Welcome back. We've listened to two examples of performances focused on an event from early in the Ramayana narrative. The hero Ram's wedding in Ayodhya and his travel to Janikpur to the home of his wife, Sita, where the final wedding rites were performed. After this, Ram returns to Ayodhya with Sita. But he is not allowed to remain there, he is exiled to the forest for 14 years. Ram is the eldest of four brothers, born of his father Dasharatha's three wives. As the eldest brother, Ram is supposed to rule the kingdom. But one of Ram's stepmothers, Kaikeyi, becomes terribly jealous. Kaikeyi insists that her son, Ram's brother Bharat, should rule. Dasharatha, Ram's father, is bound by a previous oath to grant her one boon, to grant her one wish. So, when she insists that Ram be banished to the forest for 14 years, Dasharatha is forced to exile his son. Sita travels with Ram to the forest. So, does his brother, Lakshman. This late 18th century watercolor from Gujurat shows a scene that is a focus of many textual versions of the Ramayana. This is Ram and his brother Lakshman ridding the forest of demons. There's a demon plague in the forest and it's one of the reasons that Ram has been sent to Earth as an incarnation of Vishnu, basically, is to free the world from these demons. Also in the upper portion of the painting, you can see Ram and Lakshman leaving Sita alone. She asks him to go and hunt a beautiful deer. But this was a trick. This was a trick hatched by the forest demons. So, while she's alone, the demon king Ravan abducts Sita and takes her back to his kingdom in Lanka. Just as caste and gender can affect tellings of the wedding of Ram and Sita, as you heard with the previous two audio examples, the previous two videos. The same is true regarding perspectives on the forest exile. It's not that women completely shy away from martial descriptions of battles and war at Sudasia's wedding in Banpurwa for example, the women who sang about their inability to afford a lavish Ramayana like wedding. Also saying that their family's wedding party was lined up like Rama's divine army ready to enter battle. So, women do certainly sing on these martial themes, but just as women's performances allow a certain questioning of the Ramayana narrative during Banpurwa weddings. Women's devotional song traditions also often focus on narrative-esque aspects of the forest exile that men do not dwell on. This isn't to say that the things women sing about aren't important to men. They certainly hear these messages and internalize them and able to talk about them. So, in the next video, you hear Nirmala Devi of Banpurwa village singing about Sita's suffering during the forest exile. Nirmala doesn't sing about Ram's slaying of the demons, instead she sings about Sita's hardships, she sings about the pain, the pain that Sita felt in her feet. She sings about Sita's hunger, Sita's unending hunger, she sings about Sita's unending thirst. These elements are not a feature of men's Ramayana performances in Banpurwa, so this is an obvious example of how gender affects Ramayana performance traditions. >> [COUGH] [MUSIC] >> So in this video you just heard, you heard Nirmala Devi sing about Sita's pain, Sita's suffering. This is something not focused on in most men's performance traditions in Banpurwa village. Groups from certain marginalized or historically oppressed communities may likewise choose to focus on other elements of the forced exile. You've already heard the joker Tulsi Bonsu sing about ritual offerings to the deity being polluted by parrot's saliva. He's a member of the Chambhar leather working caste. So Tulsi often had issues of purity and pollution on his mind. When I asked him about this line, that the weed is polluted by a single parrots peck. He told me about the story of Ram's encounter with Shabari in the forest. That encounter's depicted in this image here on the right with these statues of the Singhachelan temple in Andhra Pradesh in South India. Shabari is an elderly woman living in the forest. She's a tribal woman or very low caste woman, depending on who you talk to, depending on what tradition you're looking at. And in these two statues, you see her reaching out and offering Ram berries to eat which he gladly accepts. So, Shabari is from a marginalized community. Some describe her as untouchable even. And by convention, a high caste ruler such as Ram should never eat with her. But in the story, in the Ramayana, not only does he eat with her, but she's feeding him the sweetest berries from her garden. The way she knows that they're the sweetest berries is because she's tasted every single one, thrown out the sour ones and offering him only the best, only the sweetest. So remember from Tulsi Bonsu's song, that a whole ritual offering was polluted by a single peck, by a single peck from a parrot. Saliva is considered especially polluting and yet, in this story, Ram eats the berries even when his brother, Laksham, will not. And Ram explains that Shabari's devotion, her devotion is what matters, not any sort of caste hierarchy. So, individuals such as Tulsi Bonsu the joker, who identify with Shabari's low caste status, often focus on this story, and infuse their Ramayana performances with its sentiment. This reminds me of an event from the late 1980's when the Ramayana TV serial was being shown on the Doordarshan state run television station, this show was hugely popular in India. It ran for 78 episodes and basically it was a big problem for electricity companies. Because if the electricity ran out, if electricity got cut during the Sunday performance showings of the Ramayana, it would be a big problem because people were so desperate to watch it. I heard one person say that if you're a thief and you wanted to rob a store, do it on Sunday morning during the Ramayana performance broadcast because all of the police would be watching these broadcasts. It was hugely popular. So, this series originally concluded with Ram's triumphant return to Ayodhya after the forest exile. And this is where Tulsidas' Ramcharitmanas, the Hindi Awadhi version of the Ramayana finishes. Many other versions of the Ramayana end here as well. But Valmiki's Sanskrit text includes an additional chapter. And in that chapter, Valmiki appears as a character himself. Dalit communities in India, and by Dalit we refer to low caste groups formerly referred to as untouchables. Dalits consider Valmiki to be a member of their own community. You may remember that Valmiki began his life as a thief, as a low caste thief. And gained salvation by meditating on the name of Ram. For this reason, many Dalits wanted to see more episodes of the state run Ramayana series, the state produced Ramayana series, so they could see their hero on the screen. Sanitation workers, many of whom are Delits, went on strike in several North Indian cities. And when the garbage started piling up in the streets, the government was forced to make more episodes of the TV Ramayana. I can't think of any other examples like this in the world, an example of a group forcing the state to produce an artistic work. And I think this tells much about individual groups' varied interactions and interpretations of the Ramayana tradition.
