The Cultural Trajectories of Ramayana,a Text beyond the Grand Narrative

Abstract

Ramayana, the mythical story developed into a grand narrative as Valmiki Ramayana at a particular point of time in a social context, is a cultural text that contained acknowledged and unacknowledged responses to the epistemes of historical periods. Though the popularity of the grand narrative and power structures disseminate the knowledge that Ramayana is a singular narrative, studies proved this understanding wrong. Many Ramayanas produced across the centuries questioned the unilateral theories of fixing Ramayana to a solitary text and the production of the text to a single author. Not only the diversity was associated with historical periods, but also Ramayana found its oral, written and performing renditions across geographical terrains. The current paper examines the multiplicity of Ramayana narratives that contribute to the liberated reading of Ramayana as a text beyond the grand narrative. The objectives of the paper include stating the rationale for promoting the multiplicity of Ramayana, unraveling the plurality of Ramayana by introducing texts across times, geographies and religions and juxtaposing different Ramayanas with varying perspectives and focus. The paper also depicts the way how the knowledge of multiplicity contributes to the thoughts on tolerance and dissent.