Parul Pandya Dhar

The Toraṇa in Indian and Southeast Asian Architecture

The Rāmāyaṇa traditions of South India and Southeast Asia are examined at multiple levels in this volume. The research presented here offers in-depth investigations of chosen moments in the development of the epic tradition together with broader trends that help in understanding the epic’s multivalence. The journey and localization of the Rāmāyaṇa is explored in its manifold expressions – from classical to folk, from temples and palaces to theatres and by-lanes in cities and villages, and from ancient to modern times. Regional Rāmāyaṇas from different parts of South India and Southeast Asia are placed in deliberate juxtaposition to enable a historically informed discussion of their connected pasts across land and seas. The three parts of this volume, organized as visual, literary, and performance cultures, discuss the sculpted, painted, inscribed, written, recited, and performed Rāmāyaṇas. A related emphasis is on the way boundaries of medium and genre have been crossed in the visual, literary, and performed representations of the Rāmāyaṇa. These are rewarding directions of research that have thus far received little attention. Bringing together 19 well-known scholars in Rāmāyaṇa studies from Cambodia, Canada, France, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, UK, and USA, this thought-provoking and elegantly illustrated volume engages with the inherent plurality, diversity, and adaptability of the Rāmāyaṇa in changing socio-political, religious, and cultural contexts and with shifting norms, tastes, traditions, and ideologies.

Retelling the Ramayana in South India and Southeast Asia

The Multivalence of an Epic

Upinder Singh

The centuries-old interactions between the different regions of Asia took various forms including the migration of people, trade in raw materials and goods, and the exchange of religious, literary, and aesthetic ideas and forms. Covering diverse aspects of these interactions, this volume studies the connections between India and other parts of Asia including China and Southeast Asia. It, therefore, approaches the subject of Asian cultural interactions during the pre-modern and early modern periods through the prism of politics, art, religion, and trade. By bringing together these inter-related aspects of cultural encounters, it explores the complex connected histories of the Asian people in a comprehensive manner. The diversities of cultural interactions addressed in this book range from issues of war and diplomacy to trade, trade routes and ship-wrecks; from the making of grand monumental edifices to the circulation of tiny terracottas and coveted carpets, and from the religious to the secular domains in the exchange of cultural ideas and forms. Crucial for a comprehensive understanding of contemporary networks between the Indian subcontinent and various other parts of Asia, this work shows that interactions across cultures in pre-modern Asia were motivated not only by commercial but also cultural ties and explores the historical context in which they took place.

Parul Pandya Dhar

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