Myths, Similes and Memory Traces: Images of Abduction in the Ramayana Universe

Abstract

In this essay, the Ramayana is conceptualised not merely as a text but as a narrative universe constituted by the multiplicity of its telling. Each telling is unique and involves combining fragments or narrative elements in particular ways. This universe occupies not merely a geographical but also a kind of virtual topological space made up of the relation between narrative elements. The argument is exemplified at two levels, first through an abstraction of one theme—abduction—from the text of the Valmiki Ramayana, which is then mined for significant poetic elements. Second, the article takes up the Ramayani gathas (ballads) of the Pardhan Gonds of Madhya Pradesh and describes some stories also based on the theme of abduction. A comparison of the fragments from the two types of texts reveals comparable elements such that poetic elements, like similes and metaphors, used to describe Sita’s abduction and Rama’s grief undergo structural transformation and are expanded into metonymic configurations, that is, plot elements in the Pardhan Gond gathas. Thus, the Valmiki Ramayana and the Gondi Ramayani seem to have a metonymic connection with each other. The second part of the article then shows how transformations occur within the narrative universe of the Gondi Ramayani itself as the storyable themes move from the aural medium to that of painting, as contemporary Pardhan Gond artists use themes and poetic imagery inspired by the gathas for their compositions.