by Valmiki
Like any other monumental work of literature, the Rāmāyaṇa has always functioned on a variety of levels. Through the millennia of its popularity, it has attracted the interest of many kinds of people from different social, economic, educational, regional and religious backgrounds. It has, for example, served as a bedtime story for countless generations of Indian children, while at the same time, learned śāstrins, steeped in the abstruse philosophical, grammatical and metaphysical subtleties of classical Indian thought, have found it a subject worthy of their intellectual energies.4
Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa tells the tragic story of a virtuous and dutiful prince, the man who should be king, who is exiled because of his step-mother’s fit of jealousy. Rāma’s real troubles begin when he enters the forest for fourteen years with his beautiful wife Sītā and his devoted younger brother Lakṣmaṇa. Sītā is abducted by the wicked rākṣasa king Rāvaṇa who takes her away to his isolated kingdom on the far side of the southern ocean. Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa set out to rescue her and, along the way, they make an alliance with a dispossessed monkey king. The monkey king’s advisor, Hanumān, becomes Rāma’s invaluable ally and is instrumental in making the mission to rescue Sītā a success. At the end of a bloody war with the rākṣasas, Rāvaṇa is killed and Sītā is reunited with her husband. Rāma and his companions return to the city and Rāma reclaims the throne that is rightfully his.
Rāma’s equanimity and grace in the face of all the terrible things that happen to him, Sītā’s unflinching devotion to her husband, Lakṣmaṇa’s and Hanumān’s fierce loyalty to Rāma: these qualities have made the characters of the Rāmāyaṇa ideals in Indian culture, valued for their virtues and exemplary behaviour. Rāma is not just the perfect man, he is the ideal son, the ideal brother, and, most important, the ideal king. Likewise, Sītā, Lakṣmaṇa and Hanumān loom large in the cultural imagination as the perfect examples of their social roles.
Within this idealized and heroic tale of public honour and kingship is another intensely personal and intimate story. It is one of family relationships, of love between fathers and sons, brother and brother, friends and allies, husbands and wives. The Rāmāyaṇa is as much a tale of personal promises and private honour, of infatuation and betrayal, of harem intrigue, petty jealousies, destructive ambitions and enormous personal loss as it is a tale of rightful and righteous kings. Even as questions of kingly duty and nobility of character for the public realm are raised, the story revolves around fidelity, obligations and the integrity that refines individual relationships.
The Two Realms of the Rāmāyaṇa
The universe in which this tale occurs is expanded by gods and celestial beings, boons and curses, magical weapons, flying chariots, powerful sages, wondrous animals, heroic monkeys and terrifying rākṣasas. A crucial aspect of the expanded universe which includes the presence of the divine is the fact that Rāma himself is an incarnation, an avatāra, of the great god Viṣṇu. In Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa, Rāma does not know this about himself. While the gods are on his side in all that he does and often appear to help him or his allies, he goes through the story not knowing that he was born mortal for the express purpose of killing Rāvaṇa. The gods’ divine plan becomes Rāma’s personal destiny and must be played out to the bitter end. After the war is over, the gods appear and tell him who he is.
Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa is divided into seven books: Bālakānda (Childhood), Ayodhyākāṇda (Ayodhyā), Araṇyakāṇda (Wilderness), Kiṣkindhakāṇda (Kiṣkindha), Sundarakāṇda (Beauty), Yuddhakāṇda (War) and Uttarakāṇda (Epilogue). Of these, the first two and the last books (‘Childhood,’ ‘Ayodhyā’ and ‘Epilogue’) are situated firmly in the mundane world, in the kingdom of Ayodhyā, where Daśaratha and later Rāma rule wisely and well. The other books (‘Wilderness’, ‘Kiṣkindha’, ‘Beauty’ and ‘War’) are located in the forests south of Ayodhyā and in Lankā.
As with other Indian genres of literature, the magical and mundane, the natural and the supernatural encounter each other frequently in the Rāmāyaṇa. Usually, the supernatural and wondrous events occur outside the city, in the uncharted and dangerous regions through which the hero must pass. It is here, in the narrative freedom of the forests, deserts, islands and mountains, that Rāma meets monsters and magical beings. The magical and monstrous beings of the forests and wilderness are, most often, liminal creatures. They straddle the boundaries of more than one species, more than one category of being. Some of these liminal creatures test Rāma, others become his allies, as he goes further on his quest.
