begins by reciting a verse in praise of Ram, which contains the word jan —devotees, subjects, dependents:

Supremely merciful and adoring of the meek,
who has great love and compassion for his devotees. . . .
1.13.6

The Lord loves his devotees, is compassionate toward them [repeats second line above]. "Devotees' you see, means . . . dependent ones. Because, you know, in the Ramcaritmanas , in Tulsidas's books, the definition of any word has, somewhere or other, been given by Goswami-ji himself. He's explained it himself . . . somewhere. You have to search! So, who are called "devotees"? Look in Aranya^[*]kand^[*] , when the Lord says to Narad,

Listen, Sage, I tell you emphatically,
those who adore me, relying on nothing else,
these I ever protect
as a mother guards a child.
3.43.4,5

In this connection, the Lord says, "I have two kinds of children: one is big and one is little—just as a mother has a big child, and that big child does everything by himself, he relies on himself, but the small child relies on the mother."

The sage is like my elder son,
the humble man like my little one.
The devotee relies on my strength, the other on his own,
when both are assailed by the enemies lust and anger.
3.43.8,9

"The devotee relies on my strength"—here's the definition of devotee !: one who relies on the Lord's strength, is dependent on the Lord, supported by him, entirely surrendered to him.^[58]

In the context of Ramnarayan's ongoing daily exposition in which the entire epic is presented sequentially, such analysis establishes a funda-

[57] C. N. Singh, interview, August 1983.

[58] Ramnarayan Shukla, Katha , Sankat Mochan Temple, August 3, 1983.

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mental vocabulary for the discourse and invites listeners to experience the epic as a seamless and cohesive world of meaning.

Shrinath Mishra also uses the term vyakhya to describe his approach to the text; as he is normally engaged only for brief performance-series, however, he does not attempt a systematic exposition of the complete text but chooses brief passages or themes to explore. In February 1983, when he gave seven evenings of pravacan at Banaras Hindu University, Shrinath chose as his theme a single verse from Book Seven:

Ram, whose feet are worshiped by Shiva and Brahma,
is gracious to me—such is his supreme tenderness.
7.124.3

In Shrinath's analysis, this half-caupai concisely reveals the two fundamental aspects of the Lord's character: his "power" or "majesty" (prabhav ) and his "inherent nature" (svabhav , i.e., his characteristic love and compassion).^[59] This insight became the basis for a long chain of vignettes that extended over the seven evenings (and Shrinath probably could have continued almost indefinitely, so central is the theme to Vaishnava doctrine) and provided examples of these two aspects of the divine character.^[60] Each evening's pravacan began and ended—was anchored, so to speak—in the theme-line but otherwise consisted of free improvisation, dense with quotations from literary works and oral tradition, comprising stories from the Manas , the Bhagavatapurana^[*] , and the lives of famous poets and devotees, each of which expanded on the notion of either prabhav or svabhav .

Creative Retelling: Dialogue and "Domestication"

In an essay on Kannada folklore, A. K. Ramanujan points to the "domestication" of Sanskritic gods and heroes that is characteristic of folk retellings of epic and Puranic stories: "In Sanskritic mythology, the gods do not even blink or sweat, let alone weep tears, sneeze, or menstruate. Their feet do not touch the earth."^[61] In folktales, however, gods and

[59] This Vaishnava interpretation of the Lord's dual nature resembles Otto's well-known characterization of the two aspects of the sacred: mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans , the first eliciting a response of awe or even terror, the second producing an irresistible attraction; The Idea of the Holy , 12-40.

[60] The approach was not original, however. C. N. Singh recalled that the sadhu Snehlata of Ayodhya used to offer a similar vyakhya of this line, offering thirty-two examples each of Ram's prabhav and svabhav ; interview, August 1983.

[61] Ramanujan, "Two Realms of Kannada Folklore," 64-68.

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heroes are liable not only to weep but also to blow their noses and argue with their wives in earthy village dialect. Although the Manas might be termed a "folk-influenced" retelling of the Ramayan story, and although it contains many touches of the humor, local color, and proverbial wisdom characteristic of regional folktales, it is a work that strongly asserts both its own religious authority and its fidelity to a perceived "great tradition," and its author generally maintains an august and dignified tone. His principal characters may not be quite as unearthly as the gods referred to in the above quotation, but they are still exalted and noble, and his hero and heroine have sometimes been faulted by Western readers as paragons of an unrelieved and almost inhuman virtue. Devotees, however, do not share this negative assessment. Even though Ram is perceived as less playful than Krishna, indeed as profound or serious (gambhir ) by nature, he is nonetheless, to his worshipers, entirely real, familiar, and human.

One reason that the epic characters remain vivid and alive to their audience is their domestication in the endless retellings of the Manas in Katha performances. For these are indeed folk recastings of the Ramayan, utilizing the text as a framework to be fleshed out with imaginary and highly colloquial dialogues containing touches of humor and pathos often missing from the original. For example, when Tulsi tells the story of Ram's anger at the monkey king Sugriv, he has his hero speak some harsh words and Lakshman display his usual hot temper; but he does not have Lakshman say (as Shrinath Mishra does when he retells the story), "Lord, for the first time in your life you're speaking my language! I'm going to go kill him right now. You got the big brother, now I'll take care of the little one!"—the last sentence a crudely comic reference to Ram's earlier slaying of Sugriv's brother Bali. Nor does he have Ram nervously tell himself, "Oh no, this fellow is really going to murder him!"^[62] Many of the expounders' domestications prove to be "readings between the lines" of the epic—never accepting the text at face value but always probing the motives, mental processes, and emotions of characters, imagining their facial expressions and gestures, and bringing them all to life for listeners.

To demonstrate this approach, I offer a brief passage from Sundar kand^[*] followed by a transcription of its retelling by Shrinath Mishra. In this episode, Ravan's brother Vibhishan, having just fled Lanka, is coming to surrender to Ram. The monkeys, led by Sugriv, fear that he comes

[62] Shrinath Mishra, Katha , Banaras Hindu University (hereafter, B.H.U.), February 14, 1983.

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with an evil purpose and attempt to warn Ram against him. Ram counters that he must be true to his vow to welcome all who come to him seeking shelter. The Manas passage reads:

Sugriv said, "Listen, Lord of the Raghus,
Ten-head's brother is coming to meet you."
The Lord said, "Friend, what do you think?"
The monkey king answered, "Listen, Lord of men,
the illusory power of the demons can't be fathomed.
A form-changer—who knows why he comes?
This scoundrel comes to learn our secrets!
Bind and hold him—that seems best to me."
[Ram replied] "Friend, you've analyzed the strategy rightly,
but I've vowed to protect those who seek shelter."
5.43.4-8

In Shrinath's interpretation, this passage draws special poignancy from the fact that both Sugriv and Vibhishan have quarreled with and ultimately betrayed their elder brothers. Sugriv has already come under the Lord's protection, but now Vibhishan's fate seems to hang in the balance and, ironically, Ram allows Sugriv to present the case against him. This becomes the means for Ram to teach the proud and somewhat narrow-minded monkey king a lesson on the value of compassion. It also allows for a humorous digression in which Ram compares himself to the demon and finds that every evil quality that Sugriv has attributed to Vibhishan has a parallel in his own divine attributes. The discussion of evil qualities or "defects" (dos^[*] ) reminds the vyas of a passage in Book One in which nine defects are attributed to Shiva. After this digression, he returns to the subject of Ram's reception of Vibhishan and completes the story:

You know the time when Vibhishan-ji came seeking shelter and Sugriv-ji stopped him? Sugriv-ji said,

Sugriv said, "Listen, Lord of the Raghus,
Ten-head's brother is coming to meet you."
5.43.4

"Ten-head's brother"—that's the point—Ravan's brother is coming! The Lord said,

The Lord said, "Friend, what do you think?"
5.43.5

[off-handedly, speaking as Ram] "What's the need to consult me? If he's coming, well, let him come." Sugriv-ji said, "You don't understand. I'm telling you it's Ten-head's brother. . . . So the Lord said [sighs, then slowly

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and deliberately] "Well, if Bali's brother^[63] can come, why can't Ravan's brother?" [loud approval from listeners: "Vah!"] "If Bali's brother can come take refuge in me, then why shouldn't Ten-head's brother come?"

Sugriv said, "Come on, Maharaj! I mean something else, you're not getting it." The Lord said, "What's your point? Speak up, explain!"

"Look here," Sugriv said [excitedly], "Ten-head's sister came, and what a big calamity that was!"

Shurpanakha, the sister of Ravan. . . .
3.17.3

"Janaki-ji was carried off, it was a great calamity! And now Ten-head's brother is coming. . . ."

[slowly] Then the Lord said to Sugriv-ji, "Friend, I've left Ayodhya and come all this way. I go to all the ashrams of the sages and ascetics, to all the devotees' places; I go all over. If even a single devotee wants to meet me, I go to him and then travel on. I go there and then travel on! [fervently] Now a devotee is coming to meet me, and you are holding him back, Sugriv! What is this you're doing? Let him come!"

The enemy's younger brother, Vibhishan the demon. . . .

Vinay patrika. . . . Goswami-ji has eleven other books, you know, and if one studies them, the intoxication is all the greater. My revered teacher was a great scholar of all twelve books. That's why I quote a lot from the other books in my Katha .

The enemy's younger brother, Vibhishan the demon—
what devotion was he fit to practice?
But when he sought refuge, you brought him before you
and met him with open arms.
Vinay patrika , 166.8

[tenderly] The Lord, you know. . . . [returning to the story] Then Sugriv-ji said, "Maharaj, you are a king, therefore you should think like a king. Right now, consider, as a king, whether Vibhishan should be given refuge or not."

The illusory power of the demons can't be fathomed.
A form-changer—who knows why he comes?
This scoundrel comes to learn our secrets!
Bind and hold him—that seems best to me.
5.43.6,7

Four defects! Four defects were pointed out by Sugriv at that time: "illusory power of the demons"—that's one; "form-changer"—two; "who knows why he comes?"—three; "to learn our secrets"—four.

[63] I.e., Sugriv himself.

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The Lord said, "Sugriv, these four faults which you have pointed out in Vibhishan, it seems that they are in me as well. It seems they belong to me also." Sugriv-ji was stunned, "Lord, what are you saying?" The Lord said, "You said that 'the illusory power of the demons can't be fathomed.' Well., if the illusory power of the demons can't be fathomed, my illusory power also can't be fathomed:

Hari's illusory power is inscrutable,
not to be fathomed, King of Birds!
7.118a

My illusory power is also incomprehensible." And "form-changer": whenever the demons wish, they can take on a form. So the Lord said, "This defect also is found in me:

Of the fish, the turtle, the boar, the man-lion,
the dwarf, and of Parashuram . . .
[he pauses, smiling; audience completes line]
. . . you took the form!
6.110.7

[outburst of applause, exclamations of "Vah!"] When I desire it, then I too can take on a form. So this defect also is in me.

The illusory power of the demons can't be fathomed.
A form-changer—who knows why he comes?
5.43.6

Well, this 'who-knows-why-he-comes' defect is in me too:

The reason that Hari becomes incarnate,
one cannot say it's this or it's that.
1.121.2

The reason that God comes, this no one can explain with certainty. So,

A form-changer—who knows why he comes?
The scoundrel comes to learn our secrets!
5.43.6,7

He comes to learn our secrets. And I, I too . . .

Ram sits at the palace window
receiving everyone's homage.
He divines each one's desire
and gives accordingly to each.^[64]

I too, day and night, find out, you see, everyone's secrets. So it appears that all four defects are in me. Therefore, if there are four defects in Vibhishan and there are four defects in me, well then, if one defective person makes friends with another defective person, well, you know, perhaps it may turn out for

[64] A folk saying expressed as a doha .

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the best! [laughter] But if a defective person should make friends with a meritorious person, well, that could be very difficult." Like the time when nine defects were pointed out in Lord Shiva—you know, by the seven sages.^[65] Parvati-ji was delighted. She said, "Sages, I have heard it said:

Eight defects are ever in woman's heart.^[66] 6.16.2

There are eight defects in women, so I have heard. So if an eightfold-defective woman should be wed to a ninefold-defective husband, well, they'll hit it off quite well!^[67] [laughter] But if by chance an eightfold-defective woman should get a ninefold-auspicious husband. . . ." They had pointed out nine auspicious qualities in Lord Vishnu, you know. But I'm not going to tell that story now; my subject is different. I'll just tell you the gist: that they described nine good qualities in Lord Vishnu, nine defects in Lord Shankar. Then Parvati-ji said, "If a ninefold-auspicious man is wed to an eightfold-defective woman, it will be a mismatch. But if she should marry a ninefold-defective man, then, you know, it just might work out!"

Mahadev may be full of defects,
Vishnu, the abode of all good qualities . . .

But get the point, it comes at the end:

Mahadev may be full of defects,
Vishnu, the abode of all good qualities,
but whatever pleases one's heart,
that alone one desires.
1.80

"Hey, Seven Sages, what are you saying? Don't you know who my guru is? My guru is Shri Narad-ji."

My obstinacy will persist through millions of births:
I'll wed Shambhu or remain a virgin!
1.81.5

I won't abandon Narad's advice,
whether my home prospers or perishes, I won't fear.
One who lacks faith in his guru's words
finds no happiness or profit even in dreams!
1.80.7,8

[65] In Tulsi's retelling of the courtship of Shiva and Parvati, Shiva sends the seven sages to test Parvati, who is performing austerities to win him as her husband. The sages try to sway her from her purpose by pointing out a catalog of defects in her prospective spouse: he is naked, has no home or family, carries a skull, etc. (1.79.5,6).

[66] A rebuke uttered by Rayan after his wife Mandodari urges him to return Sita to Ram. In the intertextual world of Katha , even the unwed Parvati quotes the Manas , although its story has yet to be narrated m her!

[67] I.e., since by conventional wisdom a husband should always surpass his wife.

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At that moment the seven sages . . . ah, they fell at Mother Parvati's feet! [returning to original story] So, when the Lord said these things about Vi-bhishan-ji, and when he lifted Vibhishan up and clasped him to his heart, at that moment the Lord looked at Sugriv-ji. The Lord said to Sugriv-ji, "Sugriv, you told me,

Bind and hold him—that seems best to me.
5.43.7

Bind him and hold him prisoner. Well, Sugriv, I am following your advice—I am binding him. But not with rope; I'm binding him in my arms." Right? [audience: applause and "Vah!"]

Having spoken, Vibhishan fell prostrate. Seeing this,
at once the Lord lifted him up with delight.
That humble speech pleased the Lord's heart
and his great arms clasped Vibhishan to his breast.
5.46.1,2

Marvelous is the Lord's nature, marvelous! The more you dwell on it, the more delight you'll experience. . . .^[68]

The penultimate sentence above is almost a refrain, repeated at the end of each anecdote or episode in the seven-day Katha . Sometimes (as here) it is the Lord's svabhav , or "nature," that is praised, and sometimes his prabhav , or "majesty." In this way, Shrinath ties his many anecdotes and explanations into his overall treatment of the theme verse. But, as must be clear, his exposition is more an evocation and celebration of the Lord's being than a theological analysis of it, just as his vyakhya of the verse is more an improvisation on its mood and implications than a systematic analysis of its language or content.

The excerpt shows how much of a performer's exposition may consist of quotations—roughly half of Shrinath's Katha comprises aptly chosen verses from the Manas . It also offers an example of how a vyas , in presenting the text in his own fashion, necessarily interprets and comments on it. In the passage under consideration, the first line spoken by Ram himself ("kaha prabhu sakha bujhie kaha"; 5.43.5) is susceptible to at least two readings, because the verb bujhna can mean either "to think, to understand" or "to ask, to consult." The translation I have offered ("The Lord said, 'Friend, what do you think?'") is based on the first sense of the verb and is the interpretation preferred, for example, by the Gita Press tika^[*] and the Manaspiyus^[*] . Shrinath, however, wishes to stress the disparity between Ram's and Sugriv's understanding of the

[68] Shrinath Mishra, Katha , B.H.U., February 14, 1983.

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situation and so takes the verb in its other sense and glosses the line, "What's the need to consult me?" having Ram add (with a hint of irritation in his voice), "If he's coming, then let him come."^[69] This contributes to a heightening of tension in the retelling, as Sugriv supposes that Ram did not understand him correctly and hastens to explain, with a certain impatient urgency, why a demon like Vibhishan is not to be trusted. Thus the vyas gradually "sets up" Sugriv for the denouement: Ram lovingly embraces Vibhishan and shoots a glance in Sugriv's direction, accompanied by an ironic comment on the monkey's advice to "bind" the new arrival. Neither the glance nor the comment, of course, is mentioned in Tulsi's text.

Just as the text may be expanded through dialogues and incidents based on distinctive interpretations of its lines, it may also be supplemented by stories or motifs taken from other works of Tulsidas. Thus, while discoursing on the supreme good fortune of Kaushalya, Ram's mother, Shrinath Mishra cites a couplet from Balkand^[*] , which in turn reminds him of a Kavitavali verse that mentions the infant Ram demanding that his mother give him the moon to play with—a theme Tulsi probably borrowed from the poetry of Surdas.^[70] The expounder turns this brief reference into a charming dialogue between Ram and his mother, culminating in a humorous and ironic "punchline" that reflects, as Shrinath intends, on the Lord's "majesty" (prabhav ):

The all-pervading Brahman, stainless,
qualityless, and dispassionate—
that very unborn one, mastered by love and devotion,
lies in Kaushalya's lap.
1.198

Goswami-ji says that the all-pervading Brahman, stainless, qualityless, and dispassionate. . . . One time Bhagvan was playing, you know? And,

Sometimes he stubbornly demands the moon,
or seeing his reflection, is frightened.
Sometimes he claps his hands and dances,
filling the womens' hearts with delight.
Kavitavali , 1:4

[69] Shrinath is following the interpretation of his guru, Vijayanand Tripathi, whose own Vijayatika^[*] glosses the line "The Lord said, 'O Friend, what is there to question in this?'" The commentary adds, "The Lord said, 'You are my friend. You have the authority to allow people to meet me, and my door is always open. No one is denied a meeting. What need is there to deliberate about this? If he wants to come, then let him come!'"; Vijayatika^[*] 3:235.

[70] See, for example, poem 5, p. 170, in Bryant's Poems to the Child-God ; note also poem 16, p. 159, which describes Krishna playing with his reflection, a motif also alluded to in Kavitavali .

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Bhagvan said, "Mommy, give me the moon. I will play with the moon." When God plays, you know, will he play with any ordinary toy? [obstinately] "Give me the moon!"

Kaushalya said [sighs patiently], "The moon, you know, cannot come down to earth." Bhagvan laughed and said, "You mean, God can come down to earth, but the moon cannot come?" [audience: "Vah!"] "You are able to bring down the Absolute, and yet you cannot bring the moon? "^[71]

Sometimes the Ramayan story is enhanced in Katha by the introduction of material that has no basis in any of Tulsi's writings, or perhaps in any literature. Such anecdotes drawn from the oral tradition contribute significantly to domesticating the august epic characters and offer another kind of commentary on the story. The following example, again taken from Shrinath Mishra's performances, was woven into a retelling of the episode in which King Janak's messengers come to Ayodhya to announce Ram's impending marriage, and King Dashrath eagerly solicits news of his sons. The messengers remark on the personalities of the two princes, and this reminds the vyas of a story told by "a sant of Ayodhya." The story, which features an object (a jhar-phanus^[*] , or "chandelier," presumably of glass or crystal) more suggestive of a nineteenth-century princely setting than of the ancient world of the Ramayan, allows the expounder to make a good-natured joke over the fact that Lord Ram, even as a child, was inclined to be reserved.

O King, even as Ram possesses incomparable strength,
so Lakshman is a storehouse of fiery energy.
1.293.3

The messengers, here, are making a distinction. "Your elder son, Your Majesty? Well, the fact is, he's very solemn; very dignified, your elder son. . . ." You know, a certain sant of Ayodhya used to tell a wonderful story: Little Lord Ramchandra was twirling a stick. The stick flew from the Lord's hand and struck Ayodhya's most precious chandelier—you know, a hanging lamp—Ayodhya's most valuable one. The chandelier broke; it was shattered! The servants came and told Maharaja Dashrath, "Your Majesty, Ayodhya's most valuable chandelier got broken today!" Then Kaushalya-ji came. Kaushalya-ji was very frightened and said to Maharaja Dashrath, "A chandelier, the costliest in all of Ayodhya, got broken." So then Maharaja Dashrath asked sternly, "Who broke it? Who did it?!"

"Uh . . . Shri Ram. [pleadingly] Your Majesty, it was a mistake, please forgive him! Ram made a mistake. . . ."

[pause] Then Maharaja Dashrath said [gaily] "Sound the trumpets! Call a

[71] Shrinath Mishra, Katha , B.H.U., February 13, 1983.

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holiday! Go all out! At least my little Ramchandra should be naughty enough to break one chandelier!" [laughter and applause]^[72]

Similarly, the informal and open-ended structure of Katha allows the performer to "contemporize" his discourse (to borrow another term from Ramanujan) by including personal anecdotes and contemporary stories. These may be as inspiring as Ramnarayan Shukla's account of the austerities of Jugalanand Sharan, a saintly sadhu whom he knew in his youth; or as satirical as Shrinath's tale of a Calcutta businessman of his acquaintance, who aspired to earn "twenty-five lakh rupees" (Rs 2,500,000) and then retire to Vrindavan but later found—after he had earned several times the desired amount—that he was too firmly enmeshed in worldly cares to set out for Krishna's holy city. And when Shrinath has the hot-tempered Lakshman note with disappointment Ram's use of the word "tomorrow" in his threat to slay Sugriv—fearing that Ram has, as usual, left a compassionate loophole in his anger—the vyas offers a homely digression on the habits of contemporary merchants:

Our U.P. shopkeepers, you know, the clever ones, they post signs in their shops: "Cash today, credit tomorrow!" Well, whenever you go there, it's always "today," right? When is it ever "tomorrow"? [laughter]^[73]

Esoteric Interpretations

A common honorific appended to the names of famous expounders is Manasmarmajña —"knower of the secrets of the Manas "; for the vast reservoir of the epic is thought to conceal mysteries in its depths that only its most profound students can discern. One reason devotees flock to hear Katha is to learn some of these secrets and so gain insight into difficult or obscure passages. One such passage occurs in the dialogue with Parashuram (Parasuramsamvad ) in Book One. After Ram breaks Shiva's bow to win Sita's hand, he is confronted by the militant Brahman ascetic Parashuram, who challenges and insults him; their conversation is joined by Lakshman, whose hot temper matches Parashuram's own. The passage abounds in amusing insults and plays brilliantly on the tension inherent in the Brahman-Kshatriya relationship. The denouement of this long and heated exchange, however, is swift to the point of obscurity: after finally silencing his younger brother with a stern glance, Ram addresses the offended Brahman:

"Truly I speak, and not to flatter my family—
a son of Raghu in battle does not fear even Death.

[72] Shrinath Mishra, Katha , B.H.U., February 15, 1983.

[73] Ibid.

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Yet such is the greatness of the Brahman race
that even a fearless one stands in awe of you."^[74] Hearing Raghupati's sweet and mysterious words,
the curtain of Parashuram's understanding was lifted.
1.284.4-6

Ram's speech, though essentially a reiteration of what he has said earlier in the dialogue, produces a dramatic effect on the Brahman, who only a moment before was heaping abuse on Ram and threatening to kill him but now breaks into a long paean of praise to him as God incarnate. The obvious query—just what precipitates this sudden change of heart?—has been sharpened by Tulsi's use of the word gurh^[*] (mysterious, allusive) in the next to last line above to describe Ram's words; clearly the poet intends them to convey more than their surface meaning, although he provides no further explanation. The commentarial tradition has offered many interpretations for this puzzling passage, which seems significant in that it concerns a moment of recognition of the hero's incarnate divinity. For Shrinath Mishra, this is one of those passages in which Ram's awesome majesty (prabhav ) is triumphantly manifested:

"Such is the greatness of the Brahman race
that even a fearless one stands in awe of you."
1.284.5

The Lord is wearing his yellow robe [acting it out with gestures]. He pushes aside his robe and then he gives a sign to Parashuram, pointing here [gesturing to his chest]:

"Such is the greatness of the Brahman race . . . "

He says [with great emotion], "Your grandfather Bhrigu once kicked me, and I still wear that mark like an ornament! [audience: "Vah!"] Yet you address me as a 'foe of Brahmans'!"

"Such is the greatness of the Brahman race
that even a fearless one stands in awe of you."
Hearing Raghupati's sweet and mysterious words,
the curtain of Parashuram's understanding was lifted.
1.284.5,6

At that moment, Parashuram-ji . . . Look here—it's that very word. Listen carefully; you people are all learned. It's that very word! [recites slowly]

Then Parashuram knew Ram's majesty [prabhav ]
and his body trembled . . . .^[75] 1.284

[74] This half-line may alternatively be read, "that he who fears you becomes fearless"—most commentators offer both interpretations.

[75] Shrinath Mishra, Katha , B.H.U., February 14, 1983.

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In Shrinath's analysis of the pivotal verse, the word "such" (asi ) is the clue to a physical gesture by means of which Parashuram's ignorance is finally removed. For according to Vaishnava doctrine, Vishnu, the Supreme Lord, bears certain physical marks, one of which is a footprint-shaped scar on his chest, a legacy of the kick of the temperamental sage Bhrigu, who once sought to test the Lord's humility.^[76] Thus, by baring his chest Ram reveals to Parashuram that he is more than just "a son of Raghu"—he asserts his atemporal, divine identity.

Tulsi's account of Ram and Sita's marriage contains another enigmatic verse that has received attention from commentators. The poet notes that "all the gods" came to witness the festivities, and he describes their astonishment at the splendor of King Janak's capital and the magnificence of the arrangements. But the reaction of Brahma, the world-creator, is singled out for special comment.

But the Ordainer was particularly surprised,
for nowhere did he see his own handiwork.
1.314.8

This verse appears to present a problem, for although Vaishnavas believe that it is merely at the instigation of his overlord, Vishnu, that Brahma executes his periodic task of cosmic creation, they nevertheless regard him as creator of the world, and Janakpur is part of the world. Yet the poet has asserted that, at the time of the wedding, the creator could detect no trace of his own labors there. When Ramkinkar Upadhyay gave Katha in Ayodhya on the anniversary of the marriage festivities, he asked his listeners to consider whether Ram's marriage had been an ordinary temporal event. If it had been, he went on, then what would they all participate in later that evening, when wedding processions mounted by various temples would circulate through the city amid great rejoicing? Would these merely be "commemorations" of an event in the remote past? To counter this view, Ramkinkar introduced the episode containing the above verse, which he expounded as follows:

There was pride in Brahma's heart: "I have fabricated all this creation! And within this creation made by me, in this city of Janakpur, such a grand celebration is taking place. People are sure to think of me; they'll think, 'How great is Brahma's creation!'" But when Brahma entered Janakpur and looked around, then what happened? It says,

[76] See Padma purana^[*] 6.282.8-93; translated in O'Flaherty, Hindu Myths , 149-54. This interpretation is not original to Shrinath; it is mentioned in the Manaspiyus^[*] (5:691) as "the bhav of certain profound men."

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But the Ordainer was particularly surprised,
for nowhere did he see his own handiwork.
1.314.8

Brahma looked around. He was stunned. He said, "But there seems to be nothing at all here made by me!" Well, the god of faith, Lord Shiva, understood: "Intelligence operates according to reason, and so the god of intelligence is confused." Immediately, he came and stood before Brahma, but he didn't address him directly. Smiling, he asked all the gods, "What have you all come here to see?" They said, "Shri Ram's wedding." So Lord Shankar said, "Shri Ram's wedding is not to be seen with the eyes only. If one were to see it only with the eyes, then one would experience merely the delight of appearance." They asked, "How then are we to experience its delight?" Look here, you must have read the verse:

Shiva admonished all the gods,
"Don't become dumfounded with surprise . . . .
1.314

Why not? He said,

"Ponder in your hearts . . . .

It's not enough just to see , you must ponder in your heart!

"Ponder in your hearts—
for this is the marriage of Sita and Raghubir!"
1.314

To explain Brahma's state, I'll give you an example. How was Brahma's condition at that time? There was a little boy who was very beloved of his morn and dad. His morn and dad were always taking him on their laps, always caressing him. One day by chance that little boy happened upon the photo of his more and dad's wedding. When he examined it he saw his morn and he felt very happy; then he saw his dad and again he felt happy. He looked happily at everyone in the photo, but then he became sad. Some perceptive person asked, "First when you were looking at the photo you were happy. Why have you now become sad?" So the little boy said, "what can I say? It seems that everybody's picture is in here but mine, therefore I feel sad." [laughter] And then that wise person said, "Well then, understand from this photo that you did not always exist. It was only after this wedding that you came to be."

And so Lord Shiva said to Brahma, he said, "Brahma, don't look around here thinking 'what have I made?' Look here to find out "Who has made me'!" [laughter and applause]^[77]

Here a homely anecdote of a small boy's naiveté is used to present the Ramaite doctrinal view of Sita-Ram as the primordial ground of being

[77] Ramkinkar Upadhyay, Katha , Ayodhya, December 20, 1982.

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and to emphasize that their apparently narrative-bound "marriage" is actually an event that stands outside cosmic time. Not only in the above excerpt but throughout this Katha Ramkinkar's emphasis is on the immediacy of the events in the Manas and the importance of the devotee's direct participation in them. Describing the placement of the various guests in the marriage pavilion, he suddenly challenges his listeners, "But where, in the pavilion, are you seated? Do you see yourself there or not?" If they are not present in the pavilion, he chides them, they are denying the Vaishnava doctrine of the eternality (sasvatatva ) of the Lord's lila . They are viewing the Manas as a mere "picture" (citra ) of the past, however lovely and idealized, rather than as the "mirror" (darpan^[*] ) that Tulsidas intended it to be—a mirror in which they must see their own reflections.

Indeed, it is by "pondering in their hearts" or even by quite literally "placing themselves in the picture" through visualization techniques—concerning which I have more to say in the next chapter—that traditional expounders arrive at some of their unusual interpretations of the text. For although Ramayanis might be unwilling to attribute absolute theological weight to their interpretations—they are primarily storytellers, not theologians—at the same time, they would not like their views to be dismissed as "mere imagination" (an accusation sometimes leveled against Ramkinkar). The term they prefer is bhav , which in this context might best be translated "insight" in the literal sense. It is Very much within the realm of devotional possibility to regard a brilliant vyas as one who has actually been witness to what he describes. How else could he "see" Ram's meaningful glance in Sugriv's direction at the moment of embracing Vibhishan ? How else could he "see" Ram push aside his robe to show the Brahman's foot-mark to Parashuram? How else could he repeat conversations and reveal gestures and facial expressions that the text does not record? We might say that he sees all this "in his mind's eye" and regard it as mere imaginative license; the bhakti tradition is more inclined to place the locus of these events in the heart and to consider them insights into a higher reality.

Numerology and "Structural" Analysis

A notable characteristic of traditional Indian scholarship is its penchant—some might say mania—for systematic classification and hierarchy. From the three "strands," or gunas^[*] , constituting material existence, the four aims of life, five elements, six flavors, eight (or nine) aesthetic

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emotions, ten states of separation, to the twenty-four avatars of the Lord, the thirty-two basic postures of hatha^[*]yoga , and even the sixty-four different positions in which it is possible (in theory at least) for male and female to unite—there is hardly an aspect of life that Brahmanical thinking has not subjected to detailed, if at times rather gratuitous, classification into orderly systems, usually according to auspicious numerical values. Such systematizing reveals more, however, than a compulsive need to organize; it reflects a cultural conviction of meaningful structure underlying the apparently untidy diversity of the world of forms.

The devotee accepts the Manas as a work of the highest inspiration—Lord Shiva's own retelling of the eternal Katha of Ram—and therefore he expects its grand design to be filled with hidden meanings and relationships. One of the aims—indeed, one of the special delights—of Katha is to call listeners' attention to meaningful structures and correspondences underlying the surface narrative. The kind of intense but loving scrutiny to which traditional scholars subject the text is very successful in revealing such structures and thus serves to enhance the audience's appreciation of the epic as an inexhaustible store of meanings relevant to every aspect of life.

Whenever a Manas verse contains a series of adjectives or nouns, traditional scholarship is almost certain to remark on their number, and certain lines indeed lend themselves particularly well to sustained analysis in numerological and symbolic terms. One such verse is the couplet that describes Ram's beauty when he appears to King Manu and Queen Shatrupa as a reward for their long and arduous penance.

Blue as a blue lotus, blue as an amethyst,
blue as a rain-bearing cloud—
the sight of his beauty put to shame
millions upon millions of Love gods.
1.146

Although the casual reader might see only a cluster of conventional metaphors in the first two lines, the commentarial tradition discerns a triad immediately suggestive of the tripartite structure of the cosmos: the netherworld (conceived as a watery abyss and symbolized by the water-born lotus), earth (with its mines of precious stones), and heaven (realm of clouds and rain). Certain Ramayanis have also sought to relate these metaphors to other triadic clusters in philosophy and mythology:

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for example, to the divine trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, and to the three divine attributes of existence, sentience, and bliss (sat, cit, and anand ).^[78]

Pointing out the recurrence of numerical values in the text also confirms the audience's belief that there is a deeper structure to the epic than meets the eye. In his account of the reception of the newly married Ram and Sita in Ayodhya, Shrinath Mishra notes that Tulsidas used six metaphors to describe the happiness of Queen Kaushalya on beholding her son and his wife for the first time.

Like a yogi who attains supreme insight,
an invalid given rejuvenating nectar,
a pauper who finds the philosopher's stone,
or a blind man who gains beautiful eyes,
like one dumb from whose lips Sarasvati shines forth,
or a warrior victorious on the battlefield.
1.350.6-8

The expounder invites his listeners to consider why the poet has used six metaphors—their number is not arbitrary, he insists. He reminds them that Kaushalya, in a previous incarnation, was Shatrupa, wife of the primordial lawgiver Manu, who performed austerity together with her husband and was rewarded with the promise that she would one day give birth to the Lord in human form. Shrinath then cites the verse in which Shatrupa framed her boon, pointing out that it consists of six separate requests:

That very joy, that beatitude, that devotion,
that love for your feet,
that discrimination and that way of life,
O Lord, by your grace, grant me.
1.150

"These six," he concludes solemnly, "are fulfilled today for Kaushalya-ji."^[79] Of course, the more hard-nosed reader may object that the two passages, in fact, resemble each other solely in the numerical total of their components and that even a vyas would be hard put to demonstrate more specific parallels between the boons requested by Shatrupa and the metaphorical descriptions of Kaushalya's happiness. But to undertake such belabored argument is not the expounder's intent; he merely hints at a structural parallel in passing, as an aside in the course

[78] Mishra, Tulsidarsan , 328-29.

[79] Shrinath Mishra, Katha , B.H.U., February 15, 1983.

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of a longer story. In the performance context, such an insight, suggesting a unity of design linking two widely separated episodes in the text, is highly effective and earns a warm response from the devout audience.

An even more audacious example of an expounder's "structural" analysis may be drawn from one of Ramnarayan Shukla's daily talks at Sankat Mochan Temple. One day, while discoursing on the power of "speech" (vac ), he announced with great fervor that "Hanuman never utters any speech that does not contain the four holy syllables Si-taRa-ma ." This idea immediately intrigued the temple audience, but curiosity turned to astonished delight as the vyas began reeling off at great speed each of the lines spoken by Hanuman, right from his first appearance in Book Four, holding each one up in the air for a split second, as it were, and then with dazzling speed dissecting it almost visibly, syllable by syllable, like a sort of human word processor, discarding some syllables and retaining others to show that each line does indeed contain Si-taRa-ma .^[80] Inherent in the spectators' warm response to this verbal tour de force, of course, is their own faith in Hanuman and their admiration for Ramnarayan's deep devotion to him, as well as their recognition that, consciously or not, the author of the Manas really did seem to have structured each of Hanuman's speeches to contain the letters of his adored master's and mistress's names.

Allegorical Interpretation

The technique of treating the Manas as an allegory and viewing' each of its characters as symbolic of an emotional or spiritual state is not new;^[81] it is best exemplified at present by the work of the renowned but controversial Ramkinkar Upadhyay, whose interpretation of the epic—his characteristic bhav —is frequently termed "metaphysical" or "mystical" (adhyatmik ) by his admirers.^[82] Whereas many contemporary expounders favor what might be called a "fundamentalist" approach to the

[80] Ramnarayan Shukla, Katha , Sankat Mochan Temple, February 7, 1984.

[81] C. N. Singh has pointed out that the famous nineteenth-century Ramayani, Kashthajihva Swami, gave allegorical interpretations to many passages (interview, August 1983).

[82] Ramkinkar himself does not endorse this designation. Like many expounders, he conceptualizes Manas interpretation through the traditional scheme of the four ghats, each of which represents a "point of view" from which the text may be examined. He associates the adhyatma perspective with the "Ghat of Wisdom" (jnan ), on which Shiva and Parvati are seated, but he emphasizes that there are also the ghats of "Adoration," "Duty," and "Humility" (upasna , karma , and dainya ) and that he makes use of all four in his exposition (interview, April 1983). On the traditional interpretive scheme of four ghats, see my essay "The View From the Ghats."

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text—viewing its events and characters in an extremely literal fashion and constantly emphasizing the supposed historicity of the story—Ramkinkar, though not denying that the events of the epic happened as described, reinterprets them in order to emphasize their relevance to archetypal and hence contemporary human situations. It appears to be particularly this feature of his pravacan that has won the admiration of the urban, college-educated people who make up a large part of his audience.

At their best, Ramkinkar's discourses are so cohesive and seamlessly woven around a central theme or image that it is difficult to single out brief passages to convey their flavor effectively. In the Ayodhya performance mentioned earlier, for example, the vyas developed his remarks around the metaphorical image of a mirror, symbolic of the Manas itself, and its comparison with a picture or painting.

If, when reading the Ramcaritmanas you feel that it describes something that happened in the Treta Age, then you are looking at a picture. But if, when reading the ancient story, you feel that it is also the truth of the present age, the truth of our own lives, the truth of our difficulties, then it means that you are using it as a mirror.^[83]

Rhetorical questions concerning the underlying meaning (abhipray , tatparya ) of characters and events form a recurring leitmotif in Ramkinkar's performances, and the answers he provides to these questions nearly always involve symbolic interpretations. Thus, the fact that King Dashrath, in Ayodhyakand^[*] , gazes into a mirror while seated on his throne surrounded by courtiers singing his praise is interpreted by Ramkinkar as a demonstration of the need for those in authority to turn their attention from flattering voices (both internal and external) and to engage in intense self-examination. The fact that the king's crown has slipped to one side is likewise given a symbolic interpretation by the vyas :

And when he looked in the mirror, his gaze went in the direction of a defect: he saw that his crown had become crooked and he straightened it. And what is the significance of that? The crown, you know, is the symbol of authority. And, brother, it is in the nature of authority to constantly slip away. This crown of authority never resides on anyone's head for all time; in some way or other it invariably slips away.^[84]

The just king, he continues, is not afraid to consult the mirror of truth,

[83] Ramkinkar Upadhyay, Katha , Ayodhya, December 20, 1982.

[84] Ibid.

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even in public view; but, he adds, Tulsidas has deliberately refrained from mentioning even a single mirror in Lanka, Ravan's golden city of self-deception.

At times, Ramkinkar supports his allegorical designations by citing the epic. Thus, in discussing Ram's slaying of Taraka (1.209.5,6) he "proves" his interpretation of the female demon as a symbol of despair by the clever use of a line from an earlier passage in which Tulsi compares the deeds of Ram in human form with the wonders wrought by the Lord's name. Again using the image of the mirror, the expounder asks his listeners to look beneath the surface of the story to see its relevance to their own lives:

The story goes that this Taraka, you know, was a woman of the Treta Age who became a demon. But really, this Taraka is present in our own lives. Look in the mirror, and she is there. And who is Taraka?

For the sake of the sage, Ram annihilated
the daughter of Suketu, with her army and her son.^[85] Together with weakness and sorrow, the devotee's despair
is voided by the name, as night by the sun.
1.24.4,5

So Goswami-ji says, Taraka is the despair in life.^[86]

By a similar symbolic substitution, Shiva's bow, which Ram breaks to win Sita's hand, is interpreted as "egotism" (ahamkar^[*] ), over which Shiva is said to be the presiding deity. This association, like that of "intellect" with the god Brahma, is supported by Ramkinkar's reading of a line from Lanka^[*]kand^[*] in which Ravan's wife Mandodari, urging her husband not to fight Ram, describes the Lord's "universal body" (visvarup ).

Shiva is his ego, Brahma his intelligence,
the Moon his mind, and Vishnu his consciousness.
7.15a

It is in part for such "strained" interpretations that Ramkinkar is criticized by some religious leaders as well as by other expounders. "He is leading people astray," one elderly vyas told me, "because he does not interpret the Manas in accordance with the Veda, which is what Tulsidas intended." A prominent mahant of Banaras concurred, "His interpretations are fabricated out of his own mind; Goswami-ji never even

[85] I.e., Taraka, daughter of the yaksa^[*] Suketu.

[86] Ramkinkar Upadhyay, Katha , Ayodhya, December 20, 1982.

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imagined such things!" In an interview, Ramkinkar countered such criticism by observing wryly that anyone who said anything new could expect to be similarly reviled. Hadn't the Brahmans of Banaras assailed Tulsidas himself for his supposed "innovations"?

And others will come after me, and they too will ponder in their hearts, they too will develop their ideas from the perspective of a welling up of feeling; and those same dogmatic people will oppose them too. Only then they will use my ideas in their arguments, saying "What he said, that is ancient and traditional."^[87]

Certainly, it appears to an outsider that Ramkinkar is guilty of no more strained interpretation of the text than many another expounder. That he gives novel twists to certain verses in order to advance his arguments can hardly be called an innovation; by all accounts, the popular nineteenth-century Ramayani Vandan Pathak was guilty of a far more tortuous manipulation of Tulsi's words. What sets Ramkinkar apart, aside from his singular commercial success, is his tendency to move away from a literal interpretation of the story in order to make it more relevant to the concerns of his audience. The tremendous response that his effort has elicited—reflected in the designation "emperor of Katha " (Kathasamrat^[*] ) popularly accorded him and in the frank admiration for him expressed by many younger performers—suggests that Ramkinkar's allegorical style of interpretation will exert a major influence over the shape of Manas-katha to come.

The Nature of Katha: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

An American scholar of India can hardly escape being a translator—not merely of words, but of the outlooks and ideas that shape all the manifestations of the culture, including its language. In attempting to describe my fieldwork to interested Western friends, I have found it easy enough to situate Katha within certain categories that my listeners understand or think they understand—such as "public oratory" or "religious rhetoric"—yet I suspect that the associations these terms evoke for modern Westerners may not illuminate the real nature and appeal of Katha .

To risk a broad generalization, I would venture that contemporary Western culture has become desensitized to artful speech. Near-univer-

[87] Ramkinkar Upadhyay, interview, April 1983.

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sal literacy and the mass production of printed texts, combined with the dominant practice of silent reading, has given rise to a style of appreciation of the word that is increasingly divorced from the hearing of it. At the same time, the influential media of film and television have encouraged an attitude of passive consumerism toward entertainment, eliminating the possibility of real interaction between performer and audience and helping to create an audience of what Susan Sontag has boldly termed "image junkies"—an audience hooked on (and in consequence, deadened to) the proliferating flood of images.^[88] The spoken word endures in modern mass media, but it is increasingly unable to stand on its own and command attention without the support of powerful illustrative images. Television is aimed first of all at "the viewer," who is only secondarily a listener, and there is a pervasive notion that the image—especially the photographic image—is somehow "true"; that is to say, accurate, scientific, impartial—certainly truer than the word.^[89] Jean Leclercq has observed that even the term "rhetoric" has come to be viewed with suspicion; the effective and artful use of language, once considered, along with grammar, a cornerstone of education and culture, is now apt to be dismissed as "mere eloquence" or even seen as a suspicious manipulation of words.^[90] Yet the manipulation, by unknown others, of persuasive images possessing great power to penetrate into the inner life of the individual is treated with little suspicion or is even applauded as the welcome dissemination of "information"—a term increasingly confused with "knowledge" or even with "truth." In my opening chapter I spoke of the decline in the appreciation of poetry in the West and its major survival in the form of popular music; here I would add that, even in the successful genre of Rock, music alone is now often insufficient to engage the audience's attention. Concerts become visual extravaganzas and records are replaced with "video discs" that allow the song to be "seen" as well as heard; in both cases—and this is sadly characteristic of modern mass entertainment—the marketplace clamors for ever-new and more sensational, even shocking, images, in order to tempt jaded visual appetites.

Even in realms where rhetoric seems to remain important—for example, in political speech making—the role of language is downplayed. Presidential press conferences are "media events," and almost as much

[88] Sontag, On Photography , 24.

[89] In her opening essay, "In Plato's Cave," Sontag discusses this unquestioned belief in the "reality" and "impartiality" of the photographic image, which she regards as a dangerous illusion; ibid., see esp. 22-24.

[90] Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God , 266.

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attention is given to the dress, makeup, and deportment of the speaker as to the words he utters. These are understood to have been composed by others, carefully rehearsed, and then read out from an artfully concealed monitor to give the illusion of naturalness. Of course, it may be objected that such artificial events are hardly representative of the art of public speaking in the present-day West; effective and even extemporaneous orators, be they politicians, clerics, or academics, are still to be found, and they are not without their admirers. But my point is that the average person today is less likely to have regular exposure to artful speaking than was the case before the rise of the electronic mass media;^[91] indeed, today's "viewer" would be unlikely to seek such entertainment even if it were available, for words alone, unenhanced by images, would offer insufficient stimulation.

In modern India, despite the growing popularity of the cinema, radio, and television, there remains a strong and pervasive appreciation for verbal art. Among the poor, certainly, conversation remains a major form of entertainment. Talk, as we like to say, is "cheap"; it is also, to a certain extent, sustaining. It gives human contact, relief, and recreation—the temporary forgetting of one's troubles or their loud advertisement to sympathetic ears. And very often in the midst of conversation storytelling arises, which is even more diverting. I have discussed Katha as a genre of formalized performance that occurs in certain contexts, but storytelling itself pervades the entire spectrum of Indian verbal communication. Many times I have seen a conversation turn into a kind of Katha , as one speaker is drawn to illustrate a point by means of a story; if he is an expressive speaker or, better yet, something of an actor and if the conversation is occurring in a public place, a crowd will almost immediately begin to gather, to listen intently to the speaker's words and of course to spur him on to even more brilliant expression.

During the month of Ramnagar Ramlila performances, there is an hour's break each evening while the maharaja performs his twilight devotions; I always passed the time with the Ramayanis whose job it was, at other times, to chant the epic. They were men of modest means, and their refreshment consisted of tea and pan , the common currencies of male civility, which even the poor can afford to exchange. But their recreation consisted of very rich displays of verbal art: stories, jokes,

[91] Note the popular "Lyceum System" of the late nineteenth century, which brought gifted orators to audiences throughout the northern United States and Canada. Each lecturer typically gave about 110 performances in the course of a "season" on the circuit; Neider, The Autobiography of Mark Twain , 161-69.

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riddles, aphorisms, puns, anagrams, all interspersed with copious quotations from the poets: Tulsidas, Sur, Keshavdas, Bihari, and many others. I was amazed at the verbal resourcefulness of these men. And when, as happened every so often, someone would pose a serious Ramayan-related question, the joking would cease: all eyes would turn toward Ramji Pandey, the chief Ramayani, who would launch into an impromptu katha —he was, after all, at other times of the year, a professional expounder.

But even if one may generalize that modern India's culture remains unusually appreciative of verbal art, one must certainly add that the oral exposition of sacred text is unique neither to South Asia nor to Hindu-ism; rather it is common, in some form, to most of the world's religious traditions. For comparative purposes, I would like to introduce briefly two examples of such oral exegesis within the Western Christian tradition—one from the contemporary United States and one from medieval Europe. Unlike Katha , neither can be said to be widely practiced or appreciated at present, but each suggests an attitude toward scripture and its exegesis that has striking parallels in the Katha tradition and helps, I believe, to shed light on the nature of that tradition's enduring appeal.

The sermons of American folk or "spiritual" preachers have been the subject of a major study by Bruce A. Rosenberg. Although Rosenberg was interested primarily in metrical chanted sermons, which he studied in the light of the Parry-Lord theory of "oral composition," he found common features in both chanted and nonchanted styles. Both are extemporaneous, use an abundance of scriptural quotations and images, and are patronized by congregations consisting largely of low-income, poorly educated people, particularly American blacks (although some white Southern congregations also favor this type of sermon). The basic structure of such a sermon, according to Rosenberg, is what many ministers term the "text and context" form: "The preacher begins with a quotation from Scripture (the 'text'), proceeds to explain it ('context'), raises a doctrine from the passage and then, in the section that most interests the preacher, applies that doctrine to everyday. affairs."^[92] Rosenberg notes that this type of exegesis has deep roots in the Christian tradition—he observes that it was characteristic of Puritan churches and, by the evidence of surviving texts of Middle English sermons, appears to have been "the basic pattern for the later Middle Ages."^[93] He

[92] Rosenberg, The Art Of the American Folk Preacher , 14.

[93] Ibid., 32. On the style of late-medieval sermons (which likewise bore a close resemblance to Katha ), see Wenzel, Preachers, Poets, and the Early English Lyric.

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contrasts it to the "topical sermons" preferred by the pastors of some contemporary churches, "dealing with more secular matters such as civil rights, our Asian wars, [and] the 'New Morality,'" which are characteristically written in advance and read out from a manuscript.^[94]

The critical period for the development of the chanted style of preaching studied by Rosenberg was the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the religious fervor of the "Second Great Awakening" swept through the country, expressing itself in outdoor camp meetings that featured itinerant ministers known for their oratorical skills and encouraging, as a sign of salvation, passionate and ecstatic expression—singing, dancing, clapping. The "New Lights" style of preaching associated with this revival reached great numbers of plantation slaves in the early nineteenth century and was eventually adopted by black preachers, who developed it (influenced, in part, by the antiphonal "spirituals" popular among the slaves) into a chanted form "which embodies the emotional power of music and the ostensibly rational power of the spoken word."^[95]

The many striking similarities between Vaishnava Katha and "spiritual" preaching go beyond the text-context exegetical structure basic to both,^[96] and anyone acquainted with Katha who reads Rosenberg's study will recognize many familiar patterns: the intimacy and immediacy with which Biblical stories are retold and their personages referred to ("Jesus said to me last night . . . ."; "I heard John say the other morning . . . ."); the use of formulaic "stall lines" and rhetorical questions ("God from Zion!"; "Am I right this evenin'?") to give the speaker time to compose his next line; the preachers' reluctance to speak about their preparation and the ways that they "work up" a sermon and organize its points in their minds beforehand (sometimes with the assistance of books of "sermon outlines" that correspond to the Hindu expounder's tikas^[*] and sankavalis^[*] ); the speakers' insistence that they only serve, when preaching, as mouthpieces for the Holy Spirit; and the congregation's active participation in the sermon and tendency to anticipate the next phrase that the preacher is going to speak.^[97] Rosenberg even compares the sermon to a jazz improvisation, developed from the "basic score" of scripture, which the preacher has mastered;^[98] jazz, of course,

[94] Ibid., 32.

[95] Ibid., 17.

[96] Cf. Rosenberg's observation, "The sermon itself is usually based on a single line of Scripture, and not on an elaborate narrative. That single line may be expanded in many ways"; ibid., 34.

[97] Ibid., 17-56.

[98] Ibid., 25-26.

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is the Western musical style most often compared to classical Indian music, to whose structure I have similarly likened Katha . He also notes the additive, digressive style of the sermons and the fact that they come across badly in written form, appearing to lack "coherence" or any "principle of organization." However, he seems to feel that there is an ideal of organization and unity that many preachers are simply too "untidy" to meet; hence he criticizes their tendency to introduce "irrelevant" and "amorphous" material into their talks.^[99]

As we have seen, a rambling, digressive style is so characteristic of Katha performances that it seems unfair to fault them for it; it stems not only from the extemporaneous nature of the performance but also from the nature of the performer's training and religio-aesthetic goals. Tidy organization is more characteristic of what Rosenberg's informants call (with a certain disdain) "manuscript preachers"—those who read from a prepared text rather than relying on the inspiration of the Spirit.

Despite these parallels between "spiritual preaching" and Katha , there are significant differences. One concerns the level of the congregation's response, which in the case of American folk preaching sometimes reaches the point of rendering the preacher's words unintelligible, so that Rosenberg can argue convincingly that the rhythm of the chant, more than its content, conveys the "message."^[100] A typical Katha audience interacts with the expounder in various ways, but by comparison it is relatively restrained, although we may note that other devotional activities, often occurring as adjuncts to Katha (such as kirtan singing) provide a channel for emotional and ecstatic release. Another, related difference lies in what I cautiously call the level of "sophistication" of the performance, although in using this term I wish to avoid any derogation of the American preachers. The language of the latter is deeply influenced by the imagery and metaphors of the Bible and peppered with direct quotations from it, as the language of Ramayanis is similarly shaped by the Manas . Yet many of the spiritual preachers are men of limited formal education, whose exposure to literature apart from the Bible is meager and whose audience is drawn largely from socially underprivileged classes. Katha , in contrast, is rooted in an ancient tradition of oral scholarship, which presumes the study and memorization of an often-immense body of literature, and the appeal of its performances appears always to have cut across economic and educational lines.

[99] Ibid., 33, 91.

[100] Ibid., 40-47.

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Today's urban Katha audience may include university professors and pandits as well as shopkeepers and illiterate laborers.

The structure of prescholastic scriptural exegesis suggests that a closer parallel to Katha may have existed much earlier in Christian tradition, especially in the written sermons of the monks of the eighth to twelfth centuries, so eloquently described by Jean Leclercq in The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. The educational background and training of the monastic authors was more akin to that of the Vaishnava expounders, for it was founded on a knowledge of a voluminous tripartite literature consisting of the Bible, the patristic writings, and the classics of ancient Rome (which the monastic authors admired for their stylistic excellence). As in the Manas tradition, the study of scripture was less a curriculum than a way of life; in the monasteries, the daily practice of the lectio divina produced a kind of textual involvement that Leclercq, searching (like me) for a more apt term than "memorization," describes as "impregnation" with scripture—a process that "inscribes, so to speak, the sacred text in the body and in the soul."^[101]

Monastic writings such as St. Bernard's "Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles" may be assumed to bear a close relationship to the oral exposition of scripture by venerable monks and abbots (verba seniorum) that occurred daily in monasteries of the period. The typical stylistic features of these writings are worth noting; they are, first of all, personal in tone; "instead of being a teacher's instruction for a universal and anonymous public, [the monks' sermons] are addressed to a specific audience, to a public chosen by and known to the author." Consequently there is a strong sense of milieu in the writings, and an oral tone. Leclercq observes of St. Bernard, "When he writes . . . he always writes for someone, he is always addressing someone, and it is just as if he were speaking."^[102] Whereas the content of the sermons may be broadly characterized as "scriptural exegesis" (and the routine of the verba seniorum was to have a child or novice recite two or three lines of scripture, on which a more senior monk would then expound), the style is typically so rambling and digressive as to hold little appeal for modern readers. The writings of Gregory the Great, for example, "give the impression of being unorganized and overly diffuse" and indeed "unsystematic," and St. Bernard, in expounding the second verse of the Canticle of Canticles, launches on a series of apparent "digressions" that occupy him for fully six sermons before he finally returns to his original subject.^[103]

[101] Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God , 73.

[102] Ibid., 174.

[103] Ibid., 27, 75.

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Were the monastic writers simply "untidy" and "disorganized," as Rosenberg supposes his gospel preachers to be? According to Leclercq, their manner of expounding scripture was a natural outgrowth of their internalization of it by lectio divina , which gave rise to the phenomenon he calls "reminiscence"—whereby the words in a scriptural passage served as "verbal echoes" to arouse memories of other passages.

The mere fact of hearing certain words, which happen to be similar in sound to certain other words, sets up a kind of chain reaction of associations which will bring together words that have no more than a chance connection, purely external, with one another. But since the verse or passage which contains this word comes to mind, why not comment upon it here? In such a case an author may turn away from his original subject which he had started to treat, and apparently lose the thread of his discourse.^[104]

Such digression, being text-inspired, was acceptable to monastic expounders and their audiences because of their belief that every line of scripture was equally inspired by God; thus, in a sense, no digression could be "meaningless" so long as it concerned scripture. Moreover, exegesis itself was understood, as it often is in the Manas tradition, as a process of explaining the meaning of words by examining their use in other passages—what Leclercq calls "exegesis by concordance"—so that it can truly be said that, for the monastics, "the Bible itself is the commentary on the Bible."^[105] Even when the "concordance" approach is not followed, the language of a monastic author like John of Fecamp is so dense with quotations, images, and metaphors derived from scripture and from the patristic writings that it is often difficult to tell when he is being "original" and when he is simply paraphrasing or quoting a traditional source.^[106]

Another aspect of monastic discourse with obvious parallels in Ramayan exposition is the monks' great fondness for numerical symbolism: "There are thus two Advents, two loves, two spurs, two feet of God, three degrees of obedience, three kinds of chalices, horses, and lights, four animals, four loaves, four impediments to confession, and so on." As I have already pointed out, such classification codifies traditional notions of cosmic order and affirms the mystical unity of scripture; Leclercq offers the insight that the approach may also reflect the

[104] Ibid., 74.

[105] Ibid., 83.

[106] Ibid., 184.

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contingencies of oral delivery: "This way of numbering the different 'points' of the sermon makes its memorization easier for the author who is going to speak."^[107]

Throughout Leclercq's study, the exegesis of the monasteries is contrasted with the scholastic style that became popular from the thirteenth century onward and flourished primarily in urban schools. The latter style was impersonal, addressed to a universal audience, and more systematic and logically structured; it subjected the scriptures "to the same type of investigation as might be applied to any other historical document. Problems of authenticity, of dating, of situation and form were examined in succession."^[108] Although the two traditions differed in their methods of analysis, they differed even more in their aims, and this distinction is relevant not only to the tradition of the monastic exegetes but also to that of the gospel preachers and Ramayanis, for it relates to the religio-aesthetic aims of traditional religious oratory. Monastic commentaries, according to Leclercq, "are more like exhortations than explanations," and the theology they put forth is one of "admiration" rather than of "speculation."^[109] "Monastic commentary is addressed to the whole being; its aim is to touch the heart rather than to instruct the mind. It is often written in a fervent style which expresses an inner rhythm which the author wants to communicate to his readers."^[110]

The favorite texts of the monastic commentators were the Psalms, with their tone of praise and personal communion, and above all the Canticle of Canticles, which the monks understood as an allegory of the contemplative life.^[111] By contrast, later scholastic commentators preferred the Sapiential Books of the Old Testament, such as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, to which they could apply the intellectual quaestiones central to their method of analysis, which had as its aim the acquisition of knowledge. But the aim of monastic exegesis was different; it implied a milieu and a discipline—what the Vaishnavas call a sadhana . "This theology assumes on the part of the teacher, and on the part of his audience, a special way of life, a rigorous asceticism, or as they say today a 'commitment.' Rather than speculative insights, it gives them a certain appreciation, of savoring and clinging to the truth and, what is

[107] Ibid., 169.

[108] Ibid., 3.

[109] Ibid., 154, 226.

[110] Ibid., 84-85.

[111] That cloistered renunciants chose to base their meditations on the most "erotic" book of the Old Testament has an interesting Vaishnava parallel in the rasik sampraday ; see Chapter 5, Ramlila and Devotional Practice.

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everything, to the love of God."^[112] Here it is necessary to emphasize again that the sadhana —the meditatio —of medieval Christian monastics consisted largely of the verbal repetition of scripture, its "learning by mouth," to which the appropriately oral term ruminatio was commonly applied. Such "mastication" of the sacred word released its flavor, which could then be "savored" by a metaphorical internal organ, the palatum cordis . Such terms, as Leclercq notes, are difficult to translate for the modern Western audience, whose reading is typically of quite a different nature; but they would make perfect sense to connoisseurs of Katha , who often describe the act of listening as rasasvadan —"savoring the juice" of the performance. And Manas enthusiasts would understand the advice of the Cistercian monk Arnoul of Boheriss, who wrote, "When he reads, let him seek for savor, not science. The Holy Scripture is the well of Jacob from which the waters are drawn which will be poured out later in prayer."^[113] This author's chosen metaphor for scripture accords well with Tulsi's own allegory of his Manas as a reservoir of the glory of Ram, from which arises the river of inspired utterance, which nourishes the hearts of the faithful.

