Ramayana Casts Its Ancient Spell

via CAAI News Media

By SONIA KOLESNIKOV-JESSOP

Published: February 3, 2010

SINGAPORE — With numerous heroes and villains and its powerful feel-good message of good triumphing over evil, the Ramayana has been one of the great epic poems of Indian culture for centuries. Originally attributed to the Hindu Sanskrit poet Valmiki, who lived about 400 B.C., the story has been retold and adapted over time by poets, scholars and everyday storytellers.

It has also captured the imagination of many other cultures beyond its origins in India. In Southeast Asia, scenes from the Ramayana can be found in places ranging from Prambanan, a 9th-century Hindu temple compound in Yogyakarta in central Java, Indonesia, to the magnificent 12th-century Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

“Ramayana Revisited: A Tale of Love & Adventure,” an exhibition that is running at the Peranakan Museum, Singapore until Aug. 22, underlines the cross-cultural power of the popular epic.

As it spread across Southeast Asia, the Hindu tale was adapted, with localized versions emerging like the Ramakien in Thailand or the Reamker in Cambodia. Through the display of shadow puppets, papier-mâché masks, sculptures and paintings on paper and cloth sourced from the permanent collection of the Asian Civilisations Museum, this exhibition narrates the Ramayana story according to a 17th-century version from north India. The narrators of this version are Lava and Kusha, the two sons of Rama, and it tells the classic tale of their father’s epic quest to rescue their mother, Sita, from the demon king Ravana with the help of Rama’s devoted friend Hanuman and his army of monkeys.

While some of the artifacts that are shown are ancient and quite rare, like a 12th-century bronze Hanuman from the late Chola period in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, or a 12th-to-13th century bas-relief from the state of Madhya Pradesh of a reclining image of Vishnu on cosmic snake, others — especially shadow puppets and masks — are more recent. Some have been commissioned by the museum over the past 15 years.

“Leather and papier-mâché don’t last, so it’s rare to find very old artifacts,” said Gauri Krishnan, senior curator for South Asia at the museum. The inclusion of these objects helps illustrate the continuing appeal of the ancient story in modern times.

“We know that some crafts are dying in the region and will not continue for much longer, so it was important for us to commission pieces,” she said. “Our objective as curators is also to preserve dying traditions, not just buying what is old, but what is today new but will become relevant years down the road.”

On display are several nang yai or large shadow puppets from Thailand used to perform the Ramakien. Made of buffalo hide, the puppets are actually large panels of about 2 meters, or 6.5 feet, in height and 1.5 meters, or 5 feet, in width that are propped up on two large poles and depict scenes and characters from the story.

Once regularly performed at the Thai royal court in Ayatthaya, the art of nang yai went into decline in the late 18th century and is barely surviving today, said Ms. Krishnan. The shadow puppets on display were commissioned from a nang yai troupe in southern Thailand and were produced by tracing the designs of original 19th-century puppets kept in the Wat Kanon temple in Thailand’s Ratchaburi Province.

There is also a collection of 30 full-head papier-mâché masks made in Cambodia. These were commissioned in the 1990s, but originally these types of masks would have been used in dance performances of the Reamker at court, as well as during religious and festive occasions.

“This tradition of papier-mâché technique was revived after the Pol Pot regime came to an end in the late ’80s,” said Heidi Tan, senior curator for Southeast Asia at the museum.

The exhibition also offers an illustration of how shadow puppet traditions varied within the region. Wayang Kulit Siam from Kelantan, in Malaysia, is a popular shadow puppet show based on the Ramayana that uses cowhide puppets with only one moving arm, instead of the two moving arms used for shadow puppets in the Javanese Wayang Kulit in Indonesia. The Wayang Kulit Siam puppets have very fine features and tall crowns, which are also found in the Thai tradition, and their bodies have distinctive geometric decoration, explained Ms. Tan.

“In Southeast Asia, if I can characterize, the characters tend to be a little more human and their divine connections are not apparent as in India. They sometimes misbehave and have human weakness. I think it helped Southeast Asian audiences connect and identify with the characters in some way,” Ms. Tan said. “For example, in India, Hanuman is very much a deity and he’s celibate, but here he’s a bit of a womanizer.

Also on display are large Tholu Bomalatta puppets from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Fashioned out of translucent leather, which is painted with strong colors that would be projected onto a small screen, rather like color photographic transparencies in a slide show. The puppets are composed in a combination of profile and frontal views and the figures are embellished with floral designs and ornaments.

At the end of the exhibition is a collage of contemporary videos that showcase the influence of the Ramayana in today’s culture, from theater to film and animation. The story has even been adapted to Chinese Opera.