In the books located outside Ayodhyā, when the story enters the realm of magic and wonder, Rāma has to contend first with powerful sages and then with marauding rākṣasas before he meets the friendly animals who will help him get his wife back. While there are isolated instances of the magical breaking into the mundane world in the first and last books, the incidents either occur outside the kingdom (like the princes’ encounter with Tā?akā in ‘Childhood’) or under highly circumscribed situations (like Sītā’s disappearance into the earth during the sacrifice in ‘Epilogue’).
Once Rāma leaves the city, the known world has been left behind and from this point on, there are few signposts. In ‘Kiṣkindha,’ when Sugrīva is directing his monkey hordes to go out into the world and find Sītā, he provides a fascinating geography that begins with real kingdoms and real peoples and then opens up into a cosmology of wild and dangerous places where neither the sun nor the moon shine, where there are people with ears so long they can sleep inside them, and so on until you reach the regions where the gods and celestial beings live.
It is in the enchanted forests south of the kingdom that Rāma is truly tested for valour, patience and fortitude. Anything can happen here and it does. Rāma’s initial encounters with the monstrous Virādha and Kabandha are only preludes to the larger and deadlier conflicts that await him in Janasthāna and Lankā. The forests, in a sense, represent the underbelly of the Rāmāyaṇa’s idealized human actors and the perfect city of Ayodhyā. There seem to be different rules of conduct in the forests and wilderness and certainly a different set of narrative parameters. Birds that speak, monkeys that fly, form-changing rākṣasas and headless torsos that run amok are not unnatural or bizarre. Rather, they seem to fall into the normal course of events.
It has been suggested that these forest creatures, particularly the monkeys and the rākṣasas, are the shadows of the Rāmāyaṇa’s ideal principal characters.5 Because Rāma and Sītā cannot or will not act out their baser impulses, the monkeys and rākṣasas, who embody non-perfection, do it for them. For example, the monkey Vālī can banish his younger brother Sugrīva who usurped the kingship of Kiṣkindha, but Rāma is bound by his dharma and his model nature to let Bharata, his younger brother, keep the kingdom. Likewise, Śūrpanakhā, the rākṣasī, can express her carnal desire for Rāma whereas Sītā can only express sublimated love and devotion.
These sets of contrastive figures provide the poets with a vehicle for portraying the ambivalence inherent in all real human beings while keeping the central characters largely free from inner struggle.6
It is also in the same southern lands that Rāma perpetrates the two acts that apparently mar his shining dharmic nature: the unlawful killing of the monkey Vālī and the rejection of his faithful wife Sītā.7 By implication, it would seem that the strict moral and legal codes of Ayodhyā and the world of humans do not apply in the forests and the southern lands. Rāma operates here under a different code of ethics. In fact, in the early chapters of ‘Wilderness’, when Rāma, Lakṣmaṇa and Sītā have just entered the unpeopled forests, Sītā tells Rāma that here they must abide by separate rules for behaviour. She says that they must leave the codes of the city behind and learn to live by the rules of the forest dwellers. Ironically, though, Rāma’s unlawful acts are the result of his imposing the rules and dharma of human city living upon events that occur outside the city.8
Replications in
the Rāmāyaṇa
While most of the animals and rākṣasas function as shadows of the main characters, Rāvaṇa, the wicked king of the rākṣasas, functions as a mirror image, an inversion, of Rāma. Even his city of Lankā is a replica of Ayodhyā: as magnificent, as prosperous and as well-defended. Rāvaṇa is brave, strong and powerful, he is handsome and majestic. He has the capacity to perform fierce austerities and was able to demand the boon of invulnerability from Brahmā. Motivated by the desire to avenge the insult to his sister Śūrpanakhā, Rāvaṇa decides to abduct Rāma’s wife. Sītā refuses to submit to him and though he loves her to distraction, Rāvaṇa is honourable enough not to force himself upon her. Nonetheless, he also refuses to return her to Rāma and this stubborn refusal is, ultimately, the cause of his death.
We have seen that the magical beings of the forests can act as shadows for the Rāmāyaṇa’s principal human characters. This shadowing creates replications, i.e., the repetition of particular themes and structures in various ways in order to create and sustain a dominant mood, in this case, that of personal loss and tragedy.9 The replications generated by these shadows, the way their stories invert and retell the stories of Rāma, Sītā, Bharata and Lakṣmaṇa, reveal other dimensions to the Rāmāyaṇa, enriching the text and opening up our understanding of it.