When a traditional expounder draws "water" from Jacob's well or Shiva's lake and offers it to his listeners to savor, his activity implies a community of interpretation, which shares an understanding of the water's value and the pleasure to be derived from savoring it. This pleasure, according to the tradition, does not lessen the more the water is tasted; on the contrary, it increases. But to understand the aesthetic and spiritual aim of traditional exegesis as the savoring of the text brings up the question of the role and value of originality. In comparing the chanted sermons of folk ministers with those of "manuscript preachers," Rosenberg notes that originality of material is of primary concern only to the latter: "Since informational content is seldom interesting when repeated, the manuscript preacher must search weekly for new sermon topics or at least novel ways of presenting familiar ones. The preacher who chants is much less concerned with new data: his message is ever on the gospel."^[114] Rosenberg then extends this observation into a more general statement on aesthetics: "In traditional art there is no suspense and no surprise; one is satisfied aesthetically because of a sense of the logic and justness of procedure, the inherent dignity of it, and because of the fulfillment of traditional expectations."^[115] Whatever its

[112] Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 4.

[113] Ibid., 73.

[114] Rosenberg, "Oral Sermons and Oral Narrative," 91.

[115] Ibid., 93.

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relevance to spiritual preaching, this generalization suggests a rather mechanical view of the nature of traditional verbal art and seems inadequate to explain the appeal of either the monastic exegete or the modern vyas ; in the latter case, we have already noted that one of the "traditional expectations" (at least of a connoisseur like Anjaninandan Sharan) is that a fine expounder working within a tradition that emphasizes the eternality of handed-down truth will nevertheless display a kind of originality—or perhaps we might better say, a freshness of expressive interpretation. Moreover, if an audience were satisfied aesthetically merely because of "the logic and justness of procedure," then it would be unable to distinguish between a good performance and a bad one—and yet such judgments are constantly made by "traditional" audiences, including the congregations of Rosenberg's study, which respond with restless boredom to some sermons yet sing and clap with joy for others.

Leclercq offers, in my view, a more balanced perspective on the relationship of "originality" to "tradition." He notes that although the monastics focused for centuries on the same body of texts and shunned innovation—which for them was virtually synonymous with heresy—they felt free to adapt the stories and metaphors of scripture to changing circumstances: "Unanimity amongst authors comes from the fact that all depend on the Bible, and their originality results from the fact that the basic analogy can have various applications."^[116] In discussing the writings of Rupert of Deutz, one of the greatest monastic theologians, Leclercq points both to his absence of innovation and to the nature of his originality:

No doubt, if Rupert's teaching is reduced to its main points, the conclusion might be drawn that he is advancing only commonplaces. As a matter of fact, he is simply handing on the traditional teaching, the classical Christianity. But he does so with such a deeply religious feeling and such a rich poetic orchestration that he awakens in his reader new conceptions of mysteries which are not familiar to him; he never ceases wondering over them.^[117]

Just as the essential ingredient in monastic exegesis is the commentator's "feeling," which brings the mysteries of scripture to life for the community of listeners, so it is by means of "feeling" (bhav ) that the vyas revivifies the Ramayan and awakens in his listener new insights into its unchanging story.

[116] Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God , 105.

[117] Ibid., 218.

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The traditional audience's expectation of a certain constancy of subject matter does not rule out the possiblity of artistry on the part of the performer. Western painting and sculpture for more than a millennium were preoccupied with a limited repertoire of subjects, yet the manner of depiction of, say, the Madonna and Child, changed greatly from region to region and from century to century, and works of genius stand out despite the constancy of theme. We who live with a constant deluge of "new" images and a continuous babel of "original" stories may be inclined to forget the expressive power that can be evoked by a restricted vocabulary of narrative and image, understood deeply and re-presented well. Artists themselves, however, often understand the freedom of expression that such restriction can paradoxically offer. Viewing a twelfth-century carving of the virgin and child, the painter Renoir is said to have exclaimed,

They were lucky: I mean those stonecutters who carved the old cathedrals. To think of doing the same subjects all one's life: Virgin and Christ-child, the Apostles, the four Evangelists. I shouldn't be surprised if some of them did the same subject over and over again. What freedom! Not to have to be preoccupied with a story, since it has been told hundreds of times.^[118]

Certainly we can generalize that for the Katha tradition originality and artistry lie not in the story but in the manner of its telling; not in the ideas presented but in the feelings they convey, from the heart of the speaker to that of the listener, within the community of satsang^[*] .

The medium of Katha is artful language, but its essence is emotional communication—which Vaishnavas believe can touch inner depths or even effect a radical change of heart. I have already recounted how Ramnarayan Shukla's young admirer found himself "struck" by a Katha ; Shrinath Mishra took up the same theme one day, illustrating it with a story from Sundar kand^[*] . As Hanuman is about to enter Lanka, he confronts a female demon (Lankini), who bars his way. He knocks her unconscious and bloodies her face, but strangely enough, when she recovers her wits, she praises the effect of his "fellowship" (satsang^[*] ).

Hanuman-ji struck a blow, you know? He struck Lankini, and she called it satsang^[*] .

My son, if heaven's bliss and final deliverance
are placed in one pan of a balance,
together they won't equal the weight
of one moment of satsang^[*] !
5.4

[118] Renoir, Renoir, My Father, 66.

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[speaking as Hanuman] "She's punched out, and now she's talking about 'satsang^[*] '! Is that any satsang^[*] , to endure a blow? Can suffering a blow be satsang^[*] ?"

"Ah," she said, "but it is. That's just what satsang^[*] is!" If in Katha , in satsang^[*] , you don't get "hit," then you haven't really experienced it. It should always deliver a blow. And just as Lankini's blood poured forth, just so—around here we say, you know, that in poetry blood represents passionate love^[119] — well, you go for satsang^[*] , and if no love pours out of you, if no "blood" flows, then you haven't really experienced it.^[120]

The Palace of Mirrors

In his pioneering study of Vaishnava performance traditions, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , Norvin Hein observed of the genres he studied that "all of the dramas are interpretations of scripture, directly or remotely . . . and reflect even in their external forms the structure of a traditional Indian commentary with its text."^[121] As we have seen, the rhetorical art of Katha is likewise rooted in the Vaishnava performance tradition and, moreover, might at first appear to be precisely a form of oral commentary on a written text. My observations of Katha performances, however, lead me to propose that our understanding of their underlying structure would be furthered by a careful qualification of the terms "text" and "commentary," when used in reference to this tradition.

As the preceding section suggested, the meaning of "commentary" has not remained constant even within the Christian tradition. The exegetical writings of pre-thirteenth-century monastics differed not only in style but also in intent from those of later scholastic writers; the former are little read today, whereas the latter may properly be considered the forerunners of modern analytical writing, and it is their notion of "commentary" as a rational sequence of intellectual questions and answers designed to stimulate knowledge, impersonally presented through the medium of writing and addressed to a nonspecific audience, that has had the most influence in shaping our sense of the term. For the monastic tradition, however, no less than for that of the vyas , there was no need of such "commentary"; for scripture itself contains its own commentary—its own "explanation" and justification. What learned and inspired people do with scripture—that is to say, "commentary" in the

[119] Shrinath points out that the word Tulsi uses for "blood" in this passage (rakt ) can also mean "love" or "attachment."

[120] Shrinath Mishra, Katha , B.H.U., February 16, 1983.

[121] Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 274.

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monastic sense and the Vaishnava sense—is evoke and celebrate, realize , the text.

But it is necessary to repeat with reference to both traditions that even though the text being commented on may be symbolically represented as a book, it is not a book in the modern sense; rather, it is sound, the word, the word of God—a collection of inspired utterances to be sung and heard and repeated until they become completely internalized. A successful commentator is a model of such internalization and hence a model of religious achievement for the community of believers in a given text. Part of the pleasure that his listeners derive from his discourse comes simply from witnessing the ease with which he moves in the realm of the word, the readiness with which its verses and phrases come to his lips, the fact that he has it "in the throat" or "learned by mouth." The commentator is thus an exemplar, and his commentary an exemplary act, whose merit belongs not to him alone but to the community of good people who form the milieu in which he performs.

Like monastic exegesis or folk gospel preaching, Katha is a milieu-oriented art form, arising in and inseparable from the spiritual outlook and practice of a particular community. For this reason, it does not translate well to another medium or milieu. The images and emotions awakened by such performances have as their prerequisite the audience's intimate knowledge of sacred text; indeed, for one lacking such knowledge even the informational content of the sermon may sometimes be unintelligible. In the midst of a sermon on the Twenty-third Psalm, the Reverend Rubin Lacy (who figures prominently in Rosenberg's study of American folk preaching) suddenly begins a "digression" with the following words:

They tell me
In the mornin'
When the horses
Begin to come out
And the riders on the horses
Want 'em to come out
God from Zion!^[122]

At this point, a listener not well versed in the New Testament and the language of scripture-derived images favored by Lacy might easily lose the train of the discourse. The members of Lacy's congregation, however, hearing the words "mornin'" and then "horses" know at once that the reference is to the final days of this world and to the eschatological

[122] Rosenberg, The Art of the American Folk Preacher , 64.

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scenario of the Book of Revelation, and with this understanding awakened by the preacher's words, they anticipate the associated feelings of expectancy, holy awe, and triumphant justification. Similarly, when Shrinath Mishra begins a story with, "You know, the time when Vibhishan came for refuge . . . ," he can be certain that he has not only situated his intended remarks within a narrative framework but has also aroused in listeners a whole chain of associated feelings on which he can build.

If we bear in mind that sacred text itself, though fixed and bounded in structure, is essentially an oral/aural experience for the Manas tradition, then it becomes possible to understand the intimate and seamless interplay of text and oral commentary—a relationship that we might profitably suggest by such paired terms as "seed" and "manifestation," "theme" and "improvisation," or even "blueprint" and "realization." For a Katha , like a banyan tree, is a manifestation that grows from a seed. In the case of the Manas —itself an exemplary Katha —that seed is explicitly identified as the name Ram, which the poet reveres as the "seed utterance" (bij mantra ) underlying all creation.^[123] For latter-day expounders, the words of the Manas , charged with the power of that name and widely believed to be themselves highly efficacious mantras, become seeds for further expansion and elaboration. But to call one "text" and the other "commentary" is to risk missing the point that, for their audience, the two possess the same nature and manifest a single process. For this tradition, what we call "texts" are in a very real sense written-down performances—not in the sense of transcriptions such as modern researchers make from their tape recordings but rather in the sense of sharing the same motives, processes, and ultimate aims. The rambling, episodic structure of the Manas , with its many repetitions and digressions—so often criticized even by its Western admirers as potentially pleasing only "from the oriental point of view"^[124] —corresponds closely to the kind of sequential illumination of ideas and endless variations on a theme that occur in vyas performances; in both cases, the structure mirrors not a process of analytical reasoning or even of straightforward narration, but a meditative dwelling on emotionally perceived truth.

Thus, I would repeat that the Manas has for its audience an emergent

[123] See, for example, 1.19.1-2, in which Tulsi worships the divine name as "the cause of fire, sun, and moon," and as "the life-breath of the Veda." Later he refers to the legend of Shiva's having chosen the two syllabic characters of Ram's name from among the "thousand-million verses" of the archetypal Ramayan, because these were its essence (1.25).

[124] Hill, The Holy Lake of the Acts of Rama , xx.

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quality. It is a means rather than an end, a living seed rather than a finished artifact. Similarly, its contemporary realization in Katha is more than just the verbalization of written commentary. As I have noted, written Manastikas^[*] appear to have been largely by-products of the oral performance tradition—although some of the most renowned performers never acquiesced to this particular form of reification—and have been used primarily as training aids for other expounders (i.e., as records of past performances and sources of potential embellishment for future ones). If the broad genre label Katha does not distinguish between, on the one hand, the simple retelling of the Manas text, and on the other, its elaboration into such complex forms as described here, I would assert that this is not mere carelessness of terminology but an indigenous recognition of an identity of process. And it is process, not product, that is of the essence.

In describing the Manas as a "mirror" for the world, Ramkinkar Upadhyay utilizes a metaphor with a long history in Western thought; it was much favored by medieval Christian monks, who borrowed it from the writings of St. Augustine, who had himself adapted it from Plato: "Holy Scripture is a mirror. In it one sees the picture one should reproduce. As one reads, one can compare oneself with what one ought to be, and try to acquire what the picture needs so that it can resemble the model."^[125] This view of the "reflexivity" of scripture suggests a kind of identity or continuity between the mirror and the object it reflects. For Christians, the Word of God precedes creation and is the source from which the universe springs; the words of the Word, the holy scriptures, are deposited in the world to guide souls back toward that Word. For Hindus too, the Word is preexistent; as mantra it is understood as both the source of the universe and its continuing, reverberating ground. Creation, indeed, is a "commentary" on the Word.

To reflect is to reproduce and, in so doing, to "reflect on"—to "comment" or elaborate on. There is a small temple in Ayodhya, a great favorite with pilgrims, called the Shish Mahal, or "Palace of Mirrors." Here the enshrined images of Ram, Sita, and Lakshman are placed in a recessed alcove lined with mirrors—the whole arrangement resembling a fitting room in a department store. As one bows for darsan , one beholds not a single divine triad but myriad, extending in all directions into hazy infinity: thus, the cosmic Lord "comments" on his temporal, narrative-bound identity.

The Manas too, in its narrative structure, resembles a house of mir-

[125] Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God , 80.

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rors, as the story is reflected back and forth between four sets of tellers and listeners. And as it is reflected, it grows, expands, and gets reinterpreted. The reflexivity of scripture is a clue to its dynamic and living nature, its existence as a process; as Ramkinkar correctly perceived, a text that is merely a "picture" is a static, fossilized thing, but one that is a "mirror" will present a different picture to each eye, to each interpreter, and to each age that gazes into it. The text training of the vyas , his inscribing of the text in his being, is only a specially intense variation of his society's use and veneration of the text; this practice gives him the ability and authority to look into the mirror and tell us what he sees. The Manas thus becomes a point of view, a way of looking at life and the world, a darsan —the Sanskrit term we commonly render as "philosophy" (for it is that too); through its lens, the world is recreated. But the text itself is recreated and revivified through the lens of the vyas , the expounder who—by his magical ability to "divide" and so creatively elaborate—partakes in the nature of divinity itself. It is the art and discipline of the expounder that has kept the Ramayan story from becoming merely a picture of an archaic ideal and has maintained it as a living mirror of social ideals and soteriological aspirations.

The metaphor of the mirror reminds us of the importance of seeing as well as hearing. The Veda, the eternal truth, is "heard" (sruti ), but its first narrators are described as "seers" (rsi^[*] ), and the tradition holds that to narrate correctly one must be witness to what one describes. Valmiki is a "seer," and by the grace of Brahma, the events of Ram's life are revealed to him so that he can compose his great poem.^[126] In the Indian epic tradition, every great narrator is also a participant in his narrative: Vyasa not only composes the Mahabharata but also figures decisively in its story; Valmiki meets his hero in the forest and later shelters the abandoned Sita and her sons. Tulsidas too is thought to have had the darsan of Ram and Lakshman at Chitrakut and to have seen their story in his "heart's mirror"; the three exemplary narrators through whom the story has been transmitted to him—Shiva, Yajnavalkya, and Bhushundi—are all introduced into the narrative at one point or another and made witnesses to what they describe. For devotees, the desire to recite and to hear the Lord's story is strong indeed, but stronger still is the desire to see it or, even better, to actually participate in and become part of it. And so, having considered something of the recitation and oral exegesis of the Manas , we must now turn to the genre of performance in which its story is most concretely lived.

[126] Ramayana^[*] 1:2:30-33; Goldman, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki: Balakanda^[*] , 129.

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Five
Words Made Flesh: The Text Enacted

O Garuda, even one who knows Ram's reality
yet remains devoted to these acts.
For the fruit of that knowledge is this lila—
so say great sages adept in self-restraint.
7.22.4,5

The Ramlila Tradition

The annual reenactment of the Ramayan story as a series of folk plays—the Ramlila —is among the world's most popular dramatic traditions: a form of live theater that reckons its audience not in hundreds or thousands, but in millions. Norvin Hein's assertion that "there must have been few North Indian villagers in the first half of the twentieth century who did not live within an evening's walking distance of a Ramlila during the Dashahra season" probably still applies in the century's latter half.^[1] But even though the Ramlila is a widespread tradition, it is far from a homogeneous one. Its productions range from modest three-to-five-day affairs staged by a handful of village enthusiasts who double and triple up on major parts to month-long spectacles involving dozens of actors, musicians, and extras and attracting live audiences that may exceed a hundred thousand persons. The texts used for such diverse productions must obviously vary too; what they have in common—and it is this, in part, that makes possible an assertion of the fundamental

[1] Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 102.

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unity of the tradition—is that the vast majority are based, directly or indirectly, on the Ramcaritmanas ; both historically and performatively, Tulsi's epic lies at the heart of the Ramlila tradition.

As the most celebrated and visible form of Manas performance, the Ramlila has long attracted the attention of foreign travelers and both Western and Indian scholars, and a small literature has accumulated on the subject.^[2] Scholars have analyzed the Ramlila as a form of folk theater and festival and have compared it to the medieval Christian miracle play. Such comparisons, while not wholly inappropriate, have often been made on the basis of a relatively superficial observation of Ramlila performances, and some of the published accounts of the tradition have contained inaccuracies and overgeneralizations.^[3] Even Hein's two chapters on Ramlila were based, as he himself noted, on attendance at only ten performances, supplemented by the observations of several Indian friends regarding their own local stagings. Yet daily attendance at a Ramlila can significantly alter one's perception of the event—a fact affirmed by traditional audiences—and the recent writings of Richard Schechner and Linda Hess, who as a research team attended the Ramnagar production regularly for two years, have added a new dimension to our understanding of these performances.^[4] I shall have many occasions to refer to their ongoing research as well as to the earlier work of Hein and other scholars. My own approach in the present chapter is to examine several Ramlila cycles in the Banaras area from a variety of perspectives—historical, descriptive, and religious—with a focus on the role of the Manas text in the productions and on their relationship to the other forms of epic performance already introduced.

The centrality of lila in Vaishnava theology has been noted by many scholars.^[5] According to a popular formula I heard more than once in

[2] See ibid., 72 n. 5, for a comprehensive summary of this literature.

[3] Thus, for example, Alexandra David-Neel's 1951 account of an unidentified Banaras production (Ramnagar?) asserts that the practice of reciting the whole of the Manas had died out in the city (cited in Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 73 n. 7). Similarly, Balwant Gargi's chapter on Ramlila in his Folk Theater of India , 90-113, though one of the better short treatments of the subject, contains a number of inaccuracies.

[4] Schechner and Hess, "The Ramlila of Ramnagar" (an introduction that includes maps and a day-to-day account); Schechner, Performative Circumstances From the Avant Garde to Ramlila , 238-305; Hess, "Ram Lila: The Audience Experience." Schechner and Hess are presently coauthoring a book that can be expected to represent the most comprehensive account of any single production. The most informative study of Ramlila in Hindi is Awasthi's Ramlila , paramparaaur sailiyam^[*] , which includes brief treatments of several dozen productions.

[5] See Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 70, and the references in note 1 on that page; see also Wulff, Drama as a Mode of Religious Realization , esp. chapter 1; Haberman, Acting as a Way of Salvation , 40-47.

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Katha performances, "the Lord has four fundamental aspects [vigrah ]: name, form, acts, and abode [nam , rup , lila , and dham ]—catch hold of any one of these and you'll be saved!" Each of the four elements in the formula points to an aspect of Vaishnava devotional practice: the repetition of the Lord's name (jap ); the ceremonial worship of his image (puja , seva ); and pilgrimage (yatra ) to the holy places associated with his earthly activities. But what does it mean to "catch hold of" his lila —his legendary adventures? One method is to hear them artfully recounted in recitation and Katha programs. But another method, and the one especially suggested by the term lila , is to witness them through some form of dramatic "representation." This understanding needs to be qualified, because Vaishnavas consider the Lord's acts to partake of his inherent nature and hence to be boundless and eternal. They do not have to be "re-presented" because they always exist, and the devotional activities through which they can be glimpsed are themselves aspects of the lila , in which devotees are privileged to share. In the broadest sense, lila may be said to be a way of life for worshipers of Ram and Krishna.

Vaishnava theologians distinguish between two kinds of lila: nitya (continuous or eternal) and naimittik (occasional).^[6] The former refers to the Lord's cosmic activity (of which the universe is a by-product and reflection) and also to the daily ritual cycle of eight time periods (astakalin^[*]lila ), which follows the scenario of a divine courtly routine. "Occasional" lila refers to the specific adventures of one of the Lord's incarnations and also their celebration and recreation by devotees. In such observances, the calendar unit shifts from the day to the year, with its larger cycle of festivals commemorating specific events in the cultic myth. Since most of these events are associated with places dear to the Lord, the cycle of the year becomes, for sadhus and other mobile devotees, a series of pilgrimages that reenact the Lord's own movements and bring worshipers to sites at which they reexperience his salvific deeds. Thus, for Ram Navami the goal of pilgrimage is Ayodhya, where devotees gather for nine days before the divine birth to sing songs of congratulation (badhai ) and where, at noon on the ninth day, a cacophony of bells, conches, and drums announces the blessed event. For Vivah Panchami (Ram and Sita's wedding anniversary), the preferred site is Mithila (Janakpur) in Nepal, where arriving pilgrims identify themselves as members of Ram's barat , or wedding party, and trade humorous insults with the people of the bride's hometown.^[7] For really ambitious devo-

[6] Dvivedi, "Sri Ramnagar ki sri ramlila mem^[*] devatva va, lila saksat^[*] bhagvat svarupa," 54. I am grateful to Linda Hess for having brought this article to my attention.

[7] This pilgrimage is described in detail by Awasthi, Ramlila , 230.

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tees, the annual lila cycle may be demanding indeed. Snehlata, a famous sadhu of Ayodhya, is said to have recommended participation in the following site-specific festivals:

All such Ramlilas involve elements of role playing and enactment, in some cases of a fairly abbreviated or symbolic sort and in others of a more elaborate variety. On the marriage day in Ayodhya, for example, wedding processions mounted by major temples wind through the city for hours. They consist of lampbearers, drummers and shehnai players, "English-style" marching bands (all requisites of a modern North Indian wedding), and of course the bridegrooms—Ram and his three brothers—astride horses or riding in ornate carriages. The grooms are usually svarups —young Brahman boys impersonating deities—but a few processions feature temple images borne on palanquins. After receiving the homage of devotees before whose homes and shops they briefly halt, the processions return to their sponsoring establishments, where a marriage ceremony is performed. The crowds of devotees attending these rites are not merely spectators; they are encouraged to take the roles of members of the wedding party. "Aren't there any Mithila ladies here?" a portly sadhu asked at one of the ceremonies I attended, casting a twinkling eye over the crowd. "How can we have a wedding without galiyam^[*] ?" (scurrilous songs directed by the women of the bride's family against the groom and his relations). "We're here, to be sure!" a jovial-looking matron replied and launched into a song that evoked broad smiles all around. Such participation reflects a characteristic Vaishnava concern with entering into the fabric of mythic narrative.

Although lilas celebrating the deeds of Ram occur throughout the year, the term Ramlila commonly refers to a period within the yearly

[8] Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , 195; on patterns of wandering by Ramanandi ascetics, see Burghart, "Wandering Ascetics of the Ramanandi Sect."

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cycle during which Ram's story is retold sequentially and in detail. To the majority of North Indians, it means a span of from nine to thirty days, culminating in the bright half of the month of Ashvin (October/ November), with the death of Ravan nearly everywhere staged on Vijaydashami—the "victorious tenth" of that fortnight. Alternatively but less commonly, the term refers to similar dramas staged during the nine nights of the bright half of Chaitra (March/April) leading up to Ram's birthday.

There still has not been, to my knowledge, a detailed study of the geographical extent of the Ramlila tradition, but it is clear that it extends beyond Uttar Pradesh and even beyond the Hindi-speaking region, although it is less predictably to be found, or more narrowly patronized, in fringe areas.^[9] In the Garhwal hills, for example, Ramlila appears to have been introduced only in recent decades, largely by merchant groups that brought it from the plains, but the tradition has begun to be taken up by upper-caste Pahari Hindus.^[10]Ramlila is likewise staged by many Hindus in Haryana, in some towns and villages in Rajasthan,^[11] and by transplanted communities of Hindi-speakers in the cities of Bombay and Calcutta. In all these areas, however, it lacks the status of an almost universally patronized, communitywide event such as it has throughout much of the Hindi-speaking belt. In short, the popularity and patronage of the Ramlila appears to be roughly coextensive with that of the Manas .

In its heartland, the popularity of Ramlila and the scale on which its productions are undertaken seem hardly to have been diminished by the competition of newer forms of entertainment. Modern urban culture, far from turning its back on the pageant, has added its own embellishments, as is clear from this excerpt from a 1980 article in a New Delhi magazine.

Come October and big business groups host cocktail parties for press reporters and other close friends to announce their friendly competition—they are going to have a higher, gaudier Ravan, with mechanical movement in his

[9] The most comprehensive research is found in Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 101, and Awasthi, Ramlila , 56-57. Neither, however, purports to offer a thorough geographical survey of the tradition.

[10] This observation is based on my inquiries in the Mussoorie area in 1983-84; in Mussoorie itself, two lila cycles were staged that year: a nautanki -style production by a hired troupe in Landour bazaar, and a pancayati (local) production in Library bazaar; both were largely sponsored by merchants. Interviewees reported other productions in Garhwali villages. Cf. Hein's observation that the Ramlila was introduced into the Kumaon Hills only in the nineteenth century; The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 101.

[11] Joseph Miller, a researcher from the University of Pennsylvania, documented a Ramlila cycle in a remote village in Ajmer District in 1980; Miller, personal communication, January 1980.

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jaws, arms, and ears, yet. The effigies of the demons cross the hundred foot barrier and keep on soaring. . . . One Ramlila is sponsored by a cloth mill, and obviously cash is no problem. Much of it is spent on mechanical stage properties for the 10-day play, the highlight being a "flying" Hanuman. Ensconced in a canvas, steel and leather harness, the monkey glides down a steel rope-way as he brings an entire mountain so that Ram can find the herb which is needed to revive Lakshman. . . . Another Ramlila, the costliest of them all, is financed by the same tradesmen who are giving money to the crusade to pressure the government to do away with sales tax and other bindings cutting into their profits and sales. Costumes of Sita are gold-braided, and the crowns of the kings are gilded. Top political leaders vie with each other for the honour of garlanding the human gods, as the organisers scramble for keepsake photographs with the VIPs.^[12]

Apart from these examples, India's capital city has a famous old Ramlila , said to have been started two centuries ago by Hindu soldiers in the Mughal army, who staged it on the banks of the Yamuna; about fifty years ago its major scenes shifted to the huge field that separates the old and new cities and is known throughout the year as Ramlila Maidan. Its climactic Ravan^[*]vadh (slaying of Ravan) incorporates giant puppet effigies, and like the comparable scene in other large urban productions, attracts a crowd of several hundred thousand persons.

Yet despite the impressive attendance at such pageants, the real significance of Ramlila for the average Delhi citizen is better suggested by the numerous neighborhood productions staged concurrently, though with far less publicity and fewer elaborate props. The same magazine article speaks (doubtless with some exaggeration), of

the thousand-odd streetside versions that flower during the ten days along lanes and bylanes of the Capital and its suburbs, converting open plots, pavements, blocked roads and fallow fields into small islands of colour, gaiety, and a touching piety not seen in the commercial fervour of rich religionists. Organised by small ethnic groups—the Paharis at one corner, the Jats in another, Biharis, Punjabis, and a host of others in their own localities—each little Ramlila is obviously a labour of love.^[13]

That the annual Ramlila festivals provide color and gaiety is readily apparent to even the most casual observer. But to understand the religious dimension of these performances—the "touching piety" that motivates them—we must delve deeper into their history and structure. To this end, we turn our attention to the Banaras region, the present heartland and presumed birthplace of the tradition.

[12] "Delhi Goes Festive," 10 (author not identified). According to Tewari, the industrial city of Kanpur mounts "more than a hundred Ramlila plays, staged in different localities"; "Folk Music of India: Uttar Pradesh," 122.

[13] "Delhi Goes Festive," 10.

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The "Sport" of Kings: Evolution of the Banaras Ramlila

Solid evidence concerning the early origins of Ramlila is meager and there is little to add to the researches of Hein on the subject.^[14] While noting that similar performances based on other Ramayan texts appear to have existed in Orissa at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Hein concludes that the dramas in their present form originated in the Banaras area either during or shortly after Tulsidas's lifetime and that their performance was from the beginning linked with the Manas text. He postulates an ancestor for both Ram and Krishna lila performances in an ancient, royally patronized tradition of Vaishnava dance-drama, which may have flourished in the Mathura region in the early centuries of the Christian era. Hein suggests that this Ur-tradition used trained adult musicians, mimes, and singers to enact Vaishnava legends and that its techniques are still reflected in the gestural and staging conventions of such diverse performance traditions as the kathakali of Kerala, the yaksagana^[*] of Karnataka, and the nearly extinct kathak performances of the Hindi-speaking regions. He concedes, however, that this hypothetical ancestral tradition bore little resemblance to the modern form of lila dramas, apart from the fact that both served to mediate scripture. Moreover, the textual record shows a gap of roughly a millennium between the last mention of the "classical" ancestor and the earliest citation of its presumed "folk" descendant.

Although Hein offers appreciative accounts of contemporary Ram and Krishna lilas , his historical chapters risk conveying the impression that these are but derivative and corrupted vestiges of a vanished "great tradition" of Vaishnava dance-drama. Because centuries of Muslim rule had destroyed the bases of patronage and training, Hein speculates, simplified pantomime by child actors replaced an elaborate code of gestures that could only have been mastered by adults; because audiences and patrons no longer understood Sanskrit, vernacular mediations had to be provided for the ancient stories. Hein recognizes a certain genius in the folk dramas, but it is a genius of adaptation to admittedly adverse conditions; "simplification," he observes, "was the price of survival."^[15] Yet the "revival" of Vaishnava performance genres beginning in the sixteenth century occurred in a milieu that, despite intervening centuries of Muslim rule, was perhaps not so unlike that of Hein's postulated

[14] See Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 105-25; also 223-71.

[15] Ibid., 265.

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ancient tradition. With the gradual. decline of centralized Muslim authority, Hindu performance traditions again came to enjoy royal and aristocratic patronage, and they developed new forms and conventions of their own. Child actors were chosen to portray the central characters not because trained adults were unavailable but because they were unacceptable to producers; the vision of the enactment had changed—a change discussed in greater detail later. The shift from a temple or palace setting was consonant with the implicit philosophy of the bhakti movement, which sought to make religious teachings accessible to the masses; it also served the organizers' political and social aims. The forms of religious expression characteristic of bhakti —kirtan , bhajan, Katha , and lila —may reflect the Muslim political presence and the decline of large-scale temple cults, but they also display positive strengths of their own. The Ramlila is outdoor and peripatetic not because latter-day patrons could not afford to construct theaters but because the pageant came to express notions of cosmography and pilgrimage that aim at reclaiming and transforming the mundane world.

The legends that credit Tulsidas with the founding of the Ramlila in Banaras are associated with the claims of specific productions to being the city's original or adilila . Three productions presently claim this status: Tulsi Ghat, Chitrakut, and Lat Bhairav Ramlilas . Although the organizing committee of the Tulsi Ghat production, which today is sponsored by the Sankat Mochan Temple, dates back only to 1933, it claims to continue a tradition begun by the poet himself. An authority cited for this claim is the Gautamcandrika , the biography of Tulsidas attributed to Krishnadatt Mishra. A passage in this text describes Tulsi's activities during a certain bright fortnight of Ashvin:

Worshiping the nine Durgas on the ninth,
bowing his head to the sami tree on Vijaydashami,^[16] he listened to the six lovely books
of the holy Ramayana^[*] of Valmiki.
He fasted on the eleventh,
broke fast on the twelfth,
and accepted Hari's prasad on the thirteenth.
On the fourteenth, while gazing at the Ganga,
he heard the account of Ram's consecration. . . .
Having worshiped Valmiki, Hanuman, and the priest,
he produced the lila of Ram's consecration.
The full moon of Sharad adorned the umbrella.

[16] This remains a custom in the Banaras area; in Ramnagar, a sami tree along the route of the Dashahra procession is still worshiped by everyone going to Ramlila .

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Ram was resplendent on a throne of earth.
On his left side, Queen Sita,
on his right, Lakshman, whisk in hand.
The noble Bharat became crown prince,
Shatrughna attended to all duties.
The commander in chief was Hanuman,
bestower of auspiciousness.
The queens performed arti . . . .
Ram was king and Sita, queen.
Shouts of "Victory!" resounded through the world.
On Assi Ghat, beside the river of the gods.^[17]

Aside from the question of its authenticity, the Gautamcandrika poses many textual problems. Its scholarly discoverer, Vishvanath Prasad Mishra, claimed to have copied it hastily from another man's rough notes, and it has been suggested that passages may have gotten out of sequence; moreover, many lines are simply obscure. At least one author has understood the whole coronation lila as a vision seen by Tulsi in his mind's eye as he sat contemplating the Ganga and listening to the recitation of Valmiki's epic.^[18] However, the conventional interpretation, reflected in the above translation, regards the passage as an account of Tulsi's initiating a custom of enacting Ram's consecration at Assi Ghat on the full moon following Vijaydashami. Later, it is claimed, this simple drama was reorganized into a multiday affair using the text of the newly completed Manas . It is also claimed that the poet selected various sites in the area to stage specific scenes and gave them the lila names by which they continue to be known—for example, the neighborhoods of Panchvati and Lanka.

The Gautamcandrika's description suggests less a drama than a tableau: a living icon of Ram enthroned with Sita at his side, Lakshman and the other brothers in attendance, and Hanuman standing in adoration while the queens wave the arti tray and sing a hymn of praise. Such tableaux vivants still form an important element in Ramlila productions, as well as the major element in jhanki (glimpse or tableau), a related performance tradition.^[19] Hein found no textual evidence earlier than the late nineteenth century for the form of jhanki he witnessed in Mathura, but the relationship of this genre to lila dramas needs further study. Awasthi is of the opinion that tableaux accompanied by text recitation and ceremonial worship represented the original form of

[17] Mishra, "Gautamcandrika mem^[*] Tulsidas ka vrttant^[*] ," 15-16.

[18] See Gopal's translation of the passage in his Tulasi Das , 77-78.

[19] On jhanki , see Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 17-30.

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Figure 21.
A living tableau (jhanki) of Ram and Sita, at Mani Parvat,
Ayodhya, during the Jhula Festival, August 1987

Ramlila , which is still reflected in primarily pantomime-based (abhinay parak ) productions—as distinguished from the dialogue-based (samvadparak ) productions she assumes represent a later stage of development.^[20] Another scholar of Banarsi Ramlila , Bhanushankar Mehta, suggests that the jhanki tradition itself is an outgrowth of Vaishnava Temple worship, wherein the divine images are displayed with ever-changing adornments of costumes and settings.^[21]

The founding of both the Chitrakut and Lat Bhairav Ramlilas is attributed to a Ram devotee known as Megha Bhagat or Narayandas. Some legends claim he was an older contemporary of Tulsi and had been staging a Ramayan play for some time using the text of Valmiki, when Tulsi approached him and suggested using the Manas instead.^[22] Together they reorganized the drama into its present twenty-one-day form, staged at various sites in the northern part of the city. But the more usual version has it that Megha was a disciple of Tulsi and began the produc-

[20] Awasthi, Ramlila , 58-60; on the relationship of the pantomime style to jhanki , see ibid., 226.

[21] Mehta, "Udit udaygiri manc par Raghuvar bal patang," pt. 1, p. 43.

[22] Reported to me by a member of the Chitrakut Ramlila organizing committee, October 1983. A similar account is given in Barr, "The Disco and the Darshan," 7; I am grateful to Barr for providing me with this paper.

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tion shortly after his master's death in 1623.^[23] The Chitrakut organizers claim that Ram appeared to Megha in the form of a small boy and presented him with a tiny bow and arrow; these are still preserved in a temple known as Atmavireshvar and are publicly displayed once a year. Another important element in the legend is that Megha was promised physical sight (darsan ) of the Lord at the climax of the lila and collapsed and died during the scene of the reunion of the brothers—the Bharat Milap—which is still regarded as the most powerful performance in this cycle.

Although popular tradition offers no conclusive proof for the antiquity of a given lila , there are several reasons to assume that the Chitrakut production is indeed of greater age than most others in the city. In Awasthi's terms, it is pantomime-based and lacks the dialogues now standard in most other productions, which appear to represent a nineteenth-century innovation. The Chitrakut version's failure to incorporate them may indicate that it follows an older tradition in which the actors did not speak or even, for the most part, act but simply made themselves available for darsan to assembled devotees who listened to recitation of the Manas . It is noteworthy that the titles of several episodes in this production's printed schedule include the word jhanki .^[24] The Ramayanis (in this context, "Manas -reciters") chant the entire epic, occasionally supplementing it with verses and songs from other works by Tulsidas; while they recite, the actors perform an abbreviated and sporadic pantomime, acting out some scenes but omitting others.

Costuming and makeup in this production also follow a distinctive set of conventions. The faces of the boy actors are not adorned, as they are in most productions, with sequins or other elaborate makeup, but are merely colored with a yellowish clay known as "Ram's dust" (Ramraj ), said to come from the pilgrimage site of Chitrakut and used to make the forehead mark of many Ramanandi sadhus. The boys' headgear is also of a peculiar design; for scenes of forest exile, Ram and Lakshman wear crowns decorated with parrot feathers and other natural ornaments, and their garlands are of tulsi leaves. A devotee explained these conventions to me as follows: "Megha Bhagat was a poor man; he could not afford costly adornment. He just took small boys into

[23] A version of this story appeared in Sarayudas, Ram-Krsna^[*]lilanukaran^[*]siddhant , 3-20; a summary of the relevant passage is given in Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 105-6.

[24] "Nandigram jhanki (Day Nine); "jhanki of Mount Subel" (Day Fourteen); "jhanki of repose" (Day Twenty).

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the forest and used whatever he found there: clay, feathers, leaves. That's why we still use this kind of makeup."^[25]

Another notable point about the Chitrakut Ramlila is its great status in the city, even though, with the exception of the Bharat Milap, most of its performances attract little public participation. It is especially significant that the maharaja of Banaras, who is preoccupied with his own concurrently running dramatic cycle at Ramnagar, absents himself on one evening each year in order to attend the Chitrakut Bharat Milap: his presence suggests that this event predates the beginning of the royally patronized pageant and that, already in the early nineteenth century, its status was such that the maharaja's presence was necessary.

The development of a royally sponsored Ramlila in the Banaras area was the result of many factors, not least of which was the city's association with Tulsidas and his epic and the presence of already-established productions that could serve as models. In discussing the development of Katha , I outlined some of the sociopolitical factors that encouraged eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Hindu rulers to patronize the Manas exegetical tradition. The Banaras kings' special cultivation of the Ramlila must likewise be viewed against the background of their dynasty's bid for power in the region. In 1740 when Balvant Singh, the son of an ambitious local tax farmer, assumed the title "raja of Banaras," he did so as a client of the nawab of Avadh (Oudh), the paramount political power in the region, who in turn still displayed a nominal allegiance to the weak Mughal regime at Delhi. As Bernard Cohn has pointed out, the Banaras "ruler" was more correctly a middleman in a complex system in which authority was parceled out at many levels and the distribution of power was constantly being renegotiated:

The Raja's obligations to the Nawabs were the regular payment of revenue and provision of troops when requested. The Raja of Banaras at every opportunity tried to avoid fulfillment of these obligations; and on several occasions the Nawab sent troops to try to bring his subordinate to terms, if not to capture and kill him. On these occasions, Balvant Singh would retreat with his treasure and army to the jungles of Mirzapur. After a time the Nawab, distracted by similar behavior in other parts of his state or by his intervention in imperial politics, would compromise with Balvant Singh and withdraw, at which time Balvant Singh would resume his control. . . . A balancing of relative weakness appears to have been central to the functioning of the system. The Nawab could not afford the complete chaos which would result from the crushing of the Raja.^[26]

[25] Baldev Das, interview, October 1983.

[26] Cohn, "Political Systems in Eighteenth Century India," 315.

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The nawab depended on the raja because no one else was able to guarantee collection of revenue in the region (even if relatively little of it actually reached the nawab's treasury), and the raja was in a similar relationship of dependency on and intermittent conflict with his subordinates, numerous petty rajas and landlords who likewise controlled revenue and troops and were the primary intermediaries between the raja and the peasants.

That the nawab of Avadh was Muslim and the raja of Banaras Hindu may at times have given an ideological edge to Balvant Singh's ambitions, although it should be noted that some of the raja's most intractable enemies were local Hindu chieftains who disputed his authority, and that the Shi'a nawabs were highly catholic in religious matters.^[27] The issue was a matter less of communal identity than of royal legitimation, for this was what the nawab provided to the Banaras rulers—a legitimation that ultimately derived from the premise of Mughal dominion. The Monas Rajputs of Bhadohi, for example, who were staunch rivals of Balvant Singh, held their land under an imperial decree from Shahjahan. Even after defeating them the raja could not finally annex their territory until he had received permission from the nawab, the nominal Mughal representative in the region. The raja's dependency was revealed again on Balvant Singh's death, when the nawab initially refused to recognize his successor, Chet Singh (ruled 1770-81); only on the intervention of Warren Hastings and the provision of lavish gifts from the aspiring prince did the Avadh ruler consent to "tie the turban" on Chet Singh, symbolizing his recognition of the latter's claim. As Cohn has noted, "Power the Raja had; but he needed authority as well. Even though the Rajas' goal in relation to the Nawabs was a consistent one of independence, they could not afford to ignore the ground rules and had to continue to seek the sanction, even if it was ex post facto, of their super-ordinates, the Nawabs."^[28]

The splendor of Indo-Muslim culture had powerfully influenced the values and tastes of the Hindu elite of North India, but by the middle of the eighteenth century the Mughal imperial mystique must have been increasingly bankrupt. In 1739, the year before Balvant Singh assumed his title, Delhi was devastatingly looted by a Persian adventurer who carried off the emerald-encrusted throne of Shahjahan. Urdu poets like

[27] Note, for example, Asaf ud-Daula's patronage of one of the Ramanandi subsects; cited in Wilson, Religious Sects of the Hindus, 57. On nawabi patronage of Ramanandis, see also van der Veer, Gods on Earth , 37-40.

[28] Cohn, "Political Systems in Eighteenth Century India," 315.

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Mir, who fled east to Avadh, lamented the downfall of the capital, its deserted streets and ruined bazaars.^[29] Within the century the reigning motif of Indo-Islamic culture would become one of decline and lamentation over lost glory—a theme of little appeal to ambitious kings in search of positive and victorious symbols.^[30] I suggest that the Banaras rulers saw a symbolic alternative to the Mughal ethos in the theme of Ramraj as articulated by Tulsidas. This vision of an ancient, universal Hindu empire supplied the aura of legitimacy and authority that the rulers had initially been obliged to seek from the nawabs; moreover, the epic's emphasis on social and political hierarchy and on the properly deferential behavior of subjects and subordinates could serve as a chastening example to the raja's rebellious underlings.

A further motive for the Banaras kings' patronage of the Ram tradition may have been their desire to maintain amicable relations with the powerful Ramanandi order of sadhus. Several recent studies have pointed to the economic and military strength of mendicant orders during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and to the fact that, ironically, Ramanandi "detached ones" (vairagis ) not only controlled considerable wealth but also served as mercenaries in royal armies. A mobile population that was difficult to control, sadhus often traveled in armed bands and seem to have virtually controlled the trade in certain commodities.^[31] The Banaras kingdom was roughly equidistant from three important Ramanandi centers: Chitrakut in the southwest, Ja-nakpur in the northeast, and Ayodhya in the northwest—the latter began to flourish again as a pilgrimage center after it ceased to be the capital of Avadh in 1765. The Banaras rulers used the conspicuous patronage of Ramanandis—especially at the time of Ramlila , when thousands of sadhus were invited to set up camp in the royal city and were fed at the raja's expense—not only to guarantee the sadhus' loyalty but also to turn their own upstart capital, on the "impure" eastern bank of the Ganga, into a major center of pilgrimage.

These developments crystallized during the reign of Balvant Singh's

[29] On the cultural ramifications of political events of the period, see Russell and Islam, Three Mughal Poets; the sack of Delhi is described on pages 19-20; some of Mir's poems about the city are quoted on pages 259-60.

[30] Later, many nationalists would be drawn to use Ramayan symbols—and to reject Muslim ones—for similar reasons; see Freitag, The New Communalism; esp. chapter 6.

[31] Burghart, "The Founding of the Ramanandi Sect"; and Thiel-Horstmann, "Warrior Ascetics in Eighteenth Century Rajasthan and the Religious Policy of Jai Singh II." See also Cohn, "The Role of the Gosains in the Economy of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Upper India."

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grandson, Udit Narayan Singh (1796-1835). At least four legends have been offered to explain this king's decision to become a Ramlila patron.

1. The maharaja, saddened because he had no offspring, was advised by a sadhu to sponsor a Ramlila and prepare a great feast for the holy men who would attend it. By serving them and drinking their caranamrt^[*] (water in which their feet had been washed), his wishes would be fulfilled.^[32] 2. The maharaja used to attend the Bharat Milap of the Chitrakut Ramlila , but one year he was delayed by bad weather. When he reached the site, he was disappointed to find that the Milap had already taken place. He returned home resolved to create his own lila by expanding the production in neighboring Chota Mirzapur.^[33] 3. The maharaja always used to attend the Ramlila established by Tulsidas at Assi Ghat. One year the crown prince fell ill and doctors gave up hope of his recovery. His father continued to cross the Ganga to attend lila as usual. One day he prayed to Ram for the prince's recovery; at once the svarup removed his garland and told the king to put it on the prince. The latter's miraculous recovery so impressed the king with the power of lila that he resolved to commence his own production by restructuring that of Chota Mirzapur.^[34] 4. Every year on Vijaydashami, Udit Narayan used to carry out the Kshatriya custom of worshiping the royal weapons, mounts, and emblems. Then he would ride out to the border of Ramnagar to have the darsan of Ram at the Chota Mirzapur lila . One year he was delayed and found the lila finished. When he returned home disappointed, the maharani proposed that the court stage its own production the following year and offered her personal funds to cover its expense. Three years later, she instituted the custom of inviting the boy actors to the fort for a feast on the final day.^[35]

Two of the above legends have a common feature: the king's arriving late at an existing production, finding that it has been held without him, and resolving to avoid such disappointment in the future. In fact, the

[32] Reported in Mehta, "Udit udaygiri," pt. 1, p. 41; and in Awasthi, Ramlila , 77. Awasthi's source for the story is Ram-Krsna^[*]lilanukaran^[*]siddhant . The sadhu is said to have been Paramhams Ramprasad, guru of the legendary expounder Shivlal Pathak.

[33] Dvivedi, "Sri Ramlila," 9.

[34] Ibid.; Mehta, "Udit udaygiri," pt. 1, p. 41; Awasthi, Ramlila , 77.

[35] Dvivedi, "Sri Ramlila," 9-10.

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present-day organizers of the Chitrakut Bharat Milap make a great point of the punctiliousness with which this lila is scheduled: the embrace of the brothers must occur at an astrologically determined moment; even though the maharaja is an honored guest, it is possible that, were he unduly delayed, the pageant would proceed without him. At Ramnagar, however, the presence of the maharaja is essential and no performance can begin until he has taken his place on the scene. The great majority of Ramlilas are likewise pancayati , or publicly produced and supported by a general collection. The stories seek to explain (and perhaps also to justify) the striking fact that at Ramnagar a king chose to make a lila distinctively his own—to associate it in a special way with his family and status.

A second point of interest is that nearly all the accounts mention the Chota Mirzapur lila as the production taken over by the king, and one adds the detail of the Vijaydashami excursion. The elaborate puja of royal weapons, horses, and elephants performed on that day, usually in connection with the worship of the goddess Durga, is an ancient and widespread Kshatriya observance, which is not everywhere explicitly linked with the Ramayan narrative. This ceremony is crowned by a martial excursion—a sallying forth to cross the borders of the kingdom that, like the movements of the sacrificial horse in the ancient asvamedha ritual, amounts to an assertion of overlordship and a challenge to neighboring kings. In the traditional Hindu conception of monarchy, the king's authority radiates out from his person and when he enters a new region, its people come under his protection. Some commentators offer a Vaishnava gloss: the king rides out with his army to offer assistance to Ram in his final battle against Ravan. But in the political climate of the early nineteenth century, Udit Narayan's gesture may have represented less an act of assistance to Ram than an effort to be like him—a local restatement of world conquest. It was also consonant with the ideological and strategic concerns of a dynasty that chose to build its fortress-palace on the eastern bank of the Ganga, which sacred geography regarded as impure, and which, according to Awasthi, had a predominantly Muslim population—a "wilderness" beyond the City of Light. This vision reappeared in the naming of the royal capital: Ramnagar—a "City of Ram" to advertise to the whole region the prestige and piety of a parvenu dynasty of Bhumihar tax farmers.

One of the most striking features of Ramlila plays is their outdoor and peripatetic method of staging: as the story shifts from one location to another, actors and audience physically move. This pattern may have

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first developed in connection with the Krishna plays of the Mathura area, especially the annual van yatra , a multiday pilgrimage through the forests and fields of Braj to sites associated with Krishna's exploits, where enactments of the appropriate legends were presented. The development of this tradition was an outgrowth of the work of the Chaitanyaite goswamis of the sixteenth century, who "rediscovered" in their meditative wanderings countless "lost" sites associated with Krishna.^[36] Such a reclamation of a religious landscape had political implications. The goswamis were sent forth from eastern India, from a sect based in the still-independent Hindu kingdom of Orissa, to Mathura, a mere thirty miles from the Mughal imperial capital at Agra. The holy places of the region needed rediscovery, it is said, because they had become hidden during centuries of mlecch (barbarian) rule. Somewhat later, the holy city of Ram was resurrected in much the same way; indeed, the imaginative recovery of Ayodhya—by pious devotees and hucksters alike—continues today, with each newly built temple claiming to mark the site of some special place or event in Ram's life.

Udit Narayan's reclamation efforts were closer to home. Utilizing the existing tradition of peripatetic Ramlila plays and assisted by his spiritual advisers, he began a physical overhaul of his capital city: "After taking charge of the Ramlila held on the border of Ramnagar, he established a place very close to the royal fort as Ram's birthplace, Ayodhya, and started the lila from the center of town. Accordingly, after very careful consideration Ayodhya, Janakpur, Girija Temple, Chitrakut, Panchvati, Pampasar, Lanka and so forth were constructed at appropriate sites, and the Ramlila was in all ways made permanent."^[37] The environments built by the king were spread over an area of some fifteen square miles and included a number of impressive permanent structures. Each location was given a name derived from the epic's geography, by which it became known throughout the year. "Ayodhya," built in the shadow of the fort, was a walled enclosure of red sandstone with a high facade at one end to represent King Dashrath's palace, and space for about seven thousand spectators. "Janakpur," two kilometers away, was an equally large compound with several lofty sandstone plinths; the vast field of "Lanka," with its earthen ziggurat representing Ravan's fortress, was set far to the southeast on the border of the raja's territory.^[38] The template of the Ramayan was laid over the whole country-

[36] On the goswamis' reclamation activities, see Vaudeville, "Braj, Lost and Found."

[37] Dvivedi, "Sri Ramlila," 10.

[38] For detailed descriptions and diagrams of the sites, see Schechner and Hess, "The Ramlila of Ramnagar," 57-59.

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side in between, radiating out from the king's seat of authority and transforming every field, forest, and tank into a permanent setting for mythic theater. Two processional avenues were constructed, flanked by a uniformly built bazaar; they resemble nothing else in the helter-skelter urban layout of Banaras and may show the influence of Jai Singh's Jaipur, but they lend themselves well to the grand processions of the lila and its climactic Bharat Milap, which occurs at their intersection in the city's main square. Ramnagar tradition holds that the whole project was overseen by venerable Ramayanis, who were guided by inner vision and their profound knowledge of the Manas to sensitively choose the most appropriate sites for each lila —sites that resonated in some mysterious way with the original Ramayan locations so that, as in Braj, their very soil was felt to participate in the myth.

As the pageant expanded and new environments were created, existing sites were also incorporated into the emerging design. In the northeast, near the intersection of the Chunar and the Grand Trunk roads, a complex consisting of a large Devi temple flanked by a vast tank and an expansive walled garden, begun during the troubled reign of Chet Singh, was brought to completion by Udit Narayan and his successor and put to use in the plays.^[39] The huge temple, with its hundred-foot spire, became known as Sumeru, after the mythical world mountain atop which Brahmalok, the world of Brahma, is situated. It was used for one of the opening scenes, in which the gods go to Brahma to plead for relief from Ravan's depredations. The vast tank became the "Milky Ocean" (ksir^[*]sagar ) on which Vishnu rests, recumbent on the serpent of infinity. The walled enclosure became Rambag, "Ram's garden," the site of the final events in the narrative, when the hero repairs there to give instruction to his subjects.

The scale and design of these sites testify to the ideological concerns of the fledgling dynasty: the temple is one of the largest in the region and its iconography shows a conscious blend of Vaishnava and Shaiva/ Shakta elements, displaying the dual loyalty of the Banaras kings. The mammoth tank with its four sandstone ghats rising in endless symmetrical tiers may have been intended to represent Manas Lake itself, nestled at the foot of the world mountain, Sumeru/Kailash. Here the lila begins: the Lord who is to take birth later in Ayodhya appears floating on the waters, as the world itself emerges at the beginning of a cosmic cycle. The Ramlila , like the Manas epic, emerges from the waters and spreads forth into our world.

[39] Choti Maharajkumari, "Ramnagar ki ramlila maharaj Cet Simha^[*] ke purva bhi?"

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As the lila expanded in space to fill the whole of the maharaja's little kingdom, so it also extended in time. According to Awasthi's sources, the old lila of Chota Mirzapur lasted for ten to twelve days (as most Ramlilas still do), but under royal patronage it grew to fill an entire calendar month, a complete unit of time by Hindu reckoning. Another, related expansion was in what might be termed textual fidelity; this was to be not merely a staging of the Ram story as recounted in the Manas but a ritual recitation (parayan^[*] ) of the complete epic. Thus, even portions of the text that did not lend themselves to dramatic enactment—such as the long "introduction" and "epilogue"—were to be recited, extending the performance by a further ten days. Moreover, since ritual recitation has an implicit objective (in this case, the welfare of the kingdom) and involves an element of risk, the performance had to be bracketed with protective rituals: an elaborate preliminary puja of Ganesh, the Goddess, the text and its reciters, and the crowns, masks, and costumes of the actors; and a final ceremony performed within a week of the conclusion of the play, in which a Brahman completes an additional twenty-four-hour recital in a small Hanuman temple at the southern window of the fort "to make up for any omission or other error."^[40]

Another notable innovation was the final feast of the kot^[*]vidai (farewell to the fort), a ceremony interestingly analyzed by Schechner, who notes that it highlights the deities' symbiotic relationship with the royal family: "the Maharaja exists in the field of energy created by Ram, and Ram exists as arranged for by the Maharaja."^[41] Significantly, modern Ramnagar promoters stress that their lila is a mahayajna , or "great sacrifice," the term used for Vedic royal rituals and present-day public recitations of the Manas —all ceremonies that promote intimacy and exhange between patrons and deities.

Udit Narayan and Ishvariprasad were the patrons and producers of this lila , but they were not its sole directors; the evolving drama represented a collaboration with some of the leading Manas scholars of the period. The "wooden-tongued" Kashthajihva Swami took a special interest in the lila and composed songs used in the nonrecitation portions of the text.^[42] Another lila enthusiast was Raghuraj Singh (1833-79),

[40] Dvivedi, "Sri Ramnagar ki sri ramlila mem^[*] devatva," 59.

[41] Schechner, Performative Circumstances , 242, 266-67.

[42] The swami was said to have come from South India, and it has been suggested that certain staging conventions reflect southern influence: i.e., the costumes of the demons are said to be in karnataki^[*] style, and a front curtain (agraparda )—popular in the yaksagana^[*] and kathakali traditions—is used for the entry of Meghnad prior to the wounding of Lakshman; Awasthi, Ramlila , 90-91.

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crown prince and later maharaja of Rewa, who was a devotee of the youthful Ram and took special delight in the scenes of Ram and Sita's "romance." At Ishvariprasad's request, he composed an epic poem in twenty-three cantos, entitled Ramsvayamvar^[*] , from which several songs likewise found their way into the script.^[43]

The most significant collaborator in lila development, however, was allegedly Harishchandra of Banaras, the poet and author who came to be known as the "father of modern Hindi literature." An enthusiastic lila goer,^[44] Harishchandra was entrusted by Ishvariprasad with the task of modernizing the dialogues and is said to have recast their original Bhojpuri into a modified Khari Boli, the dialect of Delhi that he had adopted for prose writing. His revisions also reveal the inspiration of other texts; thus, in the "Bow Sacrifice" scene, he drew on Keshavdas's Ramcandrika to create a droll dialogue between two courtiers describing the arrival of the kings who will contend for Sita's hand—a comic and theatrically effective episode that has no counterpart in the Manas . According to Awasthi, the overall effect of Harishchandra's revisions was not merely to modernize the lila , setting its prose script in a dialect that was becoming popular in his time, but also to make it more theatrical.^[45] Ishvariprasad was pleased with the poet's revisions and the Ramnagar lila became fixed in this form. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the combination of royal patronage, Ramanandi participation, Banaras location, and innovative staging contributed to the growing reputation of this production and made it both a goal of annual pilgrimage and a model for many smaller-scale lila cycles.

Three Contemporary Productions

The importance of Ramlila in Banarsi life has not been adequately conveyed in scholarly writings on the city. Hein mistakenly reported that the tradition was in decline, that the entire Manas was no longer performed at Ramnagar, and that the city as a whole mounted only three productions.^[46] More recently, Eck, in her description of the city's festival cycle, mentioned only two productions and gave the impression that

[43] C. N. Singh, interview, October 1983; a description of Ramsvayamvar^[*] is given in Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , 472.

[44] Hein cites a verse by the poet in praise of Ramlila; The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 99.>

[45] Awasthi, Ramlila , 88.

[46] Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 94.

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participation in Ramlila was restricted to the Kshatriya community.^[47] In fact, Ramlila is a flourishing and all-but-ubiquitous tradition in Banaras, enjoys the broadest patronage, and is represented by productions that are looked on as exemplary throughout North India. For although. other cities also boast old and famous productions, it is widely felt that the inhabitants of Banaras stage Ramlila with special flair and enthusiasm (dhum-dham ), and Banarsi productions are often highlighted in popular magazines at Ramlila time. The narrator of Premchand's short story "Ramlila," which concerns a small town production, observes, "The Banaras lila is world famous; they say people come from far and wide to see it."^[48]

Although the Ramlila is particularly associated with the first ten days of the bright fortnight of Ashvin, not all Banaras productions fall within this period, and some do not occur during the month of Ashvin at all. The Ramnagar production begins its epic recitation on the third or fourth night of the bright half of Bhadon and has its final ceremony in the dark fortnight of Karttik, more than forty days later. Most other productions, which typically range from ten to thirty days, fall within this period, but a few do not. The lila on Panchganga Ghat, for example, does not even begin until after the Divali festival, a full fortnight after the conclusion of the Ramnagar pageant, and runs for another few weeks. Thus a dedicated lila -goer not only has a choice of numerous productions during the height of the season but can, in theory, attend a nightly performance of one or another cycle for close to three months. In 1982, on the night after the conclusion of the Ramnagar cycle, I chanced on a decorated stage in the middle of an intersection near my house. Surrounding streets were festooned with lights and lined with snack and souvenir vendors, and loudspeakers were blaring cinema music and advertisements. I soon learned that the Bharat Milap of the Khojwan Ramlila cycle, which runs on a different schedule from that of Ramnagar, was to occur later that night. When I returned to witness it I was promptly accosted by a betel seller who had been a regular at the Ramnagar plays; exclaiming delightedly, "Good! You've come too!" he added, "See brother, here in Kashi the Lord's lila goes on and on!"

Thus, it is more correct to speak of a Ramlila "season" than of a mere festival—a season that begins during the rainy month of Bhadon, runs through the transition month of Ashvin, and continues well into the

[47] Eck, Banaras, City of Light , 269.

[48] Premchand, "Ramlila," 55.

