Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation

Translator, folklorist and poet, A. K. Ramanujan wrote this essay for a conference at the University of Pittsburgh in 1987. It was later collected into the anthology Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia edited by Paula Richman. The copy carried here comes from that book published in the University of California Press in 1991. In this essay, Ramanujan traces the history of the Ramayana through its various tellings found across India and Asia. He cites work by the missionary and scholar Camille Bulcke that counts three hundred tellings or versions of the Ramayana and offers a nuanced view of a story, shaped depending on the region and culture of its storytellers. He also discusses how the story in turn shapes the beliefs and traditions of the people who hear the story. The Rama story exists in many languages including Annamese, Balinese, Bengali, Cambodian, Chinese, Gujarati, Javanese, Kannada, Kashmiri, Khotanese, Laotian, Malaysian, Marathi, Odia, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Santali, Sinhalese, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, and several Western languages. It also exists in multiple forms like kavya, puranas, dance-drama, mask-plays, puppet plays, sculpture, bas-reliefs and others...