How often has it happened that you have woken up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water and ran back to your bed chanting “Ram” over and over againIJ We look at Ram as a deity and worship him. But not many would know that Ram was not deitified until Tulsidas wrote his version of the epic. More than Valmiki’s Ramayan, the Kambhan Ramayan was responsible for the deitification of the character.
The more we hear, narrate and write about this epic, we realise that the vastness is far too big to even comprehend. According to AK Ramanujan, there are over 300 version of the epic and a few significant departures in the narrative but mythologists, researchers and those interested in the epic consider Valmiki’s version of the tale as the base of all studies and reference.
At a recent discussion, organised by Katha, mythologist and author, Utkarsh Patel, narrated few of the many variations and diversions that the text has gone through over the years. But considering the sensitive times we are living in he took a moment to mention and explain the difference between mythology and religion. “Mythology, and moreover these two epics (Ramayan and the Mahabharat), do not infringe on religious beliefs. They do not hurt or touch upon religion,” he said.
Patel narrated a tale which could possibly answer how so many version of the text came into being in the first place. “Some would believe that Hanuman craved the entire story of the Ramayan on a mountain. But since he was not quite satisfied with it, he broke the mountain. And Valmiki is said to have picked up one of the pieces. Others were picked up from different folk narratives,” Patel narrated.
There were a few version of the text that Patel narrated on, to show how the narrative has changed and adopted itself according to time, place and the cultural milieu of a given time. like, according to the Adhyatma Ramayan, Sita did not go with Ravan, but she had transformed to Maya Sita. “It narrates that she entered the fire to emerge as Maya Sita and the same way, the agni pariksha that Ram asked Sita, or in the case Maya Sita, to take was justified. She came out as Sita,” Patel said.
South Indian Ramayan (Kambhan)
The mythologist pointed out that Ram is essentially a North Indian character and is not worshiped too much in the South. But even then they have their own version of the text, where everything has a Tamil approach. One of the digressions that the Kambhan Ramayan takes is in the mutilation of Surpanakha. Most of the versions describe laxman chopping off her ears and nose but in the Kambhan narrative, her nipples are cut off, too. “In North India, it is a matter of shame to get your nose cut but in Tamil culture, cutting off the nipple is the ultimate insult and is a common mythological motif,” he explained.
Muslim Ramayan (Mappilla)
It would come as a surprise that one such version exist, where Ram is referred to as ‘Sultan’. It might as well have been a translation because the rest of the characters and events remain the same in this interpretation of the text.
The Jain Ramayan
Jains are considered realists and, therefore, did not believe in the supernatural happenings in the epic. “Magical things do not happen in Jain Ramayan because they are rational,” Patel pointed out. So there are no miraculous childbirth, Hanuman does not fly and Ravan does not have 10 heads. “It says that when Ravan was born, his mother was gifted a pearl necklace and when she put the necklace on Ravan, she saw 10 reflections of her son’s head,” he explained.
In this text, Ram does not slay Ravan either. laxman does. “According to the text, it was Ram’s last birth so he could not shed blood. So laxman kills Ravan,” Patel said.
Gond Ramayan
This was not written but narrated in art and was documented by Durga Bhagwad. However, in this version of the Ramayan, also called the lachman jati Ramayan, laxman is the hero while Ram and Sita cut a sorry figure. The Gond people look up to laxman and not Ram. Patel said that there are two interpretation of the story. One recounts how Ram goes to play dice with Mahadev and forgets the dices at home. He asks laxman to get it from the house and when he goes there, Sita closes the door and tried to seduce him. When laxman refuses, it hurts her ego and she tears her clothes, breaks her bead necklace and turns the room upside down. When Ram returns, she tells him that laxman had forced himself on her. Ram, without even cross checking, blames laxman and punishes him. laxman pleads innocence but is made to go through an agni pariksha where the cauldron of boiling oil, in which he was asked to step in, turned into flowers. Thereafter, he goes on a pilgrimage and returns after 14 years only to find his brother and sister-in-law living in despicable conditions. He pleads the king to restore to them their former glory. “The Gond people look up to laxman. But the point to note here is that Sita is not chastised for telling lies,” Patel pointed out.
Patel continued to explain that the versions change to make the epic more adaptable to the cultural milieu of the time and also to make it more palatable. “like in the Krittibas Ramayan of Bengal, Ram wears the Bengali topor when he gets married,” Patel gave an example.
To further the discussion on the mythologies surrounding epics, he pointed out that unlike the Ramayan, the Mahabharat does not have much variation because of the sheer length of the narrative, “Moreover, Ramayan is a linear text and Mahabharat keeps going back and forth. That makes it difficult to be interpreted,” he said.
He went on to narrate how the Malayam version of Mahabharat has an element of black magic involved. The Bheel Bharat version of the Mahabharat, on the other hand celebrated the female sexuality. “In this text, sex is not look down upon. It actually narrated how Draupadi had consensual sex with Vasuki as Arjun watched. Arjun was actually hung on the wall by Vasuki because he objected,” Patel described.
The Alli Rani version of the text, however, describes the importance of virility. “In mythology is believed that a woman loses her powers when she loses her virginity. As in this case happened with Alli Rani, who lost her ability to rule a kingdom after she had slept with Arjun,” Patel said.
To wrap up a rather engaging discussion on mythology, Patel concluded that epics and myths have been in existence for millions of years and have only been adjusted, and sometime “sanitised” to suit a particular time, place and cultural milieu.