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cool, autumnal month of Karttik. During this season, wooden platforms sprout like mushrooms at major crossroads and on many ghats. To a daytime visitor, these dilapidated structures hardly seem to warrant notice, but the same visitor returning at the proper hour of the night would see them transformed by rich draperies and backdrops into palaces and battlefields to be trodden by the feet of tiny gods in gilded and spangled costumes. In all, according to a recent tally, the city mounts some fifty-six annual productions, the majority of which are staged by the citizens of various neighborhoods, each of which has a local Ramlila committee. The financial arrangements are essentially as described by Hein for the Braj productions: a month or two before performances begin, the committee conducts a general collection (canda ) throughout the neighborhood, recording the amount given by each donor. Prosperous merchants may contribute substantial sums each year but, as Hein noted, a good portion of the typical pageant's budget comes from countless small donations, which make even some of the poorest citizens Ramlila patrons.^[49]

The Ramlila is a small industry and supports a variety of peripheral enterprises: artisans who build effigies and create fireworks; tent houses that lend platforms, awnings, and lights; and shops that provide costumes, masks, and props. Several such establishments are located in the old brass bazaar in Thatheri Gali, and although these stores also outfit temple images and nautanki^[*] troupes (another genre of folk theater), the heavy concentration of Hanuman, Ravan, and Shurpankha masks hanging from their rafters clearly advertises one of their main lines. Then there are the hawkers of lila -related toys and treats: toy bows and arrows, clay figurines of Hanuman, and small papier-mâché masks of the same design as those worn by players.

One sign of the popularity of Ramlila , and an indication that its productions attract audiences from outside their immediate localities, is the inclusion of daily schedules throughout the season in the city's Hindi newspapers. The most comprehensive listing appears on the "Banaras and Vicinity" page of Aj , the city's largest-circulation daily. The evening's program at Ramnagar is always given first, followed by that of Chitrakut—a sign of the high prestige of these two productions. Eight days before Dashahra in 1982, for example, the listings began as follows:

[49] Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 93-97.

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Figure 22.
Ramlila masks and props at the headquarters of the Khojwan
Ramlila Committee (photo courtesy of William Donner)

Kashi's Ramlila
Tuesday, 11 October

Ramnagar: Interlude on Mount Subel
Chitrakut: Fight with Jayant
Mauniji: Severing of the Nose
Daranagar: Royal Consecration
Aurangabad: Shabari's Good Fortune
Gayghat: Slaying of Khar and Dushan
Nadesar: Burning of Lanka
Ardali Bazar: Killing of Bali
Khojwan: Meeting with Nishadh
Khajwi: Meeting with Hanuman
Lahtara: Sumant's Arrival
Ashapur: Abduction of Sita
Lallapura: Janak's Arrival^[50]

[50] Aj , October 11, 1982, p. 3.

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and so on through another forty listings. Besides highlighting the variety of episodes that might be viewed on any given night, such notices help readers keep track of the progress of various pageants, in anticipation of particular events they don't want to miss. Kumar notes that "there is a sort of consensus in every muhalla as to which lilas are of most importance, and which of middling and of low importance, and attendance conforms to this judgment."^[51] Many otherwise undistinguished productions have one episode that enjoys citywide fame, such as the "Dhanush Yajna" of Laksa, the "Nakkatayya" of Chaitganj, or the "Dashami" of Chaukaghat. These attract thousands of spectators from all over the city, but each production follows its own schedule (and may even follow a different calendar, since local pandits sometimes disagree on the timing of important lunar dates), and so the newspaper listing, based on the schedules printed by each committee, is a convenient reference.

Chitrakut and the Bharat Milap

The Chitrakut Ramlila Committee is headquartered in a walled garden adjacent to the Bare Ganesh Temple in Lohatiya, the old iron bazaar, and its production is staged there and at six other locations in the northern part of Banaras—the area sometimes referred to as Kasikhand^[*] and thought to represent the more ancient part of the city. "Chitrakut" is the name of a pilgrimage place on the Madhya Pradesh border where Ram is supposed to have passed much of his forest exile; it is also the name of a locality that is the site of several performances in this cycle, although it seems probable that, here as elsewhere, the locality's name derives from the play rather than vice versa.^[52] As already noted, this production is widely regarded as the city's oldest and (with Ramnagar) most distinguished Ramlila . But whereas Ramnagar is famous for the whole of its thirty-one days, the twenty-one-day Chitrakut cycle enjoys its fame primarily for a single lila : the Bharat Milap ("Reunion with Bharat," reenacting Ram's triumphant return to Ayodhya and meeting with his faithful brother), which occurs on the seventeenth day of the cycle in a locality known as Nati Imli.

Two legends about the Chitrakut pageant are often cited by Banarsis to explain its popularity. The first is the story, already referred to, of its founding by Megha Bhagat and of Ram's promise that he himself would

[51] Kumar, "Popular Culture in Urban India," 279 n. 45.

[52] Hein points out that the legends of the founding of this lila appear to conflate Megha Bhagat with Tulsi himself, who reputedly had a vision of Ram and Lakshman at Chitrakut; The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 106-7.

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be physically present on certain days. Some say that he promised to be present on eight days, others claim six, and still others four. All agree, however, concerning the Lord's presence at the Bharat Milap, at which Megha Bhagat is said to have had the supreme vision and surrendered his body.

The second story concerns a nineteenth-century Hanuman player who was mocked by an Englishman—in some versions, by the district collector, who brought a party of "English ladies and gentlemen" to view the native spectacle; in others, by a "Padre MacPherson" who criticized the performance as part of his attack on Hindu customs.^[53] It is said that the day's lila depicted Hanuman's mission to Lanka and was held on the bank of the Varuna, the Ganga tributary that marks the city's northern limit. The Englishman, who had some knowledge of the Ramayan, mocked the religious pretensions of the play: "You say these are gods, but really they are only actors. The real Hanuman leapt across the sea; yours couldn't even cross this small river!" Accepting this challenge, the offended actor bowed before the child portraying Ram, who presented him with his ring—just as the real Ram did before dispatching Hanuman to Lanka. Then, fastening on his heavy brass mask, he strode to the edge of the Varuna—whose stream is some eighty feet wide—and attempted the impossible leap. To the astonishment of all, he succeeded, but fell down dead on the other shore. The foreigners' mockery was silenced—some versions claim that the collector officially announced that henceforth this production alone was to be regarded as the "true" Ramlila —and the actor's mask and costume were enshrined in a samadhi at the Chitrakut lila site, where they are still worshiped each year by the current Hanuman, his descendant.^[54] This popular story suggests the distinction drawn by devotees between a dramatic performance and a true lila : the former is only a representation, but the latter is a realization. It also suggests the paradoxical relationship—central to Ramlila —of the player to his role. The hero is an ordinary man who is challenged to perform a superhuman feat and does so at the cost of his

[53] Awasthi's sources give the year as 1868 and identify the player as a Brahman named Gangaram Bhatt, whose descendants are still said to play Hanuman; Ramlila , 62. Mehta gives the actor's name as Tekram; "Udit udaygiri," pt. 1, p. 43. Barr's informants assign the incident to 1803; "The Disco and the Darshan," 11.

[54] One hears various explanations for the player's demise. Some say the svarup when blessing him had ordered him not to look back, and that disobedience cost him his life. An elderly silk merchant gave me a different interpretation: "When he reached the other bank, the thought 'I did it!' entered his heart, and with it the shadow of self-pride. That was intolerable to Hanuman-ji, and so he expired." Baldevdas, interview, October 1983.

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life; yet the legend implies that he is able to succeed precisely because he is not, at that moment, an ordinary man. He becomes his role and "crosses over" in more ways than one.

The Chitrakut cycle begins each year on the ninth or tenth of the dark fortnight of Ashvin, some ten days after the start of the Ramnagar plays. As noted earlier, the Brahman boys chosen to be svarups are unusually young; Ram in 1983 was only nine, Lakshman and Sita a year or two younger, and the other brothers younger still. The adult characters—Hanuman, Vibhishan, Ravan, and the rest—are played by the same men year after year, and the roles are passed down in their families.

Bharat Milap

In terms of attendance, the Nati Imli Bharat Milap is probably the single biggest event in Banaras's annual festival cycle. In 1983 the superintendent of police estimated the crowd at 500,000 persons—nearly half the population of the city.^[55] This astonishing participation is not a recent phenomenon; the scale of the event in the late nineteenth century is suggested by a report in the Aj of October 30, 1893, which remarked of the Milap, "It would have to be an invalid or disabled person who does not go to see it."^[56] Notices often appear in the press for reserved places on adjoining housetops; there are also "Bharat Milap clubs," which rent whole roofs. Many businesses close for the day, and from early morning all roads leading into the northern half of the city are closed to vehicular traffic to facilitate the flow of crowds into the Milap area. By midday it is all but impossible to get anywhere near the site without a special guest badge from the Ramlila committee—and these are so parsimoniously distributed that one might suppose they were tickets to paradise.

The site of the Milap is a rectangular field containing a huge tamarind tree (imli ) from which the area takes its name. At each end of the field are stone platforms, connected by a slightly raised runway perhaps a hundred yards long. Each year the platforms are freshly whitewashed, the maidan is cleaned, and a processional path of crushed red stone is laid for the maharaja of Banaras and his retinue, who will approach from one of the side streets. Crowd control arrangements are particularly impressive: a bamboo barricade some fifteen feet high is erected

[55] The estimate was made by the superintendent, Shrinath Mishra (no relation to the famous expounder of the same name), in the course of an interview with Linda Hess, to whom I am grateful for this information.

[56] Cited by Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras , 198.

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wherever the field fronts on a street, and the inside of the barrier is lined. by hundreds of policemen; this is to prevent a crush from the densely packed crowd, which fills surrounding streets for blocks in every direction. A police command post on the roof of an adjacent building also serves as a reception center for dignitaries and boasts a colored awning, carpets and chairs, and a booth for All-India Radio, which broadcasts live coverage of the event. Loudspeakers on nearby houses carry announcements of lost children, although all sound is tastefully hushed as the great moment approaches. The impressive discipline and clockwork timing suggest a state ceremony or the opening of the Olympic Games, yet the remarkable thing about the Milap in comparison with such events is that all the elaborate arrangements serve to bracket a performance that lasts roughly four minutes. The incongruity of this is not lost on Banarsis, who appear to take special delight in it. "The whole thing is over in the blink of an eye," one man remarked to me, "yet hundreds of thousands flock to see it, and you must go too!"

The protocol of the Milap allows for the participation of several of the city's traditional communities. On the eve of the great day, a palanquin bearing Ram and his companions is carried from Chauka Ghat (representing Lanka) to the Chitrakut enclosure (representing the Nishadh's ashram, where Ram rests for the night). The enormous wooden palanquin, brilliantly painted in designs of flowers, birds, and animals, represents the flying chariot (puspak^[*]viman ) of Ravan, now utilized by the victorious Ram, and is carried by members of the merchant community, who believe that this service insures their commercial success during the year.^[57] On Milap day itself, the same task is performed by 125 members of the Ahir, or milkman, caste, who dress in white and tie on red turbans symbolizing their resolve (sankalp^[*] ) to carry the Lord's vehicle.^[58] They assemble outside the Chitrakut enclosure, within which the boy actors are being costumed, and worship the palanquin before lifting it. Not least among the privileges that their act of service confers is admittance to the cordoned-off inner field, from which they can obtain a clear view of the climactic embrace.

Another class of functionaries are the "beautifiers" (srngariya^[*] ), who supervise the costuming and makeup of the actors. These men represent a community of Gujarati silk merchants that has lived in Banaras for some five centuries. They are recognizable by distinctive turbans of

[57] Awasthi, Ramlila , 63.

[58] Barr, "The Disco and the Darshan," 10; Barr notes the intense competition for the 125 turbans, which are distributed by the organizers.

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gold-brocaded purple silk; they claim that the privilege of wearing this headgear on state occasions was granted them by Emperor Akbar in appreciation for silk they provided to the Mughal court. Their prosperous community carefully maintains its ethnic identity even while it occupies a prestigious niche in its adopted city. Its members speak Hindi outside the home, but Gujarati within it—a remarkable continuity in view of the fact that, as some of the men told me, they have never been to Gujarat and have long ceased to have relatives there. Notable too is the fact that the srngariyas^[*] all belong to the Pushti Marg sect, founded by Vallabhacharya, and worship Krishna as the supreme deity. Pushti Marg theology maintains the absolute supremacy of the Krishna avatar and regards Ram as only a partial manifestation; the merchants' greeting among themselves is "Jay Sri Krsna^[*] !" which contrasts with the more typical Banarsi "Ram Ram" or "Jay Sita-Ram!" In Vallabhite temples special emphasis is given to the elaborate adornment (srngar^[*] ) of images, which varies with the season and time of day, and the devotee charged with these arrangements is likewise known as a srngariya^[*] . In Banaras, even though Krishna is not without his adherents, the silk merchants have adapted themselves to the predominant Vaishnava strain of Ram bhakti by assuming the role of costumers in this prestigious Ramlila .^[59]

It was one of the srngariyas^[*] , with whom I had chatted briefly while the actors were being made up, who secured my entry to the inner field at Nati Imli on Bharat Milap day in 1983—for the soldiers guarding the bamboo gate, nervous at the press of the enormous crowd outside, had ceased honoring even guest badges by the time I arrived at the enclosure. Once inside, I made my way to the vicinity of the main platform, where I found myself surrounded by prominent Ram devotees and patrons, all dressed in their finest clothes. Also present were the twenty-four Ramayanis, identifiable by broad sashes of ocher satin, who would chant from the Manas during the performance. The gleaming white platform was encircled by purple-turbaned srngariyas^[*] , each equipped with a basket of flower petals.

The hour fixed for the Milap is always observed with great punctiliousness. Mehta has noted that early evening in this season is a time of special beauty, which seems to contribute to the extraordinary and otherworldly atmosphere.^[60] In 1983 the appointed hour was 4:45 P.M. , and

[59] Such a catholic adaptation was encouraged by the example of Tulsidas himself, who is said to have resided for a time near the Gopalji Temple and to have felt special devotion for its resident deity; note his authorship of the Krsna^[*]gitavali .

[60] Mehta, personal communication to Kumar; The Artisans of Banaras , 198-99.

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as afternoon shadows lengthened, a flood of golden light filled the enclosure and the atmosphere of joyous anticipation became unmistakable and infectious. At about 4:30 a slowly swelling roar in the distance informed us that the palanquin had left the Chitrakut enclosure, and we strained to catch a first glimpse of it beyond the tall barricades, the massed ranks of policemen, and the sea of upturned faces. First to appear was a smaller palanquin bearing Vibhishan, the newly crowned king of Lanka. A whimsical-looking man with a long gray beard and ash-white makeup, accompanied by several small children, Vibhishan was carried to a spot close to the main platform as an honored guest. The cheer of the crowd swelled to engulf the whole square as the great viman itself came into view, seemingly borne on a flood tide of bobbing red turbans (popular lore holds that it can actually be seen to float above the milkmen's shoulders). In slow majesty it entered the field and came to rest on the farther of the linked platforms. No sooner had the cheer greeting its arrival died down than another became audible from the opposite side of the enclosure, gradually growing into a thundering chant of "Har, Har Mahadev!" and signaling the approach of the maharaja. The sight of the royal elephant, resplendent in its trappings of velvet and gold, set off another wave of cheering. Vibhuti Narayan Singh, wearing a jeweled turban and shaded by a white silk umbrella, acknowledged the crowd's greeting with a raised namaskar and rode across the length of the enclosure to circumambulate Ram's palanquin.

In the meantime, Bharat and Shatrughna had also arrived and had ascended the nearer platform. Everyone was now in place, and as the magic moment approached, the dead Lash of a great expectancy fell over the multitude. At the far end of the field, Ram and Lakshman descended from their palanquin and stood at the edge of the runway; simultaneously Bharat and Shatrughna prostrated themselves full-out on their platform. A clash of cymbals announced the presence of the Ramayanis, who began singing Tulsi's description of the scene in the familiar chant special to Ramlila . So perfectly synchronized and dramatically effective was the timing that it seemed as if an invisible clock, of which all were aware, was counting off the few remaining seconds, bringing every onlooker to a calculated emotional peak. With measured steps Ram and Lakshman began walking along the runway, but they soon broke into a trot, which gradually increased to a full run. The mass silence was replaced by a kind of involuntary and ecstatic roar, as when a crowd at a sporting event anticipates the imminent completion of a brilliant play. An instant later, the runners reached their destination and sprinted up the stone steps, where each lifted up one of the prostrate

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figures and embraced him. A cloud of red and white blossoms, thrown in handfuls by the men ringing the platform, fluttered down over the embracing boys. Loud as the cheering had been, a great sound seemed to explode above it: a mixed cacophony of bells, gongs, conches, and roars of "Raja Ramcandra ki jay!" A moment later the boys realigned themselves for a second embrace, Ram with Shatrughna and Bharat with Lakshman, more cheering and more flowers. Then they formed a line, arms around one another's waist, and faced straight ahead, bestowing their much-desired darsan on the crowd facing the platform; then rotated forty-five degrees and again paused; and so on, through two complete rounds of the eight directions, each pause accompanied by an acknowledging roar from the appropriate sector.

And then it was over. The boys descended and walked to the waiting palanquin, which was soon hoisted on the shoulders of the Ahirs to proceed in slow procession to the committee's headquarters, giving darsan to tens of thousands more en route. The royal elephant departed for a rendezvous with a waiting limousine, which would speed the maharaja back to Ramnagar to supervise the delayed start of his own Ramlila . For the rest of the multitude at Nati Imli, there was little to do but stand and wait; it would be nearly an hour before the approach roads cleared enough to allow the square's human tide to flow back into the rest of the city.

The Nati Imli Bharat Milap was one of the most powerful dramatic events I had ever witnessed. Yet, as my Banarsi friends had promised, the "performance" lasted only a few moments, involved not a word of dialogue, and hinged on a single, elemental gesture. Awasthi has remarked that its extraordinary effect on spectators serves to remind us that the real power of "pantomimic lila " lies in its jhanki , or tableau.^[61] It may be added that at Nati Imli there are additional factors at work: the powerful religious expectation, supported by the story of Ram's promise of physical presence on this day; the beauty and auspiciousness of the hour; the impressive, orderly arrangements; and the presence of the maharaja, who represents not only royal authority but also Shiva, patron deity of Banaras, and whose attendance is an affirmation of the city's cultural identity. There is a further sociocultural dimension too—for one may well ask why, of all the emotional events that follow the death of Ravan, the reunion with Bharat alone evokes such an ecstatic response. I return to this topic in my final chapter.

[61] Awasthi, Ramlila , 63.

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The Enthronement

Two days after Bharat Milap I attended the performance of Ram's enthronement (rajgaddi ) in the garden compound at Lohatiya. The atmosphere could hardly have been more different from that of the frenetic and spectacular Milap. The same little boys who, two days before, had been the focus of the straining eyes of a vast multitude now sat casually on an open-air stage in a small garden, surrounded by the organizers and a handful of adult actors. And even though this performance too had been announced in the newspapers and no effort was made to exclude anyone, the total attendance during the course of the evening cannot have amounted to more than a few hundred persons. Indeed, the atmosphere was so casual that I felt I was witnessing a private party staged by the organizers for their own amusement. The child actors were in full costume—gorgeous silk robes and crowns for this special night—but they hardly seemed to be in "character"; much of the time they were lounging idly on the dais or playfully chatting among themselves, seemingly oblivious of the activities of the adults. The latter were in high spirits; everyone seemed to know everyone else, and the atmosphere suggested a backstage party after a successful opening night. Yet this was neither a party nor a rehearsal, but an actual performance of the lila of Ram's enthronement. What was one to make of it?

Amid the casual ambience, the expected sequence of events did unfold, after a fashion. The chief Ramayani, Pandit Bholanath Upadhyay, invited Ram to come sit with him near a small fire altar, where they were joined by several other Brahmans. The Manas passage describing the royal consecration was sung, and then the Brahmans began chanting Vedic mantras while their leader, smiling broadly, showed Ram what to do, guiding his little hand as he spooned oblations into the fire at appropriate intervals. While the ritual proceeded, the "party" continued all around. Vibhishan lounged at one end of the dais, conversing with an elderly devotee. Bharat and Sita played guessing games, periodically dissolving into giggles; Shatrughna fell asleep. Other groups of people sat in the garden chatting and paying no attention to what was going on. Throughout most of the evening (the ceremony began after 9:00 P.M. and continued for several hours) there were, with the exception of myself, no spectators; there were only participants, either in the lila itself or in the "party" that surrounded it. As the evening wore on, I found myself increasingly puzzled by the nature of the performance I was witnessing. It seemed inconceivable that the chuckling adult participants in the fire

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ceremony, much less the inattentive onlookers, actually believed that the little boys were really the divine characters of the Ramayan. Was any "willing suspension of disbelief" possible in such a casual, even chaotic atmosphere?

But when the fire ritual concluded, an interesting thing happened. Upadhyay took Ram by the hand and led him to the marble throne platform at one end of the open-air stage. Sita, Lakshman, and Bharat followed; even little Shatrughna was roused from his nap and escorted over. The red-suited Hanuman donned his enormous brass mask and stepped forward, fly whisk in hand; a glittering silk umbrella was unfurled. Suddenly everyone in the garden was attentive. A tableau had taken shape: Ramchandra was enthroned in glory, Sita at his side, in the midst of his beloved brothers and companions. It was the climactic vision of the Manas , like Tulsi's own reputed first lila ; the nearly full moon of Sharad rode in the sky overhead. The Ramayanis took their places before the dais and intoned a hymn of praise from the Gitavali , and a steady stream of neighborhood people began to file through the garden gate for darsan .

Another performance followed: a long red carpet was unrolled at the foot of the throne, and Upadhyay stood to one side of it. The adult characters in the lila —Hanuman, Sugriv, Vibhishan, and the others—formed a queue at the far end. While "Ram" lounged casually on the throne, looking boyishly amused, the chief Ramayani addressed him in the reverent and formal language of a royal minister: "Divine Majesty, King of Kings, Lord Ramchandra!" He then began presenting each player to him with a brief introduction that was both reverent and, apparently, intentionally amusing:

Your Majesty, here before you is Sugriv. You know, Lord, he is a great devotee of yours, and he has done an awful lot for you. He bit off the nose and ears of Kumbhakarna, you'll recall. [laughter from onlookers] He attacked Meghnad too, and Ravan as well, and altogether he has suffered a lot on your account! Please be merciful, and bestow your grace on him.

While this patter was delivered, the player in question executed a series of seven full-body prostrations, beginning at the far end of the carpet and ending at the foot of the throne. These were accompanied by many chuckles of amusement from onlookers, both at the mock-seriousness of the introductions and at the difficulty with which some of the players—older men in elaborate, constraining costumes and heavy masks—executed their bows. These were anything but casual, however; each pros-

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Figure 23.
A procession of boys adorned as Ramlila svarups

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tration, achieved with no little huffing and puffing, was total. The man lay flat-out, arms extended toward the throne. Arriving at its foot, each player knelt and removed his mask, revealing a forehead beaded with sweat but a face grave and composed. His reward was forthcoming: the little Ram leaned forward and dropped a garland around his neck.

Reflecting on the evening's performance—on what seemed to me its incongruous conflation of high emotion and low comedy, casual ambience and occasional ritual intensity—I recalled a line from one of Hess's writings on Ramlila and its devotees: "people who grew up in easy intimacy with the God of personality and paraphernalia, the God who has characteristics like their uncles and cousins and is often as common and unheeded a household item."^[62] The evening's experience had clarified a point often made by lila aficionados: that the little boys in gilded tiaras really are both children and gods. They are assumed to be guileless and innocent, free of the worries and compulsions of adults. Yet they are not merely blank screens on which devotees project the God of their imaginations; "attributes" are of the essence here, and the ones that the boys possess—innocence, physical attractiveness, Brahman-hood (equated with both social and religious prestige)—are essential ingredients in what they become. The boy chosen as a svarup is like the unblemished nim tree that the woodcarvers of Puri select, once every twelve to nineteen years, for their new image of Jagannath, Lord of the World.^[63] Just as the Jagannath devotee may be aware that the image he adores was once a tree, so the Chitrakut spectator may recall, at times, that the boy beneath the crown is so-and-so's son, lives in such-and-such lane, and so forth. At the same time this boy possesses, by virtue of his attributes, the authority (adhikar ) not merely to represent but to become Ramchandra, just as the right kind of tree becomes Jagannath. And having become the part, he can offer something that every devotee craves and even temple images cannot bestow as tangibly: familiarity and intimacy with God; the chance to do seva ("service," connoting both formal worship and actual physical attention) and to experience "participation," which is one of the truest translations of the word bhakti . Each episode of the Chitrakut Ramlila affords a different kind of participation: the mass participation of the Milap, when the lila expands to incorporate the whole city and the auspicious paradigm of the

[62] Hess, "Ram Lila: The Audience Experience," 185.

[63] On the recreation of the Jagannath deities, see Tripathi, "Navakalesvara."

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reunited brothers reaffirms familial and social hierarchies; and the intimate participation of the smaller performances, when large public symbols are replaced by near-private intimacies and grownup devotees play house with a child God.

Khojwan: Ramnagar Remade

The Ramlila of Khojwan Bazaar, a neighborhood on the southwestern outskirts of Banaras, makes claim neither to antiquity nor to originality.^[64] When the current production was organized, around the beginning of the twentieth century, Khojwan was a little kasba (market town) well beyond the southern boundary of the city. Today spreading urbanization has engulfed it, but Khojwan's narrow, meandering main street, fronted by high stone buildings, strikes a contrast to the grid-patterned colonies that have sprung up around it. Every muhalla of Banaras nurtures its own sense of identity, but Khojwan's seems particularly strong. The tidy streets, flourishing bazaar, and new secondary school all bespeak municipal pride, and this is equally in evidence in the local Ramlila arrangements.

The printed announcement of this lila is the most elaborate that I have encountered. Its heading reads "Historic Ramlila of Khojwan Bazaar, Kashi," and this is followed by a paragraph summarizing the pageant's short history:

It is well known that the acts of Ram composed by Goswami Tulsidas are performed in Khojwan Bazaar for the benefit of devotees. In olden times, revered Mahatma Apadas-ji sponsored it for some days at Manasarovar, Sonarpura, Kedareshvar, and so forth; after that the late Gokul Sahu-ji, on the Mahatma's departing for heaven, with the assistance of the late Kashinath Sahu and Jagganath Sahu (the grain dealer), sponsored it in Khojwan Bazaar and for his whole life dedicated himself to it, body, mind, and fortune. Now that he has departed the world, this great work has been accomplished for sixty-six years with the will of the community and the assistance of devotees.,^[65]

In her discussion of the patronage of neighborhood Ramlila productions, Kumar notes that organizers tend to fall into two categories:

[64] The spelling is a common romanization of khojvam^[*] . I am grateful to Diane Coccari, who did extensive fieldwork in Khojwan, for having first suggested the local Ramlila as deserving of research. See her study, "The Bir Babas of Banaras."

[65] Khojwan Ramlila Committee circular, 1983. The term that I have translated "historic" is pracin (ancient), which is routinely used in Banaras for anything older than a decade or two, and seems to connote more a sense of accepted tradition than chronological age.

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(1) middle-level merchants and traders in grain, wood, metal, or cloth as well as small shopkeepers, including those of milk and pan , and (2) religious figures, whether "official" (mahant or panda^[*] ) or "nonofficial" (vyas , sadhu , baba ). The former would control money through his institution; the latter would attract it through his personality. As a rule, the people of categories (1) and (2) work in association.^[66]

In its origin and organization, the Khojwan lila conforms to this model. The inspiration originally came from a Vaishnava sadhu who started a series of performances at sites in surrounding communities; the locations mentioned—the great tank called Manasarovar (after the Himalayan lake of Tulsi's allegory) and the bazaar at Sonarpura, about two kilometers northeast of Khojwan—are still used for certain performances. The sadhu's efforts were carried on by a group of traders in the bazaar; "Sahu" is the name of a mercantile caste, and there are still a number of Sahus among the forty-one officers of the Ramlila committee prominently listed on the schedule. The reference to the pageant's being conducted "with the will" of the community (pancayatajnanusar ) indicates that the source of its funding is a general solicitation. It was thus, I was told by committee members, that the 1983 production costs of approximately Rs 35,000 were met: "Some people give four or eight rupees, some give fifty-one, some give three hundred or more, according to their means." The announcement states that the lila has been organized in this fashion for sixty-six years—that is, since 1917, although it also indicates that Mahatma Apadas started his performances somewhat earlier.^[67]

Today the Khojwan Ramlila enjoys the status of a venerable community institution and major investments in the pageant have recently been made. In the heart of the bazaar, just behind the popular Puran Das Temple, stands a handsome two-story structure with an open-air stage at ground level and a suite of rooms above. This tidy, brightly painted Sri Ramlila Srngar^[*] Bhavan ("Ramlila Production Center," as an inscription on the facade announces) serves as committee headquarters; its upper rooms contain trunks of costumes and props, and their walls are hung with masks. Also kept there are the oversize copies of the Manas from which the Ramayanis chant and the script-books used by actors. These were composed by a local resident when the pageant first began

[66] Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras , 185.

[67] Barr was told that the lila was started in c. 1885 under the patronage of the maharaja of Vijayanagar, whose Banaras residence is located in Bhelupura, roughly midway between Khojwan and the river. Later, the pageant moved westward and its patronage shifted from royal to mercantile; "The Disco and the Darshan," 27.

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and have recently been recopied and painstakingly illuminated by an amateur artist, a cloth merchant who, like the sari dealers at Chitrakut, also serves as makeup master. The beauty and exuberance of this man's work—some of his paintings also decorate the inner walls of the building—epitomize the enthusiasm and flair with which the burghers of Khojwan mount their lila ; appropriately enough, the artist's name is Shobhanath (Lord of beauty).

The stage on the lower level fronts on a large field that serves as the schoolyard for the local secondary school, in which the pageant's director is a teacher. In the lila , the stage and the field represent Ayodhya, which thus, as at Ramnagar, is situated in the heart of the community. Other sites—gardens, enclosures, tanks, and small stages—are scattered throughout the area, and participants sometimes trek several kilometers in the course of an evening. Many sites feature permanent structures built especially for Ramlila . One of the most impressive is located at the end of Khojwan's main street: a lofty pavilion with polished columns, resembling a permanent reviewing stand. This edifice represents Ram's abode in Panchvati, from which Sita is abducted by Ravan; it is used for the performance known as Nakkatayya (nakkataiya^[*] ), which is described below. Apart from such specially built settings, existing sites in the area have also been incorporated into the drama; thus the large tank known as Manasarovar is used to stage the "Crossing of the Ganga" episode. When Ram alights on its further shore, he is received by the inmates of an adjacent Ramanandi ashram, who become (in the play) the denizens of the sage Bharadvaj's hermitage at Prayag.

The scale and permanence of the lila structures at Khojwan are striking—many community productions manage with makeshift platforms that are hauled about and rearranged to suggest the various sites—and their obvious model is Ramnagar, which lies across the river to the east. Yet the manner in which the prestigious royal pageant is recreated in Khojwan indicates the shift from princely to mercantile patronage that occurred at the close of the nineteenth century, which I noted in my discussion of Katha . The Ramnagar pageant, like the older style of privately endowed Katha , begins in late afternoon, and all but a few of its performances conclude by 9:00 or 10:00 at night. The timing serves the convenience of the royal patron, who schedules a long intermission after less than a hour of performance, during which he retires for his evening prayers—a procedure that, as Schechner has noted, daily advertises the maharaja's punctilious piety.^[68] The Khojwan lila , on the other hand,

[68] Schechner, Performative Circumstances , 262.

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like modern Katha festivals, never gets under way before 9:00 P.M., when the bazaar closes for the night. This has the result, given the leisurely pace at which most performances unfold, of setting many important scenes at 2:00 or 3:00 A.M. —a fact that organizers and players seem to take, for a month at least, in bleary-eyed stride.

At Khojwan a group of enthusiastic devotees backed by a prosperous business community have taken Maharaja Udit Narayan's inspiration one step further. Unable to go to Ramnagar regularly, they have brought Ramnagar home by reshaping their community to conform to the epic's geography, thereby also making a successful bid for wider recognition within the city. Khojwan was one of the handful of names commonly cited when I asked Banarsis to identify the most notable productions in the metropolitan area, and its biggest event, the Nakkatayya, ranks among the half-dozen or so top crowd-drawing lilas in the city. Such prominence suggests that Ramlila can serve as an effective vehicle for community identity and pride.

Although the Khojwan lila has drawn inspiration from Ramnagar, the imitation has not been slavish. While attempting to match the royal pageant's layout and scale, the local people have made innovations in specific details, which mark the lila as their own. At thirty-one days, it is fully as long as the maharaja's production, but it begins and ends about a week later and its choice of episodes for enactment is notably different. In his description of Ramlila in the Braj area, Hein noted a tendency among contemporary productions to stage and recite less of the Manas , which he ascribed to the increasing obscurity of Tulsi's sixteenth-century dialect.^[69] The relatively new Khojwan production, however, displays an impressive degree of fidelity to its text and in fact dramatizes even more of the Manas than the Ramnagar pageant does. The Khojwan lila does not confine its staging to Tulsi's central narrative but begins early in Book One with the story of Sati's delusion, the courtship and marriage of Shiva and Parvati, Narad's infatuation (a crowd-pleasing comedy that is included in many neighborhood productions), and other episodes prefixed by Tulsi to his main story. It devotes six nights to these preliminaries, which precede even the birth of Ravan and the gods' plea to Vishnu to incarnate himself—the episodes with which the Ramnagar cycle begins.

In its staging conventions too, the Khojwan lila closely follows the epic text. At Ramnagar when dialogue occurs in the poem, the Ramayanis chant a character's speech in its entirety and then stop while the

[69] Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 275.

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actor gives a prose paraphrase of the passage. At Khojwan long speeches are broken up into shorter units roughly corresponding to sentences; the resulting frequent alternation between chanting Ramayanis and declaiming actors creates the effect of a line-by-line prose commentary. In addition, the couplets that regularly occur within speeches (which at Ramnagar are rendered into prose) are often left untranslated at Khojwan; the actors interrupt their prose declamations to sing these couplets with great emotion, repeating what the Ramayanis have just chanted.

Another Khojwan innovation is a buffoon character reminiscent of the vidusaka^[*] of classical Sanskrit drama. He is played by a gifted local actor and is brought into virtually every scene: as a courtier of Ayodhya or Janakpur, the boatman Kevat, and even Ravan when the latter comes disguised as an ascetic to abduct Sita. His special function is to supplement the written script with droll ad-libs delivered with a perfect deadpan expression. Other entertainment also finds its way into the production: there are interludes of lascivious disco-style dancing by female impersonators (hijra^[*] ) on the occasion of Ram's birth and marriage. Here the producers are not simply pandering to popular taste but are following the time-honored practice of envisioning the events of the epic in their own familiar vocabulary—for hijras^[*] do indeed gather, as they have for centuries, to dance and to sing obscene songs outside homes in which a son has been born or a marriage is about to occur.

Kop Bhavan

Like other Ramlila cycles, the Khojwan production includes both "little" and "big" nights. An example of the former is the episode known as Kop Bhavan (The Sulking Chamber)—the name popularly given to the scene in which Queen Kaikeyi, swayed by her maid Manthara's arguments, demands two boons from King Dashrath, thus precipitating Ram's exile from Ayodhya. At Khojwan this episode is not staged until the fourteenth night—nearly halfway through the cycle. This seemingly delayed beginning Of the central narrative results from the many evenings devoted to introductory stories and an extended treatment of Ram's marriage, which occupies three nights. Such a seemingly disproportionate emphasis on the early portions of the epic is a reflection both of Tulsi's own handling of the story and of the devotional inclinations of later generations of devotees.^[70]

[70] See Chapter 5, Ramlila and Devotional Practice.

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Figure 24.
The Kop Bhavan lila at Khojwan

The setting is the royal palace at Ayodhya, which includes the ground-floor stage of the Ramlila Center and the large field fronting it. On this field two small pavilions are erected, connected to the main stage by walkways forming a large rectangle. The pavilions represent various locales within the palace and city; a platform that represents the home of the royal priest Vasishtha later becomes the apartment of Queen Sumitra and the scene of her emotional conversation with Lakshman before his departure for the forest. Another platform in the center of the rectangle is occupied by the Ramayanis, who sit in a circle around a low table bearing two big copies of the Manas . The remaining space within the rectangle is filled by the audience, which also extends into the field beyond (see figure 24).

The crowd is of modest size—perhaps 250 persons—when the performance begins at 9:00 P.M. , but it grows steadily as the night proceeds. Although there are no designated seating areas, men and women instinctively gravitate to opposite sides of the enclosure, as they do at most religious programs. Floodlights mounted on the walls of adjacent buildings provide illumination. No amplification is needed in the semi-en-closed area; on nights when the pageant occurs in more open areas and crowds are larger, a portable loudspeaker is sometimes brought in and its mike passed back and forth between the reciters and the actors. The

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crowd is by and large attentive during the performance; people who are less interested gravitate to its fringes, where groups of friends stand gossiping, small children play (some with little bows and arrows, acting out their own Ramlilas ), and snack and souvenir vendors operate throughout the program. But any disturbance within the central area is quickly hushed by the spectators, and most of the children—who probably make up 20 percent of the crowd—sit in rapt attention throughout.

The main stage is outfitted with side curtains and floridly painted backdrops depicting columned halls and vistas of formal gardens complete with topiary and fountains—reflecting the Victorian scenic conventions still prevalent in nautanki^[*] stagings of romantic and heroic legends.^[71] Dashrath's velvet jacket ornamented with gold braid likewise suggests nineteenth-century courtly dress. The costumes of the boy principals, however, resemble those worn at Ramnagar, which are based on religious iconography and the courtly styles of an earlier period.

The role of Dashrath is played by Kashinath Pathak, the schoolteacher who serves as the director of this lila . He gives a highly histrionic portrayal of the king's reaction to Kaikeyi's demands, collapsing on a gilded couch where he remains, writhing in agony, throughout the evening. His overacting strikes me as comic, but my reaction does not seem to be general; some older spectators are moved to tears. There are other notable performances: the man who portrays Sumitra brings considerable poignancy to the scene in which Lakshman's mother accedes to his request to accompany Ram to the forest. His rendition of her famous speech,

My child, Sita is your mother now,
and Ram, your devoted father.
Ayodhya is wherever Ram resides,
as day is where the sun shines.
2.74.2,3

elicits more handkerchiefs. The boys, who are older than those at Ramnagar, also give competent performances. The local Ram, aged sixteen, is in his second and final year of playing the part—for his upper lip already betrays a faint moustache.

The episode concludes at midnight (quite early for a Khojwan performance, as I would discover) with an arti ceremony modeled after that of

[71] On nautanki^[*] , see Hansen, "Written Traditions of a Folk Form"; also see her essay "The Birth of Hindi Drama."

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Ramnagar: the boy actors are garlanded and worshiped to the accompaniment of a hymn sung by the Ramayanis and showers of blossoms from behind the scenes. At the same time, a magnesium flare is held aloft, to sear the auspicious tableau on the minds of departing spectators.

Nakkatayya

The lila of the nineteenth night is listed on the Khojwan program as "Severing of the nose and ears of Shurpankha, killing of Khar and Dushan etc., stealing of Sita and lamentation." However, it is popularly known simply as Nakkatayya, a colloquial expression for "cutting-off-the-nose," and it attracts the biggest crowd of the whole cycle. Like so much else at Khojwan, it is a borrowing from another production—in this case the lila of Chaitganj, whose even bigger Nakkatayya seems to have given rise to this type of performance.^[72] Kumar suggests that the Chaitganj spectacle developed as recently as the first decade of this century; its citywide fame and massive turnouts probably inspired the ambitious merchants of Khojwan to copy it in their lila . They must have gone at it with their usual gusto, for their version is now only a little less famous than its model. Both attract large crowds from beyond the immediate neighborhood, Khojwan drawing more on the southern half of the metropolitan area and Chaitganj more on its northern half.

The Nakkatayya strikingly displays the Ramlila's ability to incorporate other types of folk performance into the prestigious paradigm of the Manas narrative; the resulting performance is both symbolically complex and chronologically extended. For, as Kumar points out, just as the Chitrakut Bharat Milap is renowned for its brevity, so the Nakkatayya is famed for its marathon duration, and the first remark one is liable to hear about it is the admiring comment, "It lasts all night!" It begins in Panchvati, which in Khojwan is represented by the columned pavilion in the central bazaar; here Ram, Sita, and Lakshman are visited by the female demon Shurpankha, Ravan's sister. Spurned in her sexual overtures to Ram and Lakshman, she tries to attack Sita and is mutilated by Lakshman. The subject matter is elemental and highly charged. Conventional (that is to say, male) wisdom regards the demon as emblematic of the oversexed female, whose uncontrollable lust threatens to rob men of their potency. Her mutilation (by cutting off her nose and ears in the

[72] On the origins and contemporary celebration of the Nakkatayya of Chaitganj, see Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras , 180-97.

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fashion in which, according to ancient lawbooks, adulteresses were to be punished) is seen as a fitting lesson to the female sex.^[73] At Ramnagar, where the mutilation is graphically represented—Shurpankha runs wailing through the crowd with red paint splashed over her costume—I was told by smiling men that village ladies are encouraged to attend this episode "in order to receive a good lesson." At Chaitganj and Khojwan, Shurpankha is portrayed by a female impersonator—a supposed eunuch and, like the demon herself, a socially liminal, comic, and yet repellent figure. Following her pantomimed mutilation, Shurpankha rushes off to the demon fortress of Jansthan—located several kilometers away in the Ravindrapuri neighborhood—to summon the forces of Khar and Dushan, Ravan's lieutenants in the region.

Tulsidas dwells at length on the sallying forth of the demon army with Shurpankha at its head, its foolish leaders arrogantly confident of an easy victory over the mortal princes (3.18.3-12). The ensuing conflict is Ram's first encounter with a demon army and prefigures the great battles of Book Six. In nineteenth-century pageants, this probably occasioned a small procession, such as are still organized around other episodes (Ram's wedding, journey into exile, etc.)^[74] In the Chaitganj production this procession grew in size and importance to become an all-night event. The iconographic logic behind the expansion was simple: since demons are known to be form changers, capable of assuming any shape at will, a raksas^[*] procession can contain almost anything. Thus, the Nakkatayya has become a sort of visual saturnalia, whose specific features have as much to do with the Ramayan as the floats in a Mardi Gras parade do with the life of Jesus. The procession offers an occasion for ritualized inversion, which allows for the release of pent-up tensions. Shurpankha is defaced in the early evening, and the demon forces are finally annihilated by Ram just before dawn; but in the interval the forces of illusion, sensuality, and artifice take to the streets for a sort of Walpurgis Night of phantasmagoric display. Tulsi himself sang of

Numberless vehicles, numberless forms,
numberless hosts bearing numberless weapons
3.18.5

[73] Note, however, that the justification of Lakshman's act has often been debated, especially in South India; see C. Rajagopalachari's retelling of Valmiki and Kampan, Ramayana , 139n. On the punishment of an adulteress, see Arthasastra 4.10.10; such injunctions are discussed in Pollock, "Raksasas^[*] and Others," n. 30.

[74] The growth of Ramlila processions and their acquisition of political and communal overtones is discussed in Freitag, The New Communalism , Chapter 6.

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and the Nakkatayya procession, which winds on for hours and contains bands, elephants, dance troupes, and anywhere from fifty to a hundred floats, does seem to approximate this description. All of Khojwan Bazaar is transformed for the occasion: the field before the Ramlila Center becomes a fair, with three country-style ferris wheels, booths housing games of skill and chance, and peddlers of all description; the main street is lined with bamboo railings and festooned with colored lights. It is difficult to say how many spectators witness the procession along its entire route, but thousands pack the central bazaar in the vicinity of the Panchvati pavilion, before which the Ramayanis sit on a lower wooden platform.

The head of the procession arrives in the main bazaar at about 3:00 A.M. , led by Shurpankha, who dances furiously, brandishing a suggestively rounded club that "she" waves threateningly at Ram and Sita. Behind her comes Khar, represented by a figure in a donkey mask (his name in Hindi means "donkey"), and Dushan ("blemish"), a fifteen-foot bamboo-and-paper effigy. The remainder of the procession consists of varieties of folk performance with origins outside the Ramlila .

First there are troupes of Durga dancers, hailing from all over the Banaras area. Each troupe represents an akhara^[*] —a combination social, religious, and physical-culture club for men and boys—under the direction of a dancing master.^[75] The Durga clubs specialize in a furious style of masked dancing that incorporates elements of martial art. The dancers wear silver masks topped by enormous crowns, and full-skirted costumes. The crowns feature circular coronas extending several feet into the air, ornamented with peacock feathers, mirrors, and other brilliant materials. These male dancers represent—and to some extent, as with all Hindu mimesis, incarnate—bloodthirsty goddesses such as Chamunda and the other six forms of Durga. In martial traditions these terrifying goddesses are associated with other dangerous and powerful female figures such as tantric yoginis and witches, who are believed to congregate on battlefields; like Shurpankha, they are threatening females who eat the flesh and drink the blood of virile warriors.^[76]

On the long procession route from Ravindrapuri through Bhelupura

[75] On the contemporary akhara^[*] culture of Banaras, see Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras , 111-24; Kumar estimates that there are several hundred such institutions in the city, representing an indigenous ideal of physical culture that has been overlooked by most scholars. On wrestling akharas^[*] , see Alter, "Pehlwani. "

[76] In 3.20.14-20, Tulsi depicts these demonic women dashing around the battlefield waving warriors' entrails "like a crowd of children flying kites." A similarly macabre description of blood-crazed yoginis occurs in 6.88.7,8.

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to Khojwan, the Durgas of each troupe dance, brandishing swords, daggers, torches, and skull-bowls with which they are supposed to catch the blood of their victims. Within each troupe, there are novice perform-ers—small boys who do little more than march, swaying in costume—as well as accomplished adult dancers who execute more difficult routines. Some carry metal baskets filled with hot coals, which they whirl about their heads on long chains; stirred into brilliant redness and emitting showers of sparks, they blur into fiery halos surrounding the dancer. There are also dance-duels with bamboo staves, and furious sword dances in which the performers slash at the air with gleaming scimitars. At the conclusion of such a piece, the performer appears to go out of control and rushes to the sidelines flailing his weapon as spectators duck for safety; he is quickly seized by attendants who disarm and hold him for a few moments while others fan him, apparently to calm the possessing goddess's rage. Finally each Durga is outfitted with a short sword with which he executes one last whirling dance, ending with a bow and the presentation of his skull-cup at the foot of the platform. A member of the lila committee steps forward gingerly, careful to avoid the still-twitching dagger in the dancer's other hand, and fills the cup with a handful of flowers and tulsi leaves blessed by Ram. This vegetarian prasad is supposed to satiate the goddess, who is then escorted to a side street, where troupe members remove their masks and costumes. Altogether about a dozen Durga troupes, some numbering thirty or forty dancers, appear in the Khojwan procession. The costuming of each varies slightly, especially in the ornamentation of the tall, shimmering crowns. The impassive silver masks are nearly always the same, however, and resemble the Devi images in many local temples. To a trained eye, the iconography of each costume identifies the specific goddess being represented.

After more than an hour of Durga dancing, the next phase of the procession appears: the humorous, eye-catching floats collectively known as svang (satire or burlesque).^[77] The use of such floats in Nakkatayya has an interesting history; apparently when the custom originated in the early decades of this century, the floats depicted sexually and socially indecorous situations and participants sang scurrilous songs. In the 1920s and 1930s the "obscene" character of the processions became the focus of a vociferous reformist campaign championed

[77] In other contexts, the term refers to a form of comic theater related to nautanki^[*] ; see Hansen, "The Birth of Hindi Drama."

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by the Hindi press, especially the socially conservative BharatJivan , and such upper-class educational leaders as Malviya and Sampurnananda, whose criticism of the pageant was ultimately successful in "disinfecting" it. Ironically, although the character of the tableaux changed in response to these criticisms, the identification of the Nakkatayya as a vulgar lower-class event caused the educated elite to permanently dissociate itself from it.^[78]

Most floats today have mythological themes—to which no one can object—and thus, suitably reformed, the folk art continues to flourish. The procession I witnessed in 1983 drew svang groups from as far away as Madhya Pradesh. The essence of the contemporary art is grotesquerie and trompe-l'oeil, and most floats consist of frozen balancing acts featuring small children. In one, an (adult) Shiva figure holds aloft two fur-suited child demons, each of whom appears to be speared through the middle, like a cocktail olive, by the prongs of his trident; there are gruesome red stains where the prongs emerge from their bodies. Supported by artfully concealed metal rods, the whole tableau—Shiva, trident, and demons—is balanced on a rotating pedestal high above the street. This pedestal rests in turn on a tractor, but others are supported by bullock carts or even hand-drawn wooden wagons with bicycle wheels. These high tableaux teeter along precariously, the performers sometimes having to duck to pass under power lines. By the end of the procession, many of the smallest "demons" are sound asleep on their high perches, securely held in position by the supporting rods. The floats are wired too, with strings of flashing bulbs or rotating wheels of fluorescent lights. A few have attached generators, but most have to stop periodically and be hooked up to local current in order to give viewers the full effect. The floats are preceded by hired musicians playing drums and shehnai, creating a wonderful cacophony as they proceed through the packed bazaar.

The last phase of the procession is a line of ornate carriages (viman ), resembling the chariots in religious calendar art. Each represents (and hence advertises) a tent house somewhere in the city, which hires out these gaudy vehicles to wedding parties. The last carriage, however, returns viewers to the Ramayan story, for it represents the flying chariot used by Ravan to abduct Sita; it parks alongside the reviewing stand to await the fateful moment.

The sky is growing light by the time the procession ends, and the

[78] Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras , 190-95.

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morning star hangs above the packed rooftops fronting the bazaar. No one leaves, because the final phase of the lila is only now to begin, although in deference to the exhausted condition of most participants it will unfold rapidly. The Ramayanis resume their chanting from the Manas ; Ram seizes his bow and quickly dispatches Khar and Dushan. Shurpankha goes wailing to Ravan, who appeals to his uncle Marich to take the form of a golden deer. At Sita's importuning, Ram stalks the frisky animal (a masked dancer in a spangled body stocking) to the delighted shrieks of curbside children; the detonation of a cherry bomb signals its demise. Meanwhile, Ravan approaches in sadhu's guise, portrayed by Khojwan's resident buffoon (who incongruously sports an ocher Ram-nam shawl!); after a lively dialogue, he is suddenly replaced by a conventionally masked figure who has been lurking under the dais and who now seizes Sita and spirits her away down a side street, pausing briefly to battle the noble vulture Jatayu. As the first rays of the sun strike the housetops, the brothers return to the deserted ashram, Ram gives himself up to grief, arti is performed, and the great crowd disperses.

At 7:00 A.M. I am walking to the main road through the back lanes of Khojwan, past an occasional tethered elephant, floats in varying stages of disassembly, and bleary-eyed Durga dancers crowding around an open tea stall. I get into a conversation with a small, wiry man who walks determinedly with a tall staff. He seems oddly familiar, and as we near the main road I suddenly realize where I have seen him before; "Brother, you're Ravan, aren't you?" He confirms with a wry smile and quickly disappears into the haze and the trudging throngs of pilgrims headed, on this auspicious Nav Ratra morning, for worship at the nearby Durga Temple.

Ramnagar: Pilgrims and Singers

Earlier in this chapter I discussed the origins of the Ramlila of Ramnagar, and I devote a later section to its manner of interpreting the Manas text. Since the work of documenting the individual performances of this month-long production has already been undertaken by others, I do not describe specific episodes in detail here.^[79] Instead I focus on two aspects of the pageant that have received little attention: the relationship of the performances to a traditional Banarsi pattern of recreation, and the role of the Ramayanis, or Manas chanters.

[79] See the work of Schechner and Hess, referred to in note 4 above.

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Figure 25.
A procession during the Ramnagar Ramlila (photo courtesy of
Linda Hess)

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The Art of Crossing Over It is surely clear to anyone who has ever spent time in the city that the Banarsi way of life consists of more than ritual bathing and visits to temples; even these and other pious activities for which the place is justly famed have (in Western terms) "secular" dimensions that contribute to their appeal. Yet scholarly writings on the city have tended to focus on its theological status and the complex hierarchy of its religious institutions and functionaries, and only recently has a study examined the everyday life of its people, particularly their concept of "Banarsiness" as "an ideology of the good life."^[80] Central to this ideology, as Nita Kumar discovered, is a cycle of leisure activities based on indigenous concepts of the person, space, and time, articulated in terms whose importance has often been overlooked "because they perhaps do not fit very neatly into a text-based or ritual-oriented scheme. Among these are the principle of pleasure (khusi , anand ), the philosophy of freedom and carelessness (mauj, masti ), the image of play (khel, krira^[*] , lila , manorañjan ) and a stress on individual taste, choice, and passion (sauk )."^[81] That Kumar's subjects represent some of the city's poorest artisans (such as metalworkers and woodcarvers) may appear paradoxical; the economic realities of these men's lives—starkly documented at the beginning of her study—do not suggest a great scope for leisure. Yet Kumar vividly catalogs the surprising range of participatory recreations in which artisans engage: poetry and singing clubs (including Ramayan singing groups), Ramlila troupes, wrestling and swimming clubs, and the full array of fairs, temple srngar^[*] festivals, processions, and other annual celebrations in the city concerning which a popular saying holds, "Eight days—nine festivals."^[82]

Among the most popular recreational activities is the practice known as bahrialang^[*] (literally, the "outer side" or "farther shore"), which refers to boating excursions to the opposite bank of the Ganga and to the activities pursued there. In questioning some of the city's poorest artisans concerning their recreational activities, Kumar found that most would at first vehemently deny having any—"Are sahab , what entertainment can we poor people have?" Her inquiry might have ended there, had she not discovered the magic formula bahrialang^[*] , at the mention of which the same men would wax eloquent concerning its exquisite pleasures—whether enjoyed daily, weekly, or more infrequently.^[83] The essential constituents of the practice are so simple—one

[80] Kumar, "Popular Culture in Urban India," 324.

[81] Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras , 236.

[82] "Ath bar^[*] , nau tyauhar"; quoted in Jhingaran, "Ham sevak," 20.

[83] Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras , 83-110, 230.

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crosses the Ganga, relieves one's bowels, and washes one's clothes—that an outsider may not readily grasp just what is so recreational about it. But of course, it is never a solitary activity; it is enjoyed with friends, and much time is whiled away in talking, joke telling, and singing. In addition, it provides a complete and much-needed change of environment. I have already mentioned the distinction between the two banks of the river: the city side and the "outer" side. The former is civilized and sacred, but also chokingly congested. The farther shore, in contrast, is a sandy, uninhabited floodplain, an accessible wilderness. As such it offers a refreshing antidote to the crowded bazaars and cramped working and living spaces that otherwise form the boundaries of the city man's life.

There are other dimensions to the excursion as well. Since the outer side is a ritually impure area, it has always been regarded as a good place to relieve oneself, and there is an old tradition that exemplary people repair beyond the sacred borders of the city for this purpose. The appeal of this aspect of the trip must be understood in the context of a culture in which personal hygiene practices are powerfully associated with ideals of purity and deep levels of identity. The journey itself is also pleasing; the river is the city's great scenic attraction as well as its claim to spiritual greatness, and there is no better way to appreciate its beauty than from a boat. The act of crossing the Ganga inevitably has a religious dimension—Banaras, like all pilgrimage centers, is a "crossing-place" (tirthsthan ), where believers are assured safe passage over the turbulent flood of this world—and every Hindu reaches overboard in midstream to sprinkle a few drops of water on his head while uttering a formula such as "He Mata Ganga, teri sada jay!" (O Mother Ganga, may you ever be victorious!). Finally, an essential ingredient in the pastime for many Banarsis is the consumption of bhang and the resultant intoxication. In most excursion parties one man assumes the job of preparing the treat: crushing the leaves and straining a decoction that is then drunk, or shaping the pulp into little balls—combined, if budget will allow, with raisins, nuts, and savory spices—that are eaten. A moderately powerful psychoactive drug that alters visual and time perception, bhang has a religious dimension as well, since it is associated with yogis and their lord, Shiva, who is said to consume great quantities of it. Needless to say, a draft can add a new dimension to mundane activities: one can, for example (as Kumar was gleefully told) seize a bar of soap and spend a satisfying three-quarters-of-an-hour deeply engrossed in laundering one's dhoti.^[84]

[84] Ibid., 84.

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In his writings on Ramlila , Schechner observes that an important characteristic of Banaras's most famous production is the fact that it is not located in Banaras.^[85] By constructing their dramatic environment on the further shore, the royal patrons created a theater that urban residents have to cross the Ganga daily in order to reach. Schechner vividly describes the difficulties and even hazards that this pilgrimage can entail, especially during the early part of lila season when the river is still swollen from monsoon rains. At the very least, the trip is time-consuming; a person coming from the city may require two or more hours simply to reach the lila site. If he is someone whose personal regimen is to witness every performance from beginning to end, attendance will be more than a full-time job, easily occupying ten hours a day. But I am convinced that time is still a relatively cheap commodity in Banaras and that some of the inconvenience that I, for example, experienced in getting to Ramnagar each day was not felt to the same degree by local pilgrims, who seemed to accept the journey itself as part of the recreational experience of lila . For among other things, the Ramnagar Ramlila is a grand, month-long bahrialang^[*] excursion with all that this implies.

Many thousands of people attend the Ramnagar pageant sporadically, turning out for big events such as the breaking of Shiva's bow and the slaying of Kumbhakarna. But there is a core group of spectators—probably amounting to one or two thousand—who attend daily. To be able to do so is highly valued. The question I was invariably asked by fellow audience members was "Do you come daily? " and their satisfaction when I answered in the affirmative was evident, for regular attendance is the ideal, although everyone is not able to manage it. The great exemplar of such dedication is the maharaja, the patron and principal spectator.

Those attending daily fall into two categories: sadhus and nonsadhus. As already noted, sadhus in large numbers—mainly Ramanandis—reside in Ramnagar during the month of lila ; special camps are set up for them and daily rations are provided from the maharaja's stores. With their sectarian marks and seamless garments (or lack of them, if they belong to naga , or "naked," orders), the sadhus are a distinctive presence at the festival grounds, where they often cluster around the boy actors to entertain them with devotional singing and ecstatic dancing. But the householder who comes daily from the city is no less readily identifiable, for he too affects a distinctive costume. He is known as a nemi (from niyami , "one who adheres to a regimen") or by its expanded

[85] Schechner, Performative Circumstances , 242-45.

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variation, nemi-premi (the latter connoting "lover" or "aficionado"). He typically wears a clean white dhoti and baniyan (T-shirt), a cotton scarf (dupatta^[*] ) block-printed in a floral design and tied as a diagonal sash across the chest, and yellow sandalwood paste on the forehead. He goes barefoot—this is part of his regimen—and carries a small wooden stool for comfort as well as protection from dust and mud in the varied environments. He may also carry a bamboo stave with a polished brass or silver head.

According to nemis , their costume has no special significance. Its details are either utilitarian (the staff is a convenience for walking and a protection against dogs when returning home late at night) or else (as in the case of the dhoti and the scarf) simply reflect "the old-time style of Banaras city." Since the Ramnagar production is a self-consciously old-fashioned event, it is appropriate that its core audience dresses accordingly; I have seen spectators change out of Western-style pants and shirt at the riverside, donning nemi dress and placing their carefully folded "work clothes" in a bag. Other aspects of the regimen include a bath in the Ganga before each performance and, of course, daily attendance. This may not mean witnessing all performances in their entirety; many regulars pick and choose among the episodes, giving their full attention only to favorite ones. But all make a point of being present during the concluding arti ceremony each night, when the divine presence is considered strongest. Some staunch nemis observe a daily fast, which they break only after they have had the Lord's darsan at arti time.

Although I initially understood the Ramnagar regimen as a kind of religious austerity, I gradually became aware, in conversations with aficionados, of the sensual and aesthetic richness of the nemi experience. One lila regular of the milkman caste came from a village on the western outskirts of the city. Although he had completed secondary school and was employed in a railway office, this man retained a strong taste for traditional Banarsi pastimes and was a great devotee of bahrialang^[*] . Together with a group of friends, he owned a share in a boat kept at Gay Ghat and used for daily excursions throughout much of the year. During the month of lila , however, the boat brought the group to Ramnagar. This man's description of his daily routine during the season was delivered with evident relish and testifies to the pleasures of the pilgrimage for many regular participants:

During lila I go to work very early and leave the office at about 11:00 A.M. I go home and take a light meal, then head for the ghat to meet the others. First we row across to the other side and stop there for a while. We take some

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dried fruit and a little bhang—not too much, or we'll get sleepy—then a glass; of water to cool the body. Then we go off and attend to nature's call, then meet and row to Khirki Ghat [at Ramnagar—a strenuous journey against the current; the men row in teams, chanting to set a steady rhythm]. Then have a swim and wash clothes. Then rub down with oil, then dress. Prepare sandal paste and apply it, to cool the forehead. Also a little scent at each ear, according to the weather. Then go for God's darsan .^[86]

What kinds of people pursue this "regimen"? Most obviously, of course, men; women in Banarsi society have no part in the practices described here, although they may occasionally enjoy boat rides and excursions in the company of their families, and many women do attend the lila periodically. Not the extremely poor either, or for the most part the very rich. The former lack the resources for the daily outings, for regular attendance at Ramnagar is costly, not merely in the working time lost but in the expense incurred in getting there—to maintain a hired boat, such as the Gay Ghat club did, would probably be considered the ultimate recreational luxury by poorer Banarsis—and in maintaining the proper appearance and being able to afford snacks of tea and pan , if not the many delicious foods sold in concession stalls at the grounds. The wealthy modern-educated classes possess the means to attend but nowadays mostly lack the inclination; their tastes in entertainment have changed. Those men of means who are lila -goers are people who are conspicuous in their adherence to traditional life-styles: temple owners, expounders, Ayurvedic physicians, and socially conservative merchants. The majority of regulars, however, seem to be from the middle and lower-middle classes: small-scale merchants, milkmen, betel sellers—self-employed people who can afford to shutter their shops early for one month each year or leave a relation minding the store—and lower-level office workers and clerks, who can somehow arrange (in the tolerant milieu of Banarsi business) the time away from work. These men have both the means and the inclination to attend, and their presence at the lila is no less an ideological statement than is the maharaja's staging of it. By their daily attendance, clad in their distinctive uniform, they offer an affirmation of their faith not only in Sita-Ram, the Manas , and the maharaja, but in the Banarsi way of life as they conceive of it—a "natural" life of aesthetic intoxication, wholesome outdoor activity, male camaraderie, seasonal celebration, and vociferous piety.

