The Social Conditions Of Ancient India Have To Be Patiently Reconstructed By Gathering Together The Data Available From Archaeology And Literature. It Is Impossible For One Individual, Even In A Lifetime, To Examine Critically All The Information At His Disposal .To The Archaeologist India Presents A Fund Of Sociological Data Covering, At Least, Five Thousand Years. And The Student Of Her Literature Finds More Elaborate And Informative Evidence In Literary Works, The Earliest Of Which Cannot Under Any Circumstances Be Dated Later Than 1000 B.C. A Careful Study Of The Facts So Available Is Absolutely Necessary If We Are To Have A Complete And Reliable Picture Of Ancient Indian Society. It Is For This Purpose That The Sociological Data Of The Ramayana Are Subjected To A Detailed Scrutiny In This Publication.Although The Ramayana Contains Very Valuable Information For The Study Of The Social Conditions Of India, It Had Been For Many Years Overshadowed By The Great Epic, The Mahabharata. There Are Fewer Works Dealing With The Sociological Data Of The Ramayana, Even Though The Scholars Who Worked On The Mahabharata Occasionally Referred To It.In This Publication, An Attempt Has Been Made To Discuss As Many Aspects Of The Ancient Indian Society As Practicable. While The First Chapter Has Been Devoted To Establish The History, The Date And The Historicity Of The Text, Which Is Our Source Book, The Other Eight Chapters Discuss The Evidence, Which Has Been Called From The Ramayana With Meticulous Care After Study Of All Three Recensions, Available Both In Printed Editions And Manuscripts. No Less Than Fifty-Five Different Aspects Are Dealt With In These Ten Chapters Ranging From Geographical Data To Religious And Philosophical Teaching. It Is Gratifying ,States One Of Its Critics, To Note That His Attitude In Respect Of The Problems Discussed By Him Is Quite Reasonable And Non-Dogmatic. The Society Of The Ramayana Contains The Results Of The Researches Conducted By Dr. Ananda Guruge During The Years 1951 And 1952 In Ceylon And India Under The Guidance Of Professor O.H.De A.Wijesekera, Professor Of Sanskrit, University Of Ceylon, Peradeniya. It Was Presented To The University Of Ceylon In 1953 Under The Title Social Conditions Of Ancient India As Reflected In The Ramayana And Was Accepted For The Ph.D. Degree.Since Its Publication In Sri Lanka In 1960, It Has Been Widely Used By Scholars Throughout The World, As Demonstrated By Scholars Throughout The World, As Demonstrated By Numerous References In Monographs And Articles. Referring To The Wealth Of Data In The Ramayana Translation, Describes In 1984 Dr. Guruge S Work As The Elaborate And Useful Treatment. In 1965. It Was Translated Into Tamil, As Ramayana Samudayam Dr. Guruge Is Currently Sri Lanka S Ambassador And Permanent Delegate To Unesco In Paris, France.

"Performing the Ramayana Tradition: Enactments, Interpretations, and Arguments, edited by Ramayana scholar Paula Richman and Rustom Bharucha, scholar of Theater and Performance Studies, examines diverse retellings of the Ramayana narrative as interpreted and embodied through a spectrum of performances. Unlike previous publications, this book is neither a monograph on a single performance tradition nor a general overview of Indian theatre. Instead, it provides context-specific analyses of selected case studies that explore contemporary enactments of performance traditions and the narratives from which they draw: Kutiyattam, Nangyarkuttu and Kathakali from Kerala; Kattaikkuttu and a "mythological" drama from Tamilnadu; Talamaddale from Karnataka; avant-garde performances from Puducherry and New Delhi; a modern dance-drama from West Bengal; the monastic tradition of Sattriya from Assam; anti-caste plays from North India; and the Ramnagar Ramlila. Apart from the editors' two introductions, which orient readers to the history of Ramayana narratives by Tulsidas, Valmiki, Kamban, Sankaradeva, and others, as well as the performance vocabulary of their enactments, the volume includes many voices, including those of directors, performers, scholars, connoisseurs, and the scholar-abbot of a monastery. It also contains two full scripts of plays, photographs of productions, interviews, conversations, and a glossary of Indian terms. Each essay in the volume, written by an expert in the field, is linked to several others, clustered around shared themes: the politics of caste and gender, the representation of the anti-hero, contemporary re-interpretations of traditional narratives, and the presence of Ramayana discourse in everyday life"--

This book will help the Indian and the foreign students to learn about Indian Classical studies in poetry and narrative art. A comparison between these two epics throw light on myths, exile and narratives. In India a recent trend of growing Hinduism is noticed in while studying Hindu scriptures of mahakvyas and the Puranas. This study of epics in English will attract the Indologists of the world.

This book is the first to present current scholarship on gender and in regional and sectarian versions of the Rāmāyaṇa. Contributors explore in what ways the versions relate to other Rāmāyaṇa texts as they deal with the female persona and the cultural values implicit in them. Using a wide variety of approaches, both analytical and descriptive, the authors discover common ground between narrative variants even as their diversity is recognized. It offers an analysis in the shaping of the heterogeneous Rāma tradition through time as it can be viewed from the perspective of narrating women's lives. Through the analysis of the representation and treatment of female characters, narrative inventions, structural design, textual variants, and the idiom of composition and technique in art and sculpture are revealed and it is shown what and in which way these alternative versions are unique. A sophisticated exploration of the Rāmāyaṇa, this book is of great interest to academics in the fields of South Asian Studies, Asian Religion, Asian Gender and Cultural Studies.