REGIONAL LANGUAGES ARE PACKED WITH DELIGHTFUL RETELLINGS OF THE RAMAYANA THAT INCLUDE STORIES NOT FOUND IN THE OLDEST DOCUMENTS

By Devdutt Pattanaik

Fifteen hundred years ago, the Sanskrit epic came to be associated with kingship and we find the royal retellings such as

and as far as South East Asia where the story travelled with sea merchants. The composition of the Ramayana in regional languages began about 1,000 years ago with a

Tamil retelling by Kamban. Since then we have had retellings in Telugu, Odiya, Assamese, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam and various Hindi dialects. These established Ram as an icon for and Ram as form of God. The extremely popular of the 20th century on TV made by Ramanand Sagar is based primarily on the

THE COMPOSITION OF THE RAMAYANA IN REGIONAL LANGUAGES BEGAN ABOUT 1,000 YEARS AGO WITH A TAMIL

RETELLING BY KAMBAN

Awadhi Ramayana of Tulsidas, but it is not the ‘national’ Ramayana, just as Hindi is not the ‘national’ language, politics notwithstanding.

Here are five episodes from the Ramayana that you may have never heard before, from the many versions of the epic found in Odiya literature between the 15th and 18th centuries. Remember, most Indians, hear the Ramayana in local tongues, based on regional epics. They remind us of the vast expanse of Ram in Indian art and culture, unrestrained by ideology.