[86] Pyarelal Yadav, interview, October 1982.

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The Voice of Lila The melody to which the Manas is sung at most Banaras Ramlilas is known as Narad vani^[*] ("Narad's voice," after the divine rhapsodist who is said to have created it) or lilavani^[*] , (the voice of lila ), and it shares with other forms of epic recitation an antiphonal pattern requiring two groups of singers. At Ramnagar there are twelve Ramayanis divided into two teams of six; neighborhood productions sometimes have smaller contingents. Musical accompaniment consists of double-headed drums (mrdang^[*] ), and brass finger cymbals (jhal or manjira ), which are played by the lead singer.

Perhaps the most striking feature of Naradvani^[*] is its stylized, distorting quality, which necessitates frequent minor alterations in the text. These follow a conventional pattern: the singers begin the first line of each stanza with the shouted syllable he! ; subsequent lines are begun with the syllables e-ha ! The end of each half-line is drawn out for five beats and its final vowel replaced by a , sung to a melodic pattern of three descending and two ascending tones. While this concluding pattern is sung by the first group, the second group is ready to join in on the fifth beat, which glides directly into the second half of the line. This too concludes with a , this time held only for the three descending tones, before another e-ha ! from the first group begins the next line. The ends of half-lines must often be adjusted to fit this pattern. If the final word ends with a long vowel, it may lose only a syllable; thus, the word gai (sung) becomes simply an extended ga . But words that end with short vowels may lose two syllables, and so the word pavana (pure, holy) in final position is reduced to pa , drawn out for the requisite number of beats.

The Ramayanis I interviewed could offer no explanation for the peculiarities of the style; the ringing e-ha ! with which each line began was inserted, they said, "just for the rhythm." It is a trademark of the style, however, and a Banaras newspaper article at Dashahra time mentions "the chanting of Narad vani^[*] " as a sure sign of the advent of the festive season.^[87] One purpose of the melody seems to be smooth transitions between half-verses, as the teams of singers alternate, echolike. The presence of two groups reflects not merely the antiphonal conventions of Manas recitation but also the strenuous nature of the performance style; the alternation provides a much-needed rest.

The other common meters in the text—doha , soratha^[*] , and chand —

[87] "Banaras ka gaurav—Ramlila," in Aj , weekly supplement, October 10, 1983, p. 1.

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are also rendered antiphonally, but for these the two parties sing alternate lines and there is no distortion of the words. As already noted, the couplets that complete each stanza are particularly well known to devotees, and whenever the Ramayanis sing a doha at Ramlila , a low murmur arises from the surrounding crowd, as listeners softly intone the familiar words. Many regulars carry pocket editions and read along; after the sunset break, the well-equipped nemi produces a flashlight for this purpose. But there are also listeners who know the text well enough to forego books; they sit near the Ramayanis and listen, sometimes nodding approvingly or chiming in on the last few words of a line.

The performance style might best be termed strident—a combination of singing and shouting. Performing without amplification before often-immense crowds, the Ramayanis endeavor to put their message across by sheer lung power, and their effort shows in reddened faces, bulging neck veins, and foreheads beaded with sweat. Maintaining such an effort for four hours a night is no easy task, and the result can hardly be called lilting. Naradvani^[*] resembles neither the melodious strains of Manas folk singing nor the reverent drone of the mass-recitation programs. Perhaps this is why some have criticized it as "lacking in beauty."^[88] But others, myself included, disagree. The adjectives that always came to my mind were "bardic" and "heroic," and the lusty vigor of the singing seemed appropriate to the occasion: the retelling of the epic of the greatest of all Kshatriyas, sung on a battlefield by a king's own singers. Others clearly share my taste; the brother of a prominent vyas told me almost confidentially one day when we were discussing Katha that even though he had heard all the greatest contemporary expounders, he would, in the last analysis, always prefer simply to hear good Manas recitation, "and the way they do it at the Ramnagar Ramlila is best of all!"

The chief Ramayani in 1982 was Ramji Pandey, who had sung in the pageant for more than forty-five years. A stocky, venerable-looking man, he is employed as a temple priest in the palace and also expounds the epic both within and outside Banaras. He claims to represent the seventh generation of his family to serve in the lila , and he is joined in this work by a younger brother and nephew. Ramji's family has charge of the Vyas Temple on the ramparts of the fort, and a nearby parapet serves him as office-cum-library. A closet-sized room perched high above the Ganga, it is packed from floor to ceiling with Ramayan texts

[88] Awasthi, Ramlila , 83.

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Figure 26.
Ramji Pandey leads the chanting at Ramnagar, 1982

and commentaries, framed photos and posters from Katha programs, and other memorabilia. Also kept here are the cymbals played in the lila and Ramji's turbans—an ordinary one used throughout the cycle and a special one reserved for the enthronement night. Every afternoon during the pageant month, as the sun reddens the sandstone ramparts of the fort, Ramji bathes, puts on clean clothes, and selects the manuscript leaves to be recited from that evening; these are rolled up and placed in metal canisters for transport to the lila site.

The Ramayanis wear brightly colored turbans and ocher Ram-nam sashes; these help them to recognize one another and reassemble quickly when they get separated during treks between sites. They go barefoot, as do the actors, directors, and the majority of audience members; this, they explain, is because they are in the presence of Lord Ram both in the form of the boy actor and in the sacred book they carry—therefore, they show the same reverence they would in a temple. On reaching each site, the Ramayanis quickly seat themselves in a circle; the two singers charged with carrying the manuscript leaves touch the pages to their foreheads and place them atop their canisters. All eyes go to Ramji Pandey, who sits bolt upright, cymbals in hand, looking toward the actors and their directors. Since the reciters sit directly in front of the maharaja, who is mounted on an elephant at the rear of the crowd, they

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Figure 27.
Kamlakar Mishra, a village schoolteacher who serves as a Ramayani
at Ramnagar

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Figure 28.
Kailash, the aged drummer who accompanied the Ramnagar chanters,
1982

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are frequently quite distant from the actors. The success of the performance depends on a clear exchange of signals between Ramayanis and directors (who often cannot hear one another) so that recitation and dialogues unfold in smooth succession and the players mime each action just as the Ramayanis chant its description.

The pace of recitation varies from passage to passage; it is announced by a whispered signal from Ramji, confirmed by the first clang of the cymbals, and immediately picked up by Kailash, the aged drummer who sits on the edge of the circle. Its alternations are not arbitrary but conform to established custom. The evening's recitation always begins slowly but picks up speed during long descriptive passages. However, lines that tradition has singled out as particularly important are intoned slowly and majestically, and occasionally even repeated. Thus, in the opening verses of Aranya^[*]kand^[*] , when Ram, enthroned on a crystal rock in the forest of Panchvati, adorns Sita with a garland of forest flowers plaited with his own hands—a romantic passage dear to many devotees-each half-line is slowly sung four times while the actors mime the emotion-laden scene, allowing viewers time to savor it.

The Ramnagar staging is characterized by carefully maintained archaisms aimed at preserving the atmosphere of the middle of the nineteenth century, when the pageant attained its f.nal form. The use of handwritten manuscripts is one such convention, for most other productions prefer large-format printed editions, which can be easily read under adverse conditions. The Ramnagar texts, in contrast, run words and verses together in the manner of all manuscripts, but their legibility does not appear to be of prime concern. The Ramayanis pride themselves on their knowledge of the text and rarely "read" from the manuscripts. Seated in a circle, many of them view the sheets only sideways, and while singing tend to keep their eyes on their leader's face. If they glance at the text it is only to note the first word of a line or an approaching break for a dialogue, which is indicated by a red mark on the page. After dark, they are joined by two white-turbaned attendants bearing oil torches—another deliberate archaism—which cast a flickering glow over the scene but hardly improve the visibility of the texts.

Several of the Ramayanis reside in Ramnagar and are in the maharaja's service; the rest come from villages in the surrounding area. Three work as schoolmasters, three more as priests, and one is employed by the local health department. Following Ramji Pandey in seniority is one man who has been singing for more than thirty years and several others whose participation dates back a decade or more. In 1982 the youngest Ramayani—a secondary school student who was much teased

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as the "baby" of the group—was in his second year. Whatever their outside careers, the Ramayanis all become, for the duration of the lila , employees of the maharaja, although their remuneration, like that of other participants, is very modest. For approximately forty days of work, each receives less than Rs 50 in cash; a slightly more valuable token is a daily ration of uncooked rice, flour, and pulse, as well as a quarter-liter of milk. In addition, whenever the actors are fed during a scene, portions of the sweets served to them are distributed to the Ramayanis and other cast members as prasad . By these gifts, the maharaja symbolically carries on his ancestors' tradition of maintaining the pageant workers during the course of the cycle.

During the sunset intermission, the Ramayanis take tea and pan —unlike some spectators, they strictly abjure the use of bhang—"Because it brings drowsiness, and then how could we sing?"—and pass the time in conversation, which often runs to lila gossip and Ramayan-related anecdotes. At times they are joined by senior expounders from Banaras, such as Shrinath Mishra and Ramnarayan Shukla, who come to view favorite episodes; these men greet Ramji Pandey affectionately (they are "guru-brothers" through their former teacher, Vijayanand Tripathi) while the younger Ramayanis respectfully touch their feet. The atmosphere is lighthearted and comradely, and the presence of costumed actors milling about can create startling visual juxtapositions, as when several Ramayanis stand chatting casually with Ravan in his full regalia.^[89] Like other regular participants, the Ramayanis enter with special intensity into the world of the lila , which colors all their perceptions and blurs the hard boundary between play and life. Ramayan jokes are frequent, but they are only half jokes, because the "other world" is pervasively and tangibly felt. On our first night in Lanka, for example, we were troubled by a horrible stench of putrefaction, which was particularly strong near Ravan's pyramidal citadel at the far end of the field; evidently some animal had died and its carcass was rotting nearby. As we struggled to control our nausea, the Ramayanis discussed the cause of the stench. At last, Ramji Pandey offered the definitive judgment: "After all, brothers, it's Lanka; what else do you expect?" And he quoted a verse from Sundar kand^[*] :

Everywhere the wicked demons gorge
on buffaloes, men, cows, donkeys, and goats.
5.3.21

[89] The demon king's role has remained in one Brahman family for four generations. The present actor is highly respected both for his learning and his acting ability and, according to Schechner, is known throughout the year as "King Ravan"; Richard Schechner, personal communication, April 1982.

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"The demons devour all these creatures and just toss the bones and half-eaten carcasses here and there. That's why it reeks so."

On the night of kot^[*] vidai the ceremony of "farewell to the fort" unique to Ramnagar, the Ramayanis wait with the maharaja in an inner courtyard of the palace for the arrival of the principals, who now come as visiting heads of state. Lakshman himself serves as mahout of the royal elephant, while Hanuman holds the state umbrella over Ram's head. In contrast, the maharaja, who has always been splendidly dressed, wears the costume of a simple householder: a plain dhoti, kurta , and cloth cap. Before the audience of thousands that jams the courtyard, he washes the feet of his guests and serves them an elaborate meal, while the Ramayanis chant from the latter portion of Book Seven—this is purely "background music" to the feast, for the enacted text concluded the preceding day at Rambag with the fifty-first stanza of this book.

When the meal is finished, the boys return to the coronation pavilion to give a final darsan to the crowd. The Ramayanis' work is not yet completed, however, for some sixty stanzas remain to be recited. For this task Ramji Pandey takes up position at one corner of the pavilion with one of the manuscripts cradled in his lap and begins reciting rapidly in a low voice. A few nemis , determined to complete their own parayan^[*] recitations, cluster around him, pocket editions in hand. The other Ramayanis simply mill about, waiting for their leader to finish. Shortly before 10:00 P.M. , he slows down and raises his voice; the others gather around him for the final, auspicious verses:

These deeds of the jewel of the Raghus—
one who recites, listens to, or sings them,
effortlessly cleanses the stain of the Dark Age
and of the heart, and enters Ram's abode!
7.130.13,14

On the completion of the final Sanskrit benediction, the little group around Ramji sets up a loud cheer and there are many embraces. The last arti follows immediately, and the Ramlila is over.

Ramlila and Devotional Practice

Even when the spectators cannot hear the lines or make out the actors clearly, they see the play, because it is being enacted in their minds. . . Some devoted spectators sit with eyes shut, "watching" the performance.^[90]

[90] Gargi, Folk Theater of India , 109-10.

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The Gautamcandrika passage quoted earlier contains an intriguing ambiguity. It is usually interpreted as a description of Tulsi's first staging, on Assi Ghat, of a tableau representing Ram's enthronement; yet read differently, the passage may not describe a lila at all—or rather, not an externally represented one, but an inner vision seen by the poet as he contemplates the Ganga on the full-moon night of Ashvin. Whether the text offers an authentic account of the poet's life, the ambiguity it presents is significant, for Ramlila is an activity with both external and internal dimensions. Thus far I have concerned myself only with the externals of these productions, but in this section I consider another dimension that I believe essential to understanding how the Ramlila developed and what the drama represents to devotees: its relationship to spiritual practices favored by Vaishnavas during the past few centuries.

In his study of the origins of Vaishnava theater, Hein suggests that the custom of using child actors is of comparatively recent origin. He notes the use of children to represent Shiva and the Goddess in Shaiva/ Shakta rituals of the tantric tradition, a custom of some antiquity in parts of Bengal and Nepal, and speculates that this form of dramatic "simplification" spread westward "in the special moral climate of the time of Muslim dominance."^[91] Although he may be correct in asserting a historical link with the tantric tradition, he overlooks the positive theological and ritual motivations behind the decision to put children on the stage. Indeed, given the special training that children require in order to perform in lila plays, one may question whether their use is truly a form of "simplification" at all; may it not, instead, reflect a new iconographic and ritual agenda?

Since Hein wrote his landmark study and partly as a result of it, there has been increased scholarly interest in Vaishnava theatrical traditions and their relationship to sectarian theologies. Most research to date has focused on the Krishna cult and particularly on its theological articulation in the writings of the Gauriya Vaishnava goswamis of Vrindavan, who adapted the aesthetic theories of Sanskrit drama to the service of their Krishna-centered theology. Several recent studies have turned from texts to sectarian practices and have examined the significance of role playing and theatrical performance in the lives of devotees.^[92] The shift from a text-oriented approach to Hindu tradition to one giving greater importance to praxis and performance has helped modify some common generalizations—for example, the notion that bhakti sects empha-

[91] Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 266-67, 231.

[92] E.g., Haberman, Acting as a Way of Salvation , and Hawley, At Play with Krishna .

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size spontaneous, ecstatic practices and a similarly spontaneous experience of grace, and give little importance to psycho-spiritual and ritual techniques. Haberman's work has shown that for Gauriya Vaishnavism this is anything but the case; initiates in this sect pursue a demanding discipline of visualization and internal role playing, based on their belief in the existence of an eternal lila of which this world is only a shadow. However, no study in English (and to my knowledge, only one in Hindi) has examined similar practices among devotees of Ram,^[93] perhaps because most scholars have assumed that the erotic-aesthetic themes emphasized in such practices are consonant only with the mythology of the "playful" Krishna and are inappropriate to that of the Ramayan's "exemplary man of decorum" (maryadapurusottam^[*] ). In fact, the theology and mystical practices of Ram- and Krishna-oriented sects developed along congruent lines from the sixteenth century, when the aesthetic approach became an influential current in Vaishnavism; they reflect a continuous cross-pollination between the two main branches of the Vaishnava movement.

The roots of this tradition may indeed lie to the east and reflect the influence of the tantric traditions of Bengal, Assam, and the eastern Himalayan region. Buddhist tantric treatises are essentially visualization manuals, which instruct the worshiper in the summoning up of divine and demonic figures in order to integrate their characteristic powers and attributes.^[94] It is also likely that historical factors contributed to the expanding influence of such techniques. Several recent studies have pointed to the shift, beginning from roughly the time of the Muslim conquest of North India, from royally patronized temple cults centered on powerful, heroic incarnations of Vishnu such as the boar, the man-lion, and Krishna of Dvarka, to an almost exclusive preoccupation with the adolescent amours of Krishna Gopal in the pastoral dreamscape of Vrindavan. It has been suggested that this development paralleled "a gradual retreat from the Muslim-dominated socio-political center as a sphere of religious meaning" and reflected a "serious need for an expression of Hindu dharma that placed the world of significant meaning far beyond that sphere controlled by the Muslims."^[95] Appropriately enough, the sixteenth-century Gauriya theologians who pro-

[93] Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*] rasik sampraday ; most of my information on the tradition derives from this pioneering study.

[94] See Beyer, The Cult of Tara , esp. 68-79.

[95] Haberman, Acting as a Way of Salvation , 43; also see Wulff, Drama as a Mode of Religious Realization , 18.

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vided the justification for this change in outlook were men who had themselves retreated from politics, having once occupied high positions in the Muslim government of Bengal.

The devotional paradigm developed by the most influential of these teachers, Rupa Goswami (fl. c. 1500-1550), arranges the dramatis personae of the Krishna legend in a hierarchy of relationships, each exemplifying a characteristic mood (bhav ) and capable of producing a corresponding emotion (ras —literally "juice" or "flavor"). Each emotional mood reflects a role that the devotee may assume in relation to the embodied Lord—in general practice, that of servant, friend, elder, or lover. A person initiated into this system of ritual and meditative practice is known as a rasik —"one who savors ras "—a term that can also connote a connoisseur or even a bon vivant. Rasik practice has both external and internal dimensions: the daily rituals of worship, which emphasize the service of the deity with every kind of luxury and entertainment; and guided meditations in which the devotee inwardly recreates the Lord's acts and savors their emotions by imaginative participation.

Two features common to much Hindu devotional literature point in the direction of such practices. The first is the tendency of poets to place themselves in the myth and become participants in the events they describe. Already in the ninth-century poetry of the Tamil saint Nammalvar, we find the poet assuming the voice of a young maiden of Braj and angrily chiding Krishna for his naughty pranks—the scolding, of course, providing an ironic commentary on Krishna's divine nature.^[96] In the later poetry of Mithila and Bengal, such poets as Jayadeva,^[97] Vidyapati, and Chandidasa assumed similar roles, and in time these became conventionalized: the female friend of Radha, the male comrade of Krishna, the go-between, and so on. The achievement of the sectarian rasik teachers was the transformation of these literary conventions into a complex system not only of theology but of mystical practice, which helped individual devotees realize what inspired poets of the tradition were assumed to have achieved: personal entry into the divine drama.

A second characteristic of much bhakti poetry is its delight in systematic physical description, particularly of the sort known as nakh-sikh —"from toenails to crown of head"; numerous poems and songs reflect this convention, which is also found in longer narrative works. Such

[96] For examples, see Ramanujan, Hymns for the Drowning , 22-23, 33-36, 44-45.

[97] The Gitagovinda admonishes the listener to "mentally enact" its romantic drama (4.9); noted in Wulff, Drama as a Mode of Religious Realization , 172.

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passages offer more than rich description; they present, as Kenneth Bryant suggests, "verbal icons" on which the listener is often explicitly admonished to meditate; such poems are, in effect, recipes for visualization.^[98]

In the Manas , such icons occur in two characteristic variants. One is the nakh-sikh passage itself, which focuses on Ram and elaborates the conventions of Vaishnava iconography; a good example is the stanza in which the Lord appears before King Manu and Queen Shatrupa:

His face like the autumn moon, beauty's apogee,
graceful cheeks and chin, throat like a conch,
ruddy lips, charming teeth and nose,
smile that shames moonbeams,
eyes like newly opened lotuses,
glances to delight the heart,
brows that plunder the beauty of Love's bow,
bright mark shimmering on brow's expanse,
fish-shaped earrings and gleaming crown,
curly hair like a swarm of bees.
On his chest, jewel and forest garland,
a diamond necklace and gem-studded ornaments.
Leonine shoulders, gleaming sacred thread,
armbands of matched loveliness,
arms like elephants' trunks,
quiver at waist, bow and arrows in hand.

Yellow robe that embarrasses lightning,
stomach with three noble folds,
the beauty of his navel
as if snatched from Yamuna's eddies.

His lotus feet, on which rest
the bees of sages' hearts, beggar description.
1.147.1-148.1

To a Western reader interested primarily in the advancing narrative, such recurring conventionalized descriptions may appear as redundant halts in its flow. One wonders, for example, why the poet, having provided a detailed description of Ram and Lakshman in the garden scene (1.233.1-8), indulges in an even longer one a mere ten stanzas later (1.243.1-244.2) while describing the entry of the brothers into the royal assembly. Yet such passages, which carefully delineate an already familiar image, fulfill an expectation of the traditional audience and must be

[98] Bryant, Poems to the Child-God , 72-75.

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understood in the context of Hindu religious practice, with its great stress on the visual perception of the divine, both through external darsan and internal dhyan (meditation) and smaran^[*] (recollection)—terms often used to connote visualization.^[99]

The second type of descriptive passage favored by Tulsidas might be termed a verbal tableau, or jhanki —a momentary freezing of the action to dwell on an image of Ram and his companions. An example of such a tableau explicitly identified as an object of meditation occurs near the beginning of Book Six. Ram's army has reached Lanka and camped atop Mount Subel. As twilight deepens, the Lord and his companions rest from their labors.

Finding a lofty summit,
level and resplendent,
Lakshman with his own hands spread
a carpet of fresh leaves and blossoms,
and over these a soft deerskin.
On it the Compassionate One is seated,
resting his head on the monkey king's lap,
bow to his left, quiver to right.
With both hands he trues an arrow.
Vibhishan at his ear offers counsel.
The fortunate Angad and Hanuman
deftly massage his feet.
Behind, Lakshman sits in warrior stance,
quiver at his waist, bow and arrows in hand.

Thus is enthroned Lord Ram,
abode of compassion, loveliness, and virtue.
Fortunate the man who rests
ever absorbed in this vision!
6.11.2-8, 6.11a

The frequency of verbal icons and tableaux in the Manas can be better understood in the context of religious practices current in Tulsi's day, especially the role-playing exercises, which not only aimed at a visualization of the scenes verbally crafted by poets but sought to effect the practitioner's entry into them. The conventional assumption is that Tulsi's own relationship to Ram was that of a humble servant to an awesomely powerful master, epitomizing the "servile mood" (dasyabhav ) of the system of idealized devotional relationships that was al-

[99] On the significance of smaran^[*] , see Haberman, Acting as a Way of Salvation , 63-67, 124-26.

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ready well-articulated in his day.^[100] Later rasik practitioners regarded him as one of their preceptors and reinterpreted his epic according to their own agendas, discovering esoteric meanings that they believed he had concealed in the text. I now briefly consider some of their interpretations, for they came to influence the development of Ramayan performance during the nineteenth century.

Because of the erotic content of much rasik visualization, the preceptors of this tradition advocated secrecy and restraint in its propagation. Like tantric treatises, rasik texts often contain warnings against revealing their teachings to the uninitiated or people who have not yet attained mastery over their senses.^[101] Nevertheless, the influence of at least the more superficial aspects of the tradition, like that of the tantric cult in earlier times, came to pervade North Indian Vaishnavism and indeed much of North Indian culture during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The post-Mughal painting of Rajput courts, which emphasized the Radha-Krishna theme and delighted in erotic representations of musical modes, as well as the riti or "ornate" school of Hindi poetry, may be viewed as related manifestations of a worldview for which rasik theology provided the philosophical underpinnings and rasik practice offered the spiritual and experiential inspiration.

The Ram rasik tradition is a branch of the Ramanandi order, and the spiritual lineage of its great preceptor, Agradas, is usually traced to Ramanand (c. fourteenth century) as follows:

The tradition has historical roots in Rajasthan, for it was at Raivasa, near Galta, on the outskirts of modern Jaipur, that Agradas's guru Payhari resided, and it was there that Agradas established his own spiritual center or "throne" (gaddi ) and trained his disciples—who included Nabhadas, author of the hagiographic classic Bhaktamal . Agradas is

[100] Note, however, that in some of his lyric poetry he assumes other roles; e.g., in Kavitavali 1.12, he speaks as a maiden of Janakpur, intoxicated by the beauty of the two brothers.

[101] Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*] rasik sampraday , 174-75.

[102] Ibid., 315.

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thought to have lived during the latter half of the sixteenth century; he was thus contemporary with Tulsidas and also with the later Vrindavan goswamis, with whose teachings he was undoubtedly familiar.^[103] Although a full evaluation of Agradas's influence must await a detailed study of the surviving works attributed to him,^[104] it may be noted that of the fifty-two "gateways" to the Lord (dvar —i.e., initiatory centers) recognized by Ramanandis, eleven are held to have been established by him. His poetic signature, "Agra-ali," is considered indicative of his devotional orientation, for ali is a colloquial term for a girl's intimate female friend and the tradition holds him to have been an incarnation of Chandrakala, one of Sita's intimate circle.^[105] Portraits of Agradas often show him in a garden: he is said to have chosen this setting for his visualizations of Ram and Sita's intimate pastimes, and the custom of planting formal gardens adjacent to Ram temples may have originated with him.^[106]

After Agradas's time, the rasik movement divided into two main branches—the sakhi and sakha traditions—each represented by numerous preceptors. Devotees of the former persuasion inwardly assumed the personae of Sita's girlfriends and maidservants; the latter visualized themselves as male friends of Ram. Although the Manas remained a basic text for both groups, it was supplemented by the songs of sectarian poets, most of whom wrote in the voice of one of Ram's or Sita's companions. These songs, together with the oral exposition accompanying them, constituted an esoteric Ramayan commentary, revealing secret meanings that (it was believed) Tulsi had concealed from the ordinary devotees of his day. Only in the eighteenth century did some of these teachings begin to be expressed openly in written commentaries; Mahant Ramcharandas of Ayodhya, the author of the first complete Manastika^[*] , was said to have been an avatar of Tulsi whose mission was to

[103] His disciple Nabha gave considerable notice to Gauriya Vaishnava devotees; the Bhaktamal contains entries on Vishnupuri, Raghunath Goswami, Keshav Bhatt, Rupa, Sanatana, and Jiva Goswami, and brief reference to Gopal Bhatt, Ghamandi, and several other figures in the Gauriya tradition in Braj.

[104] DhyanmanjariKundaliya^[*] , and Agrasagar; see Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , 381. On the Dhyanmanjari , see McGregor, "The Dhyan-manjari of Agradas."

[105] A similar tradition in the Vallabha sampraday regards the movement's eight leading poets (astachap^[*] ) as incarnations of Radha's intimate companions. See Hariray's commentary on the biography of Surdas, in Parikh, ed., Caurasivaisnavan^[*]kivarta , 400-401. I am grateful to J. S. Hawley for this reference.

[106] Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*] rasik sampraday , 380. Interestingly, whereas the ideal landscape of the Krishna tradition was a forest setting of natural groves and bowers, that of the Ram tradition was an enclosed and ordered palace garden which, like other features of the tradition's iconography, appears to have been inspired by a Mughal model.

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reveal the secrets of erotic devotionalism (srngari^[*]bhakti ) hidden in the depths of the Manas Lake.^[107]

Srngar^[*] means "adornment," especially the adornment that excites passion. Like the term rasik it can have both worldly and spiritual connotations. The "bhakti of erotic adornment" was the devotional path trodden by spiritual "connoisseurs" who served the Lord with every beautiful object of sense and conceived of him in terms of the highest and most engaging metaphor: human sexual passion. Just as rasik devotees of Krishna selected, from the god's total legend, a certain phase of his adolescence and attributed to it not only a special charm but the profoundest theological significance, so Ram devotees selectively edited their Lord's story. And just as the earthly locale of Vrindavan was transformed by rasik theologians into the transcendent sphere of Golok, where Krishna's ultimate lila unfolded eternally, so the mundane Ayodhya became the eternal realm of Saket.^[108] There the supreme godhead, known to other traditions as Parabrahma or Ishvar, resided eternally in his ultimate form as the sixteen-year-old Ramchandra and his parasakti , or feminine energy, Sita. Saket was conceived as a beautiful city, foursquare in plan, surrounding the Kanak Bhavan, or "House of Gold." In the center of this palace was a magnificent garden, and at its center, a dais in the shape of a many-petaled lotus, at the heart of which stood a gem-studded throne-couch. Here was enacted the supreme mystery: the eternal union of the two divine principles in human form, worshiped and served by their intimate attendants who alone could gain entry to this inner sanctum. The tantric influence on this conception is clear; iconographically it is especially evident in the mystical diagrams (mandal^[*] , yantra ), created as aids in rasik meditation, showing the plan of Kanak Bhavan with its four gates and maze of symbolically labeled chambers and passages, all leading to the central lotus throne.^[109]

Where, the noninitiate might ask, is the Ram of the Ramayan in all this—the noble prince who relinquished his kingdom, lost his wife to a demon king, and fought a heroic battle to win her back? Adepts reply that the Lord's lila has two aspects, one earthly (laukik ) and one spiritual (alaukik ). In the former, the quality of "majesty" (aisvarya ) predominates, and Ram acts as the exemplar of worldly dharma. This is also known as the "lila to be understood" (jñney lila ), and it encompasses

[107] Ibid., 159.

[108] The name is an ancient epithet for the city, the meaning of which is uncertain; see Bakker, Ayodhya , 12.

[109] Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*] rasik sampraday , 191, provides references to the texts that elucidate rasik ideology. A diagram of Saket is shown in the foldout facing page 274.

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the conventional cycle of the Ramayan story. But beyond this, they say, there is a secret lila known only to certain fortunate ones, in which the quality of "erotic sweetness" (madhurya ) predominates and Ram expresses his ultimate reality. This is the "lila to be contemplated" (dhyey lila ) and it is deliberately omitted from the Ramayan, although it may be glimpsed in those portions of the story dealing with Ram's exploits at the youthful age when eros is thought to be most perfectly manifested.

The devotee's goal is to gain access to this ultimate lila in the only way possible—by becoming a participant in it. He passes through a series of five preliminary initiations^[110] and a program of meditative practice designed to familiarize him with the iconography of Saket and its inhabitants. Sectarian texts abound in nakh-sikh descriptions of Ram, Sita, and their youthful companions, intended to assist in the visualization of the ideal realm. The most important step, which in theory is taken only when the guru perceives the aspirant to be inwardly prepared for it, is the "initiation of relationship" (sambandh diksa^[*] ), which establishes a personal connection to the supreme lila by the creation of a "divine body" (variously termed cit deh, sadhanasarir , and divya sarir ).^[111] Although this new body is, in fact, one's real identity, recognized within one by the guru, its experience depends on emotion (bhav ), which in the beginning must be carefully cultivated. The initiate receives a wealth of contextual information to aid his identification with the divine body and cultivation of its emotional mood. For example, treatises catalog seven kinds of girlfriends of Sita, ranging in age from less than six to more than sixteen years, and provide each with a list Of close relatives and teachers, and details as to their place of birth, favorite activities, and so forth. Similar catalogs exist for the male companions of Ram.^[112]

Once established in the visualized body, an aspirant is ready to begin the most characteristic aspect of rasik practice: the mental service of Sita-Ram during the "eight periods of the day" (astayam^[*] )—a cycle based on the pattern of daily worship in Vaishnava temples and ultimately on the protocol of royal courts. Most of the prominent rasik preceptors composed manuals detailing their own interpretations of the cycle and the type of activity to be visualized during each period. Dedi-

[110] These include the bestowal of a mystical formula (mantra ), of the sectarian forehead mark (tilak ) and other bodily markings (mudra ), of a rosary (mala ), and of a new name (usually ending in the suffix -saran^[*] ). Singh, Rambhakti mem^[*]rasik sampraday , 180-86.

[111] Ibid., 226-27.

[112] Singh provides examples on pages 238-40 (female friends) and pages 245-47 (male friends).

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cated adherence to an astayam^[*] schedule involves rigorous discipline; the aspirant must rise by 3:00 A.M. , bathe and purify himself by repeating the sectarian mantra, mentally reassume the visualized body, and be ready to begin offering service to the divine pair when they are awakened at about 4:30—a service that will continue at prescribed intervals throughout the day and night. The aim of this discipline (sadhana ), which may occupy one's whole life, is clearly expressed in sectarian writings: what begins as an "imaginative conception" (bhavna ) gradually becomes real. By long practice in visualization, the devotee begins to catch "glimpses" (jhalak ) of the actual lila; these gradually intensify and lengthen until the adept acquires the ability to enter the realm of Saket at any moment—a condition regarded by this tradition as "liberation in the body" (sadeh mukti ).^[113] Of course, this supreme state is not attained by all devotees, but it is an ideal to which all aspire. The intensity with which exemplary initiates have pursued these practices and the extraordinary experiences vouchsafed them are celebrated in sectarian hagiography, while the notion of the heavenly Ayodhya as the soul's ultimate abode is constantly reaffirmed in the Ram devotees' preferred idiom for death: to "set forth for Saket."

Despite the emphasis, especially in the sakhi branch of the tradition, on erotic themes, the personal meditations of many rasik devotees centered on other possible relationships to Ram. Some chose to visualize the Lord as a young child and cultivate tender parental emotions toward him (vatsalya bhav ).^[114] In this they had as a model the immortal crow Kak Bhushundi of Tulsi's Uttar kand^[*] , who asserted,

My chosen Lord is the child Ram,
who possesses the beauty of a billion Love gods
7.75.5

and who was said to return to Ayodhya in every cosmic cycle to experience the childhood sports of his Lord, thus paralleling the aspirant's own inner journeys to Saket and recreations of its lila . Common to all rasik practice was an emphasis on the techniques of role playing and visualization as well as an aesthetic delight in sensorially rich settings, rather than any specific content.

[113] Ibid., 253.

[114] See, for example, the three-volume Manas commentary entitled Balvinodini (for the amusement of children) by Mahant Gangadas of Ayodhya, in which the author regards himself and fellow devotees as child-playmates of Ram. Note also the spiritual practice of the famous nineteenth-century scholar Umapati Tripathi of Ayodhya, who scandalized his contemporaries by visualizing himself as the teacher of the youthful Ram; van der Veer, Gods on Earth , 13-14.

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As in the Krishna tradition, so in the rasik literature of Ram we find warnings against the externalization of the meditative practices, for the content of the visualizations could easily provoke the misunderstanding and scorn of the uninitiated. Yet paradoxically, since an underlying assumption is that the events seen in meditation are real, the most exemplary devotees are often those whose lives reveal a blurring of the boundary that separates this world from Saket and a spilling over of its lila into the mundane sphere. Such legends confirm the power of the technique and suggest that the devotee's "acting" is less a mental exercise than a way of life.

The early saint Surkishor (fl. c. 1600?), who, like Agradas, came from the Jaipur region, is said to have visualized himself as a brother of King Janak; hence he regarded Sita as his daughter and Ram as his son-in-law. So strictly did he observe traditional rules of kinship that on pilgrimages to Ayodhya he refrained from taking food or water within the city limits, since a girl's blood relations should not accept hospitality from her husband's family. He had an image of Sita that he carried with him everywhere and treated exactly as one would a real daughter, even buying toys and sweets for her in the bazaar. It is said that other devotees, shocked by his disrespectful attitude toward the Mother of the Universe, stole this image. Heartbroken, he went to Mithila to find his lost daughter, and Sita, pleased by his steadfastness, caused the idol to reappear.^[115]

In Katha sessions, I twice heard the story of the child saint Prayagdas. Taunted by other children because he had no elder sister to feed him sweets during the festive month of Shravan, he went tearfully to his widowed mother, who appeased him by telling him that he had a sister who had been married before he was born: "Her name is Janaki, and her husband is Ramchandra, a powerful man in Ayodhya. She never comes to visit us." The guileless child, determined to see his sister, set out for Ayodhya and after many trials reached the holy city. His requests to be directed to the residence of "that big man, Ramchandra" met with laughter; everyone assumed the ragged urchin to be insane. Exhausted from his journey, Prayagdas fell asleep under a tree. But in the dead of night in the inner sanctuary of Kanak Bhavan Temple, the images came alive. Ram turned to Sita and said, "Dearest, today the most extraordinary saint has come to town! We must go meet him." The divine entourage proceeded in state to Prayagdas's lonely tree, where the ringing of the great bells around the necks of the elephants awakened the boy.

[115] Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*] rasik sampraday , 399.

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Undaunted by the magnificent vision, he repeated his question to the splendidly dressed man in the howdah and received the reply, "I am Ramchandra, and here beside me is your sister, Janaki." But the boy, unimpressed, told the Lord, "You are surely deceiving me, because where I come from we have the custom that when a sister meets her brother again after a long separation, she falls at his feet and washes them with her tears." Devotees delight in describing how the Mother of the Universe, unable to disappoint him, got down from her jeweled palanquin and threw herself in the dust of the road.^[116]

The romantic predilections of rasik devotees led many of them to focus on the first book of the Manas . Maharaja Raghuraj Singh of Rewa wrote in his epic Ramsvayamvar^[*] that his guru had instructed him to read Balkand^[*] exclusively. A great devotee of the Ramnagar Ramlila , he is said to have attended only the early portions of the cycle each year. The sadhu Rampriya Sharan, who regarded himself as Sita's sister, composed a Sitayan in seven books (c. 1703), confining its narrative to Sita's childhood and marriage. A few preceptors even took the extreme position that the distressing events of the exile, the abduction of Sita, and so forth, were not lila at all, but only divine drama (natak^[*] ) staged for the benefit of the world.^[117] Another story told of Prayagdas has the guileless saint happen on a Katha on Ayodhyakand^[*] , the events of which are altogether unknown to him. He listens with growing alarm as the expounder tells of the exile of Ram, Sita, and Lakshman and their wanderings in the forest, but when he hears that the princes and his "sister" are compelled to go barefoot and sleep on the ground, he becomes distracted with grief. Rushing to the bazaar, he has a cobbler fashion three pairs of sandals and an artisan make three rope-beds and, placing these things on his head, he sets out for Chitrakut, inquiring of everyone concerning the wanderers. He eventually makes his way to Panchvati where, it is said, he is rewarded with darsan and the opportunity to bestow his gifts.^[118]

The influence of the rasik tradition appears to have peaked in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—the period when the Ramlila developed into its modern form. B. P. Singh's biographical listing of prominent rasik devotees includes many Ramayanis who were active in the

[116] Based on oral versions by Shrinath Mishra (February 13, 1983) and a Ramnarayan Shukla (August 3, 1983). Singh gives a different version, in which Prayagdas is sent to Ayodhya by his guru; Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , 402.

[117] Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*] rasik sampraday , 281; concerning the Sitayan , see ibid., 394.

[118] Ibid., 403.

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court of Udit Narayan Singh and his son Ishvariprasad and were involved in the development of the royal pageant—such as Ramgulam Dvivedi, Raguraj Singh, Shivlal Pathak, and Kashthajihva Swami. Singh's study also suggests the political implications of the theology and mystical practice of the sectarian teachers: in a period dominated by a foreign power, they offered devotees and patrons an interiorization of the old Vaishnava royal cult, based on a "new kingdom,"

limitless in extent, and millions of times greater in splendor than any earthly kingdom. Its king is so great that the five elements and time itself stand reverently before him . . . while he himself, in the company of countless maidservants and his own beloved, remains in the Golden House immersed in dalliance. . . . This imaginary kingdom of the rasiks is the world of Saket, its sovereign is the divine couple Shri Sita-Ram, and the easy path to reach it is through the technique of visualization.^[119]

But just as in the theory of rasik practice, what begins as imagination ends as a reality so concrete that the real world seems to be no more than a dream in comparison, so in the case of the Ramlila , what began as a play was transformed, under the guidance of the Banaras rulers and their rasik advisors, into a city and kingdom not only reimagined but physically transformed into an enduring ideological statement.

For rasik devotees the Ramlila offered a foretaste of the goal of their mystical endeavor—the realization of the adored deities and their richly iconographic world—but this exteriorization of the vision necessitated certain adjustments. The use of Brahman child actors reflected both the organizers' fascination with the corresponding phases of Ram's life and their conviction that only innocent children of pure birth could fully manifest the qualities of deities. Devotees may also have been influenced by the erotic content of much of their visualization; as in the Krishna plays of Vrindavan, in which the deity's amours, graphically described in literature, were rendered charmingly innocent by their symbolic enactment by lisping children, so the little boys of Chitrakut and Ramnagar enabled rasik initiates to harmlessly exteriorize** their visions of the loveplay of the Lord and his consort. At the same time, the Ramlila afforded them an opportunity to render tangible service to the flesh-and-blood deities, to touch and be touched by them—an intimacy that would have been impossible with adult actors.

[119] Ibid., 365. Although Singh implies that this invisible kingdom was meant to serve as an alternative to the cultural model presented by the Mughals, he points to the ironic fact that the physical details in which it was imagined were inevitably based on the most recent model of imperial grandeur—the Mughals themselves.

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Theological Views of Lila

Even today, when the conservatism of the Ramnagar Ramlila has become a matter of local pride, suggestions for the pageant's modernization are occasionally heard. Is it not inconvenient, some ask, for spectators to have to sit on the ground and to troop long distances each evening? Would it not be more sensible for the whole cycle to be staged in a single location, equipped with permanent stage, awnings, and chairs? There have been times when the producers' traditionalism has seemed to run counter to the best interests of the play—as in a recent year, when ritual pollution due to a death in a family that provided several key actors decimated the cast in midcycle and resulted in hasty and unsatisfactory substitutions. At that time, even some older devotees urged the maharaja to overlook the possible breach of dharma. They argued that the deceased was only a distant relation of the actors and the pollution was slight; why not let some purificatory rite be performed and the cycle proceed with cast intact? Vibhuti Narayan Singh was unyielding, and his sarcastic response is still quoted admiringly by aficionados: "What do you think this is . . . some play? "^[120]

It is indeed the position of many devotees that the Ramlila is not a "play" (natak^[*] ) in the usual sense; this view has been articulated by Thakur Prasad Dvivedi in an essay that illuminates some of the religious concepts underlying Vaishnava performances. Using the terminology of the classical dramatic treatise Natyasastra^[*] , Dvivedi argues that lila is a unique class of performance distinct from conventional dramatic representation; indeed, it is not "representation" at all, because it is born of the Lord and is one of his essential forms (vigrah ). Through specially consecrated actors, the Lord manifests Himself and recreates His sports in every detail, regardless of theatrical considerations.^[121] The use of footwear and chairs is eschewed by audiences not out of stoicism but out of their conviction that they are in the physical presence of God.

To underscore his contention that lila is fundamentally different from theater, Dvivedi describes the training regimen of the Ramnagar principals. On being selected by the maharaja, the boys who are to play the four brothers and Sita retire for two months to a secluded enclosure, where they are fed a special diet to enhance their "luster" (tejas ) and tutored daily by directors. This training is not merely to help them mem-

[120] Linda Hess, personal communication, October 1983.

[121] E.g., Sanskrit dramatic theory forbids the depiction of violent battles or the deaths of champions, both of which may occur in Ramlila; Dvivedi, "Sri Ramnagar ki sri Ramlila mem^[*] devatva," 50.

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Figure 29.
Adult players representing monkeys and bears at the Ramnagar
Ramlila (photo courtesy of Linda Hess)

orize dialogues and gestures—indeed, this is a secondary consideration, for a director with a promptbook will always be at their sides in performance to assist them if they forget. Rather, they are put through a process akin to the one that rasik initiates impose on themselves: they are taught to identify completely with their parts and to live them even when not in costume or in public view. From the time of their selection they are called, and are supposed to call one another, only by their lila -names, and they are taught to behave as their characters would: thus, when Ram rises from his seat, his three brothers rise respectfully as well, and whenever they address him they first bow their heads. Once the performances begin, even their nightly place of residence is determined by the narrative. Ram and Sita are kept strictly separated until the flower garden episode of their first meeting; after her capture by Ravan, Sita remains at all performance times in the compound that represents the Ashok grove in which she is imprisoned. Unlike ordinary actors, who shed their roles when they leave the theater, the Ramnagar players are never supposed to be out of character. This particular brand of painstaking verisimilitude belies the notion of Ramlila as a form of theatrical "simplification," but it has less to do with theater in the conventional sense than with sadhana .

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Ramnagar's conventions are widely admired, but few neighborhood productions can afford the special training and environments used to create the kind of identification just described, and many pay only a conventionalized lip service to it. Yet the tendency of neighborhood actors—especially adult participants who play the same roles year after year—to identify with their parts has often been remarked on; many become known by their lila names year-round in their localities and claim to be deeply affected by their participation.^[122] Ramnagar devotees still cite the total identification of the elderly man who played Hanuman for nearly fifty years and, even on his retirement, continued to "play" his role, constantly shadowing the Ram actor and serving him. Nor do they find it incongruous that the boys are playful and mischievous in their lodgings, for they assume that the Lord too relaxes and sports in his private moments. But the effects of the boys' participation may manifest later in life; among the Manas expounders I interviewed, several cited childhood participation in a Ramlila as a decisive factor in their choice of career.

Citing the Krishna lila of Vrindavan, especially the van yatra tradition of pilgrimage theater, Dvivedi quotes a Vaishnava saying,

In the forest of Vrindavan occurs the manifest lila ,
in the mind's Vrindavan, the unmanifest lila .^[123]

Both the van yatra and the Ramlila belong to the "manifest" (prakata^[*] ) category, as does the daily ritual cycle of Vaishnava temple worship. But the verse suggests the relationship that external performance has with the internal discipline of visualizing an "unmanifest" (aprakata^[*]) lila , and in discussing the various kinds of people who benefit from the Ramlila , Dvivedi concludes by noting that it offers "to initiated aspirants and especially to those who practice rasik devotion the lovely opportunity to render service."^[124]

Such service may take a variety of forms. Since the feet of a svarup are never supposed to touch the ground except when he is enacting a scene, he is transported from place to place on the shoulders of devotees, and sadhus especially vie for this opportunity to enjoy physical intimacy with God. During breaks in the performance, the boys receive an endless stream of worshipers, accept offerings of garlands and return them as prasad , are fanned and offered pan , and sometimes have their feet mas-

[122] Mehta, "Ramlila," 60.

[123] Dvivedi, "Sri Ramnagar ki sri Ramlila mem^[*] devatva," 54.

[124] Ibid., 57.

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saged by adoring devotees. Some sadhus simply sit gazing on them, rosaries in hand, while practicing the repetition of the name (nam-jap ).

Even at smaller productions similar conventions are observed. One reason the Khojwan performances last far into the night is that frequent interruptions allow devotees to offer service. Whenever Ram and Lakshman traverse the neighborhood in the course of their wanderings, they are invited to pause at homes and shops. Each establishment is decorated with lights and flowers, and even though it may be 1:00 or 2:00 A.M. , the whole household is awake. The boys are seated on richly draped couches, their feet are washed, they are fed savories and sweets, and their arti is performed by family members. The sponsors are usually merchants, sometimes householder initiates in the Ramanandi tradition, who prize this opportunity to offer intimate service to living deities. The boy actors in the Chitrakut production are housed with a different family each night—a special, coveted honor. The desire to experience such intimacy—and to gain the status it confers—must be reckoned among the factors responsible for the proliferation of neighborhood Ramlilas . By supporting the pageant, the merchants of Khojwan and Chitrakut earn the right to do what the king does at Ramnagar: play host to Ram and Sita for the duration of the cycle.

Entering the Play

How successful is Ramlila in facilitating identification with the story and its characters? To judge its success, one must attempt to enter its world. Yet the Ramlila is a form of performance that makes considerable demands on its audience. Apart from the physical hardships viewers sometimes endure,^[125] there is the prerequisite of knowledge of the text. For even though, when viewed overall, the lila may seem to be a grand and colorful pageant, most performances are actually slow-moving and uneventful. Moments of high drama and spectacle occur periodically, but they emerge out of hours of alternation between Manas recitation and dialogues, stylized and deliberately slow acting, and endless treks between sites. As one Ramnagar connoisseur exclaimed to me with wry delight, "The fact is, unless you know half the Manas by heart, our Ramlila is probably the most boring play in the world!"^[126] Few outsiders, unversed (as our idiom aptly puts it) in the performance text, have

[125] These are vividly described by Hess in "Ram Lila: The Audience Experience," 176-79.

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

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the patience to sit through even a single complete episode—as I occasionally found when I brought a foreign acquaintance to Ramnagar with me—and casual visitors in quest of Ramlila may be better advised to see one of the edited versions adapted for modern tastes.^[127] But if one has some familiarity with the text and makes the effort, by regular attendance, to penetrate the Ramlila 's world, the reward can be an insight into the religious motives that underlie this drama. In Hess's words,

To be vigorously and devotedly involved in the Ram Lila for one month is to take an excursion out of ordinary space and time. . . . The participant not only sees the drama, but finds himself acting in it. A vast world is created before and around him. Performance after performance this world is built physically and psychologically. The devotee's days are curved around the necessity of being there. . . . The tawdry samsara^[*] of ordinary life pales while the Ram Lila world becomes ever more vivid, brilliant and gripping.^[128]

This experience, particularly intense for devotees, may be shared even by outsiders, and in perceptively writing of the "audience experience," Hess necessarily included her own. I too find myself compelled to describe personal experiences in an effort to complete my accounting faithfully.

In 1982 I attended the Ramnagar performances daily and sat with the Manas chanters; like any regular from Banaras, I too found the pattern of my days "curved around the necessity of being there." I seldom reached home before midnight and barely had time each morning to write notes on the previous evening's events and attend to a few household chores before it was time to bathe, put on clean clothes, and set out for Ramnagar again—a routine that continued unbroken for thirty-one days. My experiences during this period ran a gamut from boredom to intense fascination and even to fear (of being trampled by elephants during nighttime treks, since the Ramayanis walk directly in front of the maharaja's mounted party); but one response became quite predictable. The arti ritual with which each performance ends is orchestrated around a hymn sung by the Ramayanis. Two are used in the course of the pageant: one whenever Sita is with Ram, and one when she is separated from him. Both are typical rasik lyrics—descriptions of the beauty of the deity enthroned in the eternal Saket—and bear no apparent relation to

[127] For example, the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra's annual ballet production (also entitled "Ramlila ") at Kotla Firoz Shah in Delhi, which condenses the entire Manas into a single three-hour spectacle. This fine production is presented nightly during Ramlila season.

[128] Hess, "Ram Lila: The Audience Experience," 179-80.

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the Ramayan story. Although the "Ram" before them may be seated-on the ground in forest exile, the Ramayanis still begin,

A palace of gold, a jewel-studded throne,
servants spread out shimmering carpets

As they sing, a fireworks man attaches a magnesium flare to a long pole. Just as they reach the third line of the verse,

while on them shines the Light of the World!

he ignites and elevates it. It blazes forth like a new star exploding in the firmament, bathing the whole area in unearthly brilliance. Simultaneously an involuntary sound rises from thousands of throats: something between a jubilant cheer and an awed gasp, it sounds like the roar of the sea. Always, at this moment, my throat contracts, my eyes mist, and I am swept up in the intense emotion of the crowd. At such times, I sense a change in Ram's appearance too. All the boys strike rigid poses for arti —bodies erect, faces impassive, lotuses in hand; arranged by the directors according to iconographic prescription. Yet these are not stone images, but living beings, and the difference is important to devotees. During the tumultuous sunrise arti following enthronement night, in the midst of one of Ramnagar's biggest crowds, I look at Ram's face and get an almost physical jolt: surely this is not the same boy I have been watching daily for more than four weeks; he seems older, more powerful, almost luminous above the swaying heads of the throng. And there is something else besides; something that eludes description but sends a chill up my spine. The faith that sustains the production seems, at this moment, utterly tangible.

If the power of Ramlila is revealed in its unfolding presence, it is felt no less in its absence; as Hess has noted, the sudden dissolution of the drama's vast and encompassing world on the final night is a pralay (the term used for the periodic reabsorption of the cosmos into an unmanifest condition) that profoundly affects spectators.^[129] The morning after the last performance in 1982, I awoke with a feeling of emptiness and loss. Although I had many pressing errands that had long been delayed, I felt irresistibly drawn back to Ramnagar and went to visit one of the Ramayanis, a schoolmaster in a nearby village. At sunset we cycled to the huge field where Ravan had fallen in battle six days before; it was now deserted and windswept, barely recognizable without the

[129] Ibid., 180-81, 190.

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Figure 30.
A giant puppet effigy representing Kumbhakaran at the Lanka site,
Ramnagar Ramlila (photo courtesy of William Donner)

crowds, the oil lamps, the sounds. When I remarked to my companion that I already missed the Ramlila , he replied quietly, "As for us, well, we just live somehow for eleven months until it all begins again."

But the Ramlila never disappears completely. Its names and environments remain etched on the landscape, and its magic can occasionally resurface in surprising ways. I cannot agree—nor could the people I talked to—that players are unaffected by the roles they assume.^[130] Their external acting, like the inner role playing of rasik initiates, is a serious business to them, and the personae they briefly assume are not quickly forgotten. It may be recalled that the great turn-of-the-century vyas Ramkumar Mishra always prostrated himself at the feet of Dharmdatt, one of his own pupils, because the latter had once played Ram at Ramnagar.

After lila ended, I continued to make periodic research visits to Ramnagar; one afternoon many months later I was walking in front of the palace with Ramji Pandey, the chief Ramayani, when we encountered a group of secondary school boys. Pandey chatted briefly with them, and

[130] Thus Schechner has sometimes implied; in Performative Circumstances he notes that former boy actors "had vanished into the population" (p. 280)—an observation suggesting only that he had difficulty contacting them, not that they were unaffected by their parts.

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then they requested that we join them for a cup of tea. As it happened, we had just had tea and I was in a hurry to return to Banaras, so I declined their repeated invitations. Pandey (who was constitutionally reluctant to turn down free refreshments) tried to coax me out Of my bad manners: "Certainly you must take tea; why not?" It had been a long day, and I was beginning to feel annoyed by their insistence. Then Pandey motioned toward one of the boys and asked me if I recognized him. The youngster, clad in a school uniform of Western-style shirt and khaki trousers, smiled shyly. "No," I replied firmly and started to unlock my cycle. "Yet you've seen him before," Pandey continued softly, "many, many times." I looked again; the face was oddly familiar, but my growing irritation still kept me from catching on. As I turned back to my bike, the old Ramayani suddenly became grave; taking hold of my sleeve, he almost whispered, "Don't you realize who he is? He is Ram , and he is offering you prasad of tea."

The obvious came as a complete surprise; just for an instant the sharp contours of the mundane seemed to dissolve into transparency, and another, familiar world swam back into focus, like a stone glimpsed at the bottom of a pond. I looked again at the face I had seen that morning at the sunrise ceremony. Then we all had tea.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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Six
The Text in a Changing Society

Only that fame, poetry, or power is good which, like the holy Ganga, is good for all.
1.14.9

The Paradoxical Paradigm

An implicit theme of this study has been the inseparability, for the North Indian audience, of the Manas text from its realization in performance—a relationship anticipated in the structure of the text and endlessly celebrated in the dialectic of its performance traditions. The focus in preceding chapters has been on the stage of epic performance, but we must now turn to the surrounding arena—what was earlier termed the outermost frame of the performance system. Having observed how the text instructs, entertains, and inspires its audiences, we must now grapple with the more difficult question of what it means to them and how its meanings are reflected in their lives and institutions.

Two levels of meaning come to mind: one that pertains to society and may be termed "moral" or "ethical," and one that pertains to the individual and is best termed "spiritual." These can be related to the two dimensions of performance, termed "formal" and "affective," discussed in Chapter 1. In its self-presentation to an audience, a text, like a living performer, may be said to "assume accountability" for an act of communication, and this assumption necessarily situates it within a social context. At the same time, it offers its audience the possibility of enhanced experience—a gratification that, especially in the context of religious performance, points beyond this world to that other, transcendent realm wherein ultimate meaning is felt to reside.

I suggest that the relationship between the social world and the tran-

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scendent other is the fundamental theme of the Manas but that the Hindi epic's formulation of this relationship contains a significant element of paradox. This paradox is not experienced as confusing but rather as productive of peace (santi ), understood as a state of equilibrium within the framework of a dilemma that is ultimately irresolvable, at least in this world. Tulsidas's treatment of this dilemma, I argue, has been vital to his poem's enduring appeal.

The problematic relationship between social ethics and spiritual transcendence is explored in a variety of contexts. The remainder of this section considers some implications of the poet's choice of the Ramayan story, and of his idealization of familial and social relationships. The second and third sections focus on the historical context of the epic's rise to prominence, with an emphasis on the use of the story in recent times by religiopolitical movements. The fourth section examines a continuing controversy over the social and religious teachings of the epic, and the last two sections reconsider the current vitality and speculate on the future viability of the performance genres treated in this study.

This chapter does not, however, attempt an ethical study of the epic's contents or seek to identify what Tulsidas may have believed or intended to teach on such now-controversial subjects as the hierarchical ordering of society, the position of women, and the role of the state. Studies exist that undertake such an agenda, and the assumption of their authors usually seems to be that Tulsidas held a consistent position on every such topic—a position that, once identified, they proceed to attack or defend.^[1] In fact, the words of the Manas can be used to support diverse and indeed contradictory positions, and even were it possible for us to question its author as to what he meant by certain passages, we might still reserve the right to favor other readings, since texts have a way of growing beyond the limitations of their authors.^[2] The contradictions and inconsistencies in the Manas are not simply a reflection of our faulty perception of its message, but rather signifiers of a dimension of paradox that is as close to the heart of the epic as it was to the heart of the society for which Tulsi so artfully and successfully crafted it. Some questions, as Levi-Strauss pointed out, are too important, culturally speak-

[1] See, for example, Ramdat Bharadwaj, The Philosophy of Tulsidas, and the essays in Nagendra, ed., Tulasidasa: His Mind and Art; other works dealing with specific issues are cited below.

[2] Members of the 1947 Hindu Law Commission in the Punjab found local pandits insisting on their right to interpret scripture as they chose; "Even if the author himself were to reappear and assure us of another interpretation, we should not believe him!" Cited in Derrett, "The Concept of Duty in Ancient Indian Jurisprudence," 42.

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ing, to have definitive answers. They must get themselves enacted as myths, which are performances of paradox.^[3]

In India the authoritative, systematizing sastra literature has never enjoyed mass appeal; it largely appears as a sterile imposition from above on the disordered activity of the world. The mythical narrative of itihasa and purana^[*] , on the other hand, reflects that activity and remains immensely popular, for its stories harbor paradoxes that point (as all paradoxes do) to the possibility of transcendence. Sastra was characteristically the product of Brahman authors, whereas the epics arose within a Kshatriya milieu. Priestly culture had as its early patron deity Brahma, also known as the "orderer" (vidhatr^[*] ), who sat at the head of the cosmos, gazing down and putting things in their places. The epics became identified with the Kshatriya preserver of the cosmos, Vishnu, a once-minor deity who, in both myth and history, was to dramatically expand in importance; a god who might be termed "upwardly mobile."

It is often held that the Ramayan story, apart from being shorter and more cohesive than the Mahabharata , is less morally ambiguous in tone: a Treta Yuga fairy tale of black and white as against the longer epic's Kali Yuga gray. Although I would not dismiss this generalization entirely, I find that contradiction and paradox remain powerfully present within the Ramayan tradition. Valmiki's story contains a number of inconsistencies, some so glaring that their survival in any single recension is quite remarkable.^[4] These may reflect the unwillingness of compilers to delete variant but popular accounts of key episodes or may even suggest the kind of narrative liberties we have seen taken by contemporary Manas expounders, who sometimes present conflicting versions of stories and invite listeners to savor the "feeling" of each. But there are also fundamental problems inherent in the story, such as Ram's betrayal by his foster mother, his slaying of Bali from a place of concealment, and his ultimate mistreatment of the virtuous Sita. Variant recensions and later commentaries make clear that such incidents did indeed present dilemmas to the audience, which elicited numerous solutions over the course of centuries. Yet these were never definitive, for in an oral culture no single text could encompass the whole of the tradition—the story was too well known to everyone. A millennium and a half after Valmiki, Tulsidas was still dealing with many of the same problems. He

[3] Levi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth."

