Teaching Seminar On Love`S Hidden Symmetry: Volume 4 - Grieving For Children new release dvd11/1/2016 Children's dreams: notes from the seminar given in 1936-1940. Hidden teaching beyond yoga. 25 Mini-Lessons For Teaching Writing: Paperback: 1. There Are No Children Here: Paperback: 1. And Yours: Hardcover: 1. Many Ramayanas. Preferred Citation: Richman, Paula, editor. Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia. Dante in Translation: Dante's Inferno, Purgatory. And so the Divine Comedy has to duplicate the symmetry. Publications : Department of English. Volume 4: William Enfield. Berkeley: University of California Press, c. Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, c. For years I had heard people refer to E. Love's more challenging stages are part of genuine intimacy, rather than signs of its demise. Houses children's recreation. Teaching and technology. Ramasami's interpretation of the Ramayana in a mocking and dismissive way. When I actually analyzed his reading of the story of Rama, however, I found much of it strikingly compelling and coherent if viewed in light of his anti- North Indian ideology. While I was talking one day with A. Ramanujan about my attempts to make sense of this particular reading of the Rama story, he gave me a copy of a paper he had presented entitled . Each contributor to the volume also read Ramanujan's essay, which now comprises Chapter 2 of this volume. Every other chapter can be seen, in some way, as a response to some of the questions that Ramanujan raises. As individual essays developed, intriguing patterns within the Ramayana tradition were revealed. I encouraged authors to explore the exact ways in which the tellings of the Rama story that they had studied related to particular theological, social, political, regional, performance, or gender contexts. Slowly the book grew in the direction of a study of tellings of the Ramayana that refashion or contest Valmiki's text. I am grateful to Raman for giving us his essay and to each contributor for the many revisions made to ensure the overall coherence of the volume. A number of scholars encouraged me during the many stages of this book: Michael Fisher, whose initial enthusiasm for the project encouraged me to pursue it and whose advice at every stage I have deeply valued; Clint Seely, who believed in the worth of the endeavor and invited two authors to contribute to the volume; Robert Goldman and Sally Sutherland, who offered both textual and practical advice during the period when I was conceptualizing the volume's overall structure; David Shulman, from whom I have learned a. Daniel Smith, both of whom shared their knowledge of Ramayana tradition and gave me a number of valuable comments; Sandria Freitag, Wendy Doniger, and an anonymous reader on the Editorial Committee of the University of California Press, whose challenging questions and insightful suggestions for revisions made this book more coherent, complete, and concise; Lynne Withey, my editor, whose intelligence, efficiency, and graciousness have been greatly appreciated; Pamela Mac. Farland, whose attention to detail has improved this volume in myriad ways. To all these people I express my thanks; I alone am responsible for any shortcomings. The research, editing, and completion of this book would have been impossible without a great deal of assistance. At Oberlin College's Mudd Library I want to thank Ray English, Kerry Langan, Valerie Mac. Gowan- Doyle, and Anne Zald, and at Western Washington University's Miller Library Evelyn Darrow and Jo Dereske, for tracking down unbelievably obscure works in a number of South Asian languages. Similar feats were performed by James Nye, William Alsbaugh, and Lynn Bigelow in Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago. I am also grateful to Kenneth Logan, Barbara Gaerlan, and Sumathi Ramaswamy for assisting me at the South Asia Center at the University of California, Berkeley. A grant from the Research and Development Fund at Oberlin College made research trips to Berkeley and Chicago possible. Susan Munkres and Daniel Gardiner read drafts of each paper in the volume, making insightful and helpful suggestions for improving clarity. Many of my students during 1. Ramayana tradition; I am grateful for their interest and intriguing queries. Thanks goes to the office of Ira Steinberg, which funded part of the cost of duplicating the manuscript. I appreciate the institutional support provided by William Stoever at Western Washington University during the summer of 1. Thelma Kime and Terri Mitchell typed innumerable drafts of several of the papers in this volume. I appreciate their patience and dedication. PAULA RICHMANOBERLIN, OHIO. Authors whose papers deal primarily with Hindi materials have decided to drop the final short a of syllables in order to reflect Hindi usage most faithfully. Observers estimate that over eighty million people watched the weekly broadcasts. In some places entire villages joined together to rent a television set. It was not just that people watched the show: they became so involved in it that they were loath to see it end. Despite the fact that Doordarshan, the government- run network, had only contracted with the producer