The dominant replication in the Rāmāyaṇa is that of brothers, their loyalty and disputed succession. It is through the loss of kingdoms and wives (who are often identified with royal power, śrī)10 that the personal tragedies become publicly significant. The stories of Rāma and Bharata, Vālī and Sugrīva and Rāvaṇa and Vibhīṣaṇa all resemble each other. The issue of succession, duty and the rivalry between brothers is developed and explored in the juxtaposition of these three relationships.
Rāma is the rightful king of Ayodhyā. Not only is he the most virtuous and accomplished of all Daśaratha’s sons, he is also the eldest and, therefore, should succeed his father. But, because of promises Daśaratha had made in the past, Bharata, his younger son, is crowned king. Bharata, however, motivated by dharma and his love for Rāma, tries to return the kingdom to Rāma and then swears that he will act as a regent and hold Kosalā in custody until Rāma returns from his fourteen year exile. After Rāma has lost his kingdom, his wife is abducted, sealing, as it were, the loss of his royal power. But Sītā is stolen by Rāvaṇa and Bharata has not appropriated the kingdom for himself, leaving open the possibility that both wife and kingdom will be restored, unsullied, to Rāma.
In a direct parallel, Vālī, the older son of Ṛkṣarāja, becomes king of the monkeys. He disappears for a long time and his younger brother, Sugrīva, takes over the kingdom as well as his brother’s wife, Tārā. But Vālī returns and accuses Sugrīva of having plotted to overthrow him and banishes his younger brother from Kiṣkindha. Sugrīva swears that he has been honourable and that he was forced to accept the kingship by the council of ministers. Unlike the love that persists between Bharata and Rāma, Vālī and Sugrīva become deadly enemies and the issue of who should rule the monkey kingdom is resolved only when Vālī is killed. Sugrīva inherits both the kingdom and Tārā, his elder brother’s wife.
The third axis of brothers and rightful kings is explored in the story of Rāvaṇa and Vibhīṣaṇa. Rāvaṇa is the king of Lankā because he is older than Vibhīṣaṇa and because of his superior prowess. But Rāvaṇa is governed by his addiction to sensual pleasures and by the arrogance he derives from his boon of invulnerability. His abduction of Sītā and his refusal to return her to Rāma makes him unrighteous and impels Vibhīṣaṇa to leave his brother and join forces with Rāma. Rāvaṇa’s abduction of Sītā also symbolizes his usurpation of Rāma’s position as lord of the worlds and it is for this that he must be punished. At one point in the battle, when Vibhīṣaṇa thinks Rāma might be dead, he is terribly upset because his only chance of securing the rākṣasa kingdom seems to have vanished. Thus, Vibhīṣaṇa’s motives for deserting his brother have as much to do with his desire for the kingdom as with his desire to fight on the side of the right and the good. As a reward for Vibhīṣaṇa’s loyalty to dharma, Rāma confers the rākṣasa kingdom on him after Rāvaṇa is killed in battle.
Among the three sets of brothers and their three different relationships to one another and to dharma, it is Rāma and Bharata who clearly display the ideal relationship. The other two sets of brothers represent variations on this ideal.
Here again the relations we encounter are not expressed by the logic of simple binary oppositions but through a technique of strategic exaggeration and distortion. I can only express it analogically by saying that human relations are mirrored and echoed in the worlds of animals and demons, but the mirrors are the kind that not only invert but also exaggerate and distort.’11
Women in the Rāmāyaṇa
Just as the monkey brothers, Vālī and Sugrīva, play out an alternate option to the problem of disputed kingship, so, too, does the rākṣasī Śūrpanakhā, Rāvaṇa’s sister, provide a distorted mirror image of the chaste and virtuous Sītā.
Sītā and Śūrpanakhā exemplify two types of women who appear almost universally in folklore and mythology: Sītā is good, pure, light, auspicious and subordinate, whereas Śūrpanakhā is evil, impure, dark, inauspicious and insubordinate. Although male characters also divide into good and bad, the split between women is far more pronounced and is always expressed in terms of sexuality.12
Śūrpanakhā comes upon Sītā, Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa in the forest. Rāma has just fought off the rākṣasa Virādha who had grabbed Sītā, a foreshadowing of the more serious abduction that will take place a little later. Śūrpanakhā desires Rāma for his good looks and suggests that he give up his ugly human female for her. The brothers proceed to tease and torment Śūrpanakhā, eventually cutting off her nose and ears, Śūrpanakhā’s mutilation in the forest echoes the battle the princes had with Tā?akā in which Rāma was reluctant to kill a woman until Viśvāmitra assured him it was all right. The assault on Śūrpanakhā also moves the story into top gear—she complains to her brother Rāvaṇa at which point he decides to abduct Sītā in order to avenge the insult to his sister.