[4] See, for example, Pollock's analysis of the rajya-sulka episode; The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki: Ayodhyakanda^[*] , 25-32.

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smoothed out some of them in his own fashion (often by ignoring or merely alluding to them)^[5] and created a few new ones of his own.^[6] We have observed that the Katha audience's verbalized "doubts" about the story become occasions for the performer's artful explanations, but even though such procedures may be satisfying, they do not really offer definitive solutions to the narrative's vexing but fertile problems.

The relationship between the tradition's problems and its vitality was brought home to me by one man's reminiscence of his childhood in Banaras. In the evenings, he recalled, the male members of the family would sit on their rooftop and sing the Manas to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals ("Even today," he added, "if I hear a single line of Tulsidas, that same mood comes over me"). Then they would go downstairs for the evening meal, during which a favorite pastime was to debate some incident from the story. "My elder brother might say that Ram was wrong to slay Bali; it was against dharma and he shouldn't have done it. I would take the other position and defend Ram's action as best I could."^[7] The debate was clearly enjoyable; it was just as clearly never definitively resolved.

Paradoxically, the Ramayan has often been eulogized as a "treatise on dharma" (dharmasastra ), presenting ideal models of social relationships. In the words of one modern enthusiast, the Manas "teaches us how to conduct ourselves in the world with fellow human beings. It tells us how a brother should behave towards brother, son to a father, wife to husband, and friend to a friend. . .. Through the ages men have turned to the Ramcaritmanas when they wished to know how they should conduct themselves in life."^[8] Tulsi's idealization of the relationship of Brahmans to Kshatriyas, men to women, and twice-born Hindus to the lower orders of society is taken up later in this chapter; primacy in any discussion of the text's paradigms, however, must be given to the relationship that is first not only in the listing above but undoubtedly also in the hearts of many of the epic's devotees.

[5] An example is Sita's lapse from her usual decorum to deliver a stinging allegation against Lakshman (Aranya^[*]kanda^[*] 43.19-24 in the Critical Edition of Valmiki); Tulsi merely reports that Sita uttered a "mysterious" speech (3.28.5).

[6] Examples are the apparent contradictions in the story of Kak Bhushundi in Book Seven, which, in the judgment of one modern critic, "seems like the babblings of a lunatic"; Shastri, Manas mimamsa^[*] , 223. This author's criticisms are discussed below in Cracks in the Mirror.

[7] N. Singh, interview, March 1982.

[8] Bahadur, Ramcharitmanasa: A Study in Perspective, 77. On the Ramayan as dharmasastra , see Pollock, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki: Ayodhyakanda^[*] , 75.

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Brothers and Others

Although the Ramayan has shown itself to be fairly exportable as entertainment, Western readers who approach the story expecting a romantic fairy tale of a handsome prince and beautiful princess are likely to be disappointed. The prince and the princess are present, of course, as is the wicked demon who kidnaps the heroine, setting the hero on a perilous quest to rescue her, aided by supernatural beings and talking animals. Yet within this archetypic scenario, the Western reader senses elements that are psychologically alien, most notably in the treatment of the hero and the heroine who, even in the relatively rare moments when they are enjoying each other's company, seldom seem to be alone at center stage. Like much else in Indian culture, the Ramayan is (as one of my teachers in Delhi used to say) a "group experience"—the group in this case being that microcosm of Indo-Aryan society, the patrilineal extended family.

Dharma, to paraphrase the old adage, begins at home, and Ram is the most gregariously familial of deities. Enter any of his temples in northern India and you encounter not an image but a tableau. The precise number of dramatis personae varies from shrine to shrine: Bharat and Shatrughna, Hanuman and Vibhishan are common extras; other attendants, sages, and suppliant deities may be added if space and budget allow. But the minimal and essential element in the tableau is not a representation of a heiros gamos, as in temples to Lakshmi-Narayan and Radha-Krishna, but rather of a divine triad: Sita-Ram-Lakshman— God and his wife and his junior brother. What message is encoded in this particular trinity?

Let us begin with the figure usually placed to Ram's left. Despite her legendary beauty, virtue, and accomplishments, Sita is already idealized in Valmiki's version of the epic to the point of appearing "regular and flat, with almost emblematic features."^[9] By the sixteenth century, as a result of a variety of factors—sociopolitical, theological, and (in Tulsi's case) possibly personal as well—her characterization has moved so far from flesh and blood that during much of the narrative she becomes quite literally a "shadow" (pratibimb ) of her former self, created for the purpose of being abducted by Ravan, while the real, inviolable Sita remains concealed in the element of fire. Of course, this is essentially a theological sleight-of-hand, deftly executed and instantly forgotten in

[9] Pollock, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki: Ayodhyakanda^[*] , 48; Pollock applies this judgment to all the principal junior characters.

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Figure 32.
A tableau of Ram, Sita, and Lakshman, with attendant deities,
enshrined in a Banaras temple

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the tumultuous press of events, throughout which the shadow behaves just as the real Sita would. But even in Book One, in the romantic scene where we first meet her, Sita's personality and physical attributes are treated with exaggerated understatement; the long nakh-sikh passages devoted to Ram have no parallel in descriptions of Sita, whose idealized beauty is sketched in a line or two. The problem may not be so much Tulsi's puritanism as his metaphysical position; he can never forget that Sita is "the primal energy, ocean of splendor, source of the universe" (1.148.2)—she is less Ram's consort than his almost undifferentiated feminine half, although this theological imperative finds an antidote in the popular performance tradition, in which Sita acquires a more vivid personality. In any case, she is indispensable to the triad, as a point of reference to throw into focus the crucial relationship between the other two figures.

In the introduction to his translation of Valmiki's Ayodhyakanda^[*] , Sheldon Pollock views the Sanskrit epic in the perspective of social and political conditions in northern India in the latter half of the first millennium B.C.E. , the period that saw the coalescence of a hereditary system of hierarchical social organization, and powerful monarchies governed, in theory, by the law of primogeniture. Pollock finds the central conflict in the early epic texts to be the struggle among "brothers" (often, in our kinship terms, cousins or half-brothers; the patrilineal extended family allows for the same intimacy among all of these) and suggests that the violent and ultimately catastrophic succession dispute of the Mahabharata found its ideological antithesis in Valmiki's narrative. For in every situation in which the ancient audience would have expected tension, opposition, or open rebellion, it instead found itself presented with a new ethical imperative: "For civilized society the poet inculcates, by positive precept and negative example, and with a sometimes numbing insistence, a powerful new code of conduct: hierarchically ordered, unqualified submission."^[10] However, the story's enduring popularity is not simply a remnant of the historical context of its composition, for problems of authority and power, dominance and submission, were not confined to dynastic lineages of the distant past. Tulsidas did not write for royal patrons or even in a milieu of dynastic Hindu rule, and many of the ideological tensions highlighted in the older text—the potential problems posed by the institution of heir-apparent (yuvaraja ), for example, and by the custom of sovereignty-as-brideprice (rajyasulka )—were

[10] Ibid., 16.

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of little interest to him;^[11] they are of even less concern to the modern-day, but no less fervent, worshiper of the Ramayan triad. I take up the subject of the tradition's impact on political ideology later in this chapter; for the moment I wish to consider the family dynamics with which the Hindi epic is implicitly concerned.

In Lanka^[*]kand^[*] , during Ram's lamentation over the mortally wounded Lakshman, Tulsi allows his hero to speak "as an ordinary man" (6.61.1). Here, apparently, is what an ordinary man would feel in such circumstances:

Sons, wealth, wife, home, and family,
constantly come and go in the world.
Arise, dear one, reflecting on this:
Irreplaceable, on earth, is a blood brother!^[12]

How will I face them in Ayodhya,
having lost, for a woman's sake, a dear brother?
Better to suffer public disgrace,
for the loss of a wife is no great thing!
6.61.7,8; 11,12

That this is an outburst in a moment of intense emotion makes it all the more significant. I have already noted in my discussion of Ramlila cycles that Bharat Milap—the reunion of the separated brothers—is an emotional high point far surpassing the intensity of the rather subdued episode of Ram's reunion with Sita. Significantly too, we note that in Ramchandra Shukla's identification of the "five most touching incidents" in the Manas , not a single one concerns Sita, whereas three (Ram's meeting with Bharat in Chitrakut; his lament over the wounded Lakshman; and Bharat's anguished wait for Ram's return) underscore the all-powerful fraternal bonds.^[13] Such evaluations remind us that the cornerstone of the Hindu extended family is the relationship not between husband and wife but between adult brothers, who represent the focus of authority in the family. The epic's self-regulating family hierarchy, based on the willing submission of junior siblings, is the idealized reverse-image of a real world in which brothers often quarrel and their

[11] With respect to the former, Tulsi seems concerned only to exonerate Dashrath of any duplicity in arranging the transfer of power (a trend already evident in Valmiki); the latter problem is quietly ignored. On both these points in the older epic, see Pollock, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki: Ayodhyakanda^[*] , 25-32.

[12] Tulsi, like Valmiki, uses the expression "uterine brother" (sahodar bhrata ), which poses a problem for commentators since Ram and Lakshman in fact have different mothers. For various explanations, see Sharan, ed., Manaspiyus^[*] 11:321-23.

[13] Shukla, "Emotive Appeal in Tulasidasa," 196.

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animosities split large families into hostile camps. The psychological as well as the material costs of such microcosmic Mahabharatas are best understood only by insiders, for in the often-constricted physical environment of the joint household, which necessitates constant interaction and sharing of resources, fraternal disputes can become sources of intense pain, guilt, and tension.

I once observed such a battlefield in the home of a wealthy family in Banaras, some thirty members of which shared a large duplex bungalow. A dispute between the two senior brothers (each of whom had several married sons) over the control of family businesses had been simmering for years, and relations between the two branches, housed in opposite halves of the duplex but sharing common front and rear courtyards, became increasingly strained. One day the quiet warfare took a new turn when a party of masons appeared in the front yard and, in a matter of hours, erected a brick and concrete wall down its center, creating a house quite literally divided. The elderly paterfamilias of one side, now retired from active combat, was a devoted daily reader of the Manas ; he could only shake his head and sigh, "That's how this world is—no love between brothers. Would Ram and Bharat have done such a thing?" The escalation of hostility occasioned much gossip in the neighborhood, for the sophisticated defenses of this nouveau-riche Kurukshetra added a new twist to an old, familiar story. The less privileged, who could not afford duplexes and masons, made do with conventional weapons.

The nineteenth-century Bengali saint Ramakrishna Paramhamsa's disparaging formula describing the affairs of this world—"women and gold"—has a special resonance in the Indian domestic context, for the disputes that erode fraternal love most often concern the division of inherited property and relations with sisters-in-law. The two forms of submission ideally required of a junior sibling are, in the Ramayan, neatly parceled out between two characters: Bharat, who renounces "gold"—the patrimony of the kingdom, temptingly offered to him— and Lakshman, who renounces "women" by rejecting his own wife to live as a celibate servant of Ram and Sita and maintaining a careful distance from his sister-in-law and reverence for her as his "mother."

The latter half of Tulsi's weighty Ayodhyakand^[*] is dominated by Bharat's tormented personality: his self-flagellation for being Kaikeyi's son and his tearful and reiterated denials of involvement in the events that led to Ram's exile. The portrayal is apt to strike the Western reader as excessive, yet this section has traditionally been among the most

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admired in the poem. The conventional explanation is that Bharat is a model for the devotee, yet his aptness in filling this role hinges on his being, first of all, a model brother. He also resembles Ram both in physical appearance and in character, and the harshness of his voluntary exile at Nandigram parallels or even surpasses Ram's own travails.

Among the stereotypes of the extended family are those of fraternal personality types.^[14] Although male children in North India are typically pampered, the socialization of the elder brother is liable to begin earlier and be more rigidly enforced than that of his younger siblings. The result, ideally, is a personality of dignity and reserve, a patriarch-in-the-making, aware from an early age of the responsibilities that will fall on him as future head of the family; his archetypes are Ram and Yudhishthira. Younger brothers typically have more emotional leeway, and the youngest often enjoys a prolonged and idyllic childhood. He is permitted or even expected to be impulsive and restless, often artistic, and he may "take a long time to find himself"—a luxury denied his elder sibling, whose adult personality is more a foregone conclusion. His archetype is Krishna—Devaki's eighth and last son, whose adventurous adolescence generated an entire theology.

Within the Ramayan two cohesive fraternal dyads (Ram/Lakshman and Bharat/Shatrughna) conform to the stereotype. Ram and Bharat both play the role of dignified elder (although Bharat is ultimately subsumed to Ram), whereas their junior partners display impulsiveness and quick temper.^[15] I suggest that this fraternal pattern has wider social resonances: the elder brother is, so to speak, the Brahman in the relationship—the austere, dispassionate exemplar of sattva ; the younger brother is the temperamental, rajasik Kshatriya. Together they epitomize an elemental polarity in Indo-Aryan society: that of authority (which is ultimately spiritual and based on a transcendent principle) and power (which manifests itself in the conflict-based order of this world).^[16]

[14] The stereotypic North Indian fraternal pattern was first brought to my attention by Kali C. Bahl. Brief discussions of some of its aspects may be found in Carstairs, The Twice Born , 69; and Kakar, The Inner World , 117. The analysis given here, however, largely reflects my own observations and interviews.

[15] Lakshman's quick temper and readiness to fight are too well known to warrant detailing here. Although Shatrughna seems to exist largely for the sake of symmetry and plays only a minor role in Tulsi's version, it is worth recalling that it is he who, reacting violently to the news of Kaikeyi's evil deed, turns on the hunchback Manthara, to be finally halted by the reserved and compassionate Bharat (2.163.1-8).

[16] For a recent statement of this problem, see Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of Tradition, 2-7.

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Within the joint family there tends to be a natural affinity between younger brother and elder sister-in-law. Since marriages of brothers are usually arranged in order of age and brides are typically younger than their husbands, the new wife may be closer in age to her brother-in-law; in addition, both are in relatively weak positions within the family hierarchy—hers of course is initially far more vulnerable than his. In traditional and especially in rural joint households, family life-style and household environment often restrict the development of emotional intimacy between newly married partners. The new wife of an elder brother often finds herself caught between the demanding, testing, and generally unsympathetic women of the household and a husband whom social etiquette as well as his position as elder requires to be remote and unresponsive. As already noted, the younger brother is stereotypically less emotionally restrained than his elder; he is also, if still unmarried, at an age when his contact with women (apart from mother, sisters, and aunts) is restricted and his curiosity about them intense. The culture recognizes the empathy that may develop between younger brother and elder sister-in-law as potentially both beneficial and threatening. Ideally they form what is sometimes termed a "joking relationship"—it being understood that family "jokes" are often sexually suggestive galiyam^[*] that provide an escape valve for the release of tensions—in which the elder sister-in-law (bhabhi ) becomes a friend and confidante to her younger brother-in-law (devar ); each thus gains a natural ally within the family as well as a relationship that can provide emotional relaxation.^[17] On the other hand, it is an uncomfortable fact of social life that "joking" relationships occasionally turn serious. Although actual liaisons are undoubtedly rare, the potential for even a "correct" bhabhi-devar relationship to generate emotional upheaval and jealousy among the principal protagonists can represent an ongoing source of tension in the household.

It is only against the background of joint family dynamics that the exemplary value of Lakshman's total sublimation of his sexual identity becomes fully comprehensible: his abandonment of his own wife, Urmila (a figure barely mentioned in the Manas but of importance in folk tradition), who, like Sita, desires to follow her husband to the forest; his obsessive, self-imposed wakefulness (it is said that he never sleeps during the fourteen years of exile) and reverential service to the couple. The

[17] This "joking relationship" was first brought to my attention by Santwana Nigam, my Hindi instructor in New Delhi, in the course of a study unit on family structure and kinship terms.

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modern pilgrim to Chitrakut is shown, adjacent to the hill on which Lakshman constructed a house for the pair, a smaller summit a respectful distance away, atop which he maintained his lonely vigil of guarding their idyllic romance.^[18] Especially poignant is the well-known tradition that Lakshman was unable to identify any of Sita's ornaments—thrown off during her abduction and recovered by the monkeys—apart from her anklets, which he had seen during his daily prostrations at his sister-in-law's feet.^[19]

Epic models become memorable by being extreme, and the behavior of Ram's younger brothers conveys definite lessons in hierarchical subordination. But it is also true, as Pollock notes, that "you do not legislate against things nobody does,"^[20] and so the epic, in its encompassing breadth, also dramatizes the consequences of breaches of the rule. Thus, it implicitly contrasts the human fraternal pairs with two others in which the paradigmatic senior-junior relationship is violated. Both Ravan and Bali are violent and lustful "Kshatriya" elder brothers, whereas their juniors are more judicious and religious-minded—the "Brahmans" of these adharmic duos. The wages of their social sin, of course, is death.

The Limited Ideal

A recent study by Edmour Babineau views the Manas as a response both to the narrow social outlook and obsessive ritualism of Brahmanical orthodoxy and to the excesses of antinomian theism exemplified by Kabir and other poets of the sant tradition. It identifies the epic's underlying message as the ultimate compatibility of "social duty" and "love of God." I agree that the tension between worldly order and transcendent ideal is an implicit theme of the Manas and that the epic offers—or more precisely, enacts—a kind of resolution, but it is not the tidy ethical compromise ("loving submission to the will of Ram") that Babineau's study proposes.^[21]

[18] Rasik devotees regard the period of residence at Chitrakut as one long erotic idyll; the yellow clay known as Ramraj found at Chitrakut and used in making sectarian marks is said to be the residue of sandalwood paste rubbed off Sita's body during pastoral "sports"; Singh, Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , 181-82.

[19] Although removed from the Critical Edition and not mentioned in the Manas , the incident is found in many manuscripts of Valmiki and often retold in Katha . See the notes to verse 4.6.18 in Bhatt and Shah, eds., The ValmikiRamayana^[*] 4:37.

[20] Pollock, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki: Ayodhyakanda^[*] , 18; he is quoting Fredric Jameson, "Criticism in History," in Norman Rudich, ed., Weapons of Criticism (Palo Alto: Ramparts Press, 1976), 37.

[21] Babineau, Love of God and Social Duty in the Ramcaritmanas , 189.

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The theme is already implicit in the Sanskrit Ramayana^[*] , and Valmiki's handling of it highlights a basic contrast between the two early Indian epics; for whereas the Mahabharata's realpolitik presents a world in which brothers quarrel and reconciliation is finally possible only in heaven, the Ramayana 's^[*] depiction of fraternal harmony proposes instead to bring heaven to earth, demonstrating perfection within this world rather than beyond it. The Sanskrit epic opens with Valmiki questioning Narad as to whether a perfect man can be found in this world. The response is a name, and a story told first in brief and then in · expanded form. But seven books and fifty thousand lines later, each listener must still decide whether the question has really been answered.

The relationship between this-worldly order and transcendent ideal has been explored in the context of South Indian Hinduism in an essay by David Shulman. Viewing the tradition as "a religion radically divided against itself," Shulman compares the paradigms of orthodox ritualism and devotional ecstasy and, within the social order, the roles of Brahman and Kshatriya; he detects, "an enduring dialectical tension between an intensely idealistic vision and a consciously pragmatic urge to come to terms with the created world. . .. The order which seeks to encompass these forces rests on the principle of limitation."^[22] The vitality that Shulman sees in the radical poetry of the Tamil cittars , which is epitomized in North Indian bhakti in the iconoclastic vision of Kabir, is an eruption of "divine chaos" into an orthodox order of forms that "in all their purity can become dead, empty, shells, while life rages outside their petrified boundaries."^[23]

At the intersection of worldly order and divine chaos stands the notion of dharma—"that most elusive of ideal orders."^[24] Dharma is also, for translators of South Asian texts, among the more elusive of terms— it is both what Babineau renders as "social duty" and Pollock as, among other things, "righteousness." The range of meanings that the term encompasses suggests an abiding cultural tension; as O'Flaherty observes, "dharma is a problem rather than a concept."^[25] For dharma is both earthly and transcendent: the justification for what we do in this world, it has its roots in that other realm to which we aspire. A principle to which even the gods must bow, dharma points toward ultimate things

[22] Shulman, "The Enemy Within," 12, 43.

[23] Ibid., 19.

[24] Ibid., 11.

[25] O'Flaherty and Derrett, eds., The Concept of Duty in South Asia, xiv.

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and, by imposing order on chaos, permits the creation of a meaningful world. Yet paradoxically, within that world dharma becomes another kind of limiting order, which legislates against the eruption of the other kind of chaos that Shulman describes: the unmediated vision of transcendence. Like samsara^[*] , dharma has often been visualized as a wheel: complete and harmonious but also closed and potentially stifling, a system against which the heterodox liberation theologies rebel—although not by denying dharma but by positing a transcendent dharma outside it. The attempt to express ideal order in this world is necessarily imperfect; in due course the paradigm of cosmic organization—"that which upholds"—becomes the legitimation of social oppression—that which "holds down." Within the Hindu social system, the tension between real and ideal is expressed at many levels, perhaps nowhere more clearly than in the relationship between the reigning elites of Brahmans and Kshatriyas.

At the spiritual apex of the system, the Brahman stands in two worlds as both seer and ritualist; the problematic quality of this dual role is reflected in an ongoing debate over his essential nature. Is he the "knower of the Absolute" and the exemplar of a transcendent order based on wisdom and inner experience, or the knower of the mechanics of ritual and the minutiae of systematizing stricture, a hereditary specialist in worldly order? Ideally, he is both, but the Upanishads already recognize that in practice this may not be the case. The rigid theoretical division between spiritual authority and worldly power is implicitly questioned in these texts, where priests sometimes go to kings in order to gain esoteric knowledge. We know from history that the Kshatriya order, though in theory no less a function of birth than that of the Brahman, was in fact always more permeable—witness the numerous royal lineages that rose from humble or "obscure" (gupta ) beginnings. This permeability offered aspiring individuals and communities the possibility of worldly dominion—but not, in theory, of spiritual transcendence, which was reserved for the Brahman alone. Within the system the Brahman, by serving the king as minister or purohit, bestowed legitimation on the regime but sacrificed his own purity. The king, accepting the Brahman's legitimation, acquired worldly merit (and otherworldly dividends) but acknowledged his spiritual subservience.^[26] A delicate balance was maintained, yet mythology preserves murmurs of discontent,

[26] Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of Tradition, 7.

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notably in the saga of king-become-seer, Vishvamitra, which—interestingly enough—was elaborately highlighted in the Sanskrit Ramayana^[*] .^[27]

Pollock has noted the tendency of early Indian monarchs to aspire to what he terms "self-legitimation." Thus, a spiritualized king like Ashoka inevitably begins to usurp the Brahman's exclusive status.^[28] However, he does so by transcending the system: adopting a heterodox creed and positing a new universal dharma that negates the old order of tension and compromise.^[29] The Valmiki epic, which seems to have historical roots in roughly the same epoch, counters with a vision of a universal monarch who remains within the system; hence his usurpation of transcendent authority is more subtle. In analyzing the character of Valmiki's hero, Pollock suggests the paradox that while Ram, as exemplary Kshatriya, embraces and upholds the worldly hierarchy, he also, by his obstinate refusal to accept the pattern of killing and conflict that had come to be recognized as Kshatriya-dharma, appropriates some of the perquisites of the Brahman renunciant, thus offering "a comprehensive model of behavior, enacting . . . two roles that encompass communal life in its totality."^[30] This dual characterization of the epic's hero has profound implications: "If, in his course of action, Rama explicitly affirms hierarchical subordination, the spiritual commitment that allows for his utopian rule seems explicitly to oppose it. . .. Hierarchical life and the separation of 'powers' that underpins it, which the poem elsewhere unambiguously attempts to validate, appears at the highest and critical level to be questioned, and a reformulation is offered in its place."^[31] This reformulation has as its symbol the concept of Ramraj: transcendence brought to earth through the medium of a spiritualized king, whose role has expanded to fill both earth and heaven. This understanding of Ram suggests the inevitability of his association with Vishnu, the "expanding" deity whose self-limitation in incarnate forms is the touchstone of his transcendence, the "Kshatriya" guardian of this world who ultimately usurps the status of the Upanishadic Absolute. The "upward mobility" implicit in the Ramayan story also helps to explain the historical fact of the epic's having been enjoyed and patronized by those who are oppressed by the social system it explicitly promotes. Yet the epic's resolution of the paradox of dharma—in Heesterman's terms, its attempt to heal the "axial rift" between "un-

[27] 1.50-64; see Goldman, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki : Balakanda^[*] , 221-47.

[28] Pollock, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki : Ayodhyakanda^[*] , 70, n. 12.

[29] Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of Tradition, 20.

[30] Pollock, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki : Ayodhyakanda^[*] , 20.

[31] Ibid., 72.

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compromising transcendence and mundane reality"^[32] —could not be explicitly formulated on the level of the didactic (for that would have challenged the system), but only, as Pollock suggests, implicitly enacted as narrative.

To Pollock's formulation of the essential question framed by the Valmiki epic—"What is it that makes life possible?"^[33] —I would add an equivalent question posed by Tulsidas: "Is transcendence possible in human life?" In the very act of choosing as his embodiment of the Absolute a figure who had acquired the title "ideal man of propriety" (maryadapurusottam^[*] ), Tulsi began his confrontation with this problem. Although maryada connotes rule, order, and propriety, it also carries the more archaic meanings of frontier, limit, and boundary. The "ideal man" of maryada is thus a man who, as we would say, "knows his limits." But does this not make him, then, necessarily limited? This indeed is the problem that generates the Manas narrative, and it is raised again and again by each of the principal hearers of the tale: Yajnavalkya, Sati, Parvati, and Garuda.

The Absolute that is all-encompassing, undefiled, unborn,
undivided, impassive, undifferentiated,
which even the Veda does not know—
Can it take form and become man?^[34] 1.50

Since the archetypal hearers, situated on the ghats of the encompassing frame story, are surrogates for every potential listener, we must suppose that their oft-repeated question was one that Tulsi expected his own audience to pose concerning his Ram-katha . Its hero might be exemplary and his adventures instructive, but could the man who wept with grief for his lost wife in the Dandak forest be accepted as the ultimate expression of divinity?

Ram's "limitations" were well known to Tulsi's contemporaries. The verses that Kabir had sung perhaps half a century earlier,

The creator didn't marry Sita,
didn't tie up the sea with stones.
Those who pray to Raghunath as the one
are praying in the dark.^[35]

[32] Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of Tradition, 5.

[33] Pollock, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki: Ayodhyakanda^[*] , 4.

[34] Thus it is posed by Sati. See also the formulation of the same question by Yajnavalkya (1.46.2ff.); Parvati (1.108.5ff.); and Garuda (who is troubled by an especially striking image of limitation: Ram's allowing himself to be bound by Indrajit's serpent weapon; 7.58.6-8).

[35] Bijak , sabda 8; the translation is from Hess and Singh, The Bijakof Kabir , 45.

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were undoubtedly still heard in the religious assemblies of Banaras. In proclaiming his devotion to the name Ram, the unorthodox poet had been careful to dissociate it from the limited hero of the Ramayan narrative. An even more serious challenge (since it came from within the orthodox Vaishnava fold) was the assertion by the leading theologians of Krishna bhakti —Vallabhacharya and the Bengali goswamis of Vrindavan—of the limited nature of the Ram incarnation. Despite the reverence that these pious Vaishnavas paid to the son of Dashrath as a "descent" (avatar ) of the Lord, it was inconceivable to them that the role of maryadapurusottarn^[*] could represent the fullest expression of divinity. Ram, they said, was a partial incarnation (ams^[*]avatar ), who manifested only twelve "degrees" of godhood (kala ; units of a circle), whereas the sixteen degrees necessary for a total manifestation were present only in the life of Krishna, the lilapurusottam^[*] whose playful pastimes overstepped the bounds of propriety.^[36] Ram's acquiescence in the established order of the world seems to have taken precedence in the minds of Tulsi's contemporaries over the liberating possibilities implicit in the myth of the spiritualized king. The sant poets could adore him only by denying his earthly acts, other Vaishnavas only by demoting him to the second rank of godhead. Yet Tulsi's istadev^[*] , through the medium of the poet's irresistible narrative, would in true Vaishnava fashion expand beyond these limitations to become the most pervasive symbol of divinity in northern India.

An important factor in Tulsi's success was his rearticulation of the tension between order and transcendence, now set in an explicitly Vaishnava theological context in which the Lord's acceptance of limitation became not only the key to his accessibility but also, paradoxically, the proof of his divinity. The sants ' solution—the rejection of order in favor of transcendence—was both heroic and extreme; its idealism was widely admired, but in practice it became formalized (as antistructure movements in India usually do) as a counter-structure, pressing its own claims to ritual purity and power.^[37] The risks of chaos—divine or other-

[36] Cf. Priyadas's story of the challenge given to Tulsi in Vrindavan; Rupkala, ed., SriBhaktamal , 772 (kavitta 647); a translation appears in Growse, The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , xlvii. Manas expounders have come up with their own answers to the ams^[*]avatar doctrine; thus, Shrinath Mishra argues that although the moon requires sixteen degrees or lunar asterisms in order to be full (Krishna being of the lunar lineage), the sun (emblem of Ram's solar lineage) is complete in twelve degrees; hence both incarnations are equally "full." Katha , B.H.U., February 15, 1983.

[37] Cf. Bansi Dhar Tripathi's observation that the Kabir and Dadu sects now prefer to recruit their sadhus from twice-born castes, and do not afford equal status to Shudras; Sadhus of India , 85.

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wise—and the attractions of order-based status proved more compelling to some than the vision of uncompromising freedom. The solution offered by the poets and theologians of the Krishna tradition had as its quintessential expression the raslila , in which the human urge for transcendence was fulfilled by the Lord's multiplying himself to satisfy every devotee. This theophany was visualized, however, as a divine drama enacted on a circular platform deep in a nocturnal forest—an arena (as Hawley points out) decisively separated from the mundane world.^[38] Earthly order was not rejected but was left behind at the time of entering Krishna's realm; as in the Mahabharata , transcendence was possible only beyond the boundaries of worldly life.

In contrast, Tulsi's play came to be enacted in the most public of arenas—city streets and squares—and its visual parable of simultaneous limitation and transcendence was destined to spill over formal theatrical boundaries. The paradoxical manner in which it "resolves" the tension between order and transcendence may be glimpsed in an individual episode, considered as both text and performance. The problematic relationship between Brahman (the paradigmatic elder brother and representative of transcendent order) and Kshatriya (the junior brother and the surrogate in this dyadic schema for all the lower orders) is dramatized in the encounter between Ram and his elder Brahman "double," Parashuram. The fact that this episode is one of the few passages in which Tulsi departs from Valmiki's narrative sequence suggests that it occupied an important place in the poet's personal agenda.

If Ram is a Kshatriya acting as a Brahman—a warrior in hermit's guise, who upholds his father's word by self-imposed suffering—his adversary is just the opposite: a Brahman acting as a Kshatriya, who upholds his father's word by matricide and universal "sacrificial" destruction.^[39] The referee of this reverse-image confrontation is Vishvamitra—mythology's one example of a Kshatriya literally become a Brahman, and Ram's own initiatory preceptor. The senior "Ram" storms into Janak's assembly (note that Tulsi prefers the public arena of the bow sacrifice, with all the kings and citizens of Videha present, to Valmiki's forest setting) to punish the breaker of Shiva's bow—the sym-

[38] Hawley, At Play with Krishna, 156-59, 189-91; the scripts of many raslila plays feature a goddess named Yogmaya, whose duty it is to separate the lila from the mundane world. The other favored Krishnaite motif, that of the bower (nikuñj , is similarly insulated from any connection with the real world; cf. Snell, "The Nikuñja as Sacred Space in Poetry of the Radhavallabhi Tradition."

[39] An account of Parashuram's deeds is contained in the Mahabharata , Aranyakaparva^[*] 3.115-117; see van Buitenen, trans., Mahabharata 2:444-47. Cf., in the Manas , Parashuram's boastful account of the bloody "sacrifices" he performed (1.283.1-4).

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bol of the god who, for Tulsi, was the special patron of Brahmans—an upstart Kshatriya who threatens to have it all: marry the princess, rule the world, and even encompass the Absolute.

The pungent satire of this scene is best appreciated by witnessing its performance at Ramnagar, where it ranks among the most popular episodes in the Ramlila . For this occasion the maharaja dismounts from his elephant and sits enthroned on a columned verandah, for once in close proximity to both Ramayanis and actors—clearly he doesn't want to miss a word. Himself of ambiguous status—king and Kshatriya by role, Bhumihar Brahman by claim^[40] —he listens with evident amusement as his Brahman chanters and actors recreate the saucy insults hurled by Ram's alter ego, the fiery Lakshman, at the overweening Parashuram, a Brahman who does not "know his limits."^[41] Ram, like the maharaja, listens with apparent relish, intervening only when actual violence threatens to erupt, and then only to utter ironically deferential homilies. Characteristically, however, the denouement is effected by a gesture that both affirms and supersedes the conventional social hierarchy. When Ram parts his robe to reveal on his chest the footprint of the sage Bhrigu (another angry and overweening Brahman), it is, of course, a deferential gesture—the meek, Brahman-loving Vishnu displaying the scars of his devotion to dharma. Yet paradoxically, it is also the ultimate theophany: the self-revelation of a cosmic Clark Kent who tears open his shirt to display the symbol of unchallengeable transcendence. Parashuram is instantly subdued and, turned once more into a docile Brahman, intones a hymn of praise before departing for the forest to practice austerities, leaving godhood to the upstart generation.

How is the viewer to interpret this scene? Brahmans are to be respected, evidently, although some Brahmans—even powerful ones—are clearly fools whose arrogance blinds them to greater realities. The display of deference to such people may itself indicate a kind of superiority to them. By scrupulously keeping within his limits, Ram puts Parashuram back within his. On a didactic level, the text affirms varna^[*] structure and the conventional rule that deference must be shown to Brahmans regardless of their character or behavior, as Tulsi has Ram himself affirm unambiguously elsewhere:

[40] The Bhumihars rose to prominence as landholders during the eighteenth century, but their assertion of Brahmanhood is still dismissed by conservative Shaiva Brahmans of Banaras.

[41] The insults at times have sexual overtones, as when Parashuram brandishes his axe and Lakshman quips, "I am not just some little gourd / that will wilt when you raise your finger!" (1.272.3).

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Though he curses, beats and berates you,
a Brahman should be adored—thus sing the holy.^[42] 3.34.1

Yet on a narrative level, the Manas enacts an ironic commentary on this doctrine. The result is a paradoxical "resolution."

I shall soon have occasion to note some of the tortuous efforts of Tulsi's modern apologists to explain away verses such as the above and to attribute to the poet a logical and consistent—or more incongruous yet, a twentieth-century liberal-democratic—view of the relationship between wordly order and transcendent ideal. In fact, the statement just quoted is followed, a mere fifteen lines later, by Ram's solemn declaration,

I recognize only one relationship: devotion.
Caste and lineage, virtue and status,
wealth, power, family, merit, and intellect—
a man possessing these, yet without devotion,
resembles a cloud without water.
3.35.4-6

The occurrence of such jarring juxtapositions is an indication that the poet, unlike his apologists, posited no definitive solution to the dilemma of order and transcendence.

Babineau labels Tulsi's approach "orthodox theism" and cites the poet's "special aptitude for acclaiming renovation without destroying tradition, for promoting change without sacrificing continuity."^[43] Many modern Hindu writers similarly describe the poet's path as "devotion based on the sastras " (sastriyabhakti ).^[44] Yet we may recall that, for Hindus, "orthodoxy" is generally less important than "orthopraxy" and the sastras are often mutually contradictory and subject to diverse interpretations. Shulman's analysis of the negotiated nature of Hindu orthodoxy more effectively expresses the Hindi poet's position as well as the paradoxical role of his hero: "To the complete freedom of disorder gained by the rejection of compromise, orthodoxy prefers the tension of living within borders while always looking beyond them."^[45]

Although the utopian vision of Ramraj is elaborately developed in the final book of the Manas (and its implications are considered further

[42] I use Linda Hess's translation, given in her unpublished paper "For the Sake of Brahmans, Gods, and Cows."

[43] Babineau, Love of God and Social Duty in the Ramcaritmanas , 23, 192.

[44] Tripathi, Vijayatika^[*] 1:6.

[45] Shulman, "The Enemy Within," 43.

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below), Tulsi's preferred symbol of transcendence is the divine name and his vehicle of order is a new "Veda"—the epic itself—which is accessible to all. Yet the very recognition of a Veda reiterates the need for authority, structure, and limitation. The borders remain; instead of the fundamental problem being resolved, it is endlessly reenacted. The poet's inspired irresolution allowed for this performative elaboration, and in time for the use of his epic by political groups to the right and the left, as well as—like the text itself—at the paradox-ridden center.

The Rise of the Eternal Religion

In examining genres of contemporary Manas performance, I observed that many of them developed significantly during the nineteenth century, acquiring wider audiences and benefiting from the proliferation of printed versions of the epic. To gain a better understanding of the enhanced role that the text acquired during this period, it is desirable to view Manas patronage and performance against the background of broader socioreligious developments—a task complicated by the fact that the relevant individuals and institutions have as yet received little scholarly study. The causes of this neglect of popular Hindu movements are themselves worth noting. The widely current notion of a "Hindu Renaissance" with its familiar sequence of reformers and movements— Rammohan Roy and the Brahmo Samaj, Dayanand Sarasvati and the Arya Samaj, Vivekananda and the Ramakrishna Mission, and so on— reflects a model of religious change first formulated by John N. Far-quhar in his 1915 work, Modern Religious Movements in India . Though scholarly and informative, this study reveals its author's concern to justify the colonial and missionary presence on the Subcontinent. It divides the nineteenth century into an initial period of awakening, during which enlightened leaders like Roy, under the benign influence of the Christian message, campaigned against the decadent customs of popular Hindu-ism, and a subsequent period of counterreformation (1870-1913) characterized by an increasingly reactionary defense of the faith. Most of Farquhar's work is devoted to movements prevalent among the English-educated elite, which had imbibed the influences of Christian morality and Western rationalism. When, toward the end of his study, he at last turns to the movements championed by such "uneducated" leaders as Pandit Din Dayal Sharma—the dregs, in his view, of the counterreformation—Farquhar paints a grimly negative picture of their activities.^[46]

[46] Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India, 316.

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Subsequent studies of Hinduism, if they discuss modern movements at all, seem implicitly to accept Farquhar's model, and so it is not surprising that scholars who take a more positive view of the tradition tend to avoid discussing the groups Farquhar branded "reactionary." In consequence, it is now possible to find whole volumes with such titles as Religious Ferment in Modern India that contain no reference to influential mainstream groups like Sharma's Sanatan Dharm Rakshini Sabha and its innumerable offshoots.^[47] The notion of a Hindu Renaissance championed by a progressive elite, eschewing centuries of superstition and selectively rediscovering the best in its own heritage, has by now filtered back through the writings of academicians to become pervasively constitutive of the concept (though not the practice) of Hinduism held by large numbers of Indians. This trend of thought, as Agehananda Bharati points out, tends to blur the particulars and diversities of the tradition and replace them with a vague and generalized set of principles couched in "the neo-Vedantic diction of Renaissance thought."^[48] It also contributes to the disparagement of traditional sadhus and teachers and to a disproportionate emphasis (again, more in theory than practice) on certain Sanskrit "great tradition" texts: "Indians and sympathetic occidentals alike have come to regard the Bhagavadgita as the Hindu Bible. No challenge against this notion has ever emerged from the spokesmen of the Renaissance, yet this claim is not part of an informed view about Hindu lore. The people who might challenge it are the ones that won't: the grass-roots scholars, the orthodox pandits, cannot participate in the give-and-take of the Indian Renaissance with its English language premises."^[49] The conventional view of the Hindu Renaissance needs to be reexamined, particularly by scholars who have access to Indian-language materials. Even the supposed innovations of its leaders often revealed continuities with older traditions: Dayanand Sarasvati's reformist fervor coexisted with a deeper orthopraxy, and the allegedly Christian-influenced practices of the Arya Samaj reflected techniques of religious proselytization that had long bhakti pedigrees;^[50] similarly, the neo-Vedantic homilies of Swami Vivekananda, which created such a

[47] French and Sharma, eds., Religious Ferment in Modern India; this study predictably limits itself to the Brahmo and Arya Samaj, Ramakrishna, Gandhi, and Shri Aurobindo. Note also Taylor, "Concepts of Duty Held By Indian Nationalist Thinkers," which is full of unexamined "Renaissance" assumptions.

[48] Bharati, "The Hindu Renaissance and Its Apologetic Patterns," 284.

[49] Ibid., 274.

[50] Note the Samaj use of weekly satsang^[*] featuring oral exposition, bhajan singing, and even nagar kirtan (urban devotional processions first popularized by the fifteenth-century Bengali mystic Chaitanya); Jones, Arya Dharm , 262. Jones is too ready to assume that all such techniques were adapted from Christian evangelicals.

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sensation at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, coexisted back home with a millenarian belief in the divinity of Ramakrishna and the fervor of a characteristically Bengali devotion to the goddess Durga. Moreover, the actual impact of such leaders on. popular practice is debatable. Their apparently high profile, especially in English-language publications, may be deceiving, like their visible canonization in "secular" India. Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and Swami Dayanand—together with the Rani of Jhansi, Subhash Chandra Bose, and even Annie Besant—have become national heroes, but to most Hindus they are simply the newest faces in the teeming pantheon of religious poster art, joining Buddha, Shankaracharya, Tulsidas, Mirabai, and countless other divine and semidivine beings on the iconostasis of the tea stall and dry goods shop. They have been reabsorbed by the mainstream, if indeed they ever left it.

But the scholarly focus on the activities of a handful of reformers, based mainly in the Punjab and Bengal where foreign influence was strongest, has tended to overshadow the complex pattern of mainstream Hindu activity both in the same regions and in the vast, largely Hindi-speaking Gangetic plain. This pattern, exemplified by the activities of such traditionally educated publicists as Din Dayal Sharma, was characterized by attempts to formulate an orthodox Hindu identity, most often subsumed under the label Sanatan Dharm. As a subject for study, this tradition has suffered not only from Farquhar's criticisms but also, as C. A. Bayly has pointed out, from its very ubiquity and multiformity—it has been easier to write about the trees than about the forest: "However faction-ridden at times, the Arya Samaj was at least a definable organization with a common creed. . .. But Sanatan Dharmis professed no distinctive set of beliefs beyond a general concern for the propagation of 'orthodox religion,' and their organizations present a bewildering variety of formulations and reformulations."^[51] In the continuing absence of a major study of the Sanatan Dharm movement—one that would utilize, for example, the voluminous tract literature produced during the latter half of the nineteenth century^[52] 52—I must nevertheless try to identify some of its characteristic features and concerns, particularly as they relate to its enthusiastic endorsement and propagation of the Manas .

In theory, this was not a new movement at all. Its name implies an

[51] Bayly, The Local Roots of Indian Politics , 113.

[52] Jones makes admirable use of such materials in his study of the Arya Samaj, although his focus on the Sanatanis is limited to the context of their debates with the Aryas; see Arya Dharm , esp. 108-12, 189-91.

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adherence to patterns of behavior held to be eternal or immemorial (sanatan ) and believed to have their source in the revealed Veda, which is itself beginningless. The expression is of undoubted antiquity. The formulaic phrase "for that is the eternal dharma" (sa hi dharmah^[*]sanatanah ) occurs several times in the Mahabharata and the Valmiki Ramayana^[*] with reference to exemplary behavior such as the protection of a kingdom, obedience to elders, and hospitality to guests.^[53] Nineteenth-century Hindus would no doubt have agreed that such acts reflected dharma, yet their use of the expression was essentially different. Indeed, given the contexts in which they used it, I am sometimes tempted to translate Sanatan Dharm as "old-time religion"; like the American Protestant expression, it was a self-conscious affirmation of religious conservatism in a perceivedly pluralistic context.^[54] It was necessarily a vague label, as it had to be applied to vast numbers of people whose beliefs and practices displayed great variation; what was important about it was that it excluded others.

Like the Upanishadic Absolute, the adherent of Sanatan Dharm might best be described in negative terms—as one who was not an Arya or Brahmo Samajist, not a Christian or Westernizer and who did not advocate widow remarriage, the initiation of untouchables, or the abandonment of image worship. A designation of orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy, the term could encompass pan-Indian rites such as puja , arti , and pilgrimage as well as purely localized caste and kinship customs. For a sense of what a late nineteenth-century pandit meant by it, we might turn to Shraddha Ram of Ludhiana's condemnation (c. 1873) of a prominent fellow citizen who had established a Brahmo-type "Society for Moral Enlightenment":

Mr. Alakhdhari who is against sruti and smrti^[*] and does not keep a knot on his head and does not wear the sacred thread which is essential for the Vaishya and who hates to have cow dung paint in the kitchen and uses a dining table and calls bhojan as khana and thinks all the caste system is useless, then how is it possible that Hinduism can spread and prosper through his efforts? He also has some ideas that to worship Krishnachandra,

[53] See, for example, Mahabharata 15.26.19 and 5.83.7; in Valmiki's Ayodhyakanda^[*] the phrase is twice uttered by Ram (2.16.52 and 2.27.30), to justify Bharat's guardianship of the throne and his own obedience to his parents; I am grateful to Sheldon Pollock for these references.

[54] Simon Weightman and S. M. Pandey argue that dharm in modern Hindi most commonly means "religion" and that "the English word and concept is the major determinant factor in the Hindi usage"; "The Semantic Fields of Dharm and Kartavy in Modern Hindi," 223.

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Ramchandra and Brahma and Vishnu and to go on pilgrimage to the Ganges and other rivers is foolishness . . .. Then he wears shoes and he wants to listen to the preaching of the Vedas and sastras in front of Christians anti Muslims and he cannot tolerate a mark on the forehead of another person.^[55]

Most of the elements of enduring concern to Sanatanis are invoked here: respect for a body of authoritative texts, a preference for traditional dress and adornment, reverence for the cow and its products, and (by the final decades of the nineteenth century) insistence on a Sanskritized Hindi vocabulary rather than an Urdu one.

A range of factors contributed to the articulation of the Sanatani identity. Christian missionaries were active in northern India throughout the nineteenth century and especially after 1857, when Crown Rule replaced that of the East India Company and evangelicals stepped up their campaign for intervention in Indian affairs.^[56] The Brahmo Samaj, founded in Calcutta in 1828, and the Arya Samaj, organized in Bombay and Lahore in the mid-1870s, responded to the missionary challenge and at the same time launched their own critique of traditional practices. Even though reformist and orthodox positions diverged sharply on certain issues (especially image worship, widow remarriage, and the interpretation of caste status), other highly volatile issues (such as cow protection, suddhi or the "purification"/reconversion of Christians and Muslims, and the agitation for the Hindi language and Devanagari script) tended to unite orthodoxy and dissenters under a common banner of "Hindu" identity.

The economic and social trends underlying these developments can be traced to the period immediately preceding the consolidation of British power—notably, to a growing competition between rising Hindu mercantile groups based in new cities and the older, rural-based landed aristocracy and service gentry, both Hindu and Muslim,^[57] Other factors more directly related to the British presence were the introduction of print technology and the steady improvement of transport and communication, which facilitated the work of religious publicists. The tours and debates of Brahmo leader Keshab Chandra Sen in the late 1860s and Swami Dayanand in the 1870s are well documented, but other peripa-

[55] Translated in Jones, Arya Dharm , 27-28.

[56] On missionary activities at Allahabad in the 1870s, see Bayly, The Local Roots of Indian Politics , 106. In the Punjab, missionaries were active from the 1830s and established a network of schools, presses, and medical missions that resulted in some 40,000 conversions by century's end; Jones, Arya Dharm , 10.

[57] Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen, and Bazaars , 286-95.

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tetic religious orators stepped up their activities during the same period; information on the identities of these wandering orators has rarely been preserved, but their ranks must have included many Vaishnava expounders who aired their views through the established channels of satsang^[*] and Katha .^[58]

Perhaps the most significant impact of the Arya Samaj, the most influential of the reformist societies, came from the organizational model it presented, which increasingly came to be emulated by orthodox groups. As a result, "personal campaigns in defense of tradition of the 1860s and 1870s gave way to new organizations with all the techniques of modernity."^[59] Among the earliest were the Sanatan Dharm Rakshini Sabha (Association for Defense of the Eternal Religion), formed in Calcutta in 1873, and the Hindu Dharm Prakashik Sabha (Society for the Promulgation of the Hindu Faith), formed in Ludhiana, Punjab, at roughly the same time. Organized Sanatani activity in the Gangetic plain did not begin until the late 1880s, culminating in the founding of Sanatan Dharm societies in Hardwar and Delhi in 1895, the Bharat Dharm Mahamandal in Mathura in 1902, the politically activist All-India Hindu Mahasabha at Allahabad in 1913, and numerous smaller organizations with similar names and objectives—according to Far-quhar, some six hundred local societies by the first decade of the twentieth century.^[60]

The instigation for the founding of these organizations often came from specific and sometimes localized issues; thus, the agitation in eastern U.P. and Bihar in the 1880s for a ban on cattle slaughter, which resulted in the founding of numerous local Gaurakshini Sabhas (cow protection societies), reflected not merely the traditional veneration of cattle but also the declining economic circumstances of local landlords and their Brahman clients and the rising aspirations of the Ahir, or milkman, caste.^[61] Similarly, the founding of organizations for the promotion of Hindi and Devanagari script, such as the Nagari Pracharini Sabha (Banaras, 1893) and the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan (Banaras and Allahabad, 1910 and 1911), reflected a growing association of script with religious affiliation, which in turn was related to intensified competition between upper-class Uttar Pradesh Hindus and Muslims for gov-

[58] Bayly, The Local Roots of Indian Politics , 105.

[59] Jones, Arya Dharm , 108.

[60] Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India , 318.

[61] Pandey, "Rallying Round the Cow," 104-6, 114.

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ernment jobs.^[62] Although concern over cow protection and linguistic identity was shared by Arya Samajis, the most prominent spokesmen of the cow and Hindi movements in U.P. at this time were generally the leaders of local Sanatani organizations.

They were also the men who were liable to be active in Manas-pracar (the promulgation of the epic)—themselves dedicated readers, expounders, and promoters of what was increasingly hailed as the "Hindi Veda." Thus, the "chief religious adviser" to the Bharat Dharm Mahamandal in 1910 was Pandit Jvalaprasad Mishra of Moradabad, a Ramayani who compiled one of the most influential Manas editions of the period.^[63] During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Hindu revivalism developed into "Hindu populism," the most prominent spokesman of which was Madanmohan Malviya, whose public statements on the epic will be cited shortly. The son of a leading Brahman family of Allahabad with close ties to the city's conservative mercantile community, Malviya became the Sanatan Dharm publicist par excellence, the founder of three newspapers, and the champion of a campaign to create a "Hindu University" in the sacred city of Banaras. To Western observers, Malviya appeared simultaneously "reactionary" and "progressive" and thus epitomized the inherent tension within orthodoxy.^[64] Also prominent in Sanatani causes beginning in the 1920s was the redoubtable Swami Karpatri, whom we have already met as the inspiration behind the Gyan Vapi Manas Festival and will soon encounter again as the founder of a political party that aimed to usher in "the rule of Ram."

A persistent problem for would-be Hindu reformers was their lack of accessible texts. The Arya Samaj rejected much of Hindu devotional literature, branding the Bhagavatapurana^[*] , for example, an "immoral" fabrication. Yet Swami Dayanand's calls for the public preaching and exposition of the Veda never met with more than a lukewarm response, and his planned Hindi commentary on the Rg^[*]veda remained incomplete after his death.^[65] In theory, the text problem was to be remedied by universal Sanskrit education, yet later Samaj administrators had to accept that the clientele of their successful Dayanand Anglo-Vedic Col-

[62] King, "The Nagari Pracharini Sabha of Banaras"; also see his essay "The Hindi Movement in Banaras."

[63] Mishra, ed., SrimadgosvamiTulsidas-jiviracit ramayan^[*] , sanjivanitika^[*]sahit; this tika^[*] is still widely sold.

[64] See Bayly's incisive analysis of Malviya's personality; The Local Roots of Indian Politics , 216-17.

[65] Jones, Arya Dharm , 187-89.

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leges was more interested in the "Anglo" than in the "Vedic" component of the curriculum. Vivekananda and his successor swamis in the Ramakrishna Mission took a more catholic view of sacred literature but likewise tended to look to ancient Sanskrit texts, frequently citing the Upanishads and Bhagavadgita in support of their neo-Vedantic views. These texts had prestige but little popularity.

Sanatanis too invoked the "Veda" as their ultimate authority, but they tended to use this term loosely to refer to all revered scriptures. For practical purposes, however, they had a text that was both authoritative and accessible—in Malviya's words, "the living essence of the teachings of the Puranas, smrti^[*] , and Veda."^[66] Swami Karpatri gave this claim a more detailed theological articulation: "When that Parabrahma who is known to the Veda became manifest in the form of Ram, son of Dashrath, then the Veda too became manifest through the great sage Valmiki in the form of the Ramayana^[*] . That same Ramayana^[*] has been made manifest by Goswami Tulsidas-ji in the form of the Ramcaritmanas . In practical terms, the meaning of the Veda is the meaning of the Manas ."^[67] As the most accessible Veda, the Manas was the Sanatani scripture par excellence—a devotional work that preached reverence for cows and Brahmans; offered a veritable catalogue of sacred rivers, pilgrimage sites, and popular rituals; presented a harmonious synthesis of Vaishnavism and Shaivism; and in the minds of devotees managed at one and the same time to stand for religious egalitarianism, the maintenance of the social status quo, and (later on) even nationalism and swadeshi (the boycott of British products, especially textiles), since it offered an inspiring vision of a powerful and self-sufficient Hindu state. Moreover, unlike the Veda, which Sanatanis continued to insist could be taught only to twice-born males, the Manas was suitable for everyone. Statements to that effect, tirelessly reiterated, by (usually Brahman) spokesmen like Pandit Shivkumar Shastri of Banaras, sometimes bordered on paternalistic condescension; the Manas was morally unobjectionable, true, but also unlikely to make waves: "There isn't one religious book, Purana, epic, etc., which can be narrated from beginning to end before every sort of person. But this is one book you don't have to hesitate to expound to young and old, men and women, boys and girls, high and low, householder and ascetic, orthodox Vaishnava, Shaiva or Shakta—anyone at all." One must add, however, that the venerable

[66] Quoted in Poddar, ed., Kalyan^[*] : Manasank , 52.

[67] Quoted in Tripathi, Vijayatika^[*] 1:3.

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Shastri, who was much admired for his Sanskrit learning and his impressive library of classical texts, devotedly carried his own little gutka^[*] edition because "after all, in this alone do I find peace."^[68]

Malviya himself issued a stirring call for Manas-pracar : "Blessed are they who read or listen to Goswami Tulsidas-ji's Manas Ramayan. . . . But still more blessed are those who print beautiful and inexpensive editions of the Manas and place them in the hands of the very poorest people, thus doing them priceless service. At present, Manas-katha is going on in many towns and villages. But wherever it is not, it should begin, and its holy teachings should be ever more widely promulgated."^[69] It was answered by, among others, Malviya's friend Hanumanprasad Poddar, the son of a Marwari business family, whose Gorakhpur-based Gita Press began churning out low-priced Manas editions of every size and description. Another friend of Malviya's, Mahant Bankeram Mishra of the Sankat Mochan Temple, organized the first annual Manas-katha festival in the mid-1920s, setting a precedent that others would follow.

A further aspect of the Sanatani self-definition remains to be noted: the increasingly aggressive rhetoric of opposition to both Islam and Western culture. In the communally tense Punjab (where Hindus were outnumbered by Muslims in many-districts), Dayanand had provided fuel for this campaign with his strident denunciations of Christianity and Islam—their doctrines, scriptures, and prophets.^[70] His antidote to the "degradation" imposed on Hindus by foreign rule was a hearkening back to the remote golden age of Vedic civilization, when Aryan seers had crafted the perfect scientific civilization, complete with railways and airships. The vision was persuasive and remains influential to this day, but Sanatanis have generally preferred to find their locus classicus, airships and all, in the Treta Yuga days of Ramraj , when all the world was united under a divine Hindu monarch.

The articulation of Hindu communalism under the slogan of Ramraj is discussed shortly; here I note the modern tendency to communalize the Manas —to present its author less as a humble ascetic singer than as a crusading militant, heroically responding to a Kali Yuga characterized by the "foreign" domination of India. Whereas Gandhi and other advocates of Hindu-Muslim unity cited the age of Akbar as a period of communal harmony and pointed to the essential compatibility of Hinduism

[68] Quoted in Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 908.

[69] Quoted in Poddar, ed., Kalyan^[*] : Manasank , 52.

[70] Jones, Arya Dharn , 139-41, 145-46.

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and Islam, Sanatanis saw syncretism only as a more subtle form of subversion and viewed the composition of the vernacular epic as the vanguard of a militant Hindu resurgence:

The Manas was composed at a time when Bharat was being struck by the thunderbolt of cruel and intense Muslim oppression. Hindus were utterly frightened and distressed, yet they clung to their traditions. . .. The evil-hearted Akbar displayed a clever policy of tolerance, and in order to deceive the Hindus, released them from the jaziya tax. And mixing up the Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Parsi religions, he promulgated a new faith called Din-i-Ilahi and started treating all with equality and friendliness. As a result, simple-hearted Hindus, forgetting their own natural Indian social system, customs, and rules, began to unwittingly embrace the Muslim creed and eat and intermarry with Muslims. In this way the Hindu religion began to be absorbed into Islam. No Hindu could grasp this dark conspiracy of Akbar's and their religion was about to go under, when Goswami Tulsidas-ji looked at the situation and recognized Akbar's wicked stratagem. . .. He took refuge in Lord Ram and at his inspiration composed the divine Manas epic, thus rescuing the drowning Vedic religion.^[71]

This reading of the past remains influential among Manas devotees and finds frequent articulation in the communally tense atmosphere of contemporary North India. In 1984 at a huge Katha program in Ayodhya— a city that has become a cause cèlébre of Hindu communalism—an elderly devotee seized the microphone during a break between speakers and, in a quavering voice, worked the crowd into wild cheering with a poem that opened with a mocking litany of Muslim dynasties (and incidentally, presumed a knowledge of history and geography that would have been unthinkable among the devotees of Tulsi's day):

The trickery of Ghuri, Ghazni, Slave, Khilji,
mixed with the spirit of Tughlak, Lodi, and Sayyid,
and the evil plot of the Mughal Akbar—
by the power of his pen, he bested them!
Blessed the wisdom and power,
blessed the poetry of Tulsi,
that even in a vile age toppled the unbeliever!
The Ramcaritmanas nourished people's hearts
and gave life back to Hindus.

Iran, Arabia, Russia, China, even up to Indochina,
the victory of Islam was everywhere proclaimed.

[71] Dvivedi, "Sri Ramnagar ki sri Ramlila mem^[*] devatva," 49; the translation is adapted from an unpublished one by Linda Hess.

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India's holy soil was imbued with Muslim ways
and customs were corrupted in city and village.
Tulsi Goswami perceived the anguish
and played such a tune,
comforting the hearts of great and small,
that there remained no taste for Koran,
sermon, and salaam,
and in every home arose the song
of the name of Ram!^[72]

If the activites and rhetoric of both would-be reformers and their orthodox antagonists reflected a single underlying mood, it was one of anxiety. The theme of "protection"—of cattle, of women, and of dharma itself—permeates their activities and suggests a worldview increasingly on the defensive. Even programs of social welfare seemed to be motivated by a kind of fear; funds for orphan relief during the terrible famines of 1896 and 1899 were solicited by Arya Samajis with the plea that if Hindus did not help the orphans, they would fall into the clutches of Christian missionaries and be lost to the faith.^[73] Similarly, caste Hindu's solicitude for untouchables and willingness to consider admitting them to (usually low) varna^[*] status seemed to reflect the fear "that there will not remain any 'low castes' at a not very distant date and the 'higher castes' will have to exert all their energies in protecting themselves from being pushed to the wall."^[74] Social programs not underwritten by major fears—such as work for the uplift of women—took low priority in the agendas of religious activists.^[75]

To be sure, there were valid reasons for some of this anxiety: the political and economic upheavals of the recent past, the smug cultural chauvinism of the colonial regime, the growing militancy of Muslims and the strident critique of Hinduism by missionaries all must have contributed to it. Yet the fact that tens of millions of Hindus rapidly became convinced that their way of life was in imminent danger of vanishing gives one pause to wonder if the root of their anxiety did not lie in something more fundamental. The Kali Yuga is, after all, more

[72] Recorded at Lakshman Kila, Ayodhya, April 9, 1984.