for a year's worth of episodes, the audience demanded more. In fact, sanitation workers in Jalandhar went on strike because the serial was due to end without depicting the events of the seventh, and final, book of the Ramayana . Quite apart from such militant enthusiasm, the manner in which viewers watched the serial was also striking. Many people responded to the image of Rama on the television screen as if it were an icon in a temple. They bathed before watching, garlanded the set like a shrine, and considered the viewing of Rama to be a religious experience. The size, response, and nature of the television Ramayana's audience led Philip Lutgendorf, a scholar of Hindi Ramayana traditions, to comment: The Ramayan serial had become the most popular program ever shown on Indian television—and something more: an event, a phenomenon of such proportions that intellectuals and policy makers struggled to come to terms with its significance and long- range import. Never before had such a large percentage. Perhaps not surprisingly, enthusiasm welcomed this new entrant into what has been an unending series of Ramayanas in India and beyond. The televised Ramayana did, however, disturb some observers, who worried that the Doordarshan version might come to dominate other tellings of the story. Romila Thapar, a noted scholar of Indian history, is among such observers. When the state acts as patron of the arts, argues Thapar, it often favors social groups that wield relatively great influence in that society. In Thapar's analysis, Doordarshan presented a Ramayana telling that reflected the concerns not of the vast majority of Indians but of what she calls . In the past, many performances of the Ramayana have been sponsored by those in political power, but never before had a Ramayana performance been seen simultaneously by such a huge audience through a medium which so clearly presented itself as authoritative. The story in these versions included significant variations which changed the conceptualization of character, event and meaning. Were the television Ramayana and the broadly distributed videocassette tapes of it to achieve widespread acceptance as the version of the epic, Thapar warns of possible negative effects for Indian culture. The homogenization of any narrative tradition results in cultural loss; other tellings of the Ramayana story might be irretrievably submerged or marginalized. The contributors to this volume desire an opposite fate—that the public discourse and scholarship stimulated by current interest in the Ramayana. In order to illuminate the nature of this process, our essays analyze an array of tellings, the better to display the vitality and diversity of the Ramayana tradition. Meanwhile, for other readers, it is useful to provide an outline of the story's basic events. Such an enterprise, however, is fraught with difficulties, for . Nonetheless, those who are not Ramayana specialists need at least a skeletal knowledge of incidents, characters, and locations in the Ramayana tradition in order to appreciate the essays in this volume, which analyze different ways in which the Ramayana has been told. I have therefore chosen to present a synopsis of the story of Rama based on Valmiki's Ramayana . Most scholars would agree that Valmiki's Ramayana , the most extensive early literary treatment of the life of Rama, has wielded enormous influence in India, Southeast Asia, and beyond. Many later Ramayana authors explicitly refer to it either as an authoritative source or as a telling with which they disagree. For centuries it has been regarded as the most prestigious Ramayana text in many Indian circles. It has also drawn the most attention from Western scholars. My goal is not to privilege Valmiki's Ramayana but to give the nonspecialist reader some necessary background, since in explaining the components of other tellings of the story the contributors to this volume often take a knowledge of Valmiki for granted. In addition, to tell other Ramayanas here would be to preempt the work of the rest of this volume. My aim is to present readers with the plot of an extremely influential Ramayana without encouraging them to view as normative the events, characterizations, and particular ideological commitments of Valmiki's Ramayana . As the story opens the ruler of Lanka, the demon Ravana, has gained apparent invincibility by winning a promise from the gods that he cannot be. Meanwhile in the city of Ayodhya, we learn, King Dasaratha has no male heir. In order to remedy this problem his ministers urge him to perform a special sacrifice, which causes his three wives to conceive sons. Firstborn among them is Rama, son of Queen Kausalya; then come his three half- brothers, Bharata, son of Queen Kaikeyi, and Laksmana and Satrughna, the twin sons of Queen Sumitra. Rama begins his career as a warrior while still a youth, when he defends a sage's sacrifice by killing the demons that threaten its success. Subsequently, Rama wins his bride, Sita, by stringing an enormous divine bow. When King Dasaratha decides to retire, he chooses as his successor Rama, beloved among Ayodhya's citizens for his wisdom and compassion.
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