Both Katherine Erndl and Sally Sutherland13 demonstrate that the major opposition between Sītā and Śūrpanakhā is in terms of sexuality. Sītā’s is a domesticated, conjugal love while Śūrpanakhā represents untamed, aggressive and, therefore, potentially threatening desire. Sutherland suggests that the encounter between Sītā and Śūrpanakhā carries the potential of their becoming co-wives and therefore, they are set up as rivals for the same man’s affections. She also interprets the mutilation of the rākṣasī as necessary to curb her dangerous sexuality because Rāma cannot make the same mistake as his father: he cannot be ensnared by a woman’s charms. The Rāmāyaṇa implicitly argues that it is not wrong for Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa to assault and disfigure Śūrpanakhā, just as it was not wrong for them to have killed Tā?akā the yakṣinī, because they are in the forest where different rules apply and because Rāma cannot afford to commit the same mistakes as his father.
The same sexual opposition between rival wives is played out between Kausalyā and Kaikeyī, the mothers of Rāma and Bharata.14 While Kausalyā is the respected senior wife of Daśaratha, it is clearly Kaikeyī, the junior wife, who has the king enthralled by her beauty and charm. Kausalyā does everything right, including producing the perfect son, but she has little hold on the king’s affections even though she is the ideal wife and mother. Kaikeyī, on the other hand, is wilful and stubborn and gets her way all the time. She conspires to obtain the kingdom for her son and earns the contempt of everyone, including Bharata.
Similarly, good and righteous wives recur in the multiple stories of kingship. Vālī, the monkey king, has a virtuous and wise wife named Tārā who first urges him not to destroy Sugrīva and then cautions him against fighting Rāma. Vālī does not heed her words and goes out to meet his fate. When Vālī dies, Sugrīva inherits T�
�rā along with the kingdom. As his senior wife, she remains the voice of righteousness and sanity in his court and Rūmā, Sugrīva’s other wife, becomes the focus of his sexual attentions. The parallels with the Kausalyā-Kaikeyī situation are very clear: Kausalyā and Tārā are the wise, older wives who have the king’s attention because of their virtues and Kaikeyī and Rūmā are the younger wives whose sexual charms have a hold on the king. Similarly, Rāvaṇa’s chief queen, Mandodarī, tries her best to dissuade him from taking on the might of Rāma because she knows that Rāvaṇa is acting wrongly, but to no avail. While he holds Mandodarī in great respect, Rāvaṇa satisfies his sensual and sexual desires with the thousands of other women that fill his palace.
Along with dangerous, demonic women, female ascetics (like Svyamprabhā) and the virtuous wives of sages (like Ahalyā and Anusūyā) also live in the forests. Their rigorous austerities have given them magical powers and a high spiritual status. But once again (as with Sītā), because their sexuality has been sublimated, they pose no threat to anyone. In Lankā, the good rākṣasīs Saramā and Trijaṭā, both of whom help Sītā during her imprisonment, mirror the female ascetics of the forest. The female ascetics and the good rākṣasīs are safe havens in the regions where dangerous, demonic women abound.
These variations on particular themes in the Rāmāyaṇa are expressed through replication, shadowing and mirror images. Within the text, they explore multiple possibilities in terms of relationships, characters and story lines. The tight normative roles prescribed for Rāma, Bharata, Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa are, in fact, heightened by the more realistic paths taken by the non-human and liminal characters in the text. Apart from presenting a contrast between the prescriptive behaviour of the human characters and the morally ambiguous actions of their non-human shadows, replications also serve to generate the narrative trope of foreshadowing. As in the case when Virādha snatches Sītā away, events, emotions and even behaviours are hinted at and suggested in smaller incidents and side tales well before the critical moment occurs. Foreshadowing acts as a powerful tool in the building and maintenance of a mood for the epic. It also provides a narrative rhythm as it lays out the primary concern of the text.