[73] Jones, Arya Dharm , 236-39.

[74] From a Punjabi newspaper, 1892, cited in ibid., 144.

[75] See ibid., 215-16, on the half-hearted Arya efforts to extend education to women; note too that "women's uplift" finally made it into the Thirteen Point Program of the Hindu Mahasabha in 1925—as the last item on the list; Weiner, Party Politics in India , 166.

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than a chronological designation; although in theory it has temporal limits, they are effectively beyond the range of human experience.^[76] Instead, like the Old Testament story of the Fall, the "Dark Age" is best regarded as a metaphor for the human condition, an expression of the inevitability of vitiation and decline and of the unending battle to retain purity and potency. As Shulman suggests (and Tulsidas realized), the enemy is within, even though he can readily be externalized to suit the circumstances of the day.

The Politics of Ramraj

Two powerful and contrasting visions dominate the final book of the Manas . The first is of the world as it might be: a harmonious and abundant realm in which virtue and happiness prevail—a world presided over by God, incarnate as a just and loving human being. The second vision stands in dark contrast, and no listener can escape the impression that it is Tulsi's intended description of his own world and of ours. Taken together, these two visions reflect further the poet's meditation on the paradoxical relationship between order and transcendence.

Ramraj , in Tulsi's view, was characterized by an ideal social order. It was a world in which everyone "knew his limits" as prescribed by authoritative scripture and diligently kept to them.

Everyone was devoted to his own duty
according to class and stage of life,
and ever following the Vedic path
was happy and free from fear, sorrow and disease.

All men displayed mutual affection
and intent on scriptural precept,
followed their proper duty.
7.20, 7.21.2

Yet under Ram's benevolent direction, this earthly order, far from oppressing human beings, produced a freedom hardly earthly at all—a world in which even the most elemental limits were transcended.

No one was ever pained by untimely death,
everyone had beautiful and healthy bodies.

[76] According to the usual reckoning, the Kali Yuga began some 5,000 years ago and will continue for roughly another 350,000 years.

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Forest trees constantly blossomed and bore fruit,
elephants and tigers dwelt in harmony.
Trees and creepers dripped honey on request,
cows yielded milk at a mere wish,
the earth was always filled with crops,
the Krita Age reappeared in the Treta.

The moon flooded the earth with nectar,
the sun offered just enough heat,
you asked the cloud and it released rain—
in the realm of Ramchandra!
7.21.5; 7.23.1,5,6; 7.23

This vision of a peaceable kingdom in which time itself is reversed and the Golden Age recreated suggests a harmonious balance between order and transcendence. By perfect adherence to divinely sanctioned order, heaven is brought to earth, and so, apparently, the fundamental tension of the epic is resolved.

Yet the epic is not over. After some seventy stanzas of devotional instruction, Tulsi offers another, more troubling vision of a dark age in which scriptural order is overturned, resulting in a chaos of heresies and utter social corruption.

Religion is tainted by the Kali Age's filth,
the holy books become concealed
while hypocrites spin their own fancies
and promulgate numberless sects.

There's no rule of caste or of life-stages
and all men and women live opposed to the law.

Brahmans sell scriptures, kings prey on their subjects
and no one obeys Vedic injunction.

Brahmans are illiterate, greedy, lustful,
reprehensible fools keeping low-caste concubines.

Shudras mutter prayers, do austerities and fasts,
and sitting on high seats expound the Puranas.

Mendicants are rich and householders poor—
Brother, the perversities of the Kali Age cannot be told!
7.97a; 7.98.1,2; 7.100.8,9; 7.101.2

Even as the willing adherence of Ram's subjects to the rule of order produced heaven on earth, so the refusal of the people of the Kali Age to adhere to scriptural precept results in the sufferings of an earthly hell.

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Racked by disease, men find no pleasure anywhere,
yet wallow in vain pride and enmity.
Their lifespan barely a dozen years,
they fancy themselves outliving an aeon!
The Dark Age makes all mankind desperate,
no one respects even sisters or daughters.
Without contentment, discrimination, detachment,
high and low are reduced to beggary.
7.102.3-6

This jeremiad goes on for some seventy lines, and sensitive listeners of any era will readily discern in it an indictment of their own times. When, inevitably, they contrast it with the glowing vision of Ramraj , they may at first conclude that Tulsi is issuing a strident call for reform by stressing how far society has fallen from its ideal. Such an interpretation falls short of encompassing the full implications of this passage, however. For paradoxically, the long diatribe against the Dark Age ends not with condemnation but with praise and the promise of a new kind of transcendent, personal "Ramraj ," now accessible to all by the power of the divine name:

Listen, Garuda, the Kali Age
is the treasury of sins and vices,
yet it has one great virtue:
salvation may be had without effort!

The state attained in the first three ages
by worship, sacrifice, and austerity—
truly it is gained by Kali Age people
by the name of the Lord.

The Dark Age has no compeer
for one possessing faith,
for by singing the spotless fame of Ram
liberation comes without exertion.
7.102a,b; 7.103

When a traditional order is threatened or destroyed, several responses are possible. One is to preserve or recreate it—the former might be termed "conservative," the latter "reactionary."^[77] Another is to mold a new order and, depending on the degree of change between old and

[77] The relevance of these terms to the Indian context is discussed in Erdman, The Swatantra Party, 1-9.

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new, such an effort might be termed "reformist" or "revolutionary." To be sure, Tulsi's idealization of tradition is so powerful that it inevitably elicits nostalgia for the past. Yet his insistence on carrying his narrative forward into the troubled present suggests a recognition that the past is irretrievable, and his prescription for the ills of the Kali Yuga is not a reconstruction of the shattered order but rather a new, egalitarian expedient. Thus, it is possible to read his poem as either a glowing affirmation of traditional order or a dramatic cancellation of it.

In his discussion of the social impact of Ramlila , Hein cites the enduring influence of the notion of Ramraj : "It was one of the few vital indigenous political ideas remaining in the vastly unpolitical mind of the old-time Indian peasant. Through centuries of foreign rule the Ramlila helped preserve a basis for civic resurrection. It must be considered in the history of Indian nationalism."^[78] The point is an important one, although we should refrain from drawing a sharp distinction between politics and religion in this context. Bayly has shown the importance of Hindu revivalism to the development of the Indian National Congress and has noted that political ideas in nineteenth-century India "were almost unavoidably expressed in terms of religious tradition, because this was the language of social comment."^[79] Yet if the Manas became part of the language of social comment for Hindus, it did so with its paradoxes intact, as the use of the concept of Ramraj in twentieth-century political movements demonstrates. For Ramraj may be viewed primarily as a harmonious but hierarchical order, in which the privileged confidently enjoy their status and the dispossessed know their limits, or conversely as a kingdom of universal righteousness, in which the possibilities of freedom are accessible to all.

Liberation Theology in Avadh

During the latter part of 1920, a peasant revolt erupted in three districts of what is now eastern Uttar Pradesh—the area that had constituted the pre-1857 kingdom of Avadh (Oudh).^[80] Mass demonstrations led to police firings and a state of near-anarchy as peasants abused their landlords and refused to pay rent. Law and order deteriorated to such a

[78] Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 100.

[79] Bayly, The Local Roots of Indian Politics , 6.

[80] The account given here is based on Pandey, "Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism."

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degree that the British governor of the United Provinces speculated that he was witnessing "the beginnings of something like revolution."^[81] Prominent leaders of the Indian National Congress were equally concerned and rushed to the affected districts. Yet the rhetoric of the peasant leaders was not of revolution but of Ramraj , and their aim was not the overthrow of the state or even of the state-supported system of revenue farming. Instead, they sought a return to an order that had been disturbed by changes in the rural economy and by the depredations of a new class of absentee landlords.

Within the Kisan Sabhas (cultivators' societies) that formed the organizational basis of the agitation, the influence of the Manas and its themes was pervasive. The most influential spokesmen for these groups were two Vaishnava sadhus, Baba Ramchandra and Baba Janaki Das; the former had been an indentured laborer in Fiji before returning to his homeland and assuming sadhu's garb to become a wandering kathavacak and peasant organizer. He was, in short, one of the "millenarian stump orators" noted by Bayly, who flourished in the region during the latter part of the First World War amid a catastrophic influenza epidemic and wild rumors of the imminent collapse of the British Empire.^[82] It is clear from a description of their activities that, even in the context of the Kisan Sabhas, Ramchandra and his cohorts remained kathavacaks : "At the early peasant meetings Ramchandra and others commonly recited excerpts from Tulsidas' Ramcaritmanas , the favorite religious epic of the Hindus in northern India, and especially beloved of people in this region: their own language, Avadhi, was after all the language of Tulsidas' composition, and places like Ayodhya (a few miles from Faizabad), the seat of Ram's kingdom, very much part of their world."^[83] So important was Ramayan symbolism to the movement that the establishment of the first Kisan Sabha, in the village of Rure, was explained by citing a half-line from the epic that could be interpreted to contain the name of that village.^[84] For the first large-scale meeting of the

[81] Ibid., 143.

[82] Ibid., 164; Bayly, The Local Roots of Indian Politics, 105. On the tremendous impact of the influenza epidemic, see Clark, "Mortality and Fertility in the Gangetic Plain."

[83] Pandey, "Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism," 168-69.

[84] Ibid., 171; the line is rajasamajavirajata rure (1.241.3), which occurs in the context of Janak's bow sacrifice, at which Ram and Lakshman "appear resplendent in the assembly of kings." By reading the word rure (resplendent) as a proper noun, however, the line can be ingeniously construed to mean "the royal assembly appears in Rure," thus implying that the brothers visited the village. As noted earlier, this kind of playfully strained interpretation of Manas verses is common in Katha performance.

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movement in December 1920, the organizers selected the pilgrimage city of Ayodhya, the mythical capital of Ramraj , and mustered eighty thousand supporters.

The peasants had evident faith in the liberating power of Ram's name and made it the rallying cry of their movement. One of the early objectives of Baba Ramchandra (who seems hardly to have been distinguished from Ram himself in the minds of some supporters) was to change the customary local form of greeting: "When he first came to Avadh, the greeting salaam (usually addressed by one in an inferior station to one in a superior) was widely used. He promoted the use of the alternative, 'Sita-Ram,' which did away with such discrimination on grounds of status, and thus earned the displeasure of 'many of the praiseworthy (sic.) and respectable folk of the upper castes.'"^[85] Once the cultivators' movement got under way, the new greeting became one of its most potent organizing tools; "it was enough for Ramchandra to raise the slogan 'Sita-Ram': the cry was promptly taken up in one village after another, and thus in a remarkably short space of time thousands would assemble." To worried British officials, "Sita-Ram ki jay!" (Victory to Sita-Ram!) was a "war-cry . . . the cry of discontent." Yet Ramchandra's use of the name was hardly the maneuver of a sophisticated politician—his memoirs bear witness to his ingenuous faith in its power both to turn back club-wielding policemen and to cause sickly mango trees to yield fruit. Rather it was a natural invocation of an established symbol that had both social and religious resonance. "In the most difficult of situations, the peasants turned to the slogan 'Sita-Ram,'" recalled Ramchandra, "and the slogan fulfilled their many different desires. As a result the organization grew ever stronger."^[86]

The objectives of the Kisan Sabha movement must be understood in the context of the region's political and economic history. After the revolt of 1857, nearly three-fifths of the cultivated land in Avadh was assigned to some 280 landlord families who had proved their loyalty to the British and were designated "natural leaders." The assignment of such unprecedented privileges, now protected by the strong arm of the colonial regime, led to their widespread abuse of "inferior right holders" (various categories of tenants intermediary between the landlords and the peasants) and the actual—and generally landless—cultivators.

[85] Pandey, "Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism," 169; the embedded quote is from Baba Ramchandra's memoirs.

[86] Ibid., 169-71.

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These abuses were worsened by economic changes, especially by the rise of an urban mercantile and banking class that, under British law, acquired the control of large estates in repayment of debts. These new landlords lived away from their estates and accepted none of the reciprocal responsibilities of the old aristocracy; instead, they made rapacious demands on the tenantry through abusive estate agents and their armed guards. It was against the oppression of these (in Nehru's words) "spoilt children of the British Government" that the peasants of Avadh arose.^[87]

To the peasants Ramraj did not mean the overthrow of the landholding system, but it did mean lower rents and fairer treatment. In Gyan Pandey's analysis of the peasants' views, "exploitation as such was not unjust. It was inevitable that some ruled and some conducted prayers and some owned the land and some laboured, and all lived off the fruits of that labour. But it was important that everyone in the society made a living out of the resources that were available."^[88] Yet even such modest objectives were too threatening for the colonial regime. While official reports coldly detailed the wretchedness of the peasants on the estates and the unwillingness of the landlords to contemplate any loosening of their hold and even while the government publicized its promise to investigate and press for reforms, the full weight of its most autocratic powers of police and judiciary was pressed into action to crush the revolt and imprison its leaders. By April 1922, the agitation was successfully suppressed.

But it was not the government alone that felt threatened. Nationalist leaders, including Gandhi and Motilal Nehru, after showing initial sympathy for the peasants' demands, withdrew their support and abandoned the movement to its unsung demise. Their ostensible motive was fear that the revolt would turn violent and wreck their peaceful Noncooperation Movement. They stressed instead the need for peasants and landlords to forget their differences and present a "united front" against imperialism. Pandey has incisively analyzed the implicit logic of this strategy as well as its portent for the future of Congress government:

[87] Apart from the usual exorbitant rents—often in excess of 50 percent of the harvest-peasants were expected to fill the landlord's own fields and perform free labor for him, as well as to periodically meet special assessments such as a motorana tax, levied when the landlord desired to purchase an automobile; Pandey, "Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism," 161, 172.

[88] Ibid., 171.

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The Congress' insistence in 1921-2 on a united front of landlords as well as peasants and others, was a statement in favour of the status quo and against any radical change in the social set-up when the British finally handed over the reins of power. The advice to peasants to give up organizing "meetings" and "disturbances" and to leave politics to the professionals, was a statement against mass participatory democracy and in favour of the idea of "trustee-ship"—the landlords and princes acting as trustees in the economic sphere, Gandhi and company in the political.^[89]

It was also the reflection of an economic reality, for many of the absentee landlords against whom the Avadh peasants directed their protests were the same "new men" who provided the financial backing for the Congress.

Pandey's analysis of the Congress position suggests one of the possible readings of Ramraj : a paternalistic autocracy of natural leaders and cooperative subjects. The peasants' actions suggested the possibility of another view: a Ramraj of mass participatory democracy insuring a fairer distribution of wealth. It was ironic, as we shall see, that Mohandas Gandhi should have been drawn, in this instance, to favor the former interpretation; it is less surprising that it has remained dominant in post-Independence Indian politics.

Gandhi's Katha

Like the peasants of Avadh, the man who was to become known as the "Father of Indian Independence" articulated a vision of Ramraj that was rooted in a fervent devotion to the Manas . His own account of his childhood exposure to the text reflects a style and milieu of performance that should by now be familiar to readers:

What, however, left a deep impression on me was the reading of the Ramayan before my father. During part of his illness my father was in Porbandar. There every evening he used to listen to the Ramayan. The reader was a great devotee of Ram—Ladha Maharaj of Bileshvar. . . . He had a melodious voice. He would sing the dohas (couplets) and caupais^[*] (quatrains), and explain them, losing himself in the discourse and carrying his listeners along with him. I must have been thirteen at that time, but I quite remember being enraptured by his reading. That laid the foundation of my deep devotion to the Ramayan. Today I regard the Ramayan of Tulasidas as the greatest book in all devotional literature.^[90]

[89] Ibid., 188.

[90] Gandhi, An Autobiography , 46-47.

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A perusal of the entries under "Ramayan" and "Tulsidas" in the indexes to Gandhi's voluminous collected works suggests the extent of what Gandhi termed "the fascination that Tulsidas has wrought on me." To the well-known personae of Gandhi the lawyer, political organizer, and · wandering holy man should perhaps be added that of Gandhi the kathavacak , who used Manas verses as proof texts (praman^[*] ) to buttress political arguments. These citations sometimes helped him in difficult ideological situations, such as when (only seven days before his assassination) he addressed the faithful at his evening prayer meeting in New Delhi on the subject of Subhas Chandra Bose, whose birthday it was:

Today is Subhas Babu's birthday. . . . Subhas Babu was a votary of violence while I am a devotee of ahimsa^[*] [non-injury]. But what does it matter? I know that the most important thing is that we should learn from other people's virtues. As Tulsidas says,

The Lord has created this world full of lifeless
and living things and virtues and vices.
The wise, like the swan, take the milk of virtue
and leave out the waste of water.^[91]

We should be like the swan and take the milk of virtue. Man has virtues as well as vices. We should emulate him in his virtues and forget his deficiencies. Subhas was a great patriot. He laid down his life for the country.^[92]

Gandhi often explained his own political activities by referring to the Ramayan narrative; thus, when he was queried about the inspiration for the Noncooperation Movement, he cited the Sundar kand^[*] passage in which Sita, though a helpless prisoner of Ravan, boldly refused to submit to his wishes^[93] Addressing a meeting of untouchables in 1925, he reminded them of Ram's compassion for the lowly: "You might be acquainted, if you have known Tulsidas' Ramayan, with the fact that Ramchandra, Sita and Lakshman had very affectionately embraced the untouchable Guha and I want to see the same repeated once again in India. . . . I would therefore appeal to Hindus of the higher castes present here that, if they call themselves Sanatan Dharmi, if they love the cow, they should not hate members of the untouchable classes."^[94]

[91] This doha (1.6) was one of Gandhi's favorites and appears frequently in his talks and writings. See, for example, its citation in one of his earliest letters to Ghanshyamdas Birla, In the Shadow of the Mahatma , 7.

[92] Gandhi, Collected Works 90:485.

[93] Quoted without citation of source, in Gopal, Tulasidas , viii.

[94] Gandhi, Collected Works 28:179.

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Although Gandhi-the-devotee's personal faith in the Manas is beyond doubt, it is also apparent that Gandhi-the-politician knew how to use homely adaptations of its imagery to solicit mass support. Campaigning for the Swadeshi movement in 1925, Gandhi told a rural crowd, "You should bear in mind that, in the days of Shri Ramchandra, neither rich nor poor used any foreign cloth and the khadi [homespun] produced in the country was in the general use of all."^[95] Later that year while urging the use of his beloved home spinning-wheel (carkha ), he regaled a women's gathering with a bit of domestication worthy of any kathavacak : "Gandhiji said that . . . they must try to become like Sita of yore who was the soul of Ramraj . In the days of Sita every household had its carkha just as they find a hearth in every home. Sita also spun on her own carkha which might have been bedecked with jewels and probably ornamented with gold, but all the same it was still a carkha ."^[96]

The notion of Ramraj forms a recurring theme in Gandhi's discourse. He used the term to articulate his dream of an independent India, often equating it with or preferring it to the term svaraj (self-rule) used by other Congress leaders.^[97] It was here that Gandhi-the-politician and Gandhi-the-devotee came together, for Ramraj was "not only the political Home Rule but also dharmaraj . . . which was something higher than ordinary political emancipation."^[98] Something higher perhaps, but also something more thoroughly Indian. Westerners who read translations of Gandhi's Hindi speeches and writings, wherein the word "dharma" is rendered "righteousness," "truth," or "justice," are understandably liable to interpret these ideas according to the Judaeo-Christian notion of a universal ethic that admits no exceptions. Resonances of this worldview are of course present in Gandhi's thought and language, as they are in those of many other English-educated Indian leaders. Yet it is important to recognize that, for the vast majority of Gandhi's listeners, the word "dharma" referred to an infinitely particularized and situational code of behavior, fundamental to which was the notion of the inherent inequality of human beings. Dharma was not a monolithic law that every one of these unequal individuals obeyed, but rather a cosmic framework within which they pursued their respective courses. The tra-

[95] Ibid.

[96] Ibid., 295. The image is not so incongruous as may appear, since Tulsi's account notes that Sita, ever the model wife, insisted on performing the palace chores herself, "although there were countless male and female servants skilled in all tasks" (7.24.5,6).

[97] Bose, Selections from Gandhi , 255.

[98] Gandhi, Collected Works 28:295.

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ditional view has always been that authority and punishment (danda^[*] , or "the rod") were necessary to keep individuals on course and so to insure harmony; thus, a kingdom governed according to dharma was necessarily an authoritarian one. Gandhi tried to circumvent this problem by interpreting Tulsi's epic as a metaphor for spirtual experience rather than an account of historical realities: "Tulsidas had nothing to do with the Ram of history. Judged by historical test, his Ramayan would be fit for the scrap heap. As a spiritual experience his book is almost unrivalled, at least for me. . . . It is the spirit running through the book that holds me spell-bound."^[99] It was Gandhi's insistence on reading the "spirit" rather than the letter of the Manas that made possible his original interpretations of its basic themes and his successful use of them as slogans to unify—even if only temporarily—diverse groups within his society. Thus, he could offer such startling interpetations of Ramraj as the following, in which Tulsi's vision of a divine authoritarianism is transformed into a divinely democratic populism by appealing to the moral principle of self-abnegation: "Ramraj means rule of the people. A person like Ram would never wish to rule."^[100]

The contrast between spirit and letter returns us to the problem of transcendence and order. It was the spirit of Gandhi that caught the imagination of the masses: the charismatic sadhu who traveled the countryside quoting their beloved Ramayan, preaching homely virtues and causing distant thrones to tremble. During the peasant uprisings in Avadh, his name figured in the wildest rumors; at times he was thought to have already overthrown the government at Delhi.^[101] The "letter" of Gandhi sometimes proved harder to pin down, harder still to follow. To the long-suffering peasants of Avadh, it proved to consist, in February 1921, of a set of seventeen printed orders under the heading "Attainment of Swaraj or redress of grievances is impossible unless the following rules are strictly observed." The detailed directives displayed a characteristic Gandhian concern for nonviolence yet, as Pandey has shown, they also served to undercut every one of the achievements and strengths of the peasant movement. They forbade the withholding of taxes and rent, however unjust, and required the abandonment of all acts of even

[99] Ibid., 111.

[100] Gandhi, Collected Works 49:92.

[101] A British report on the Kisan Sabha movement noted dryly, "No one seems to know quite who or what he is, but it is an accepted fact that what he orders must be done. He is a Mahatma or sadhu, a Pandit, a Brahman who lives at Allahabad, even a Deota [deity]"; cited in Pandey, "Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism," 196.

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nonviolent resistance, such as Gandhi himself would lead elsewhere. In Pandey's interpretation, "for tactical reasons as much, it appears, as out of any concern for non-violence," the apostle of Ramraj spearheaded the Congress's desertion of the peasants and thus indirectly served the interests of a class of petty aristocrats whom the lieutenant governor of the United Provinces had cynically hailed as "the only friends we have" and Jawarharlal Nehru later described as "complete parasites."^[102] But then we have already seen that the spirit of Tulsi's Ramraj was inherently paradoxical and reflected, together with a longing for transcendent freedom, a fear of worldly disorder.

Ramraj and the Right

Now, what of those who would impose the letter of Ramraj ? The Sanatani organizations that proliferated during the closing decades of the nineteenth century expressed political as well as religious aims. The Madhya Hindu Samaj of Central India, for example, founded on Dashahra day in 1884, held its annual meetings until 1891 concurrently with those of the Indian National Congress, to which many of its members belonged. Its objectives included the propagation of Hindi, the protection of cattle, and (in 1891) the defeat of proposed legislation banning infant marriage, which many Hindus viewed as government meddling in family affairs.^[103] The most broad-based Sanatani organization of the early twentieth century was the All-India Hindu Mahasabha, founded at Allahabad in 1913, which likewise held its annual sessions concurrently with those of Congress; Malviya was president of this organization several times, as was Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the militant Maharashtrian leader who was among the first to propound the doctrine of India as a Hindu state. Although initially intended as a religious organization that would complement the Congress, the Mahasabha gradually became politicized, adopting an increasingly anti-Muslim stance. This position understandably angered Muslim leaders, whom Gandhi was endeavoring to keep within the Congress, as did the fact that large numbers of Congress delegates attended the Mahasabha sessions. In 1925 the Mahasabha accepted a thirteen-point program that advocated reconverting Muslims, organizating "gymnasiums" for paramilitary training, and founding "service committees" to promote Hindu interests. When widespread communal riots broke out during

[102] Ibid., 156-61.

[103] Bayly, The Local Roots of Indian Politics , 108-9.

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1924-26, these committees were suspected not merely of having provided relief to Hindu victims but of having helped to perpetrate the violence. Mahasabha leaders, in turn, blamed Congress moderates and especially Gandhi for advocating the "appeasement" of Muslims. The views of more moderate leaders like Malviya were gradually overshadowed by the jingoistic rhetoric of younger spokesmen like the Punjabi Arya Samaj leader Paramanand, who declared at the 1933 session, "Hindustan is the land of the Hindus alone, and Musalmans and Christians and other nations living in India are only our guests. They can live here as long as they wish to remain as guests."^[104] By the late 1930s the Congress-Mahasabha split was complete; the former organization adopted a policy forbidding its members to belong to communal groups, and the latter began to function in effect as an anti-Congress opposition party.

The attainment of independence in 1947 did nothing to heal the rift between the two groups; the holocaust of religious violence that accompanied partition was fueled in part by the rhetoric of the communalists, who accused Congress of having betrayed the "Hindu nation" and called for the annexation and forcible reconversion of Pakistan. The Mahasabha continued its political activities, joined on the scene by several parties that shared many of its objectives and have been variously characterized as "communal," "conservative," "rightist," and "reactionary." Parties such as the Jana Sangh (founded in 1951), the Swatantra party (1959), and the older but officially nonpolitical Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (R.S.S., 1925) have generally represented a small, fragmented minority within the government. Yet as Howard Erdman has observed, the relatively poor showing of rightist parties in parliamentary elections has never been a definitive barometer of the strength of conservatism in India; for the dominant Congress party itself, far from being ideologically monolithic, included conservative elements that could assert themselves over specific issues.^[l05]

The rhetoric and objectives of the major rightist parties have had much in common; behind their various platforms may be detected the specter of a religiopolitical ideal that most would not hesitate to equate with Ramraj . This ideal was given its most explicit articulation by one of the first parties to emerge after the achievement of Independence: the

[104] Baxter, The Jana Sangh , 10-19.

[105] E.g., Nehru's controversial "Hindu Code Bill" of 1950, which met stiff resistance and had to be greatly watered down before it could finally be approved in 1955; Erdman, The Swatantra Party , 60.

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Ram Rajya Parishad ("Ramraj party," hereafter abbreviated R.R.P.), founded in 1948. Although this party enjoyed only brief and limited success, its platform and rhetoric reflected attitudes that have proven more enduring.

The guiding genius of the R.R.P. was the energetic Swami Karpatri (1907-82), a Brahman-turned-ascetic who became one of the most prominent religious activists of the post-Independence era.^[106] Born Nar Narayan Ojha in a village in Pratapgarh District, U.P., the future Karpatri reputedly left home at the age of seventeen to embark on a spiritual quest that took him to the Himalayas and later back to Prayag (Allahabad), where he was initiated into the Shankaracharya order of dandi^[*] (staff-bearing) ascetics under the name Hariharanand Sarasvati.^[107] Karpatri belonged to an elite subbranch that admitted only Brahmans, the members of which prided themselves on their learning and scrupulous adherence to "Vedic" customs. Karpatri's impeccable orthodoxy and widely publicized activities earned him high regard; as the acknowledged leader of the dandis^[*] , he came to be recognized as "the visible manifestation of Shiva."^[108] His reputation proved useful in his organizational activities, for merchant groups were eager to acquire prestige by associating with the most orthodox teachers.

Karpatri's early activities included the founding of a journal, Sanmarg (1936), backed by the merchant Mulchand Chopra and edited by Vijayanand Tripathi; later (1941) this became a daily newspaper published from Banaras and Calcutta. Karpatri also championed the revival of large-scale Vedic sacrifices, for which he solicited funds from merchants and industrialists.^[109] His rigid conservatism was perhaps most evident in his attitude toward the socially oppressed, for while some liberal Sanatanis paid lip service to the notion of a varna -based^[*] social order of only four grades and advocated (in principle) the "purification" of untouchables, Karpatri unashamedly argued for the mainte-

[106] Tripathi's brief life sketch lists eleven organizations founded and/or headed by Karpatri; Sadhus of India, 224-25.

[107] The name Karpatri (literally, "one whose vessel is his hand"), derived from his austere eating habits. It is not an uncommon title among ascetics; see Ghurye, Indian Sadhus , 76.

[108] Thus Vijayanand Tripathi salutes him in the introduction to the Vijayatika^[*] (1:18); at Karpatri's approach, Banaras crowds would chant (as for the maharaja, who is considered another divine manifestation) "Har Har Mahadev!"

[109] These costly and well-publicized potlatches did not impress everyone, however; one of my interviewees recalled with bitterness, "I remember, in those days there was famine in Bengal. Karpatri got the big merchants to sponsor a yajña for the 'welfare of the nation,' and huge amounts of rice and ghee were poured into the flames, while pandits chanted the Vedas and reporters took photos."

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nance of the status quo, including the continued ostracism of people at the bottom of the system. Thus, he opposed the opening of temples to untouchables, in accordance with the provisions of the new constitution: "When some Harijans entered the premises of Vishvanath Temple in Varanasi, he declared that the idol of Vishvanath-ji had become devoid of all Divine Virtues and was nothing more than a piece of stone. After this incident, he constructed another Vishvanath Temple in Varanasi."^[110]

The R.R.P. faced its first test at the polls in the parliamentary elections of 1952. For the occasion, the party produced a forty-page manifesto detailing its principles and aims. This unusual document, "replete with Sanskrit quotations, moral exhortations, metaphysical subtleties, and even arguments for the existence of God,"^[111] read more like the transcription of a Katha performance than a statement of political policy. Its evocation of Ram's glorious reign—the model it wished India to emulate—resembled Tulsi's panegyric: "Every citizen of Ramraj was contented, happy, gifted with learning, and religious-minded. . . . All were truthful. None was close-fisted, none was rude; none lacked prudence; and above all, none was atheist. All followed the path of dharma."^[112] The manifesto advocated a return to this blessed state but gave little indication of how the party intended to bring it about. Among the document's few concessions to the mundane were calls for a ban on cow slaughter and the sale of alcoholic beverages, for government encouragement of the system of village barter (jajmani ) rather than a cash economy, and for the replacement of Western medicine with Ayurveda. Society was to function smoothly according to the immemorial varnasram^[*] system, but lest it be supposed that this did not offer something for everyone, the manifesto recommended that sweepers, Chamars, and other Untouchables be assigned "high posts" in sanitation departments and the leather and hides industry.

Though largely ignored by the English-language press and the urban intelligentsia, the R.R.P. did not fare altogether badly at the polls. Its most successful candidates were a handful of ex-aristocrats in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, seeking political office in their former domains,

[110] Tripathi, Sadhus of India , 225. Like many of Karpatri's actions, this was dramatic but ineffectual; the new shrine is rarely visited by worshipers, while the "polluted" one continues to thrive.

[111] Donald E. Smith, India as a Secular State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 464; cited in Baxter, The Jana Sangh , 79.

[112] Weiner, Party Politics in India , 174.

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who found success by linking their local prestige with the image of the party and its leader.^[113] In all, the R.R.P. mustered some two million votes, including 14.2 percent of the vote in Madhya Pradesh and 9.4 percent in Rajasthan.^[114] If it was clear that the party had found a constituency, it was just as clear that Ramraj was not imminently to be ushered in.

Although the R.R.P. continued to contest seats in later elections, it gradually lost popular support even in its early strongholds.^[115] Some observers attributed its poor performance to the unbending personality of its leader. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the R.R.P. contemplated merging with one or more of the other rightist parties—a move that might have strengthened its overall position. But the bottom line for Karpatri usually proved to be varna^[*] , and so merger talks with the Jana Sangh broke down in 1956 over his insistence that the other party exclude Harijans from membership.^[116] When B. D. Tripathi conducted research among sadhus in the mid-1960s, he was surprised to find that even they evinced little support for the R.R.P.^[117] Karpatri himself managed to remain in the limelight by periodically unpacking the old reliables of Sanatani sentiment; thus, in 1966 he led 125,000 protestors in a march on Parliament protesting cow slaughter—a demonstration that ended with the torching of vehicles and police firing.

Any judgment of the failure of Karpatri's party must be tempered by an awareness of the relatively greater success of several other rightist parties. It is easy enough to laugh at Karpatri's posturing and to dismiss the R.R.P. manifesto as a "handbook for Indian reactionaries and obscurantists,"^[118] but one should not overlook the fact that more moderate and successful conservative leaders advocated programs that were in substantial agreement with those of the R.R.P. Also participating in the 1952 elections were the Hindu Mahasabha and the newly formed Bharatiya Jana Sangh. The former secured roughly a million votes and four seats in the Lok Sabha with a manifesto that advocated an "undivided" India (i.e., the nullification of Pakistan), cow protection, and Ayurvedic medicine and opposed Nehru's Hindu Code Bill. On social issues the Mahasabha adopted a more reformist stance than the R.R.P.,

[113] Erdman, The Swatantra Party , 52.

[114] Weiner, Party Politics in India , 175.

[115] In 1962 it won only 3.79 percent of the vote in Madhya Pradesh and 2.01 percent in Rajasthan; Erdman, The Swatantra Party , 277.

[116] Baxter, The Jana Sangh , 132.

[117] Tripathi, Sadhus of India , 150.

[118] Erdman, The Swatantra Party , 52.

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advocating "Harijan uplift" and women's rights but, as Erdman has noted, the rhetoric can be misleading since many Mahasabha supporters no more believed in the literal implementation of such ideas than their R.R.P. counterparts did in those of Swami Karpatri.

The Jana Sangh was founded in 1951 by Shyam Prasad Mookerjee, a former Mahasabha leader, but much of its support came from the older "service" organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The Maharashtrian Brahmans who established this paramilitary group in Nagpur in 1925 chose Vijaydashami day for its founding and wallowed in the rhetoric of a "glorious Hindu past" combined with a healthy dose of hatred toward other communities.^[119] The R.S.S. quickly extended its influence into Hindi-speaking regions; a cadre was established in Banaras in 1931, and by 1940 the organization claimed a nationwide membership of one hundred thousand. Each local group was supposed to meet daily for exercise, marching drills, patriotic songs, and Sanskrit prayers. This training was intended to foster absolute devotion to what was vaguely termed "national religion and culture." A similar ideology later dominated the policy statements of the political offshoot of the R.S.S., the Jana Sangh. Its 1951 manifesto contained—in addition to the predictable calls for a ban on cow slaughter and for the promotion of Ayurvedic medicine—criticism of the "materialism" of Western culture and praise of Sanskrit as "the repository of national culture"; a decade later its platform continued to extol "the age-old scientific principles of social organization."^[120] Although we should not overlook the ideological differences among the rightist parties—in 1954 the Jana Sangh supported the abolition of untouchability and the opening of temples to Harijans—we may recognize that many of these differences were literally "ideological" and had little bearing on practical approaches to real-world problems. Rejection of the concept of untouchability had become, by 1954, almost as politically acceptable as motherhood and Ramraj , as improved transportation and growing urbanization made it increasingly difficult to limit physical contact with the socially oppressed, and the anachronistic views of Karpatri became a liability for conservatives. But

[119] Wrote R.S.S. "Supreme Leader" Golwalkar in 1939, "The non-Hindu peoples in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture . . . or may stay in this country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even citizen's rights"; M. S. Golwalkar, We or Our Nationhood Defined (Nagpur: Bharat Prakashan, 4th ed., 1947), 55-56; cited in Baxter, The Jana Sangh , 31.

[120] Weiner, Party Politics in India , 176; Baxter, The Jana Sangh , 212-13.

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rhetoric is one thing and action another; even the efforts made by radical Arya Samajis earlier in the century to "purify" untouchables had proven to be largely self-limiting, and most latter-day conservatives contemplated no such herculean efforts.^[121]

Perhaps Karpatri's biggest failing as a politician was that he never mastered the language of euphemism favored by English-educated intellectuals.^[122] In his ingenuous fanaticism, he proclaimed the letter of Ramraj as he read it, complete with Chamars heading shoe companies. Sad to say, such ideas, apart from their absurd unenforceability, were rather on the idealistic side. In U.P. when "high posts" were handed out—whether in sanitary engineering, the leather industry, or any other field—they tended to go to people with the right credentials and connections, the majority of whom proved to be twice-born Hindus.

The power of euphemism was exemplified by the most successful of the early conservative parties, the Swatantra party, established in 1959. Its founding father, the widely revered C. Rajagopalachari (a former freedom fighter, chief minister of Madras, and something of a kathavacak in his own right as the author of popular adaptations of the Ramayana^[*] and the Mahabharata ) tried to steer a more centrist course and avoided blatantly communal rhetoric. Yet he defined "culture" (samskrti^[*] ) as "essentially the prevailing pattern of joyous restraint accepted by the people," called for the maintenance of dharma ("an organic growth which it is our duty to respect and which we should not treat as mere Indian superstition"), and bemoaned the undermining of the caste system by "the impact of Western individualism and perverted movements of social reform."^[123] Once again there is a risk of the English reader's misunderstanding what is intended here; or perhaps it is a case of Rajaji's intending two different things—the one ideological and abstract, the other euphemistic but practical. Erdman astutely noted this dual meaning: "In his analysis Rajaji uses the term dharma in a rather

[121] During the first decade of the twentieth century, Aryas in Punjab successfully "purified" more than 36,000 low-caste Meghs, who were then admitted to the Samaj, but with the special label "Arya bhagats " (a vernacularization of bhakta, bhagat was the designation applied by the Sikhs to Kabir, Raidas, and other untouchable saints) and were enrolled in vocational training programs to prepare them for "pure" but lowly trades; caste Aryas continued to send their sons to Dayanand Anglo-Vedic colleges; Jones, Arya Dharm , 212-13.

[122] Cf. such current Indian English usages as "anti-social elements" (applicable to those holding opposing views), "communal disorders" (religious riots), "Eve-teasing" (public annoyance or molestation of young women), and "dowry deaths" (the murder of brides by in-laws).

[123] Erdman, The Swatantra Party , 91.

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abstract fashion, but more relevant in popular Hinduism is the more 'earthly' notion of varnasram^[*] dharma. . . . The former usage may be flexible, the latter is not, and in this sense, too, there is an element of 'disguised conservatism' which intrudes into Rajaji's approach."^[124] The concept of varnasram^[*] dharma is central to Sanatanis' understanding of their "eternal religion." It is often invoked in Katha performances and I have even heard the claim that it is the "real essence" of the Manas . A wealthy Banarsi Brahman, prominent in the patronage of Manas performances, once explained to me rather confidentially, "God, Ram, bhakti —the truth is, you can leave all that aside. The essence of Goswami-ji's teachings is a certain 'social genius.'" The speaker was university-educated and clearly had learned the art of euphemism. Not surprisingly, for him the essence of the Hindi epic was a concept that upheld the prestige, power, and wealth of his own family and class.

Today varnasram^[*] dharma is virtually a euphemism itself. The asram portion, to begin with, has little practical meaning. A reference to the widely held ideal of life-stages, it is a voluntary rather than a prescriptive concept, and not even Karpatri, fond as he was of quoting the lawbooks of Manu, would have been inclined to introduce legislation forcing, say, a middle-aged male to pack up and leave for the forest "when he sees . . . the sons of his sons."^[125] It is the varna^[*] portion of the term that carries the sting, for despite sensory evidence and anthropological arguments to the contrary, large numbers of Hindus continue to believe that their social system is founded on a division of four degrees of "color"; that this term, even in an obviously racially mixed population, is not merely symbolic will be clear to anyone who examines a page of marriage advertisments, with their characteristic sensitivity to gradations of skin tone.

The essentially repressive contemporary meaning of varnasram^[*] becomes clear from the circumstances in which it is invoked. The fact that a Brahman's son chooses to enter politics, industry, or for that matter, sanitary engineering, does not elicit it; but the potential upward mobility of the sweeper, cobbler, or washerman provokes angry cries. One suspects that it is the "holding down" aspect of dharma that is foremost in Rajaji's theme of "joyous restraint"; restraint, joyous or otherwise, is ever urged on the oppressed by their oppressors. That there is an undercurrent of anxiety in such usage is scarcely surprising, for keeping those

[124] Ibid., 94.

[125] Manu 6.2; Buhler, The Laws of Manu , 198.

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beneath one within their limits becomes all the more essential in a society of growing scarcity and competition, in which oppressed classes, agitated by "perverted movements of social reform," attempt to assert rights whose full exercise inevitably erodes others' privileges.

Today, long after the demise of the Ram Rajya Parishad, the cry that greeted Swami Karpatri wherever he went still echoes in Sanatani assemblies throughout northern India and is often given by Banaras orators when they travel about to expound the Manas . It is a militant cry of "victory" (jay ) and "annihilation" (nas ), begun by the speaker and completed by the crowd:

May dharma be victorious!
May adharma be annihilated!
May there be good feeling among beings!
May the world prosper!
Har Har Mahadev !

Although it is only a slogan, I suggest that it is not so vague in meaning as it may appear at first. "Dharma" in this context now largely means the Sanatani religion and social hierarchy; adharma (anti-dharma), any effort to promote social change. The pattern of social crises and economic stagnation giving rise to jingoistic and authoritarian movements is hardly unique to India. In the face of complex social and economic challenges, rightist leaders continue to brandish their familiar battery of reliable symbols. Writing on the early Jana Sangh and Mahasabha, Weiner astutely observed, "Their emphasis was on cultural questions—Sanskritized Hindi as the national language, a ban on cow slaughter, their opposition to the Hindu Code Bill, and their charge of favoritism toward Muslims by the government—these were the key issues for both parties, not land reform and other economic questions."^[126] The essential elements of one interpretation of Ramraj were present in the rhetoric of all the rightist parties, regardless of whether the slogan used was Ramrajya (R.R.P.), Dharma raj (Jana Sangh), Hindurastra^[*] (Hindu Mahasabha), or Bharatiyamaryada (Swatantra party): an authoritarian government with a militaristic stance, strict adherence to a "dharma" defined by the ruling elite, and the denial of religious and cultural pluralism.

An upsurge of militant Hindu nationalism in the 1980s was hailed by its leaders as a new "Hindu Renaissance." The familiar rhetoric of Ramraj , the cow, Sanskrit education, and maryada was again unpacked,

[126] Weiner, Party Politics in India , 213.

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this time against the darkening background of the nation's spiraling population growth, chronic scarcity of resources, and enhanced capacity for communal violence. Once again, amid strident calls for "a consolidated society, based on our national heroes," Hindu leaders voiced a pervasive fear of impotence and decline, and "were convinced—how-ever ludicrous it might sound—that a conspiracy of sociology and de-mography would soon render the Hindus a minority within their own country."^[127] Once again, lower-class Hindus were asked to forget their troubles, to move "beyond caste" and unite in the face of an enemy who, as always, was without: Muslims, Christians, the government, the West. Even though the movement was said to engage the sympathy. of a cross-section of the Hindu population, it exploited the special frustration and capacity for violence of "loosely-formed militias of unemployed youths and small shopkeepers."^[128]

A special symbol of the new militancy was an image of Lord Ram imprisoned in a padlocked cage. This was transported throughout the country by the Vishva Hindu Parishad (a successor organization to the Mahasabha) to dramatize its claim that the government gave preferential treatment to religious minorities. The symbol of the "caged Ram" conveyed meaning on several levels. It was a reference to the long-standing "incarceration" of an image of Ram behind an iron fence in his reputed birthplace, the Babari Mosque in Ayodhya, which was for many years closed to pilgrims while the government considered Hindu and Muslim claims to the site.^[129] But it was also a reference to the alleged restriction of Hindu culture by the legislation and policies of a secular government. Perhaps it was only another irony of the Kali Yuga that Tulsi's ideal man, self-limited and yet powerfully ascendent, was incongruously seen by groups whose rising economic aspirations were thwarted by recession and overpopulation to be the victim of a new set of repugnant "limits": the need to respect the rights of others in a democratic, pluralistic society.

Hindu nationalists claim to speak for an immemorial tradition, yet their authoritarian program in fact "represents a considerable departure from traditional Indian norms and institutions,"^[130] for these always

[127] "Hindus: Militant Revivalism," 33.

[128] Ibid., 36.

[129] The decision to award the structure to Hindus in February 1986 touched off rioting in five northern states, in which some twenty people died; see "Ayodhya: Holy Row," 66-67; also March 15, 1986, p. 18.

[130] Erdman, The Swatantra Party , 35.

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implicitly recognized the gulf between real and ideal and settled for a negotiated and imperfect order of compromise and parceled authority. The specific dangers of the new coalescence of religion and politics stem from the radically transformed political milieu within which the campaign is waged. Heesterman has incisively analyzed what he terms the new "tradition of modernity," exemplified by the modern state:

Its distinctive feature is . . . the total identification of the mundane with the transcendent order. As the sovereignty ascribed to it makes dear, the modem state cannot be transcended. It is itself transcendent and so is its universalist order. Hence the similarity of the Brahmanical and the modern tradition. However, the difference is equally obvious. There is no more room for a countervailing order. Modernity, then, means the integration of the mundane and the transcendent orders into one explosive reality.^[131]

For Tulsidas the heavenly state of Ramraj could be brought to earth in only two ways: by Ram himself or by his name. The vision of transcendence realized in concrete terms was set in a remote epoch and made dependent on the catalyzing presence of a divine king; transcendence in mundane time, however, was immanent and personal, dependent only on an accessible and salvific name. The idealist in Tulsi looked longingly to Ramraj ; the realist embraced nam-raj as the "order" of the Kali Age. The secular theology of the twentieth-century state, implicit in the discourse of both liberals and conservatives, has inverted this model, secularizing and homogenizing the individual even as it transcendentalizes the state. As Heesterman suggests, this bold new attempt to resolve the tension between real and ideal is fraught with hazard.

Cracks in the Mirror

The Ramayan tradition has always had "problems." Some of them, as I suggested earlier, are inherent in the story and have been discussed and debated through numerous retellings. The irreducible nature of the narrative is sometimes playfully acknowledged by the tradition, as when Sita, in the Adhyatmaramayana^[*] , offers as her final, unanswerable argument for accompanying Ram to the forest the fact that she has heard "diverse Ramayans from Brahmans; where and when did Ram go to the forest without Sita, do thou tell me?"^[132] Similarly, can one conceive of

[131] Heesterman, The Inner Conflict of Tradition , 9.

[132] Adhyatmaramayana^[*] 2.4.77-78; Baij Nath, trans., The Adhyatmaramayana^[*] , 39. This striking instance of intertexmality was brought to my attention by A. K. Ramanujan.

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a Ramayan in which Ram and Lakshman do not befriend Sugriv and Vibhishan (thus helping younger brothers overthrow their elders), or in which Ram (a Kshatriya) does not slay Ravan (a Brahman)? Using an analogy to crystallography, A. K. Ramanujan likens such incidents to flaws in the surface of a crystal, which become the points at which new crystals grow; the epic expands through the audience's response to its inherent stress-points.^[133]

Within the Vaishnava exegetical tradition, the articulation of "doubt" (sanka^[*] ) concerning sacred narrative and its "setting to right" (samadhan ) by an authoritative spokesman represents virtually a performance art in itself—a special variation on the dialectic of Katha . The occurrence of such "doubt" need not indicate a lapse of faith in the narrative or a serious questioning of it; rather it invites a creative, even playful, exercise in textual mediation. Manas enthusiasts delight in dreaming up difficult questions for their favorite expounders, since these provide occasions for the latter to display their ingenuity, rhetorical skill, and knowledge of the text. Nor is there any doubt in the questioner's mind that the resolution of his doubt exists somewhere, for in the realm of Manas exegesis there are no unanswerable questions; it is simply a matter of finding the right vyas . A perusal of one of the written collections of epic-related problems, such as the Gita Press's popular Manassanka^[*]samadhan by Jayram Das Din ("Resolution of Doubts Concerning the Manas ," published in 1942 and in its twenty-seventh printing in 1981) suggests the gamelike nature of the interpretive enterprise. Many of its thirty-nine questions concern highly scholastic points, hinging on extremely literal interpretations of specific lines.^[134] Typically the expounder's endeavor is to show that in some other passage the epic offers the information necessary to resolve the matter—reminding us again that, for this tradition, the Manas itself is its own commentary.

But there are some problems that even the visionary author of the Manas did not anticipate—indeed, could not have anticipated, because they concern a worldview that he took for granted and raise issues scarcely regarded as such in his time. People troubled by such issues do not raise devotional "doubts" in order to enjoy the process of their artful "setting to right," but question the relevance to their society of some of the poet's implicit assumptions—specifically, his attitude to-

[133] A. K. Ramanujan, personal communication, November 1984.

[134] Thus, sanka^[*] 9 (p. 33) cites Lakshman's boast that if Ram but orders him, he will "lift up the universe like a ball" (1.253.4), and asks where, in that case, Lakshman himself would stand.

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Figure 33.
Women reciting the Manas during a public festival, Banaras, 1982

ward women and people of low caste. Clearly these issues are relevant to the present and future vitality of the text. For the power of an epic, as Pollock has observed, lies in its encompassing vision and its ability to mirror our ideals and realities.^[135] The narrative flaws referred to earlier need not interfere with this mirroring ability; on the contrary, they dramatize paradoxes and dilemmas that are part of our reality and point to solutions that become part of our ideal. But we must consider what happens when, as a result of social or historical change, the image that an epic shows us begins to appear intolerably distorted: a reflection of oppressive realities or discredited ideals.

The question (to paraphrase the title of a recent Hindi tract) "Was there enmity in Goswami Tulsidas's heart toward women and Shudras?"^[136] apparently troubles large numbers of regular Manas reciters, for there is scarcely a modern work on the epic, be it commentary or devotional tract, that does not attempt to answer it. Powerful and contradictory arguments on the subject have been advanced by various

[135] Pollock, The Ramayana^[*]of Valmiki: Ayodhyakanda^[*] , 14.

[136] Acharya Der, KyaTulsike man mem^[*]sudrom^[*]ke prati ghrna^[*]thi ? Although this booklet focuses on Tulsi's attitude toward Shudras, many other apologists, as will be seen, deal with his treatment of women.

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scholars, and anyone who approaches the Manas with an awareness of these issues—present writer not excepted—can hardly help forming an opinion on the matter. However, my aim here is not to answer the question but to consider the questioning process itself as another aspect of the interaction between the text and its audience.

There have been few who have straightforwardly attacked the Manas ; to do so would be like attacking motherhood or the COW.^[137] Many devotees, as Linda Hess found, readily articulate only a placid acceptance of the epic's suppositions—"If Tulsidas-ji says it, it must be true."^[138] A researcher focusing on the social impact of the epic's teachings may even begin to wonder, as Hess did in her fieldwork, whether the "problem" is not largely in her own mind. At the popular level, the questioning of Tulsi's treatment of women and Shudras must be inferred from the frequency with which the topic is addressed by traditional scholars—rather in the manner that we surmise the vanished theories of the ancient lokayata school of materialist philosophers from their reflection in the polemics of their opponents. Tulsi's defenders are quick to locate the source of such questioning in the influence of the modern educational system, which has been infiltrated by secular and foreign ideas. Thus, Pandit Ramkumar Das of Ayodhya, in his pamphlet "Consecration and Censure of Women in the Manas ," attributes the "wrongheaded notion" that the epic insults women to "people who are decked out with a foreign education."^[139] A similar charge is leveled by another apologist, Narayan Singh, the author of a book entitled "Tulsi the Revolutionary." In characteristic Renaissance style, he paints an idealized picture of Hinduism's golden age and then blames the spread of Western values for subsequent disharmony:

After some time capitalism began to spread in Europe. Then democracy raised its head there and gradually various laws were developed for giving women political power and equality with men in social life. . . . This sort of trend spread from Europe to India along with the Western nations that gained a foothold in the country at the time of the Mughals. . . . The result was that Indian men and women turned away from their innate spiritual nature and practice and began to lose themselves in external appearances that seemed to hold out the promise of freedom. Turning from our own tradition of conjugal oneness, of mutual service, of wife as Lakshmi of the

[137] An exception is Rajnikant Shastri, whose views will be considered shortly.

[138] Hess, "For the Sake of Brahmans, Gods, and Cows," 3.

[139] Ramkumar Das, Manasmem^[*]naridiksa^[*]aur narininda , 28.

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house and other noble ideals, we began to take pleasure in tales of an "equality" rooted in lustful cravings. When Western contact, literature, and ideology had begun to dim our subtle and spiritualized point of view, then only, aided by Western critical methods, did we begin to see Tulsi's criticisms concerning women as insults to women.^[140]

As the author implies, most of the writing critical of Tulsidas has issued from university-educated scholars influenced by European literature, although the specific complaints of these scholars do not echo Western observations. Early Western writing on Tulsidas—largely by Victorian scholars—was the product of a society hardly less male chauvinist and socially stratified than the one in which the Hindi poet wrote, and it was largely preoccupied with religious and historical issues. Insofar as writers like Growse and Grierson concerned themselves with the ethical content of the Manas , they were generally unstinting in their praise.

Among the early signs of an indigenous questioning of Tulsi's views were the influential writings of the Mishra brothers, whose Hindinavratna (Nine gems of Hindi) included a study of Tulsidas that tempered its praise with criticism of some of the poet's attitudes. In a striking departure from the traditional view of Tulsi as a divinely inspired poet-saint, they offered a psychological explanation of his negative judgments on women's character: "Goswami-ji's mother had died in his infancy, and later he became unhappy with his wife. Because he was a renunciant he didn't meet women of noble station, and he must only have encountered, here and there, women of a low type; therefore, he did not have any experience with women. It is for this reason that he insulted them; nevertheless, it was not proper for such a great teacher and poet to have given vent to such strong abuse."^[141] Qualified though it was, the Mishras' criticism implied a serious defect in the Manas , which might compromise its much-vaunted suitability to all groups and classes of people. Other literary scholars rallied to the defense of the text. Some sought to place Tulsi in a historical context and to argue that his worldview was shared by others of his age, both in India and the West—thus, Ramchandra Dube pointed to some of the negative stereotypes of women in Shakespeare's plays.^[142] Others noted that even Tulsi's most oft-cited rankling utterance on the subject, an apparent folk saying put into the mouth of the god of the Ocean,

[140] Singh, KrantikariTulsi , 134.

[141] Mishra and Mishra, Hindinavratna; cited without page reference in Singh, KrantikariTulsi , 135.

[142] Ramchandra Dube in Shukla (ed)., Tulsigranthavali 3:184; cited in Singh, KrantikariTulsi , 138-39.

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Drum, rustic, Shudra, beast, and woman—
all these are fit for beating.
5.59.6

had a counterpart in an English proverb still current in the nineteenth century:

A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree—
the more you beat them, the better they be.^[143]

The weakness of such arguments was, of course, that although English plays and proverbs might reveal attitudes similar to those reflected in Manas passages, they could no longer be said to carry the normative weight in their culture that Tulsi's epic had come to have in North India.

In any case, attempts to explain Tulsi's views by placing them in a historical or psychological context offer little satisfaction to the numerous devotees who view the Manas as a transtemporal revelation—Shiva's account of Ram's acts—which the poet merely transmitted in his own language. Like certain fundamentalist Christians who hold that every word of the King James Bible is the actual utterance of God, devout Manas enthusiasts are unwilling to concede that some passages in their beloved epic may be less "inspired" than others; hence, in dealing with problem passages they prefer ingeniously contrived explanations that eliminate the need to impute any blemish to the epic or its visionary author.

Thus, exegesis of the verse quoted above (widely regarded as the text's single most objectionable line) tends to focus on the verb tarna^[*] (to punish, beat, chide, admonish), seeking to demonstrate that in this context it does not imply physical abuse. Writes Jayram Das Din,

Here the meaning of tarna^[*] is simply to give instruction to the five mentioned individuals for the sake of their wellbeing. . . . Thus, a drum is calculatedly stretched and sounded so that it may give out a pleasant sound; it is not stretched or struck so forcefully that it will become useless. . . . In the same manner it can only mean here to make a rustic or lowborn person virtuous and wise by threatening and reprimanding him, not to beat or insult him without cause. People scold animals too and keep them from running away, only insofar as is necessary to insure their safety. . . . In the same way, what is intended here is to not let women be wayward, so that they may remain of calm and sober disposition and virtuous behavior.^[144]

[143] Attributed to Taylor the Water Poet (1580-1654); see E. Cobham Brewer, The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (London: Cassel and Co., 1901); cited without page reference in Bharadwaj, The Philosophy of Tulsidas , 234.

[144] Din, Manassanka^[*] samadhan , 163-64. Similar interpretations of this line were offered by Hess's interviewees; "For the Sake of Brahmans, Gods, and Cows," 19-20.

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Even more tortuous explanations are encountered: one commentator attempts to construe two of the words in the first half-line as adjective.,; rather than nouns, and so reduces to three the number of individuals said to merit chastisement: "A drum, a rustic Shudra, a female animal."^[145]

Fanciful etymologies—long a mainstay of Hindu exegetes—are also invoked to explain away bothersome lines. Given the perceived potency of Sanskritized language, these arguments continue to carry rhetorical weight, especially in the context of oral exposition. In attempting to argue that Tulsidas showed no preference toward Brahmans, Narayan Singh first points out that the word "Brahman" seldom occurs in the Manas ; he then proceeds to tackle a word that does occur frequently: vipra. This hoary term (literally "one who trembles"—an apparent reference to the poet-shamans of the Vedic hymns) has been used since at least the time of the epics to mean simply "a priest," but Singh, undaunted and original, breaks it up into its syllabic characters and, determining that vi - stands for visva (the world) and -pra for pragati (progress), triumphantly construes vipra as "one who promotes world progress"—then modestly adds that, although .this prodigious interpretation is purely his own, he has discussed it with a number of Sanskrit pandits and "they did not disagree with it."^[146]

Another common and more plausible defense of Tulsidas is that each statement in the Manas must be interpreted in its context of place, time, character, and situation (des, kal, patra, avastha ). This approach reflects the characteristically situational Hindu ethics found in the epic itself, which contains nearly formulaic references to the context of speeches—thus, Ram addresses the assembly at Chitrakut, "having considered the place and circumstances, the time and assembly" (2.304.6).^[147] The "drum" statement, it is pointed out, is made by a foolish character, the Ocean personified, in the course of an obsequious apology in which he thanks Ram for having chastized him; consequently it should not be taken as an exemplary instruction (upades ). Several other strong criticisms of women are likewise uttered by ignoble characters-for example, Ravan's enumeration of woman's "eight defects" (6.16.1-3). Even the fact that one of the harshest such passages is spoken by Ram himself (3.43-3.44) is liable to be explained in terms of its narrative context: "You see, at that time the Lord was feeling the intense

[145] Singh, KrantikariTulsi , 144.

[146] Ibid., 122.

[147] The words used are des, kal, samay, and samaj . I give Growse's translation, The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , 404.

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agony of separation from Sita-ji, and he was behaving like a madman. Then too, he was speaking to Narad-ji, who had taken a vow of lifelong continence. For people like sadhus and so on, women are very dangerous and they have to be warned against them. For them, it is good advice, but it isn't meant for householders."^[148]

Other apologists place the blame for the harshness of some of Tulsi's judgments on the supposed atrocities of his age. The long tradition of anti-Muslim historical polemic, exemplified by both the writings of colonial historians and those of Hindu nationalists, provides fuel for this argument.^[149] Thus, Narayan Singh excuses Tulsi's call for absolute wifely obedience even to an unfaithful or cruel husband (best exemplified in Anasuya's speech to Sita—3.5.5-3.5b) by invoking a vision of Hindu womanhood at the mercy of leering Turks:

Women had become the playthings of the Muslims' sex-lusts. Harems were like thriving bazaars for libertines. The honor and dignity of Hindu sisters and daughters, wives and widows, was perpetually imperiled by sinful leering, brute strength, and hypocritical strategems. . . . Therefore, teaching the lesson of restraint and fearlessness, in order to save people from sex-lust, Tulsi made statements appropriate to the context that were favorable or unfavorable to both men and women, feeling this to be his indispensable duty as a servant of society.^[150]

Gandhi took another approach to the text's troubling passages. As we have seen, his emphasis on social reform and his opposition to untouchability did not keep him from enjoying and constantly quoting the Manas . But he reserved the right to interpret the spirit of the text in his own fashion and (in the metaphor of the couplet he was so fond of citing) to strain out the "milk" and discard the "water." Discussing the infamous drum verse, he recommended that "one should not stick to its letter, but try to understand its spirit, its meaning in its total context. . . . An evil fate awaits one who beats his wife because Tulsidas has said in his work that a Shudra, a dull-witted person, a beast and a woman merit chastisement. Ram not only never raised his hand against Sita, he did not even displease her at any time. Tulsidas merely stated a common belief. . . . The support which the work seems to lend to evil customs should be ignored."^[151]

[148] Ramji Pandey, interview, October 1982.

