300 Ramayanas

Summary
Resource Person: Dr. Bharati Jagannathan
Medium: English

A K Ramanujan’s thesis on Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation, was one of the seminal works presented at the University of Pittsburg in 1987. In this essay, he collated the various tellings of Ramayanas spread across the entire Asian continent.

In this two-part lecture series, Dr. Jagannathan will discuss the diversity of the Ramayana in the tradition by looking at how it has been creatively adapted by different tellers of the tale. The fundamental arguments in A K Ramanujan’s Three Hundred Ramayanas will be elaborated with different examples too. She will also touch upon wives, mothers and other women in the Ramayana and take a close look at women in the epic tradition, both in Valmiki, and with examples from later retellings.