This canto is entitled “Patalakhanda” in it the assemble sages ask Suta to give an account of Lord Rama’s activities.
It even includes a narration of the Ramayana that took place in a earlier kalpa and is different (kalpa bheda) in some resepects to the more recent Ramayana. The greatest repository of Ramalila in the puranas that I know of is the Padma Purana wherein much of the fifth canto is devoted to Lord Rama. As an example Srimad Bhagavatam has three chapters (10-12) in canto nine, dedicated to Lord Rama. In this current Kali yuga that will not be possible but we do get some help from the Puranas most of which have parts dedicated to Rama-lila and often fill in some details not found in the Valmiki Ramayana. Thus we only have an insignificant fraction of the original Ramayana making for a lot of lacuna that need to be filled in. However the sastras are vast and in them many apparent contradictions and mysteries are resolved including the mystery of why Rama exiled pregnant Sita to the forest.Īccording to Madhvacarya’s Mahabharata Tatparya Nirnaya 2.3-4 the original Mula Ramayana was a massive work consisting of 100 crore slokas (1 billion) while the currently available Valmiki Ramayana consists of only 24,000 slokas.
Sita ramayan free#
He is completely free to do anything and everything, for He is always my worshipful Lord unconditionally.” An Indonesian stamp commemorating a Ramayana festival. “I know no one but Krsna as my Lord, and He shall remain so even if He handles me roughly in His embrace or makes me brokenhearted by not being present before me.
To them Krsna is their Lord no matter what, as exemplified in the last verse of Lord Caitanya’s Siksastaka. That we have to accept Krsna on His terms, and that no matter how it may seem to us, that Krsna always has our best interests at heart. Most devotees realize that we cannot always enter into the Lord’s mysteries. They forget it is a divine lila and that the Lord has His own reasons for doing what He does, and that they are not always within the purview of our tiny understanding. It seriously tests their faith and in some cases actually breaks it, leading some to even offend Lord Rama. Not princely birth and generous mind.For some people the episode of Rama exiling Sita to the forest, while she was five months pregnant, is one of the most disturbing and incomprehensible events in the Ramayana. How / to me / unfit / speech / such / ears / harshĬruel / you cause to hear / hero / common / to common / like We begin with verse five, in which Sita reacts to Rama’s hurtful reproach. These are taken from Ralph TH Griffith’s colonial-era retelling in rhymed verse, published in the 1870s, Manmatha Nath Dutt’s prose version of 1893, Arshia Sattar’s widely read Penguin edition, from 1996, and a recent annotated translation, completed in 2017, by a team led by Robert Goldman. Further, I have collated four English translations spanning more than a century’s range of translation styles and idioms, so that readers may clearly see the variations in translation-sometimes subtle, sometimes gross-from a comparative perspective. The verses- shloka numbers 5, 7 and 14 from the Yuddha Kanda (Book Four), sarga (section) 104-capture Sita’s response to Rama’s characterisation of her chastity during her imprisonment in Lanka. In that spirit, I present below the three relevant verses from Valmiki’s Ramayana in Sanskrit, along with literal, word-for-word English glosses.
The irony of the situation seemed to have been lost in translation, so to speak.Īs a translator and student of classical Indian literature, I believe it is critical to return to original sources. Sadly, many of her detractors exhibited a poor understanding of the material in question, and, even worse, a deplorable tone that, as Truschke pointed out in a piece in this magazine, reinforced the very misogyny they could not tolerate to see Rama accused of. The tweet elicited serious backlash from the Hindu right.
Sita ramayan trial#
As such, to translate in today’s polarised political climate is delicate work, especially when translating the Indian epics.Īudrey Truschke, a professor of South Asian history, tweeted in April that in Valmiki’s Ramayana, “(I’m loosely translating here): During the agnipariksha, Sita basically tells Rama he’s a misogynist pig and uncouth.” Later, writing for The Wire, she described this characterisation as a “colloquial summary of Sita’s admonishment of Rama” during her trial by fire. Every act of translation encodes something political, and, regardless of whether we like it or are even aware of it, all translators are political commentators.
0 kommentar(er)