[149] Note Farquhar's crude synopsis of Indian history in Modern Religious Movements in India, 2; also his remark (p. 405) on "the wild violence and lawlessness which characterized Muslim rule for centuries."

[150] Singh, KrantikariTulsi , 139.

[151] Gandhi, Collected Works 28:318.

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Perhaps the most common response to problem verses in the Manas is simply to ignore them and focus instead on the abundance of inspiring and inoffensive passages that the epic offers—one is reminded of a popular American evangelist's avowed preference for "positive" Bible quotations, carefully selected to avoid unpleasantness or controversy.^[152] At several recitation programs I attended, festival enclosures were decorated with banners displaying Manas verses; needless to say, the organizers' choice hardly fell on controversial lines. Instead one found equally famous—and important—verses like Ram's admonition to Bharat,

Brother, there's no dharma like the welfare of others,
no baseness like causing others pain.
7.41.1

And just as few contemporary Christian clerics, however fundamentalist in their approach to the Bible, would consider basing a sermon on, say, the passage in Exodus that neatly details the circumstances permitting a father to sell his daughter into slavery,^[153] so one finds few expounders who are inclined to dwell publicly on controversial Manas passages. Instead, as we have seen, they often select episodes that challenge society's implicit hierarchy: Ram's partaking of the fruits offered by the untouchable Shabari; his family priest Vasishtha's fervent embracing of the boatman Kevat in the love-filled atmosphere of Chitrakut. Such symbolic, even ritualized acts of voluntary pollution—part of Hindu society's ongoing flirtation with boundaries—have always coexisted fairly comfortably with the status quo of caste.

The problem with the Manas , of course, is that it is so much with us; it is easier to ignore the unpleasant features of a text if one isn't exposed to it very often. All-India Radio in Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Banaras, Patna, and numerous other broadcast centers in North India presents fifteen minutes of Manas singing each morning, but there is a firm policy of deleting all controversial lines. Such governmental "meddling" in the religiocultural field irritates some listeners; one man told me that in the days of the British Raj, it was forbidden to publicly recite the verse

In whose domain dear subjects are sorrowful,
that king, surely, is fit for hell.
2.71.6

[152] The phrase is credited to the popular television minister ("Hour of Power"), Dr. Robert Schuller of the "Crystal Cathedral" (a.k.a. Garden Grove Church), Anaheim, California.

[153] Exodus 21.2. I am grateful to Kenneth Kuntz for help in locating this passage.

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and complained that, even after Independence, the Manas was still being "censored" by the authorities. In spite of all efforts to "set them to rights," the vexing lines in the Manas clearly continue to vex.

Shastri's Sastra

The criticisms of the Mishras and other scholars, though controversial, were mild compared to those of astrologer-pandit Rajnikant Shastri, whose 1949 book, Manasmimamsa^[*] (An inquiry into the Manas ) brought debate over the epic to a new level of passion. Although subtitled "a nonpartisan critical study" and dutifully sweetened with a chapter entitled "The Merits of the Manas ," Shastri's book consists for the most part of a no-holds-barred attack on poem and author, delivered with the zeal of a public-spirited crusader.

I grant that the Hindi-speaking Hindu populace views this book with an extremely reverent gaze. They are ever intoxicated with its sweetness and consider its reading and recitation to effect their temporal and spiritual well-being, and foreign scholars too, noting its virtues, openly sing its praises. But in deference to truth I must declare that people's attention has till now never been drawn toward this book's defects, from which people have suffered greatly and continue to suffer.^[154]

Shastri's catalog of defects is long; it is also idiosyncratic and his method of attacking them no less so. His complaints against the Manas are weighty: that it promotes the oppression of women and Shudras and, by encouraging blind faith and fanaticism, saps the vitality of Hindu society. Yet the arguments put forward in support of these views often involve the same kinds of tortuous and fanciful interpretations favored by the epic's defenders. Thus, he devotes a long chapter to a testy attempt to prove, largely using astrological calculations based on Puranic passages, that Sita was born nine hundred years earlier than Ram and therefore the entire Ramayan story is only an airy fiction. Chameleonlike, the venerable Shastri appears at one moment as a radical atheist, debunking all myths and championing social egalitarianism, and at the next as a pious Hindu, quoting a wide range of texts (including the Valmiki Ramayana^[*] , which he has dismissed as a hoax) in order to prove various assertions.

Despite such inconsistencies, Shastri's scholarly tone and modernist idiom have added a powerful statement to the debate over the epic's

[154] Shastri, Manasmimamsa^[*] , 1.

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social teachings. A single passage on Tulsi's treatment of Shudras will give a sense of the author's angry eloquence:

If he had the impertinence to call Brahmans hypocrites in such verses as "Brahmans were illiterate, greedy, and lustful," etc. [7.100.8.], at least he atoned for it by writing "A Brahman should be worshiped even if without virtue," etc. [3.34.2]. But what had he to fear from weak and helpless Shudras? He gave them a thorough thrashing. Beholding their prayers, austerities, and fasts his hateful heart burned with rage. Seeing them seated on a dais expounding religious stories was like a needle in his eye. Perhaps you are not aware that Vasishtha, Parashar, Bharadvaj, and other sages were the sons of, respectively, a prostitute, an untouchable, and a Shudra mother; but by prayer, austerity, fasting, and so forth they made themselves not merely Brahmans but sages who founded great lineages and whose descendants even today are puffed up with pride. . .. In a country whose revered leader wishes to uplift the nation by extending education to women, sweepers, and scavengers, this Ramcaritmanas of Tulsi's, "in accordance with numerous scriptures," pummels and ridicules him with its "virtuous" teachings. . .. But now there have appeared people who will calculate the true cost of this intoxicating spell of his; those whose keenly critical pens, like the sharp lancets of dedicated surgeons, heedless of the abuses he poured out in anticipation of criticism, will slice open his overripe boils and extract and discard all their filthy, rotted pus!^[155]

Shastri, who clearly considers himself foremost among the surgeons, goes on in this fashion for more than two hundred pages, tempering lofty social criticism with the cranky literalness of a Ramayani.^[156] He reiterates many of the common problems raised by believers,^[157] but his diatribe occasionally includes striking insights of the sort that rarely intrude into the polite game of sanka^[*] and samadhan . In discussing Tulsi's attitude toward women, he notes the common defense that the poet's criticisms are directed only against "wayward women" and that the epic provides many positive female models (Sita, Kaushalya, Anasuya, Shabari, etc.) as well as many reprehensible male characters. Shastri points out that whereas the condemnation of men is particularized, that of women is universal and based on a constantly repeated theme of inherent feminine impurity. If Ram's misogynistic lecture to Narad is intended only for ascetics, Shastri wonders, then why is there no comparable passage for householders, extolling women's virtues?

[155] Ibid., 40-42.

[156] Thus he attempts to prove, using internal evidence, that Shiva could not have been the original narrator of the Manas ; Manasmimamsa^[*] , 89-90.

[157] E.g., inconsistencies in Tulsi's scheme of narrative framing; Ram's mistreatment of Shurpankha and slaying of Bali; see pages 89-90, 101-5.

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And why are exemplary female ascetics like Shabari not similarly warned by Ram against the allurements of young men?^[158]

Such insights, albeit nearly buried beneath Shastri's invective and quaint preoccupations, suggest a degree of questioning of the traditional worldview that is rarely encountered in any of the polemics, pro or con, concerning the epic. As Hess observed after noting the ingenious interpretations of the verb tarna^[*] —to "instruct," "correct," "tune," "get the best out of," and so forth—with which most of her interviewees sought to explain the drum verse,

in their very defense of this line, the speakers reveal attitudes which to us may seem just as incriminating as the obvious problem about beating. . .. The very juxtaposition of these five terms—drum, peasant, Shudra, animal, woman—implies the degradation of the human items on the list. The comparison of the five, and the explanations commonly offered, continually reinforce the idea that women and Shudras, like animals and drums, are there for certain other people to "get something out of." Those people are twice-born males . . . or husbands of any caste or class.^[159]

But if, like the legendary hamsa^[*] bird, we choose to selectively relish the milk of Shastri's insights, we must first strain out a great deal of water. The pandit's motives for his unprecedented attack, visible here and there beneath the surface of his argument, merit closer examination; I return to this subject shortly.

No Apologies from Kanpur

The bluntness, if not the tone, of Shastri's attack is matched by a tract from a self-styled Acharya Dev (divine preceptor) of Kanpur, the first of a projected series known as Manas tarang^[*] (Waves of the Manas ) and devoted to clearing up the "much-discussed, controversial topic" of Tulsi's attitude toward Shudras. The dilemma of order and transcendence is neatly resolved by this author by the assertion that there are really two Tulsis: "Tulsi the devotee and Tulsi the social preceptor." For Tulsi the devotee, caste does not exist and "there is no question of Brahman or Chandal." But most people do not function on this level and so must be guided by the teachings of preceptor-Tulsi, which, the author explains, are not simply different from those of devotee-Tulsi but actually contradict them.^[160] And so after a brief eulogy of the casteless society envisioned by devotee-Tulsi (symbolized by the love-drenched

[158] Shastri, Manasmimamsa^[*] , 213-14.

[159] Hess, "For the Sake of Brahmans, Gods, and Cows," 20.

[160] Acharya Dev, KyaTulsike man mem^[*]sudrom^[*]ke prati ghrna^[*]thi 14.

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atmosphere of Chitrakut), the Acharya devotes the better part of his tract to what for him is obviously the real message of the Manas : the immutability of birth.

Insisting that varna^[*] really refers to "color," he offers an ingenious explanation for the fact that caste divisions no longer seem to follow pure color-coded lines. Alas, the original physical purity of the four orders has been lost due to "mixing," but lest one suppose that this undermines the whole system, Acharya Dev reveals that, though no longer visible to gross eyes, the original colors are still present in the individual's aura or halo of light—invisible to most people who are not Acharyas from Kanpur. The aura of a Brahman, he intones, is pure gold, whereas that of a Shudra is black. A citation or two from an American parapsychologist triumphantly confirms that this particularly devious variety of racism is upheld by "Western scientists."^[161] No one need despair, however, for black though his aura may be, the Shudra too has his place in the great scheme of things: he is descended from the feet of the cosmic giant (purusa^[*] ), and "if the feet rebel, then the whole body will be crippled; if the feet are listless then the whole body is incapacitated. The whole body is indebted to the feet."^[162]

Acharya Dev's views are typical of one kind of Brahmanical elaboration on the Manas occasionally encountered at Katha festivals and in tract literature. One can scarcely call it exegesis, since it rarely refers to the epic itself; Acharya Dev draws most of his citations from the Bhagavadgita , the Manusmrti^[*] , and other prestigious Sanskrit texts. But his pamphlet reminds us that the fanciful ideas of epic exegetes have cultural resonances that we ought not overlook. Hess has eloquently described the genesis of her own inquiry into the social impact of the Ramlila :

I began to think about the India through which I moved each day: the girls who were uneducated and otherwise neglected; the women with their faces covered, often married by the time they were twelve . . . the sweepers who were born to the vocation of scooping up filth from the streets with their bare hands and who rarely broke out of the status that was supposedly ordained for them by God. There were forces in India working against the oppression of women, Shudras, untouchables, and so on. And there were powerful forces working to maintain the status quo.

Was Tulsidas one of the forces at work to prevent social change? Did the grand cultural performance and the beloved epic poem I was studying function to perpetuate people's suffering?^[163]

[161] Ibid., 30.

[162] Ibid., 43.

[163] Hess, "For the Sake of Brahmans, Gods, and Cows," 3-4.

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Hess did not find simple answers to these questions, nor do I. It is clear enough that words on a page do not oppress people—people oppress people—but it should be as clear by now that no scripture, least of all the Manas , is simply "words on a page." If we have admired the variety, ingenuity, and beauty of some of the tangible ways in which people perform this text, should we not consider as well some of the more subtle ways in which they enact its implicit values? Should we not consider the high levels of female illiteracy and female infant mortality in the regions where the epic is most popular? Should we not consider the harsh repression of low-caste and untouchable villagers in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in recent years—acts of violence by the twice-born against whole communities of the landless and oppressed because the latter, emboldened by their government's own words on a page, had begun to overstep their traditional limits? Should we not consider the corrupt local hierarchies of political and police power in these regions, dominated by members of the Brahman and Rajput castes, who more often than not turn their backs on such crimes and let the perpetrators (usually their own caste fellows) escape unpunished? Must we not admit that the epic offers, among other things, a vindication for this state of affairs, both in its resigned assumption of an infinitely corrupt Kali Yuga and in its implicit defense of the privileges of birth?

Yet I would not wish to join Rajnikant Shastri in making the Manas a scapegoat for the ills that afflict North Indian society or to overlook the many positive values that the text imparts. The tension between order and aspiration is not a discovery of the twentieth century, and Tulsi has clearly provided fuel both for orderers and aspirers. Moreover, when one turns from cultural generalization to the relationships of individual devotees to their epic, the picture becomes more complicated. When I interviewed the independent-minded young woman who had surprised me with her devotion to the Manas , I brought up the subject of the text's treatment of women; did she find any of the controversial passages troubling? She replied emphatically that she was "not at all bothered by anything in the Manas " and continued, "The things Goswami-ji says about women pertain to natural life [prakrtik^[*] jivan ] only and are valid as far as that goes. But they don't concern individuals. Our Hindu dharma is that woman's position must always be a little lower, and man's a little higher. That was true in Tulsidas's time and it is also true today. It is only natural and I don't have any objection to that."^[164] Should such a statement be taken at face value? Explained as

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

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the repetition of an official line absorbed since childhood? Or dismissed as a formally "correct" answer to an outsider and not indicative of the speaker's real feelings? Any field researcher, even while proceeding with caution over cross-cultural terrain, must unavoidably make judgments about the motives and sincerity of interviewees. In this case I recognized that the Manas , in spite of its explicit message that "woman's position must always be a little lower," paradoxically provided this woman with a justification for her own independent course within her family and also gave her (in ritualized recitation) a perceived power over the course of events. Notable too was the fact that she and a close friend spent a good deal of time attending recitation programs in distant parts of the city—a piously unobjectionable activity that nevertheless carried them far from the constricting environment of the joint household. Indeed, Katha programs and Ramlilas appear to provide, especially for lower-middle-class urban women, a socially sanctioned break from the routine of household chores. Such women turn out in large numbers to sit knitting under gaudy canopies and flickering lights, listening to orators addressing them as "sisters" and "goddesses," and hearing again the old familiar stories, and yes, the old familiar ideology with its balance of limits and possibilities.

A foreign observer with preconceived notions of what constitutes conservative tradition and liberal reform—Hess's "hypothetical Modern Egalitarian Democrat"^[165] —may also overlook the fact that, vexing as some lines in the Manas may be, the controversy over them is largely a paper war conducted at a lofty remove not only from the epic's real audience but also perhaps from the real issues. A closer reading of some of Tulsi's stronger critics suggests that their objections are more to the poet's style than to his content. It is the "harshness" and "vulgarity" of Tulsi's expression of traditional views that is objected to rather than the views themselves, and this "liberal" attitude, which indeed reflects the impact of modern higher education, can easily coexist with a social arrogance and an elitism more insidious than anything in the Manas . In his discussion of the epic's views on varna^[*] , Shastri attacks Tulsi's supposed motives rather than the inherent injustice of his views, and he tellingly devotes fully a fourth of his book to an elaborate but unconvincing attempt to prove that Tulsidas himself could not have been a Brahman but rather was of low birth and probably illegitimate—a real Brahman, it appears, would never have been so blatant about his superi-

[165] Hess, "For the Sake of Brahmans, Gods, and Cows," 6.

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ority.^[166] Despite his eloquent insights, Shastri's overall tone is squarely elitist and anti-Vaishnava—he does not hesitate, for example, to repeatedly quote the Manusmrti^[*] (a text hardly known for its feminist or egalitarian stance) in support of his views—and one suspects that this astrologer-pandit's attack on the "audacity" of the Brahman-pretender Tulsi would in an earlier century have been phrased in quite different terms but has now found its way into a fashionable social-reformist idiom.

Especially revealing is Shastri's contemptuous observation that he has seen, "never mind illiterates and rustics, but the distinguished holders of B.A. and M.A. degrees, including many lawyers and high government officers, before a stone image of Ramchandra, dancing, clapping their hands, and singing the verses of the Manas ."^[167] The attitude suggested here is characteristic of a university-educated elite of what might be termed "neo-Brahmans," who hold themselves aloof not from social prejudice, which they continue to express, but from a certain bhakti -permeated folk ethos that they perceive as beneath their dignity. The Manas offered an affirmation of traditional social structure balanced with an ecstatic devotional message presented in a mass idiom. It did not challenge social stratification per se but created a context in which M.A. holders and lawyers, putting aside their august dignity, might mingle with illiterates and rustics in a performance context that temporarily relaxed social restraints and gave equal pleasure to all. The new elite, however, shrinks from such recreational contact with the lower classes.

The difficult task of interpreting motives returns me to the image of the mirror, cracked or otherwise. For it seems that much of what is beheld in the Manas depends, after all, on the beholder. A Gandhi will look into the mirror and see devotion to God and compassion for the oppressed; a Baba Ramchandra will see the hope of a just society; a Rajnikant Shastri will see intolerable impudence; an Acharya Dev will see his own golden aura.

Dona Nobis Pacem

If in spite of nagging doubts about the contemporary relevance of certain of its teachings, people go on reading the Manas —which clearly they do—it must be because the text offers them something. The most common articulation of that "something" which I heard from devotees was that their involvement with the epic brought them santi .

[166] Shastri, Manasmimamsa^[*] , 1-58.

[167] Ibid., 190-91.

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From this alone I get a feeling of santi .

I get mental santi from reciting this.

Such santi as you obtain here cannot be had from any other book.

Santi is normally translated "peace," but what sort of peace? Its Sanskrit root, sam , means "to finish, stop, come to an end, rest, be quiet or calm or satisfied or contented" and also "to appease, allay, alleviate, pacify, calm, soothe, settle."^[168]Santi was the state of the Vedic priests after they had finished their sacrificial labors, the peace of extinguished fires and subdued passions, the equilibrium of opposing forces resolving into quiescence. To many Westerners, there may be something disturbingly passive about this kind of equipoise—a relinquishing of the striving and assertiveness necessary for individuation; a denial of what psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar terms the "historically determined, culturally specific Weltanschauung of the ideal 'healthy' personality cast in the Faustian mould."^[169] This view of the perils of "peace" accords well with the judgment, shared by many modern Western and Indian social scientists, of such social institutions as caste and the extended family as "oppressive, in the sense of hindering the growth of such personality traits as 'independence,' 'persistence,' and 'achievement motivation' in the individual."^[170] In his study of Hindu personality formation, Kakar does not deny the "oppressive inconsistencies" that Hindu culture shares with other complex societies but chooses to focus on "adaptation rather than on conflict." This necessitates placing the individual in the context of the social group (the extended family or subcaste), for "in India . . . the ideal of psychological wholeness or 'maturity' . . . is quite compatible with an ego which is relatively passive and less differentiated."^[171]

"Peace" within such a framework may be of two kinds: the peace that comes from the harmonious balance of social forces—in which the autonomy of the individual is subsumed to the group's need for order; and the peace of final liberation (moksa^[*] ), which opts out of the system and breaks away from the wheel of worldly activity to attain a transcendent condition. The "peace of mind" that devotees say they obtain from the Manas resonates with both kinds: the peace of acceptance of the fundamental rightness of things as they imperfectly are, it is also the

[168] Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary , 1053.

[169] Kakar, The Inner World, 6.

[170] Ibid.

[171] Ibid.

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peace of recognition of a vital if remote ideal. It is the peace of what we might term "tradition"—a negotiated cease-fire in the eternal battle between real and ideal.

People of the Book

I would like to begin this section with a series of vignettes that reflect the present-day popularity of the Manas and the cult of Ram in Hindi-speaking northern India.

Rush-Hour Revival

In the spring of 1983, during Pandit Ramkinkar's annual Katha program at New Delhi's Birla Temple, I made the acquaintance of a man from a village in Haryana State who commuted daily to a teaching job in the capital. As we discussed Ramkinkar's program, it became clear that my acquaintance was both enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the Manas . When I asked him how he had come to know the epic so well, he replied that he studied it on the train during his daily one-and-a-half-hour commute to work. Thereby, as it turned out, hung a tale—one that brought to my attention the most unusual Katha "program" of which I was to hear.

In 1944, the story went, four Brahman office workers were playing cards in a third-class coach of one of the morning commuter trains that converge on Delhi from smaller cities in adjacent areas of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. Someone jokingly asked them why they were wasting their time playing cards; "You are Brahmans; you should be expounding the scriptures!" The four took the suggestion seriously, and a "Railway Ramayan Mandali" (Ramayan "group" or "circle") was formed. The men carried copies of the Manas and read them systematically, discussing each verse. Other riders became interested and asked to join in. The group soon became too large to be accommodated in a single compartment and expanded to other compartments and coaches and, in time, to other trains.

Forty years later, the initial study group had grown into a loosely organized network of moving Katha programs, converging on Delhi each morning from four directions: from Sonepat to the north, Rohtak to the west, Palwal to the south, and Ghaziabad to the east. On each of these lines, according to my acquaintance, one could find commuter trains with special coaches (marked by an ocher-colored flag displayed from one window) in which Manas exposition was being conducted.

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Portable megaphones were used so that everyone in the designated coach could hear; the actual reading and exposition was handled by a core group of enthusiasts who took turns preparing passages for exposition; my acquaintance belonged to one such group and had to be prepared to speak on an assigned passage once each week or so. He said that he devoted much time to these preparations in order to do as creditable a job as possible and often came to professional Katha programs in search of new ideas. He proceeded to give me the then-current schedule of groups and topics for trains to and from his own local station of Sonepat:

This literally "running" commentary may well be unique; certainly I never heard of anything like it. But its scale and organization is impressive, as is the fact that it is largely an activity of white-collar workers in India's capital. It is a reminder of the continued appeal of traditional religious exposition in one of the nation's most cosmopolitan and rapidly modernizing regions.

You've Read the Book . . . Now Buy the Cassette

The hottest-selling recording in the thriving cassette stalls of Banaras in 1984 was not, as I would have supposed, the soundtrack to any of the then-current crop of Hindi film musicals or a local hit by any of the city's popular biraha or qawwali groups. Instead, according to Scott Marcus, an ethnomusicologist conducting research on popular music in the city,^[172] it was a boxed set of eight cassettes comprising an abridged version of the Manas sung by the popular film singer "Mukesh," accompanied by other soloists, chorus, and orchestra. These recordings were

[172] See his essay "The Rise of a Folk Music Tradition." The information on the Manas recording was a personal communication, February 1984.

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made between 1972 and 1976 in celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of the composition of Tulsi's epic (1974) and were initially released as records by the Gramophone Company of India. They represented, it was said, a nostalgic labor of love by the aging Punjabi singer, who had made a fortune as the offscreen "playback" voice of numerous Bombay film stars and had set out late in life to rediscover the styles and melodies of Manas recitation he had heard in his childhood. The resulting recordings, although presented in modernized "filmi" idiom, faithfully preserved a number of traditional melodies of Manas chanting and offered a sequential (though heavily abridged) musical version of the epic.

The records enjoyed modest success but were too expensive to reach a mass audience. However, the advent of inexpensive cassette recorders during the late 1970s revolutionized the music industry in India, creating for the first time a mass market for recordings. The Mukesh series was rereleased on cassette by the original distributor and then quickly pirated by smaller companies working outside the limits of the poorly enforced copyright laws. Given the shadowy nature of major pirate distributors such as "T Series,"^[173] it is impossible to say how many of the sets were sold, but by 1984 their impact was both visible and audible. One could scarcely attend a public or private religious function in Banaras that year without hearing, over the obligatory loudspeaker system, the familiar strains of Murli Manohar Svarup's orchestration and Mukesh's mellifluous chanting. And when a consortium of artists and recording companies decided to take out a series of full-page newspaper advertisements to protest the unlawful duplication and sale of recordings, their choice of a symbolic and readily recognizable release was obvious: beneath the banner heading, "Save Music—Kill Piracy," was a large photograph of the ubiquitous "T-Series" Tulsi-Ramayan.^[174]

. . . And Watch the Video

On January 25, 1987, a new program premiered on India's government-run television network, Doordarshan. Broadcast on Sunday mornings at 9:30 A.M. , it represented an experiment for the national network, for it was the first time that television (popular in India only since the early

[173] Distributed by Super Cassettes Industries Private Ltd., New Delhi; ironically, the "T Series" sets were themselves pirated, labels and all, by smaller companies, so that it became impossible to tell whether a cassette bearing the "T Series" logo was actually produced by that company.

[174] See, for example, Hindustan Times , December 24, 1983 (page reference not available); I am grateful to Scott Marcus for having brought this advertisement to my attention.

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1980s) was used to present a serialized adaption of a religious epic. The chosen work was the Ramayan and the major source for the screenplay was the Manas . Produced and directed by Bombay filmmaker Ram-anand Sagar, the serial itself was an epic undertaking: featuring some three hundred actors, it was originally slated to run for fifty-two episodes of forty-five minutes each but had to be extended three times due to popular demand and eventually grew into a main story in seventy-eight episodes, followed after an interval of several months by a sequel incorporating the events detailed in the seventh book (the Uttarakanda^[*] , or epilogue) of the Valmiki epic. Long before the airing of the main story concluded on July 31, 1988, the Ramayan had become the most popular program ever shown on Indian television, drawing an estimated one hundred million viewers and generating unprecedented advertising revenues. Throughout much of the country, activities came to a halt on Sunday mornings and streets and bazaars took on a deserted look, as people gathered before their own and neighbors' TV sets. The epidemic of "Ramayan fever" (as the magazine India Today termed it) generated lively debate in the press, with urban intellectuals and policymakers struggling to understand why a production dismissed by critics as a second-rate and technically flawed melodrama had elicited such a staggering response. Did its success point once again to the enduring power of sacred narrative to galvanize the masses, or was it rather a cue to the advent of a new force in Indian culture: the mesmerizing power of the television screen? Yet few critics noted the show's continuities with older genres of Manas performance: the serialized format, the presence of a storyteller/commentator (usually Ramanand Sagar himself, who, like Tulsidas, inserted himself into his "text"), the alternation between actors' dialogues and sung narration (chiefly Manas verses set to music), and the imaginative and extended elaboration on individual incidents and characters—all these elements suggested the conventions and interpretive styles of Katha and lila performances. The audience too responded appropriately: purifying and garlanding the TV set (as a seat for the video vyas ), performing the arti of beloved characters, and distributing prasad at the close of broadcasts. The phenomenal impact of the Ramayan serial merits closer examination than it can be given here, but it is clear that the production and the response it engendered once again dramatized the role of the epic as a principal medium not only for individual and collective religious experience but also for public discourse and social and cultural reflection.^[175]

[175] See Lutgendorf, "Ramayan: The Video."

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Banking on the Name

The use of the name "Ram" as the most common nonsectarian designation for the supreme being was already widespread in northern India before Tulsidas's time and was reflected in the use of the name by nathpanth yogis and sant poets such as Kabir.^[176] But Tulsi's great emphasis on the power of the name—his insistence in Balkand^[*] that "the name is greater than Ram himself" (1.23), and his endorsement in Uttar kand^[*] of the name as a panacea for all the ills of the Dark Age—gave further impetus to the cult of the name. Whether or not one accepts Rajnikant Shastri's irate charge that Tulsi's advocacy of the name "has rendered millions of householders and thousands of ascetics apathetic and weak . . . firmly convinced that in the Kali Yuga, apart from the repetition of Ram's name, no other discipline or activity can be fruitful,"^[177] one cannot deny the pervasive presence of Ram's name in North India today, reflected in its invocation in moments of distress, as the most common rural greeting (Ram-Ram ), and in the pallbearers' chant (Ramnamsatya hai —"Ram's name is truth"). But if Tulsi urged the ceaseless verbal repetition of the name, millions of literates and marginal-literates armed with pens and paper have taken up a new discipline based on the name, which has given rise to a new kind of popular religious institution.

I first became aware of this phenomenon in an encounter with a woman who worked as a servant in a Banaras guesthouse. During her afternoon rest periods I would see her sitting on the steps, diligently writing in a notebook. My curiosity was aroused. Was she studying something? Keeping a journal? Doing accounts? On inquiry, I was shown pages and pages filled with minute renderings of a single name, in an immaculate hand and bright red ink. This activity was not spontaneous; the notebook, she cheerfully explained, was provided by "the priest at the Hanuman temple" and was to be filled and returned to him, whereupon she would be issued another. My curiosity as to what would become of the filled notebook—it could hardly be thrown away, since it contained the name of the Lord—was answered on a pilgrimage to Ayodhya, where I discovered that the latest trend was the construction of special "banks" (so labeled with a transliteration of the English word) for the deposit of these uniform workbooks, neatly ordered in bales of fifty or a hundred, wrapped in red cloth, and stacked floor-to-ceiling in

[176] Vaudeville, Kabir, 115.

[177] Shastri, Manasmimamsa^[*] , 196.

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small, Plexiglas-fronted temples. A sign on the facade of one such establishment showed that someone was keeping track of the accumulated merit; it invited the pilgrim to "enjoy the auspicious sight of 125 karor^[*] (1,250,000,000) names of Ram!" In the foreground, several larger notebooks were on display, on whose opened pages artists had created striking images of Manas scenes in what at first appeared to be a hazy, pointillist style but on closer inspection proved to consist entirely of minute, ingenious permutations of the name in various shades of ink.

The spiritual exercise of repeatedly writing out a divine formula is not new; Tibetan Buddhism long ago developed it with comparable technological ingenuity, and it has also long been customary, I was told, to present Hanuman at the Sankat Mochan Temple in Banaras with paper garlands, the links of which contain 100,000 renderings of the name. Yet the "banking" scheme seems, for India, a peculiarly late twentieth-century development—a reflection of an only recently popularized system of savings banks and a modern variant on an enduring need for tangible signs of religious activity. The mere name on one's tongue may seem an ephemeral thing in these materialist times, but a filled Ram-nam notebook is, as we say, "like money in the bank"—congealed merit (punya^[*] ) slowly accumulating interest in the concrete and Plexiglas vaults of a vast but (one hopes) uncommonly efficient spiritual bureaucracy. More than once in Katha programs, I heard Ram's court described not as a darbar or kacahari (the royal or magisterial court of the nineteenth century) but as a daftar —a modern bureaucratic office—complete with desk and file cabinet and with Hanuman at the door to screen petitioners.^[178] Though intentionally humorous, the metaphor plays on the real anxiety that many Indians feel about their dealings with bureaucracy; any expedient to circumvent the system, any magical "chit" or passbook to get the Great Man's attention, is not to be overlooked.

To these brief vignettes might be added many others that likewise suggest the continuing vitality of the Ram tradition and its principal text,^[179] but the reader may not require further evidence on this point. Yet what of the future of Manas performance genres? Urbanization,

[178] This metaphor was used, for example, by Swami Sitaram Sharan in a Katha given in Ayodhya on April 9, 1984, in which he compared an ordinary temple to Ram's office and Ayodhya to his home, where he takes his ease and can be reached without the usual runaround.

[179] For example, Joyce Flueckiger's research on women's Manas recitation; "Literacy and the Changing Concept of Text."

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industrialization, and increasing literacy are among the factors that are unquestionably changing many aspects of life in India. What effect will such changes have on the popularity of Tulsi's epic? Before I address this question, let me raise a pertinent and related one: Do Manas devotees understand what they are reciting?

Avadhi, Khari Boli, and "Hindi-Ization"

In the course of my research I sometimes encountered educated people who told me that they could not understand the Manas . "It's in Avadhi," one man said, "not in Hindi, and so it's just like a foreign language to me." Although the performance genres that I have described undoubtedly help spread knowledge of the text, they also presuppose a considerable familiarity with it; the most effective Katha performances require an audience knowledgeable enough to interact with the performer and even to complete his quotations from the text. Yet Tulsi's epic is more than four centuries old; unlike its Sanskrit ancestor, it was not composed in a frozen literary language but in a fluid spoken dialect. Thus, it seems inevitable that the archaism of the text will obscure its meaning and erode its popularity. Hein observed that an important function of the Vaishnava dramas he witnessed in Mathura in 1949-50 was to mediate texts that were no longer readily comprehensible to their audiences. He warned that "the thought and language of Surdas and Tulsidas . . . present all the difficulties Shakespeare would have for us if in addition he had been a Scotsman. The gap which the players are called upon to bridge is widening, and the time will come when the best dramatic skills will not be able to make the old poetry live."^[180] The growing use of standardized Khari Boli—the dialect of the Delhi re-gion—to mediate the Manas in oral performance is undeniable, as is the fact that much recitation is conducted in a mechanical fashion that gives little importance to comprehension; shall we assume then, that most contemporary devotees, like the man cited earlier, no longer understand their epic?

To answer this question, we must consider the linguistic complexity of northern India and the continued existence, even within the Hindi belt, of variant dialects, particularly in the rural areas where 70 percent of the population still lives. The region has long been characterized by the coexistence of more or less standardized dialects used for intra-

[180] Hein, The Miracle Plays of Mathura , 275.

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regional communication, with localized ones used for the expression of a village- or district-level cultural identity. Despite Tulsi's assertion that he wrote in "village speech," linguists have come to recognize that he, along with other bhakti poets, evolved new, composite dialects "aimed at a larger audience much beyond their own dialectical region."^[181] What Tulsi's literary language had in common with much village speech—and this is as true today as it was in the sixteenth century—was its oral playfulness, its readiness to twist and transform words while still leaving them recognizable in their context. As Edwin Greaves noted in his 1895 study of the grammar of the epic, "Any attempt to indicate all the modifications and changes to which a word is liable in the hands of Tulsi Das would be quite vain. He does not go in search of a word to fit into a certain corner, as a meaner poet would do, but takes the word most suitable in meaning and makes it fit, and it is wonderful how snug and comfortable these words look and sound, after the eye and ear have had a little practice."^[182] Thus, when we read that the Manas is composed in "Avadhi," we should bear in mind that this was not, in Tulsi's hands, a precisely standardized language; rather it was a synthetic dialect built on a base of Eastern Hindi grammatical forms but incorporating elements from other dialects and utilizing an enormous vocabulary of Sanskrit, Perso-Arabic, and local words,^[183] all of which were subject to the poet's characteristic transformations. "A little practice" was probably as necessary in the sixteenth century as it is today, although comprehension of the variant forms comes more readily to the ear than to the eye.

Greaves wrote nearly a century ago, when Khari Boli prose was already becoming the standard literary dialect of the educated and doubts were being raised concerning the "archaism" of the Manas . Yet Greaves argued that "[the epic's] very difficulties constitute its peculiar value to the student who wishes to learn the language of the people" and went on to observe, "There are some, I know, who look upon the Ramayan as written in, perhaps, interesting, but still, obsolete, language, and who say, 'But the villagers don't talk in the language of the Ramayan'; it can only meekly be replied, 'But they do.' Not, of course, entirely, but village boli is very much nearer to the language of the Ramayan than probably any other book that could be named."^[184] Many of the epic

[181] Mishra, "The Language of Tulsidas," 246.

[182] Greaves, Notes on the Grammar of the Ramayan^[*] , 9.

[183] Madan Gopal credits Tulsi with the "equalization" of Hindi between town and countryside, and also with the popularization of several thousand "lost" Sanskrit and regional words; Tulasidas , 60.

[184] Greaves, Notes on the Grammar of the Ramayan^[*] , iii-iv.

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forms that Greaves cited as current in his day—such as kakahabata (what shall I say?), toke and mose (to you, and by me) and dui (two)—remain in everyday use in eastern Uttar Pradesh, where they coexist with the Khari Boli forms that people learn in school. Concluded Greaves, "This is the language of the Ramayan and this is the language of the people."^[185]

Gandhi, who promoted the use of Khari Boli Hindi as a national language, was inclined to agree and to praise Tulsi's colloquialisms: "He just picked up words spoken in the streets and used them, because Tulsi Das was writing for you and me. . .. The language of Tulsi Das therefore is our language."^[186] Lower-class devotees usually confirmed this assertion; when I asked the Manas singers at Khari Kuan if they understood the words they were singing, one replied, "Brother, this is our own local speech. How could we not know it?" On the other hand, educated people sometimes indicated varying degrees of difficulty with the idiom; one daily reciter estimated that she understood "about half" of the text as she chanted it; to understand it fully, she said, she would have to read it more slowly and with the aid of a prose commentary. Such difficulty, however, may stem as much from poetic style as from dialect; some lines are simply convoluted and obscure, and probably always were. The straightforward narrative of Books Two to Six is, in my experience, more readily comprehensible than the philosophical digressions of the first and last books. Poetically difficult language invites interpretation and commentary, and the obscurities of the Manas have always been germane to its performance traditions. When one expounder told me that the Manas was "difficult," I asked him whether he meant that its language was difficult. "No," he replied, "its language is simple—its inner meaning is difficult," and added, smiling broadly, "that's why we expounders are necessary."^[187]

Indians are often bi- or trilingual and relatively comfortable with variant dialect patterns. The fact that Braj Bhasha and Avadhi, in their pure forms, were spoken by relatively few people at any given time did not prevent poetry in these languages from being widely enjoyed. Indeed, until this century, these dialects, together with Urdu, were the preferred media of poetry; a person who wished to express poetic sentiments switched into one or another of them, just as Banarsis shift back and forth between Bhojpuri, Khari Boli, and Urdu, according to the

[185] Ibid., iv.

[186] Gandhi, Collected Works 88:255.

[187] Ramji Pandey, interview, February 1984.

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context and the person being addressed. We may compare this multivocality to that in the American musical idiom, where, for the expression of certain conventional sentiments, white northern singers assume a southern or African American dialect and accent.

Frequency of exposure and knowledge of context are critical to the comprehension of a literary dialect. Elizabethan English varies sufficiently from contemporary speech that we cannot understand many of its terms and idioms without a glossary. Yet we may grasp a good deal of this language when we hear it performed, particularly if we are familiar with the general context of a passage or (in the case of Shakespeare's works) with the plot of a play. Returning to Hein's observation, I suggest that the King James Bible might be a more apt choice for comparison with the Manas than the works of a Shakespeare, Scots or otherwise. A person raised in a household where passages from this Bible were recited daily would become imprinted with its patterns (even though he would not necessarily use them in ordinary speech) and might even feel, as many Christians did until recently, that its archaisms were essential to religious diction, so that in addressing God in prayers or hymns, he would automatically shift into these special forms, which were sanctified by long use. In the same way, many contemporary speakers of Khari Boli use Braj or Avadhi forms when singing devotional hymns to Krishna and Ram.

Both Greaves and Growse, writing a century ago, stressed the ready comprehensibility of the epic to even uneducated people; Growse observed that "a Hindu child generally grasps at once the familiar idiom, and finds no great difficulty in even the most crabbed passage."^[188] A century of linguistic change and increasing standardization of urban speech necessitates modifying these observations somewhat. It is notable, for example, that in the nineteenth century the most popular section of the Manas was said to have been Ayodhyakand^[*] , even though it was admitted to be long and slow-moving and to contain (especially in its latter half) some of the most convoluted and obscure language in the epic.^[189] When I asked contemporary devotees which section they liked best, the answer was usually Sundar kand^[*] —which is short, action-packed, and one of the easiest books linguistically; only one old woman told me that she liked Ayodhya best—"Because of the way they talk to each other."

[188] Growse, The Ramayana^[*]of Tulasidasa , lvi.

[189] Ibid., lvii; see also the note on page 403, where Growse complains of the obscurity of the latter portion of this kand^[*] .

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Clearly not everyone grasps the idiom so readily now, especially if he or she was not raised in an environment permeated by the text. An upper-class resident of Delhi, reared on a combination of Punjabi-flavored Khari Boli and public school English and never exposed to the epic at home, encountering it for the first time in a college course on medieval Hindi literature, would assuredly find its language highly irregular. It was one such person whom I cited earlier, who informed me that he could not understand the epic. But it is important to recognize, as was clear in the context, that this man wished to convey to me not only that he did not "understand" the Manas but that he did not particularly like it or believe in it; he wanted to distance himself from its folk ethos and "backward" values. If large numbers of Indians felt this way, then of course the text would quickly lapse into the status of a literary relic. But as long as people continue to value the epic and to perform it—which a great many still do—its language, even though significantly different from their everyday speech, will remain accessible to them.

One more linguistic factor in the popularity of the text should not be overlooked: the ever-growing influence of Hindi as a (usually unacknowledged and often explicitly denied) lingua franca for much of India. Little credit for this development can be given to heavy-handed governmental efforts to impose a highly Sanskritized form of Khari Boli as a national language, yet despite the resistance that such efforts have provoked and the continued vitality of other regional languages, Hindi of one sort or another has continued to make inroads in many regions. The popularity of Hindi films and, more recently, of Hindi-language television (most notably the Ramayan and Mahabharat serials) has obviously contributed to this process, but other, more subtle factors have long been at work. Bharati noted that, despite the explicit emphasis of Hindu Renaissance leaders on Sanskrit texts and education, the actual effect of their activities has been what he terms "Hindi-ization" and the spread of a more homogeneous, bhakti -oriented popular faith, permeated by texts in the "bhakti lingua franca"—one or another dialect of Hindi.^[190] Like Hindi itself, the Manas has tended to "win by default" in popular religious practice, as an accessible and relatively nonsectarian scripture equally suitable for a Hanuman puja or a Devi vrat . This has been true not merely in the epic's homeland but also in neighboring regions that do not have a comparably authoritative text in their mother tongue. I was told by a Kannada friend, for example, that he knows of

[190] Bharati, "The Hindu Renaissance," 269.

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middle-class ladies in Mysore who have become convinced of the benefits of reciting the Manas and have taken up the study of Hindi solely for that purpose.^[191]

Along with the above factors, we may note the effects of increased mobility and especially of pilgrim traffic to important religious centers in Hindi-speaking areas, such as Banaras, Allahabad, Hardwar, Ayodhya, and the Himalayan shrines of Uttar Pradesh, where pilgrims encounter a milieu permeated by the epic's influence as well as bazaar bookstalls filled with inexpensive editions that they carry back to their home regions. This process of dissemination has also been influenced by the diaspora of a people who themselves originated outside the linguistic homeland of Tulsi's epic, but whom historical circumstances have now made among its most active propagators.

The New Patrons

I have referred several times to historical changes in the patronage of Manas performance; these changes may be summarized as follows:

Of these developments, the most significant for contemporary performance genres was the shift from aristocratic to mercantile patronage during the latter part of the nineteenth century, and it will now be worthwhile to take a closer look at some of the causes and consequences of this shift.

The historian C. A. Bayly has argued that until the nineteenth century the influence of merchant groups, even in cities such as Banaras, Faizabad, and Lucknow, was subordinated to that of the land-based gentry, which represented the dominant local power and exercised considerable control over trade. This pattern began to change as the economic impact of the colonial presence became more pronounced. The British attempt

[191] U.R. Ananthamurthy, personal communication, April 1986.

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to standardize the revenue system and promote a cash economy began to threaten systems of local taxation, local mints, and the pattern of (what the British termed) "idle consumption" by aristocratic society, "acted out in forms of relationship between orders of people, and gift-giving, feasting and display."^[192] These changes were augmented by a widespread economic depression in northern India between roughly 1830 and 1850, probably worsened by a series of poor harvests, which altered the economic standing of key segments of the population.^[193] The gradual recovery that followed, helped along by the construction of the railways, was characterized by a steady reduction in courtly consumption and by the growing importance of trading and adminstrative centers and (by the end of the century) of manufacturing cities—notably Kanpur, strategically located on the new railway line. One consequence of these developments was a change in the role of the merchant, who had always functioned as both trader and moneylender (baniya ).

In the Indian states the usurious role of the merchant had often been offset in part by lavish royal expenditure and investment which the merchant community also helped to finance. Merchant, peasant, artisan and ruler had been part of a system in which it was not in the interest of one element to reduce any of the others to complete dependence. Many of the negative features attributed to the Indian Baniya in more recent times do not seem to be a product of inherent viciousness but of particular historical circumstances. In particular, his role changed in the absence of the lavish local elite expenditure and intrusive political authority which had once put limits to the consequences of his commercial ruthlessness.^[194]

The stereotype of the "commercially ruthless" Baniya is most often applied in contemporary North India to the Marwaris, a group of mercantile castes that migrated from the princely states of Jodhpur (Marwar), Jaipur, Bikaner, and Jaisalmer in a diaspora to the rising commercial towns of northern and central India. These castes had formerly served as bankers and brokers to the Rajput houses of their home regions and had also participated in overland trade with western Asia, which declined with the coming of the British and the rise of maritime commerce. They represented what some economists have termed a "resource group," a far-flung network of closely knit family firms joined by ties of marriage and religious affiliation, which seems to have put them in a uniquely advantageous position to exploit commercial opportunities.^[195] Their di-

[192] Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen, and Bazaars , 101, 266.

[193] Ibid., 292-95.

[194] Ibid., 299.

[195] Timberg, The Marwaris , 37.

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aspora had begun in the eighteenth century, when Marwaris served as bankers and contractors to some of the Maratha kingdoms; during the early nineteenth century, large numbers of Shekhavati Aggarwals (a trading community from the Jaipur region) became prominent in the opium trade out of Malwa, while other groups of Marwaris established themselves in the grain markets of the Doab and the Ganges Valley. By 1832 James Tod could write (perhaps with some exaggeration) that "nine-tenths of the bankers and commercial men of India are natives of Maroodes [Marwar]."^[196]

The cohesiveness of the Marwaris contributed to their success. During the period 1840-60, when Marwari merchants began to establish themselves in Calcutta in competition with indigenous Bengali and Khatri trading communities, prosperous Marwaris set up subsidized boarding houses to attract other members of their community, whom they employed in their growing firms. By 1864 roughly half the bankers in Calcutta were Marwaris, and by the 1880s they had begun to beat out Khatris and Bengalis in the battle for coveted appointments as chief brokers to the leading British import-export firms. By 1921 the diaspora had grown to an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 persons spread throughout India (in addition to some 600,000 community members in Rajasthan), who controlled an increasingly disproportionate percentage of the nation's commerce.^[197]

Even more significant for India's subsequent economic development was the entry of Marwaris into manufacturing following World War I. The Birla family, which had quadrupled its assets in the profitable trade of the war years, opened a jute mill in Calcutta in 1919 and textile mills at Delhi and Gwalior in 1920-21; during the 1930s the family added sugar refineries and cement plants. Such family conglomerates continued to grow during the post-Independence period, buying up many of the British firms they had previously served as commercial agents; by 1964 the "Birla Group" had become the largest private conglomerate in India, controlling 151 companies, the majority of which were headed by brothers, cousins, and nephews of the pater familias, Ghanshyamdas Birla.^[198] The family's success was signal but not unique; the Marwari community as a whole is estimated to control 60 percent of the assets of Indian industry.

[196] James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan , 2 vols. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1929-32; rev. ed., Calcutta: S. K. Lahiri, 1894), 2:166; cited in Timberg, The Marwaris , 42.

[197] Timberg, The Marwaris , 52-57.

[198] Ibid., 64-66, 163, 282.

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Great success often arouses jealousy; such folk sayings as "If you meet a snake and a Marwari, kill the Marwari" reflect the popular stereotype of the community as unscrupulously self-aggrandizing. The merchants' rise to prominence was paralleled by the decline of the landed gentry and the traditional economy in which the Marwaris themselves, back in Rajasthan, had once participated. The colonial government's increasing demand for cash revenue, coupled with cycles of bad harvests, the repeated subdivision of inherited estates, and the enforcement of uniform and inflexible commercial laws, resulted in the old rich getting poorer throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The merchant was the beneficiary, and for commercial castes the period might be characterized as one of semiinvoluntary upward mobility. Put into varna^[*] terms, Vaishyas were being turned, by historical circumstances and their own commercial ambitions, into Kshatriyas. One Gokuldas, for example, of the banking firm of Sevaram Khushalchand of Jabalpur, acquired numerous estates in forced sales for tax defaults and ended up owning 158 villages and having the title "raja" prefixed to his name.^[199] Such success was financially desirable, but it was also threatening, since it challenged the traditional order to which the Marwaris, like other pious mercantile communities, implicitly subscribed:

The area of the greatest and most pervasive social risk, however, was for Hindus, like Jains, the boundary between the inward, frugal life of the merchant and the kingly manner which involved constant giving and receiving. Merchant families might find themselves trapped in the limbo between these two styles of life, unable to command the power and respect of the ruler yet "expensive" enough to forfeit credit in the mercantile sphere.^[200]

Power in the rising cities was increasingly concentrated among "bodies of entrepreneurs and property-owners who were not well accommodated within the older relations of ranking and precedence."^[201] In other words, the merchants faced a crisis of identity that reflected the classic tension in Hindu society between upward social aspiration and downwardly imposed order. In the special circumstances of the period, the interaction of these forces in the assertion of new identities helped fuel both nationalism and religious revival.

Despite their legendary wealth, the great Marwari families of Calcutta avoided the kingly pattern of luxury consumption and instead

[199] Ibid., 60.

[200] Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen, and Bazaars , 386-87.

[201] Ibid., 337.

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concentrated on patronage of religious and cultural institutions. Among the most lavish activities of these pious Vaishnava familes were funerary observances, entailing the feeding of huge numbers of Brahmans and guests.^[202] Enormous sums were also given to charity, and such largesse benefited both religious and nationalist causes. The Marwaris were reckoned to be one of the most conservative and "backward" mercantile communities; the census of 1921 reported that whereas their male Hindi literacy rate was high (this being essential to the conduct of business), their rate of English literacy and involvement in higher education was low and their female literacy rate was almost nil—evidence of continued adherence to rigid rules of female seclusion (parda ).^[203] Marwaris were active in Sanatani organizations and in the cow slaughter agitation of 1917.^[204] The prominent Marwari families of Allahabad at the turn of the century "dotted the town with temples and rest houses, patronized the Ramlila Committees, and became presidents of orthodox religious bodies in the neighborhood."^[205] Yet at the same time Marwaris were active in the Nationalist movement and became committed Gandhians, devoted to such causes as women's rights and Harijan uplift; indeed the community—and especially Ghanshyamdas Birla, a close personal friend of Gandhi's—was the major financial power behind the Indian National Congress, donating an estimated Rs 100,000,000 to the movement by 1947.

Like other Marwaris (and like Gandhi himself), the Birlas continued to identify themselves as Sanatani Hindus; Ghanshyamdas's elder brother, Jugal Kishor, retired from the family business in 1920 (after cornering the market in opium futures) to devote himself to religious activities, constructing a chain of temples and rest houses at major pilgrimage places. As he grew older, Ghanshyamdas himself manifested similar interests. Patronage of the Manas , as we have seen, was often synonymous with Sanatani activity, and as a community the Marwaris have become so active in this respect that they may rightfully be regarded as heirs to the princely patrons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Swami Karpatri's religiopolitical activities were underwritten by the Marwari community of Banaras, which also organized, with his blessing, the Gyan Vapi Manas Festival. The Poddars (the name means "treasurer," and the clan was originally said to have served the nawabs

[202] See Timberg's account of the 1908 Goenka family funeral; The Marwaris , 59.

[203] Ibid., 67.

[204] Pandey, "Rallying Round the Cow," 96-97.

[205] Bayly, The Local Roots of Indian Politics , 73.

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of Fatehpur in this capacity) founded the Gita Press of Gorakhpur, which became the preeminent North Indian distributor of the epic. The Birlas, through their Academy of Art and Culture, sponsored mass recitations and Katha performances, published Atkins's two-volume English translation of the epic, and spread the fame of Pandit Ramkinkar, the family's favored expounder. The example set by the most powerful families was emulated by lesser Marwari clans, and the exodus of top-ranking Katha performers to the industrial cities of Kanpur, Bombay, and Calcutta noted earlier is essentially a consequence of Marwari patronage.^[206]

The identity crisis to which I referred above was not unique to the mercantile community, for other groups were also affected by the economic and social reshuffling of the late nineteenth century. Rajas and zamindars themselves, though in overall decline, tried to hold on to their perquisites and continued to patronize their traditional clients as long as they had the means; the conspicuous patronage of religious performances was one of the more visible ways in which to uphold a public image. The Brahman and Kayasth service communities dependent on these patrons likewise promoted orthodox religious causes in order to retain their own prestige. Moreover, it must be remembered that the landholding class, despite a dominant Rajput ethos, was far from monolithic in caste constitution; during the late nineteenth century as several of the "marginally clean" agricultural castes, such as the Ahirs and Kurmis, rose in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, they too manifested a desire to assert an upper-class life-style and identity. The fact that British census takers in 1901, convinced of the relevance of the varna^[*] system to Hindu social organization, classed the Ahirs as "Shudras," produced an immediate reaction in the formation of a caste association to press for recognition of Kshatriya status. Thousands of Ahirs began wearing the sacred thread and appending "Singh" and "Rai" to their names; this effort also propelled them into the forefront of cow slaughter agitation and other Sanatani causes, and hence into an unlikely alliance with Brahmans and Rajputs, who often did not recognize their claims.^[207]

The "new men" of the late nineteenth century faced the need to assert their identity and status by participating in a perceived Great Tradition-in a process as old as the historical record in India. But other

[206] Describing an upcoming engagement at the home of a Bombay industrialist, Shrinath Mishra smilingly remarked to me that the patron was "not a Birla, but a little jealous of the Birlas. He wants Katha in his house too!"; interview, February 1984.

[207] Pandey, "Rallying Round the Cow," 74-75, 118, 127.

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factors specially relevant to this period and to these men help explain the appeal the Ramayan tradition exerted for them. The Birla family has remained in the forefront of the progressive wing of the Marwari community; its sons and nephews today have no qualms about "crossing the black water" to earn M.B.A.s at foreign universities before taking over their assigned portfolios, and they then operate with considerable autonomy within the conglomerate. Yet close-knit family structure is still regarded as essential to the corporate success of the Birla Group. As the family dharmasastra par excellence, the Ramayan presents a paradigm of the loyalty, cohesiveness, and hierarchy that the Birlas and other leading Marwari clans recognize as one of their greatest strengths—hence its obvious appeal to a family-oriented business community. Then too there is the factor of diaspora: the Marwaris achieved their success in areas remote from their homeland. They carried with them a revered text and, in the typical manner of the émigré, sought to promote it in their new regions, bringing renowned pandits from Banaras and Ayodhya to Calcutta and Bombay to publicly expound it.^[208]

The decline of the princes and zamindars in the late nineteenth century was not simply another of the periodic dynastic fluctuations of the past; it had a finality that even the most conservative merchants must have sensed—the world was changing in fundamental ways and there would be no going back to the old order. The men who rose up to replace the princes did so in a new milieu of nationalism; they spoke of something called "India," of concepts of democracy and equality that challenged the traditional structure of society. The interplay of order and transcendence, of real and ideal, within the Manas made this epic, to troubled and uncertain "new men," a source not only of orthodoxy but also of "peace of mind."

The Future of Manas Performance

"The theater," Bernard Shaw is said to have quipped, "is always in a state of decline." Hindu culture seems to have reached a similar consensus regarding the cosmos in general and human affairs in particular. The mangoes of one's childhood, it seems, were always sweeter, the musicians more talented, and people in general simpler and less greedy; and

[208] The epic has been similarly favored by groups settled outside India. For example, among the Hindus of Fiji, anthropologist John Kelly found performance of the Manas to have become the community's dominant form of religious activity; indeed, since 1916, Tulsi's epic has been the text on which Fijian Hindus take oaths in court. John Kelly, personal communication, August 1986.

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in one's grandparents' day, all these were better still. To the human tendency toward nostalgia and the pervasive myth of a lost Golden Age may be added, in the Indian case, an explicit cosmology of decline through successive ages, culminating in our own interminable and ever-darker Dark Age—and even, from a contemporary perspective, some stark facts of real decline due to rising population, scarcity of resources, and relentless inflation. A researcher studying traditional performance genres must be mindful of such factors in attempting to judge responses to queries concerning the present and future vitality of a given tradition. I was told again and again, "You can't hear real Katha anymore nowadays!" and "These days it has become just another business." One man summed up this attitude with ingenuous clarity, saying, "The Katha I heard in my childhood—that was the real Katha !" Yet only moments later, he was praising his own favorite expounder, Ramnarayan Shukla, with the words "His is the real Katha , like in the old days."^[209]

Are traditions of Manas performance really declining? Let me begin with the most basic one: path^[*] , or recitation. As noted in Chapter 2, the spread and standardization of this practice was an outcome of both the advent of printing technology and the increasing literacy of the middle classes. The presence of the Manas as an authoritative yet accessible scripture gave literate people who were not religious specialists the potential for a heightened form of interaction with the efficacious sacred word and spawned a range of related ritual practices. Far from being in decline, certain of them—such as twenty-four-hour and nine-day recitations—were on the increase in the early 1980s. Although I have had only a limited opportunity for firsthand observation since, the militant Hindu revivalism that swept North India in the latter half of the decade and had as a special focus Ram's birthplace in Ayodhya gave continued prominence to the epic and its recital. The popular booksellers whom I interviewed in Banaras (and whose stock typically ranged from Sanskrit sastras to rustic self-help manuals on hypnotism, dream interpretation, and astrology) told me that they sold more copies of the Manas than of any other work—a typical shop carried a dozen or more editions in all sizes and price ranges.

To be sure, much recitation is conducted mechanically and perhaps, as one Banarsi connoisseur disparagingly remarked to me, "reciting the Manas and enjoying the Manas are two entirely different things!" The comprehensibility of the text is certainly influenced by such factors as

[209] S. S. Singh, interview, July 1983.

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the reciter's mother tongue or dialect, degree of education, and frequency of exposure to the epic. Many devotees maintain that it is not necessary to understand the text in order to benefit from it. The woman who told me that she could readily understand about half of her daily recitation added, "But it is not necessary to understand in order to benefit. The words that Goswami-ji used have a power of their own. If I am very busy or have a lot on my mind, I just hurry through to the break and don't worry about whether I understand or not." Such attitudes may invite scorn—thus, Rajnikant Shastri, mocking the tendency toward "mindless" repetition, accused devotees of having made the epic into a "web of spells"^[210] —yet they hardly represent an innovation in Hindu practice. The widely held view of the Manas as mantra is a sign of its prestige as well as its occasional obscurity—an indication of its status as the "Hindi Veda." Moreover, mindless repetition is a vital part of the training of those to seek to understand the text best—traditional scholars and expounders—as it leads to memorization and "internalization." If nothing else, the constant loudspeaker bombardment of Manas recitation and singing that one encounters in religious centers like Banaras and Ayodhya keeps the epic very much "in the air" and reinforces exposure to it. And an observer with no knowledge of the text should not be too quick to assume that it is all gibberish, even to casual passersby.

A few interviewees complained of the vulgarity of mass-recitation festivals. Significantly, these critics belonged to the aristocratic class that had formerly been influential patrons, and they looked with disdain on the activities of "those merchants" and their hired Brahman specialists. Whatever one may think of electrified dioramas and booming loudspeaker networks, one must recall that religious kitsch is not an invention of the twentieth century.^[211] Some two centuries ago the ancestors of these critics, like today's Marwari merchants and industrialists, charted their own upward social course using the epic as a vehicle of legitimation, and their patronage of Ramanandi sadhus and small-town Ramayanis may likewise have earned the disdain of the then-established elite.

Katha —good, bad, or indifferent—is certainly booming, even amid (to paraphrase Mark Twain) greatly exaggerated reports of its demise.

[210] Shastri, Manasmimamsa^[*] , 202.

[211] Ayodhya displays many examples of late nineteenth-century kitsch—such as Kanak Bhavan Temple—which, like early Hindu calendar art, now appear charmingly antique (although it remains difficult to imagine the Tulsi Manas Temple ever taking on this patina).

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Again, foreign observers should be cautious of the airy generalizations thrown out by the English-educated residents of large urban areas to the effect that "no one goes in for that kind of thing anymore." Years ago, before I began studying the Manas , I lived for nearly a year in a middle-class neighborhood in New Delhi, and had I then been asked about epic performance in the city, I would have opined that one would have to go to a smaller, more traditional place to find it. Yet I was to discover, on the contrary, that I had to return to the heart of India's capital to hear and record one of the most celebrated contemporary expounders, and I also found ongoing Katha programs in some of the fashionable southern suburbs as well as on commuter trains. The fact that middle-aged people predominate in many audiences cannot in itself be taken as an indication of declining interest in the epic among the new generation, for in the asram scheme of the life cycle it is indeed older people who are expected to take greater interest in religious discourse. In any case, I also encountered youthful enthusiasts for Katha as well as many young and ambitious performers.

As one Hindi journalist noted, there is today no lack of claimants to the exalted title of vyas . Despite nostalgia for the era of great expounders like Shivlal Pathak and Ramkumar Mishra, it is clear that, at least for today's "All-India" performers, financial incentives have never been better. And even though some might suppose that "modernization" leads to declining interest in religious oratory, others argue to the contrary. Shrinath Mishra, after detailing his own packed performance schedule, offered this opinion on the present popularity of Katha .

Just observe, interest in Katha keeps going on increasing. And one cause is this: nearly everyone is unhappy. Everyone has got some problem or other—someone's health is bad, or another's mental state is not good; someone else has economic troubles, or someone's business is not going well, or someone is worried over marrying off a daughter . . . it's this modern life-style that affects nearly everyone. There didn't used to be such crowds at programs; if a hundred or so people came to hear a Katha , it was a lot. And nowadays there have started to be such huge crowds and, well, the main cause is that everybody has anxiety over some problem or other, and in hearing Katha that anxiety disappears.^[212]

Anxious or otherwise, large numbers of North Indians are being exposed to a great deal of Katha , and it is an art form that appears readily adaptable to modern electronic media, concerning the impact of which I have more to say shortly.

[212] Shrinath Mishra, interview, October 1983.

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The Ramlila tradition is likewise flourishing, at least in the sense that there are probably more productions today than in the past. As I have noted, most of them are based on the Manas but utilize the text to varying degrees. Devotees of the Ramnagar pageant like to imply that other productions represent a debasement of the tradition. "They are all stage plays," one man told me; "only Ramnagar is lila ." It is true that the producers at Ramnagar are notable for their fidelity to the text and their insistence on reciting every word of it, and neighborhood productions often use only excerpts—although we have seen that there are exceptions to this rule. Yet this too is not new; the majority of Ramlilas have never lasted for more than nine or ten days—for the average Ramlila committee lacks the means to mount a lengthier production—and it is impossible to enact the complete Manas in that period. The Ramnagar style was an innovation of the early nineteenth century and a reflection of the patronage of a leisured class that could afford the enormous inputs of time and energy it required. It is still widely admired, but like other aristocratic pastimes it is suffering from the decline of its original patrons. Like many an orchestra or ballet company in the West, the Ramnagar Ramlila —with a cast of ninety-five, a crew of over one hundred, and an annual budget in six figures^[213] —has made an uneasy transition from princely to public patronage, with the bulk of its funding now supplied by the government of Uttar Pradesh. Attendance continues to be high—probably higher than in the past, since many of the sites were built to accommodate smaller crowds than now pack in and around them—but of course no admission is charged, and costs continue to increase while the budget remains more or less fixed. Schechner speculates that "if some economically productive plan is not developed the sheer production elements of the Ramlila —the effigies, the environments, the costumes, the flares—will get shoddier and shoddier."^[214] The potential decline of this magnificent pageant—one of the cultural treasures of North India—should be a cause for public concern. But the very uniqueness of this production underscores the fact that its present difficulties and troubled future cannot be taken as indicative of the popularity of Ramlila in general.

Any discussion of the future viability of genres like Katha and Ramlila must take into consideration the new communications media that

[213] Schechner and Hess estimate the total production cost (including the year-round maintenance of sites) at Rs 350,000; Schechner, Performative Circumstances , 285-86.

[214] Ibid., 286. I most recently viewed the pagent in 1989 and found it to be essentially unchanged.

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have already become influential in South Asian culture. How may radio and television and audio and video recording be expected to influence the storytellers and actors of the Ramayan tradition? During recent decades, growing scholarly awareness of (to paraphrase the preeminent media pandit of the 1960s) the inseparability of medium and message has tended to foster the assumption that new technologies usher in "revolutions" that radically transform cultures, decisively effacing older traditions. In contemporary Western pop culture, change associated with new technological gadgetry is almost invariably hyperbolized as an epoch-making upheaval—so that we are invited to marvel at, successively, the "Industrial Revolution," the "Data-Processing Age," the "Information Explosion," the "Compact Disc Era," and so on. Marshall McLuhan's ominous pronouncement concerning the introduction of movable type in fifteenth-century Europe—"as the Gutenberg typography filled the world the human voice closed down"^[215] —is typical of the dramatic and portentous tone of much contemporary discourse on media.

Recent scholarship has begun to apply such assumptions to cultures outside the Euro-American cultural sphere. Thus, Susan Wadley suggests (albeit with some appropriate caveats) that the spread of print technology in North India may cause localized oral traditions to wither away and be replaced by "less malleable, more widely spread written traditions."^[216] Although it is certain that the availability of printed texts encourages literacy and standardization, it cannot be assumed that it necessarily discourages oral performance, at least not in a culture in which oral rhetorical skills remain highly valued. As we have seen, even though the Manas has been in print for more than a century and a half, its oral exegetical and storytelling traditions continue to flourish and to interact in various ways with print media.

With respect to the newer electronic media, the Euro-American model again tends to be taken for granted. A critic of television like Neil Postman argues that the world of rational discourse created and maintained—especially in the United States—by the dominance of print media is now threatened by the power of a seductive flood of decontex-tualized images disseminated daily over the airwaves.^[217] Postman's observations offer much insight into American popular culture, but one

[215] Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962), 250; cited in Graham, Beyond the Written Word , 39.

[216] Wadley, "Popular Hinduism and Mass Literature in North India," 81.

[217] Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death , esp. chaps. 3-6.

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may well ask how relevant they are to South Asia—where, for example, typographic technology is only a little more than a century old and has never produced the kind of print-saturated culture that developed in the United States; where "oral literacy" (in which people who cannot read and write are familiar with and sometimes creators of sophisticated bodies of literature) remains prevalent; where great religious significance attaches to images and to the acts of "seeing" (darsan ) and "hearing" (sruti ); and where a wide range of performance genres have long coexisted with mass-produced texts and images. All these factors contribute to creating an environment in which the advent of electronic media may produce less jarring discontinuity and cultural alienation than it purportedly has in the United States.

In eastern Uttar Pradesh, short Katha programs are occasionally broadcast by All-India Radio stations; Ramnarayan Shukla, for example, told me that he sometimes goes to Allahabad to record talks for broadcast on the local station. The present vogue of taping talks is also noteworthy; when I observed, in 1983, the upper-class devotees of Ramkinkar Upadhyay collecting and exchanging his talks with the same enthusiasm with which they traded the latest film videos, I wondered why no one had thought of marketing such tapes.^[218] Returning to India six years later, however, I found prominently displayed in the cassette stalls of Vrindavan a multi-cassette series of discourses by Morari Bapu, a Gujarati Manas expounder whose fame, by the late 1980s, had come to rival that of Ramkinkar. Entrepreneurs have, moreover, begun to utilize video technology to increase the impact of Katha performances, and this trend is likely to continue. The 1987-88 television serialization of the Ramayan reflected the interpretive strategies of katha -style elaboration of characters and themes, and the staging methods and iconography of the Ramlila . In keeping with a long-standing convention of Hindu storytelling, the television narrative was framed by introductory and concluding segments in which orators—one of whom was the famous Manas expounder Morari Bapu—discoursed on the significance of the events portrayed. The unprecedented success of the Ramayan serial was itself the most dramatic demonstration to date of the power of television to command mass attention in South Asia, and its showcas-

[218] The 1983 EMI catalog of the Gramophone Company of India lists six recordings under the heading "Katha"; some of them appear to be musical renditions of Ramayan themes (such as "Sita-Ram ki kahani Katha" by Krishna Goyal and chorus) while others may be pure exposition (i.e., "Dhanus^[*] yajna" by Madanmohan Shastri). I am grateful to Scott Marcus for these references. Note, however, that in Karnataka the genre of devotional discourse and song known as harikatha is immensely popular on tape cassette.

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ing of oral exegesis may well encourage further videotaped presentations of katha -style discourses.

One religious movement has already made a successful use of such technology: the Bombay-based sect known as Swadhyaya (self-study), which is estimated to have one million adherents in northwestern India and among Indian communities overseas. This movement bases its message on the teachings of a Maharashtrian Brahman named Pandurang Athavale, who is affectionately known to his followers as "Dada" (elder brother). Dada's message of individual and social transformation through bhakti is conveyed to his far-flung congregation via weekly discourses (labeled pravacan ) delivered at his headquarters in Bombay but, since the late 1970s, videotaped for worldwide distribution. Every Sunday morning, audiences from Kansas City to Nairobi assemble to watch these "sacred tapes" and participate in all the formalities of Katha performance described earlier (removal of shoes in the hall, antiphonal chanting of an initial prayer, closing arti ceremony, etc.). Dada hails from a region in which the Tulsi version of the Ramayan story is less well known, and his discourses are often based on other Vaishnava texts, such as the Bhagavadgita (especially popular in Maharashtra), but like all Katha they consist largely of free oral improvisation on religious themes, interwoven with tales, anecdotes, and quotations from authoritative texts. What is most significant is that the weekly videotaped performances form the essential basis of this movement's message—for although numerous printed materials bear the Swadhyaya founder's name, they are all said to be transcriptions of oral performances, and it is emphasized by his followers that Athavale "writes" nothing. For Swadhyaya's contemporary adherents, the oral word of the inspired teacher retains its primacy, and video—which conveys it both audibly and visually and permits the recreation of much of its ritualized milieu—becomes an ideal medium for its promulgation.^[219]

I have briefly reviewed the three principal performance genres treated in my study and have found signs of continued vitality in each. To speculate on their future appeal, however, we must further consider the question of social aspiration, and of the text's role as an authoritative scripture. Hindu social mobility has often been understood in terms of the concept of "Sanskritization," first elaborated by anthropologist M. N. Srinivas, which refers to the acquisition of status by an adherence to accepted standards of upper-caste behavior;^[220] a classic example was

[219] Information on the Swadhyaya movement and its founder is taken from Little, "Video Vacana."

[220] See Srinivas, Caste in Modern India, and Other Essays , 42-62.

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the bid for Kshatriya status, mentioned in the preceding section, of the members of the Ahir or milkman caste. The overall utility of the concept: has been much debated; McKim Marriot, for example, has pointed out that it suggests too external a view of a process that he would prefer to call "samskar -ization^[*] ," since from the point of view of participants, the high-status and ritually pure forms of behavior adopted are truly samskars^[*] ("impressions" or "alterations of substance"), which change them in fundamental ways.^[221] Implicit in the process, however one labels it, is the tension between aspiration and dominance.

The Hindu universe is a closed system and conservative in the most literal sense; matter, energy, and all else are conserved and recycled endlessly. The notion of unlimited growth favored in Western economic theory, like the corresponding sociopolitical ideal of universal equality, is fundamentally incongruous to this worldview, which indeed might find something perverse in it, like the quest for physical immortality in which the Puranic demons are always engaged. There cannot always be more and more of everything, the tradition reasons, because really there is only so much. And it is only the existence of hierarchy that makes aspiration possible: one can rise only with reference to others above and below. Those who successfully achieve mobility within the system become what they have aspired to and, in so doing, necessarily change. That is why, ironically, aspiring castes are often especially harsh in their treatment of those still below them.^[222]

But closed systems become stifling and must then be broken open. The aims of human life (purusarth^[*] ) as conceived by Hindus are said to be four, but historians tell us that once they were only three; dharma in late-Vedic thought was identical with the cosmic order, and there was nothing higher. The recognition that dharma itself was part of the mundane system necessitated the quest for a fourth aim: a breaking free from the wheel to achieve ultimate liberation (moksa^[*] ). It is understandable that the relationship of this fourth aim to the other three has remained problematic, since it exists beyond the system that encompasses everything else human beings do and know. Those people, like Kabir, who set their sights on this transcendent goal can afford to thumb their noses at the system. Yet their followers, who have to live in this world, invariably seek some kind of accommodation with it.

Texts, like people, have to live within the system or move beyond it,

[221] McKim Marriot, personal communication, February 1986.

[222] Cf. Erdman, who calls this phenomenon "middle-level conservatism"; The Swatantra Party , 30.

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and the identification of moksa^[*] as the ultimate aim of life paralleled, historically speaking, the withdrawal of the Vedas from an active role in human affairs. The Hindu archetype of scripture became "liberated" when it ceased to serve any practical role and became squarely situated in the other world as an eternal referent of transcendence. For this very reason, having left the realm of cyclical flux, it was rigidly and perfectly preserved, even though (or indeed, because) its contents had ceased to have any relation to worldly activity.^[223] The most authoritative text for the tradition was, ironically, the least living one. And conversely, living texts could never be ultimately authoritative.

The problem of textual authority and vitality—itself a variation on the tension between order and transcendence—can be clearly discerned in the genesis of the Ramcaritmanas . We know that this epic was the creation of a single man, a poetic genius who lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Yet when this man boldly undertook the fashioning of something new—a religious epic in the language of ordinary people—he had to situate it within the worldly order and also give it a relationship to the transcendent archetype. And so he presented it as only a fourthhand transmission of a divine Katha first uttered by Shiva to Parvati and then carefully preserved and passed on by authoritative narrators, and he was careful to point out its fundamental consistency with "numerous Puranas, Vedas, and agamas ." Despite the epic's obvious orthopraxy, its claim to authority did not go unchallenged. For its linguistic accessibility—its one truly revolutionary feature, and one which should not be underestimated—must have posed an implicit threat to the established order of scriptural mediation.^[224] The triumphant and irresistible rise of the Manas —the folksong that became a Veda—is graphically allegorized in the famous story of its attempted "suppression" by the Brahmans of Banaras beneath a pile of Sanskrit scriptures. Not surprisingly, this work became the text-of-choice for the upwardly mobile and the nouvel arrivé : the vehicle of legitimation for an upstart dynasty of Bhumihar tax collectors, the solace of rising mercantile and agricultural communities, and the refuge of captains of industry seeking religious merit and good public relations.

Yet there is another dimension to social mobility that should not be overlooked: the fact that those who arrive at the top sooner or later cast

[223] Heesterman, "Veda and Dharma," 80-81.

[224] Cf. Derrett's observation on renaissance Europe, "The coming of good vernacular Bibles and the collapse pro tanto of the traditional moral authority, which claimed secular and spiritual jurisdiction, were interconnected"; "The Concept of Duty in Ancient Indian Jurisprudence," 41.

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in their lot with those already there and become part of the repressive mechanism of the system—what "holds down" in opposition to aspiration. The example of the Ramanandi sadhus is pertinent. For several centuries they formed one of the most liberal religious orders in India, accepting women, untouchables, and Muslims into their fold.^[225] But when, in the eighteenth century, they sought royal patronage in order to enhance their prestige and protect their network of religious institutions, they had to adhere to a different set of rules: to restrict entry to twice-born males, apply varna -based^[*] commensality practices to communal meals, and appoint only Brahmans as their mahants .^[226] This process was not confined to orthodox Vaishnavas; the same dynamic was at work, for example, among the Shaiva Udasis, and even among the radical reformist sects.^[227] In the case of the epic, this process is reflected in the tendency of an elite, having associated itself with the text, to appropriate it and make it narrowly its own, and to use it to assert its dominance over other aspiring groups. If these groups come in time to accept the association, then the text may wither, like a tree cut off at its root.

The most revolutionary thing about the Manas was its language—its unashamedly folk diction—and in a curious way this has remained true. The very existence of a brilliant religious epic, however traditional in its outlook, in the "vulgar" mother tongue of flesh-and-blood people, has remained vexing to those whose self-image and status are derived from one of the "father tongues" of India—Sanskrit then, English now. There have been repeated attempts to fabricate line-by-line Sanskrit versions and present them as the original "divine" Manas of Shiva, which Tulsi merely translated into common speech.^[228] Such desperate efforts to set

[225] The best-known verse attributed to the order's founder enjoins, "Do not inquire from anyone his caste or community; whoever worships the Lord belongs to the Lord"; cited in van der Veer, Gods on Earth , 93.

[226] Burghart, "The Founding of the Ramanandi Sect," 133-34; Thiel-Horstmann, "Warrior Ascetics in Eighteenth Century Rajasthan," 5. Whether the sadhus in fact gave more than lip service to these standards is another question.

[227] Ghurye, Indian Sadhus , 145-46; Tripathi, Sadhus of India , 85. Note also that the "radical" Garib Dasis now assert their status by opening Sanskrit colleges; Tripathi, Sadhus of India , 53.

[228] These unsuccessful "duplicities" are mentioned by Sharan, "Manas ke pracin tikakar^[*] ," 908. I too was sometimes smugly informed that the Manas was "copied" from a Sanskrit original; cf. Shastri's testy contention that the narration cannot really be Shiva's because Shiva would have spoken "the divine tongue"; Manasmimamsa^[*] , 89-90. Hawley suggests that a similar "Sanskritization" process was at work in the Surdas tradition, reflected in the attempt to organize Sur's corpus according to the structure of the Bhagavatapurana^[*] ; personal communication, September 1986.

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Tulsi's epic, once and for all, within prescribed limits—not unlike the effort to "Brahmanize" Kabir^[229] —present an example of "Sanskritization" so literal as to seem laughable—save that they are so doggedly implacable. But an alternative and more subtle means of appropriation is what might be termed "Veda-ization."

It is from this perspective that we must reconsider the latter-day yajñas of Swami Karpatri and his followers, in which perhaps more than words are being "sacrificed." It is not the mechanical recitation that is problematic here—as I have already noted, that has a long tradition and a practical use—but rather the attempt to associate the Manas with Vedic ritual performance: to give it the ultimate status, which also means to withdraw it from the realm of the living. For these occasions, the Gita Press prints up elaborate instructions in Sanskrit on the "correct" way to recite the Manas , and the ritual specialists go through the motions with customary expertise. These trappings of Brahmanical culture represent an association dating back less than half a century, yet they are clearly important to the patrons who pay for the events and seek to derive status and merit from them. Such performances, though impressive, are in fact devoid of the real life that the text has for its audience—its life as story—and so this has to be pumped back into them through dioramas, processions, and dramatizations: a return to more vital genres such as jhanki and lila . The yajñas currently proliferating throughout the Hindi heartland make Manas recitation a spectator sport and specialist activity, and the more modest householders who seek to imitate these events do so mindful of the new rules of the game: they hire Brahman reciters to come into their homes, loudspeakers and all, and end with a fire sacrifice. The family members, unless particularly ambitious, sit it out on the sidelines. Thus, the sacralization of the cultural epic may be accompanied by a shift away from direct participation in its performance. One of my most outspoken interviewees observed of Swami Karpatri, "He has made our Manas into a religious book, something people chant in the morning, after taking a bath. But in my family we used to sing it together at bedtime, for pleasure. Do you see the difference?"

Parallel to the vogue for yajña is the increasingly unrelenting association of the Manas with varnasram^[*] dharma, in the euphemistic and re-

[229] Keay, Kabir and His Followers , 28. Such attempts to "rewrite history" (as anti-Muslim propagandist P. N. Oak frankly labels his agenda) may be more influential in shaping the popular Hindu conception of the past than either Indian or Western scholars realize.

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pressive sense in which, as I have noted, this term is now used by the upper classes.^[230] Another significant and related phenomenon is the withdrawal of the modern elite from recreational contact with the lower classes. The one form of Manas performance that seemed to be on the decline in Banaras was the most egalitarian and participatory of them all: the local folksinging style that appeared to embarrass some of my educated neighbors.^[231] Such recreational, rather than ritual, use of the text in a pleasurable group activity uniting upper and lower classes now appears to be acquiring the stigma of "backwardness." Kumar has noted a similar process at work in neighborhood festivals, including Ramlila ,^[232] and although Katha seems to have retained a relatively high status, the participatory and folk dimensions of this art too may in time restrict its patronage or, perhaps more likely, cause it to be withdrawn from the public arena. I found, for example, that certain of my wealthy and educated acquaintances were eager to hear and copy my tapes of Katha performances (provided the expounder was of high repute), yet they would never go to such programs themselves; to sit on the ground amid a motley crowd, to strain forward eagerly to hear, to exclaim with delight at a nice turn of phrase—these things were no longer suitable to people of their dignity. They would sit in private shrine rooms and do ritualized recitation, yes, but they would no longer go to a lila , a Katha , or a singing program. The current vogue for private Katha may likewise reflect an attempt to control the environment and restrict the audience. I am told, for example, that the Tamil expository art of kathakalaksepam^[*] has recently moved into the concert hall to become an elite performance genre, with tickets priced at Rs 40 and up, and a dignified and unresponsive upper-class audience.^[233] The combination of the elite's withdrawal from mass-participatory forms of performance and its emphasis on an interpretation of the text heavily weighted toward the rigid protection of privilege might ultimately convince the lower classes that there is no recourse for them in this epic and discourage them from using it, as so many have done, for personal and social aspiration.

I set out to discover the "life" of this text and found it in performance. The essential nature of performance, which is to effect emo-

[230] Cf. the testimonials prefixed to the Vijayatika^[*] , which constantly emphasize as this commentary's special feature the fact that it upholds varnasram^[*] dharma.

[231] Although the same caveats given earlier must be applied to any hasty judgment of the "decline" of this tradition, it is notable that the singers at Sankat Mochan on Hanuman's birthday in 1983 told me that a decade or so earlier the courtyard had been crammed with groups, whereas now only six or seven were present at one time.

[232] Kumar, The Artisans of Banaras , 195.

[233] Lee Weisman, personal communication, August 1986.

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tional uplift through communication, imposes limits on the tendency toward ritualization and withdrawal. Audiences still "vote with their feet,"^[234] and a text that no longer speaks to them will quietly drop out of the repertoire, as most of the Puranas appear to have done. A living text, like an organism, has a life cycle, and perhaps a life expectancy as well. Yet religious texts in India never "die"; they simply recede into the more ethereal realms of the Word—authoritative but rarely heard—and yield their places to some upstart on the road to Veda-hood. For this upstart, as for so many problematic things in the culture, there is a euphemism: the "Fifth Veda." Through the centuries numerous texts have earned this designation: the Natyasastra^[*] for an actor or musician, the Tiruvaymoli^[*] for a Tamil Shrivaishnava, the Mahabharata for almost everyone; and now, for Hindi speakers, the Manas . The Fifth Veda is the text we actually know and love, and because we love it, we want it to be true and authoritative. But the designation, great as it is, is a symbol of transience too, for real eternality is beyond this world and belongs only to texts that no one knows. And so the Fifth Veda, ensign of our own aspiration, gets an honorary but always unsteady place on the borders of eternity.

Shrinath Mishra once told me that the greatness of the Manas and the secret of its popularity lies in the fact that it "teaches by example." I have indeed found this to be true—and in more than the conventional sense—because for Hindu culture, along with (and perhaps more important than) what a text says , is what it does . For four hundred years the Manas has functioned as something like a living yajña —a performance of meaning that samskar -ized^[*] and thereby changed its performers: made them over into what they aspired to be, while bringing transcendence to earth in the form of human language and song. When it ceases to do this—and fresh memories of large, enthusiastic audiences tell me that this day is yet a long way off—the Fifth Veda will merge with the other four, in the world beyond change and aspiration.

But that is outside the limits of this Katha .

[234] I borrow the idiom that Eck so aptly applies to the behavior of Hindu pilgrims; Banaras, City of Light , xvi.

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Glossary of Names with Transliteration

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---

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---

Index

A

Acharya Dev, 403 -4

Adhikar , 281 ;

of chief listener, 148 ;

in Katha tradition, 139 -40;

of women as expounders, 172

Adhyatmaramayana^[*] , 392 ;

influence on Manas , 7

Advaita philosophy, influence on Manas , 7

Agradas, 314 -15

Ahir caste: participation in Ramlila , 274 ;

status, 425

Aj , 269 -70, 273

Akbar the Great, 368 -69

Akhand^[*]path^[*] : defined, 55 ;

rituals described, 74 -79

Akhara^[*] , 47 , 291 n. 75;

martial dancing dubs, 291 -92

Allegory: in Katha , 228 -31;

of Manas Lake, 20 -22

All-India Hindu Mahasabha. See Hindu Mahasabha

Aranya^[*]kand^[*] , 13 ;

scene in Ramlila , 306

Arnoul of Boheriss, 240

Arti , 77 ;

after Katha performance, 188 ;

at Ramnagar Ramlila , 326 -27;

text and ceremony, 72

Arya Samaj, 361 , 364 , 366 , 370 , 383

Ashvin, month of, 255

Assi Ghat Ramlila . See Tulsi Ghat Ramlila

Astayam^[*] , 317 -18

Athavale, Pandurang, 433

Avadh, Nawabs of, 259 -61. See also Daula, Asaf ud-

Avadh, peasant revolt in, 374 -78, 381 -82

Avadhi dialect, 415 ;

Sufi literature in, 15 -16

Awasthi, Induja, 256 -57, 266 -67, 277

Ayodhya, 261 , 369 ;

Babari Mosque controversy, 391 ;

daily Katha programs in, 193 ;

Katha tradition in, 139 , 171 , 330 ;

Ram-nam banks, 413 -14;

Ram Navami festival, 250 ;

Shish Mahal Temple, 246 ;

Swing festival, 330 -31;

Vivah Panchami festival, 250

Ayodhyakand^[*] : final couplet in ritual, 71 ;

nineteenth century popularity of, 418 ;

opening couplet in singing program, 105 ;

Prayagdas's ignorance of, 320 ;

Ramkinkar's interpretation of verse, 229 -30

B

Baba Ramchandra, 375 -76

Babineau, Edmour, 351 , 359

Bacchu Sur, 161

Bahrialang^[*] , 296 -300

Balaram, 171

Balkand^[*] , 26 ;

in Khojwan Ramlila , 285 ;

length, 13 ;

Parashuram episode, 221 -22;

rasik emphasis on, 320 ;

in singing programs, 104 -5

Banaras, 8 , 42 -52;

bahrialang^[*] , 296 -300;

development of Ramlila , 254 -67;

Malviya's activities in, 366 ;

popularity of Manas singing, 100 ;

popularity of Ramlila , 267 -71

---

Banaras, maharajas of, 63 ;

patronage of Katha135 -37;

patronage of Ramlila , 259 -67;

as personification of Shiva, 331 ;

role in Kot^[*]Vidai ceremony, 308

Banarsipan , 44 , 296

Bare Ganesh Temple, Manas singing group, 102 , 109 -10

Bauman, Richard, 33 ;

on framing, 18 , 23

Bayly, Christopher A., 362 , 374 -75, 420 -21

Bengali Vaishnavas. See Gauriya Vaishnavas

Benimadhav Das, 59

Bernard, Saint, 237

Bhagavadgita: as Hindu "Bible," 361 ;

Manas passage compared to, 202

Bhagavatapurana^[*] , 7 , 366 ;

Katha based on, 115 -16, 195 -96;

phalsuti of, 57 -58

Bhaktamal: praise of Tulsidas, 9 ;

Priyadas on Tulsi's Katha129

Bhaktirasbodhini See Bhaktamal

Bhakti tradition, 281 ;

emphasis on performance, 255 ;

importance of satsang^[*] , 111 ;

Puranic exposition tradition, 124 ;

reinterpretations of Ramayan, 4 -5

Bhang, 46 ;

use in bahrialang^[*] , 297 , 300

Bhanita See Poetic signature

Bharat, as fraternal ideal, 348 -49

Bharat Dharm Mahamandal, 365 -66

Bharati, Agehananda, 361 , 419

Bharatiya Jana Sangh. See Jana Sangh

Bharat Milap, 258 -59, 262 , 265 , 347 ;

of Chitrakut Ramlila , 271 -77

Bhat^[*] , 124

Bhav , in Katha tradition, 132 , 187 , 225

Bhavisya^[*]purana^[*] , 126

Bhavprakas commentary, 142

Bhumihar caste, 135

Bhushundi. See Kak Bhushundi

Binduji, 161 -62, 174

Birla Academy of Art and Culture, 204

Birla family, 203 -6, 422 , 424 -46

Birla Temple. See Lakshmi Narayan Temple

Bonazzoli, Giorgio, 58 -59, 124 -27

Bose, Subhas Chandra, 379

Brahmanas (texts), 121

Brahman caste: emphasis on varnasram^[*]dharm , 389 ;

as expounders of Manas , 135 , 170 ;

as mediators of Sanskrit epics, 123 -24;

opposition to Tulsidas, 8 -10, 142 ;

Parashuram episode, 221 -22;

relation to Kshatriyas, 349 , 353 , 357 -58;

Tulsi's attitude toward, 398

Brahmo Samaj, 360 , 364

British period: economic impact of, 420 -24;

impact on Katha tradition, 137 ;

peasant revolt during, 374 -78;

scholarly appreciation of Manas , 29

Bryant, Kenneth, 312

C

Calendar, ritual, 64

Canticle of Canticles, 237 , 239

Caran^[*] , 124

Caupai , 14

Chaitganj Ramlila , 289 -90

Chaiti, 100

Chakkanlal, Munshi, 148 -50

Chand , 16 -17

Children, as Manas expounders, 172 n. 13

Chini Kshetra: daily Katha , 194 ;

recitation of Manas , 54

Chitrakut, 50 , 119 , 271 , 351

Chitrakut Ramlila , 258 -59, 271 -82, 325

Choteji, Sant, 156 ;

encouragement of women expounders, 172

Christianity: controversial scripture passages, 400 ;

interpretation of Manas , 30 -31;

Katha compared to sermons, 234 -42;

monastic lectio divina , 176 ;

scripture as mirror, 246

Citra ramayan^[*] , 136 , 330

Coburn, Thomas, 127

Colonial period. See British period

Communalism, dispute over Gyan Vapi, 80

Congress Party. See Indian National Congress

Cow protection, 365 -66, 386 -87

D

Daksina^[*] : to expounders, 165 ;

to reciters at Gyan Vapi, 85

Dandi^[*] order, 384

Dark Age. See Kali Yuga

Dashahra festival, 51 , 66 , 248

Datt, Purushottam, 153

Daula, Asaf ud-, 141

Dayanand Sarasvati, 360 -61, 368

Delhi, 260 , 429 ;

Birla Temple program, 205 ;

Ramlila productions, 252 -53

Devanagari script, 364 -65

Devi. See Goddess

DeviBhagavatapurana^[*] , 59 , 67

Dev Tirth Swami. See Kashthajihva Swami

Dham , 186

Dharma, 343 -44, 352 -54, 434 ;

in Gandhi's thought, 380 -81;

in modern Hindi, 363 n. 54;

Rajagopalachari's view of, 388 -89

Dhyan , 313

---

Din, Jayramdas, 177 , 393 -97

Divali festival, 75 -78

Doha , 14 -15

Domestication, in folk narratives, 212 -13

Dumrao, royal patronage of Manas , 137

Durga dancers, 291 -92

Durga Puja, 81

Dvivedi, Ramgulam, 139 , 144 -46, 321

Dvivedi, Thakur Prasad, 322 , 324

E

Eck, Diana, 43 , 267 -68

Erdman, Howard, 383

F

Farquhar, John N., 360 -61

Flower garden episode. See Phulvari

Folksinging: Chaiti, 100 ;

Holi, 100 , 110 ;

Kajli, 100 -101,105 -6, 109 -10;

Manas in, 97 -112;

women's, 77 -78

Formulas, in Katha , 191 -92, 235

Four ghats, narrative framing of Manas , 25 -27

Framing, 18 ;

allegory of Manas Lake, 20 -22;

narration as, 22 -29

G

Galiyam^[*] : in joint family, 350 ;

in women's folksongs, 77 -78, 251

Gandhi, Mohandas K., 161 , 368 , 399 ;

interpretation of Ramraj , 378 -82;

response to peasant revolt, 377 -78;

on Tulsi's language, 417

Ganesh, 68

Ganga (Ganges River), 42 -43;

excursions across, 296 -300;

Tulsi's mention of origin, 120

Garuda, 28

Gauriya Vaishnavas: influence on Ramlila , 264 , 309 -11;

view of Ram, 356

Gautamcandrika: founding of Ramlila , 255 -56, 309 ;

Tulsi as expounder, 128 -29

Gita Press, 60 , 66 -67, 177 ;

Manas edition, 61 -62, 368 ;

Manaspiyus^[*] edition, 154 ;

Manas recitation system, 55 -56

Goddess: devipith^[*] , 182 ;

Durga dancers in Ramlila , 291 -92;

recitation during Navratra festival, 66 -67

Goswami, Piyush. See Piyush Goswami

Goswami, Rupa. See Rupa Goswami

Greaves, Edwin, 416 -17

Gregory the Great, 237

Grierson, Sir George, 29 , 63

Growse, Frederic Salmon, 63 ;

appreciation of Manas , 29 , 418 ;

use of rhyme in translation, 16

Guru, role in Katha tradition, 137 -41

Gyan Vapi, 80

Gyan Vapi Manas festival: evening Katha program, 200 -203;

payment to performers, 167 ;

recitation program, 80 -91, 163 , 188

H

Haberman, David, 135 n. 50 , 310

Hanuman, 11 -12, 65 , 68 , 228 ;

birthday observances, 100 , 161 ;

in Chitrakut Ramlia , 272 ;

daily temple routine, 195 ;

encounter with Lankini, 242 -43;

as incarnation of Shiva, 48 ;

invocation by expounders, 184 ;

order to Ramgulam Dvivedi, 144 -45;

order to Jnani Sant Singh, 141 -42;

prominence in Banaras, 47 -51;

Ramnarayan Shukla's devotion to, 174 , 199 . See also Sankat Mochan Temple

Hanumancalisa , 11 -12, 47 , 68 , 89 , 195

Harikatha , 116 , 159 n. 100

Harishchandra, Bharatendu, 147 , 267

Heesterman, J. C., 392

Hein, Norvin, 243 , 248 -49, 256 , 267 , 269 ;

on Braj Ramlila , 285 ;

on kathak tradition, 116 ;

on linguistic archaism, 415 ;

on Ramraj , 374 ;

origins of Ramlila , 254 ;

Vaishnava child actors, 309

Hess, Linda, 249 , 281 , 326 -27, 395 , 404 -6

Hijra^[*] , 286 ;

Shurpankha impersonated by, 290

Hindi language, 419 . See also Khari Boli dialect

Hindu Mahasabha, 365 , 382 -83

Hindu Renaissance, 360 -61, 419

Holi, 100 , 110

I

Improvisation, in Katha , 187 , 235 -36

Indian National Congress, response to peasant revolt, 377 -78

Iramavataram , 5

J

Jagannath, 281

Janakpur (Mithila), 250 -51

Jana Sangh, 383 , 386 -87

Jhanki: in Manas text, 313 ;

in Ramlila , 256 -57, 277 ;

in recitation festival, 94

Jhulamela , 330 -31

John of Fecamp, 238

Joint family, 344 -49

K

Kabir, 351 , 355

Kaithi script, Manas manuscripts in, 9

Kajli, 100 -101, 109 -10;

in Visheshvar Ganj, 105 -6

Kakar, Sudhir, 408

---

Kak Bhushundi, 28 , 170 ;

as model for devotees, 318

Kali Yuga, 28 , 370 -71, 405 , 427 ;

duration of, 371 n. 76;

and foreign rule, 368 ;

importance of Puranic recitation, 58 ;

importance of scriptural exposition, 125

Kalyan^[*] , 67 ;

Manas recitation rituals prescribed, 70 -72;

Manasank , 62

Kamaksha Devi Temple, 67 , 92

Kampan, 5

Kanak Bhavan Temple, 70 , 319 ;

performance by Ramkumar Mishra, 151 -52, 166 ;

in rasik tradition, 316

Kapindraji, 161

Karpatri, Swami, 96 , 155 , 183 n. 29, 204 , 366 -67, 437 ;

leader of R.R.P., 384 -88

Kashi, 42 , 200 .See also Banaras

Kashthajihva Swami, 146 -47, 266 , 321

Katha , 40 , 115 -19;

on commuter trains, 409 -10;

compared to Christian sermons, 234 -42;

contemporary popularity of, 427 -33, 438 ;

defined, 115 ;

economic aspects of, 165 -69;

performers, 170 -75;

preparation for performance, 176 -82;

relation to Ramlila , 330 -32;

sammelan performances, 160 -64, 200 -203;

in sociopolitical movements, 365 ;

spiritual power of, 197 -98;

techniques of, 210 -31

Kathak , 124

Kathakalaksepam^[*] , 116 , 438

Kathakara , 39 , 116

Kathavacak , 157

Kavitavali , 6 , 128 ;

verse cited in Katha , 219

Kayasth caste, 9 , 148

Keshavdas, 267

Kevat^[*]prasang^[*] , 181 , 208

Khari Boli dialect, 45 ;

impact on popularity of Manas , 415 -19;

use in Ramlila , 267

Khari Kuan, Manas singing group, 102 , 109 , 111

Khojwan Ramlila , 173 , 268 , 282 -94, 325

Kirtan: after recitation ceremony, 77 ;

prior to Katha , 185 -86

Kisan Sabha movement, 375 -76

Kiskindha^[*]kand^[*] , 13 -14;

phalsruti of, 38

Kop Bhavan episode, 286 -89

Kot^[*]Vidai , 266 , 308

Krishna: contrasted to Ram, 356 -57;

Holi songs about, 110 ;

as junior brother, 349 ;

in Kajli lyrics, 106 ;

in Pushti Marg, 275 ;

in rasik tradition, 309 -11, 321 ;

scholarly response to, 30

Krsna^[*] paksa^[*] , 64

Kshatriya caste, 262 -63;

Ahir claim to be, 425 ;

relation to Brahmans, 349 , 353 -54, 357 -58

Kumar, Nita: on bahri alang, 296 -97;

on Manas singing, 100 -103;

on Ramlila , 271 , 282 -83, 289 , 291 n. 75

Kurmi, Baijnath, 158

L

Lacy, Reverend Rubin, 244

Lakshman, 17 , 213 , 221 ;

angry speech to Sumantra, 333 ;

as fraternal ideal, 348 -51

Lakshman Chaitanya, 183 n. 29

Lakshmi Narayan Temple, 181 , 205

Language, intelligibility of Manas, 415 -20

Lanka^[*]kand^[*] , 13 , 230 , 347 ;

controversy over verse, 336 ;

jhanki of Ram, 313

Leclercq, Jean, 232 , 237 -41

Lectio divina , 176 , 238

Lila , 249 -51;

theological views of, 322 -25;

worldly and esoteric dimensions, 316 -17

Lilavani^[*] , 69 , 301 -2

Literacy: and appreciation of poetry, 37 ;

and popularization of Manas , 60 ;

and standardization of texts, 431 ;

in Uttar Pradesh, 113

Lord, Albert, 35

Love of Learning and the Desire for God, The , 237 -41

M

McLuhan, Marshall, 431

Madhya Hindu Samaj, 382

Mahabharata: compared to Ramayana^[*] , 342 , 346 , 352 ;

motif of change-of-sex, 60 n. 14;

sanatanadharma in, 363 ;

suta as bard, 122 -23

Mahatma Gandhi. See Gandhi, Mohandas K.

Malviya, Madanmohan, 101 , 293 , 366 -68

Manas . See Ramcaritmanas

Manasank . See Kalyan^[*]

Manasarovar. See Manas Lake

Manasdipika commentary, 146 , 329 -30

Manas Lake, 20 ;

in Khojwan Ramlila , 283 ;

in Ramnagar Ramlila , 265

Manasmayank^[*] commentary, 143 -44

Manasmimamsa^[*] , 401 -3

Manasmuktavali , 177

Manaspiyus^[*] . commentary, 131 , 153 -54, 177

Mangalacaran^[*] , 183 -85

---

Mani Parvat, 331

Mantra, 19 , 75 ;

bijmantra , 245 ;

effect of mispronunciation, 89 n. 50

Marcus, Scott, 410

Marriot, McKim, 434

Marwari community, 421 -26, 428 ;

folktale of merchant's pilgrimage, 198 ;

patronage of Gyan Vapi festival, 85 , 93

Marwari Seva Sangh, 81

Maryada , 135 , 355

Masparayan^[*] , 73 -74;

defined, 55

Megha Bhagat, 257 -59, 271 -72

Mehta, Bhanushankar, 257 , 275 , 337 -39

Memorization: and appreciation of poetry, 37 ;

in Christian and Hindu tradition, 240 ;

in expounder's training, 176 ;

Hindi idiom for, 75 , 99 , 244

Miracle Plays of Mathura , The , 243

Mishra, Bankeram, 368

Mishra brothers, 396

Mishraji, Hari, 201

Mishra, Jvalaprasad, 366

Mishra, Kamlakar, photo, 304

Mishra, Krishnadatt, 128 . See also Gautamcandrika

Mishra, Ramkumar, 145 , 149 -53, 159 , 166 , 328 , 336

Mishra, Shrinath, 156 , 164 , 176 , 189 , 227 , 245 , 307 ;

on Brahman expounders, 170 ;

choice of career, 174 ;

on Parashuram episode, 222 -23;

performance fees, 169 ;

photo, 181 ;

on popularity of Katha , 429 ;

preparation for performance, 179 -81;

on satsang^[*] , 242 -43;

story from Bengali Ramayan, 133 ;

style of vyakhya , 212 ;

textual sources, 177 -78;

translations of performances, 213 -21

Mishra, Vishvanath Prasad, 256

Mithila, 250 -51

Morari Bapu, 432

Muhalla s: Khojwan as, 282 ;

Manas singing groups in, 100 ;

Ramlilas in, 268 -71

Muhammad, Rajesh, 172

Mukesh, 410 -11

Mulgosaim^[*]carit , 59 -60;

Tulsi as performer, 128 -30

Mundan^[*] , 53 n. 1

Musayra , 163

Muslims: as corrupters of women, 399 ;

Gyan Vapi dispute, 80 ;

impact on Ramlila , 254 -55, 259 -61;

influence on Katha tradition, 133 -34;

influence on rasik theology, 310 -11;

Sanatan Dharm view of, 368 -69

Mussoorie, 252 n. 10

N

Nabha Das, 9 , 315

Nakb-sikh , 311 -12, 317

Nakkatayya, 284 -85, 289 -94

Name of Ram. See Ram-nam

Nammalvar, 311

Namsankirtan^[*] . See Kirtan

Naradvani^[*] . See Lilavani^[*]

Nath, Gokarna, 201 -2

Nati Imli, 271

Nautanki^[*] , 288

Navahparayan^[*] : defined, 55 ;

established by Tulsidas, 59 -60;

preliminary purification, 87 -89

Naval Kishor Press, 61

Navratra festival, 66 -67

Nawabs of Avadh. See Avadh, Nawabs of

Nehru, Jawaharlal, 382

Nemi , 298 -300

New Delhi. See Delhi

Nine-day recitation. See Navah parayan^[*]

Nirgun^[*] devotional tradition, 10 , 26

Numerology: in Christian exegesis, 238 -39;

in recitation cycles, 64 -65;

significance of nine, 65 ;

use in Katha , 225 -28

O

Oral-formulaic theory, 35

Oral performance. See Performance, theory of

Otto, Rudolph, 212 n. 39

P

Padma purana^[*] , 126

Pandey, Gyan, 377

Pandey, Ramji, 156 , 175 , 234 , 328 -29;

photo, 303 ;

at Ramnagar Ramlila , 302 -3, 307 -8

Paramanand, 383

Parashuram, 221 -22, 335 -36, 357 -58

Parayan^[*]path^[*] , 54 , 266 . See also Path^[*]

Parvati, 217 -18

Path^[*] , 39 -40;

akhand^[*]path^[*] , 74 -79;

contemporary popularity of, 427 -28;

defined, 54 ;

literacy as encouraging, 63 ;

melodies used in, 69 ;

Ramlila chanting as, 301 -2;

relation to Katha , 331 ;

ritual applications of, 70 -72

Pathak, Kashinath, 288

Pathak, Shivlal, 139 , 142 -44, 321 ;

royal patronage, 137

Pathak, Shrinivas, 202 -3

Pathak, Vandan, 147 -48, 151 , 231 ;

anecdote on virtuosity, 187 n. 38;

sankavali^[*] text, 177

Patronage: of Katha , 160 -61, 164 ;

of Manas , 420 ;

by Marwari community, 420 -26;

of Ramlila , 269 , 282 -85

Pauranika^[*] , 124

---

Performance, theory of, 33 -37, 340 ;

technique of framing, 18

Phagua . See Holi

Phalsruti: defined, 38 ;

encouragement of recitation in, 117 ;

use in Puranas, 57 -58

Phulvari , 7 ;

in Kajli singing, 105 , 109 ;

in Ramnagar Ramlila , 332 ;

temple tableau of, 94

Pith^[*] . See Vyaspith^[*]

Piyush Goswami, 174 , 202 -3

Poddar, Hanuman Prasad, 62 , 368

Poetic signature, 10 -11, 17 -18

Pollock, Sheldon, 346 , 351 , 354 -55, 394

Possession, of expounder by Hanuman, 199

Postman, Neil, 431

Praman^[*] , 159 , 187 , 379

Prasang^[*] , 17

Pravacan , 160 , 178

Prayagdas, 319 -20

Premchand, 268

Publishing: early Manas editions, 61 -62;

impact of, 62 -63.See also Literacy

Puja-path^[*] , 54

Puranas: recitation tradition, 57 -59;

role of oral expounder, 124 -27

Pushti Marg, 275

R

Radha, 106

Raga, 187

Raghunath Das "Sindhi," 146 , 329 -30

Rajagopalachari, C, 388 -89

Ram: in bhakti tradition, 4 ;

rasik interpretation of, 310 , 316 ;

in Sanskrit tradition, 3 ;

Tulsi's view of, 355 -56

Ramanandi order: growing conservatism of, 436 ;

mangalacaran^[*] of expounders, 184 -86;

patronage by Banaras kings, 261 ;

at Ramnagar Ramlila , 298 ;

rasik branches of, 314 -18

Ramanandlahari commentary, 140 -41

Ramanujan, A. K, 212 , 393

Ramanuja order, 184 -85

Ramayana^[*] of Valmiki, 3 -4, 367 ;

compared to Mahabharata , 346 , 352 ;

inconsistencies in, 342 ;

in founding of Ramlila , 256 ;

kingship in, 354 ;

Lava and Kusha as performers, 122 -23;

popular ignorance of, 12 ;

sanatanadharma in, 363 ;

scholarly attention to, 30 ;

Tulsi's reference to Uttara kanda^[*] , 120

Ramayanis: in Chitrakut Ramlila , 275 -76;

in Khojwan Ramlila , 287 ;

in Ramnagar Ramlila , 301 -8

Ramayan^[*]paricaryaparisist^[*]prakas commentary, 147

Rambhaktimem^[*]rasik sampraday , 131 n. 45

Ramcandrika , 267

Ramcaritmanas: abbreviation of title, 12 ;

as basis for Ramlila , 248 -49;

date of composition, 8 ;

early manuscripts, 141 n. 59;

early publishing history, 61 -62;

framing of narrative, 18 -29;

as Hindi Veda, 367 , 435 ;

as Katha , 117 -18;

metrical structure, 13 -18;

popularity in nineteenth century, 63 ;

problems in translating, 31 -33;

significance of title, 18 -20

Ramcharandas, Mahant, 140 -41, 145 -46;

as rasik preceptor, 315 -16

Ramji Vyas, 178 -79

Ramkumar Das, 59 n. 12, 170 -71, 177 , 395

Ramlila , 41 , 45 ;

annual season, 251 -52;

in Banaras, 267 -71;

contemporary popularity of, 430 ;

geographical spread, 252 ;

melody used in recitation, 69 ;

outdoor staging, 263 -64;

rasik influence on, 320 -21;

Shivpur production, 337 -39;

theological interpretation, 322 -25. See also Ramnagar Ramlila

Ramnagar: construction of fortress, 135 -36;

selection of site, 263 ;

symbolic geography of, 263 -65

Ramnagar Ramlila , 136 , 147 , 194 , 233 -34;

arti ceremony, 326 -27;

and bahrialang^[*] , 296 -300;

enthronement mela , 97 -99;

experience for participant, 326 -29;

founding of, 262 -67;

influence on Khojwan, 284 -85;

as Manas commentary, 329 -36;

photos, 295 , 303 -5;

Raghuraj Singh's participation, 320 ;

Ramayanis, 301 -8;

rising cost of, 430 ;

theological interpretation, 322 -24

Ram-nam: as bij mantra , 245 ;

in epic's title, 19 ;

in Kali Yuga, 392 ;

Ram-nam banks, 413 -14;

as revolutionary cry, 376

Ram Navami, 66 , 250 , 330

Ramprasad, Paramhams, 143

Ramraj , 135 , 208 , 261 , 354 ;

rightist view of, 382 -92;

Sanatan Dharm interpretation, 368 ;

Tulsi's view of, 371 -74

Ram Rajya Parishad (R.R.P.), 384 -88

Ramsvayamvar^[*] , 320

Ras , 187

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (R.S.S.), 383 , 387

---

Rasik tradition, 310 -21;

definition of rasik , 311 ;

influence on Ramlila , 323 -25;

Kashthajihva Swami, 146 ;

sakha and sakhi branches, 315

Raslila , 357

Ratnavali, 6

Ravan, 91 , 252 -53

Recitation. See Path^[*]

Renoir, Pierre Auguste, 242

Revelation, Book of, 244 -45

Rewa, 137

Rg^[*]veda. See Veda

Riti poetry, 314

Ritual: recitation as, 78 -79, 95 -96;

Ramlila as, 266 . See also Vedic ritual; Yajña

Rosenberg, Bruce A., 234 -36, 238 , 240

Roy, Rammohan, 360

R.R.P. (Ram Rajya Parishad), 384 -88

R.S.S. (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), 383 , 387

Rudra. See Shiva

Rupa Goswami, 311

Rupert of Deutz, 241

Rupkala, Sitaramsharan Bhagvanprasad, 151 , 153

S

Sacrifice: Manas recitation as, 95 -96;

Puranic recitation as, 58 . See also Ritual; Vedic ritual; Yajña

Sadhus, 298 . See also Ramanandi order

Sagar, Ramanand, 412

Sagun^[*] devotional tradition, 10 , 26

Saket, 316 -18

Sakha and sakhi traditions. See Rasik tradition

Sammelan. See Katha

Samput^[*] , 69 -72

Samvad , 17 ;

as framing device, 21 ;

relation to Katha , 117

Sanatan Dharm movement: defined, 362 -63;

development of, 360 -71;

emphasis on varnasram^[*]dharm , 389 -90;

influence on Manas interpretation, 177 ;

role of Gita Press, 62

Sanka^[*] : concerning Sundar kand^[*] , 210 -11;

published collections, 177 ;

in Puranic tradition, 127 ;

in Vaishnava exegesis, 393

Sankat Mochan Temple, 49 -51, 156 , 169 , 174 , 189 , 414 ;

daily Katha program, 194 -200;

folksinging program at, 100 ;

Katha festival, 161 -63, 368 ;

Ramlila sponsorship, 255 ;

recitation festival, 92

Sankirtan^[*] . See Kirtan

Sanmarg , 155 , 384

Sanskrit language, 30 ;

diction in Katha , 190 ;

as father tongue, 436 -37;

promotion by R.S.S., 387 ;

use in recitation rituals, 89

Santi , 407 -8

Sant tradition, 356

Sarasvati, Dayanand. See Dayanand Sarasvati

Sati (goddess), 201 -2

Satsang^[*] , 111 ;

as milieu of Katha , 118 -19, 196

Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar, 382

Schechner, Richard, 96 , 249 , 266 , 284 , 298 , 331

Second Great Awakening, 235

Seva , 281

Shaivism, 10 , 24

Shaktism. See Goddess

Shankaracharya order, of dandi^[*] , 384

Sharan, Anjaninandan, 57 , 62 ;

on economics of Katha , 166 ;

emphasis on originality, 175 ;

essay on Katha tradition, 131 -39;

Manaspiyus^[*] , 153 -54

Sharan, Mohini, 93

Sharan, Rampriya, 320

Sharan, Sitaram, 186

Sharma, Din Dayal, 360 -62

Shastri, Rajnikant, 401 -3, 406 -7, 413 , 428

Shastri, Shivkumar, 367

Shastri, Srimati Krishna, 171

Shastri, Sunita, 171

Shatrughna, 349 n. 15

Shiva, 10 , 24 , 71 n. 35;

allegorical interpretation of, 230 ;

cited in Katha , 217 , 224 ;

Hanuman as incarnation, 48 ;

prominence in Banaras, 46 ;

in Ramnagar Ramlila , 331 ;

Vishvanath Temple, 80 ;

yajña honoring Rudra, 95

Shiva Narayan, 86 -87, 203

Shivpur Ramlila , 337 -39

Shravan, month of: festival at Tulsi Manas Temple, 51 ;

folksinging during, 105 -9;

Swing Festival, 330 -31

Shri Venkateshvar Steam Press, 61

Shudra caste, 394 -95, 402 -4

Shukla, Ramchandra, 347

Shukla, Ramnarayan, 156 , 179 , 228 , 307 , 432 ;

choice of vocation, 173 ;

daily Katha described, 197 -200;

interaction with audience, 189 -90;

mangalacaran^[*] , 184 ;

performance fees, 167 , 169 ;

photo, 168 ;

reverence for Manas , 182 ;

style of vyakhya , 211 ;

use of epithets, 192 ;

use of local dialect, 191

Shulman, David, 352 -53, 371

---

Shurpankha, 289 -90, 294

Singh, Balvant, 135 -36, 259 -60

Singh, Bhagavati Prasad, 320 -21

Singh, Chandradharprasad Narayan (C. N. Singh), 9 n. 18, 210 -11

Singh, Chet, 260 , 265

Singh, Gopal Sharan, 137

Singh, Ishvariprasad Narayan, 136 , 146 -49, 266 -67, 321

Singh, Jnani Sant, 141 -42

Singh, Mansaram, 135

Singh, Narayan, 398 -99

Singh, Prabhu Narayan, 136

Singh, Raghuraj, 137 , 266 -67, 320

Singh, Udit Narayan, 136 ;

founding of Ramlila , 262 -66, 321 , 329

Singh, Vibhuti Narayan, 63 , 276 , 322 , 330

Singh, Vishvanath, 137 , 141 , 145

Sita: characterization of, 344 -46;

illusory Sita, 7 ;

in Kajli song; 109 ;

in Kampan Ramayan, 5 ;

in Ramnagar Ramlila , 334 ;

in rasik tradition, 315 -17, 319 -20

Sitayan , 320

Smaran^[*] , 313

Song of Songs. See Canticle of Canticles.

Sontag, Susan, 232

Soratha^[*] , 14 -15

Srisampraday , 184 -85

Srngar^[*] , 275 ;

in rasik tradition, 316 ;

as temple festival, 53 n. 1

Srngari^[*]bhakti . See Rasik tradition

Srngariya^[*] , 274 -75

Sugriv, 213 -19

Suklapaksa^[*] , 64

Sumeru Temple, 265

Sundar kand^[*] , 48 , 50 , 307 -8;

exposition by Ramkumar Mishra, 151 ;

exposition by Shrinath Mishra, 213 -19;

Gandhi's interpretation of, 379 ;

Hanuman and Lankini, 242 -43;

in Kajli singing, 109 ;

modern popularity of, 418 ;

phalsruti of, 38 ;

problematic verse in, 210 -11;

use of framing in, 25 ;

verse written on trucks, 51 -52

Surdas, Ramsahay, 11 , 70

Surkishor, 319

Sursagar , 11

Suta , 122 -24, 170

Svang , 292 -93

Svarup: defined, 94 n. 54;

in Chitrakut Ramlila , 273 ;

in festivals, 251

Swadhyaya movement, 433

Swatantra Party, 383

Swing Festival, 330 -31

T

Tableau. See Jhanki

Tamil Ramayan. See Iramavataram

Tantric tradition, 24 , 309 -10, 314 , 316

Taraka, 230

Television, serialization of Ramayan, 12 , 411 -12, 432 -33

tika^[*] , 132 -33

Tikamgarh, 151

Tilak , 132 -33

Tivari, Devipalat, 152

Todar Mal, 47

Translation, problems in, 31 -33

Treta Yuga, 3 -4

Tripathi, Narayankant, 156 ;

childhood Ramlila role, 173 ;

daily Katha described, 194 -97;

training of grandsons, 174 -75

Tripathi, Rameshvar Prasad: childhood Ramlila role, 173 ;

daily recitation regimen, 75

Tripathi, Vidyabhaskar, 175 , 194

Tripathi, Vijayanand, 133 , 154 -55, 192 , 307 , 384 ;

chronology of Ramayan, 65 n. 25;

influence on Ramnarayan Shukla, 173 ; 179 . See also Vijayatika^[*] commentary

Tulsidas, 5 -7;

association with Banaras, 47 ;

concept of Manas as Katha , 117 -18;

devotion to Krishna, 275 n. 59;

encounter with Hanuman, 49 -50;

as founder of Ramlila , 255 -58;

as oral expounder, 128 -29;

originator of nine-day recitation, 59 -60;

poetic works, 10 -11;

social views of, 341 , 355 -56

Tulsi Ghat Ramlila255 -56, 262

Tulsi Manas Temple, 51

Tulsiparampara , 137 -57;

diagram, 138

Tulsivani^[*]69 , 89

U

Unmani, Sant, 158

Upadhyay, Ramkinkar, 156 , 164 , 174 , 432 ;

allegorical interpretations, 228 -31;

criticism of, 230 -31;

economic success, 167 -68;

interpretation of Ram's wedding, 223 -25;

metaphor of mirror, 225 , 246 -47;

patronage by Birlas, 425 ;

performance described, 203 -9;

Sanskritized diction, 191 ;

spontaneity of performance, 181 -82;

written works, 177

Upanishads, 121 ,353

Urdu, in Katha , 190

Urmila, 350

Uttar kand^[*] , 13 ;

vision of Ramraj , 371 -74

---

V

Vaishnavism: bodily signs of Vishnu, 223 ;

four aspects of Lord, 250 ;

eternality of lila , 225 ;

impact of Muslim rule, 134 ;

importance of Katha in, 115 ;

influence of Tulsidas on, 10 ;

Ram and Krishna compared, 356 ;

Ramanandi-Ramanuja distinction, 185 ;

rasik tradition in, 309 -11, 314 ;

theology of lila , 249 -51;

visualization techniques, 316 -21

Vaishya caste, 423

Valmiki, 247

Valmiki Ramayana^[*] . See Ramayana^[*] of Valmiki

Vandana . See Mangalacaran^[*]

Van yatra , 264 , 324

Varanasi. See Banaras

Varnasram^[*]dharm , 208 , 385 , 389 , 437 -38

Veda, 58 , 247 ;

authority of, 434 -35;

as frozen text, 127 ;

Mahabharata as Veda, 123 ;

Manas as Hindi Veda, 79 , 360 , 366 -67, 428 , 435 , 437 , 439 ;

as oral tradition, 56 ;

Vyasa as expounder of, 125 . See also Vedic ritual

Vedic ritual: havan in recitation ceremony, 78 -79;

model for Manas recitation, 437 ;

Ramlila compared to, 266 ;

revival of public rites, 95 -96;

storytelling during, 121 -22

Vibhishan, 213 -19, 276

Vighna Haran Hanuman Temple, 92 -94

Vijayatika^[*] commentary, 133 , 155 , 219 n. 69

Vijaydashami festival, 252 , 262

Vinay patrika , 7 , 128 ;

cited in Katha , 215

Virah , 101 , 109

Visheshvar Ganj, Manas singing group, 102 , 104 -8

Vishnu, 32 , 223 , 342 ;

Ram's association with, 354 . See also Vaishnavism

Vishva Hindu Parishad, 391

Vishvanath Temple, 46 , 80 ;

entry of untouchables, 385 ;

testing of Manas , 9 -10

Visualization, 225 ;

in rasik tradition, 316 -21

Vivah Panchami festival, 250 -51;

use of Vedic ritual, 96 n. 56

Vivekananda, Swami, 361 -62, 367

Vrat , use of Katha in, 116

Vyakhya , 125 ;

in Katha performance, 210 -11;

in Ramlila , 332

Vyakhyatr^[*] , 125 , 170

Vyas:Ramlila director as, 332 ;

role of Puranic expounder, 125 -26

Vyasa, Krishna Dvaipayana: as archetypal expounder, 125 ;

association with Ramnagar, 136 ;

and vyas seat, 182 -83

Vyaspith^[*] , 82 , 182 -83

Vyas seat. See Vyas pith^[*]

W

Wadley, Susan, 431

Weiner, Myron, 390

Women: exclusion from recreation, 300 ;

as expounders, 171 -72;

folksongs in ritual, 77 -78;

as Manas reciters, 73 -74, 405 -6;

in Marwari community, 424 ;

relation with brother-in-law, 350 ;

Shurpankha's mutilation, 289 -90;

Tulsi's attitude toward, 394 -403

Y

Yajamana , 58 , 78

Yajña: Manas recitation as, 95 -96, 437 , 439 ;

Puranic recitation as, 58 ;

Ramlila as, 266 . See also Sacrifice; Vedic ritual

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Preferred Citation: Lutgendorf, Philip. The Life of a Text: Performing the Ramcaritmanas of Tulsidas. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  1991. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft796nb4pk/

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