[INDOLOGY] Brockington Rāmāyaṇa archive: seventh update

Wed Dec 4 19:13:29 UTC 2024

(forwarded; replies and comments to John & Mary and/or the list)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Brockington <John.Brockington at btinternet.com>
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2024 11:47:48 +0000
Subject: Brockington Rāmāyaṇa archive: update

Dear Colleagues,

After a longer interval than we had hoped, we are pleased to announce the
seventh update of our material on the Oxford Research Archive, first
deposited in January 2016; this update is identified as Dec 2024. We
deposit this material in order that it can be available for others to
consult even in its present, unfinished state. It can be accessed at the
same location as before, <
http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8df9647a-8002-45ff-b37e-7effb669768b>, or
you can find it via the Bodleian Libraries website, under ORA, by looking
for either our surname or its title, "Development and spread of the Rāma
narrative (pre-modern)".

As before, there are additions, revisions and corrections to the material
throughout.

Apart from minimal changes to the folder C. Narrative Elements, work by MB
consists mainly of more on the folder F. New Beginnings: an overall survey
of the effects on the traditional portrayal of the *VRm’s* heroes and
villains when varied supplementary elements now mostly collected into the
CE *Bāla *and* Uttara kāṇḍas* were added to the core text, classified as
Stage 3 (JLB 1985).  Six chapters are planned, with the first four and the
sixth now complete.

Chapters 1-3 now consider the techniques of composition of the core
narrative as a whole, with chapter 4 identifying and exploring the core
texts of *kāṇḍas* 1 and 7, showing that they cannot be considered as
unitary, and proposing an explanation of the gradual emergence of their
different elements.  Where the evidence on which my conclusions are based
is too complex to be absorbed into the text, it is made available in five
files of Supporting material.

Chapter 5 ‘Filling in the gaps’ is still to be written; it is hoped to
contain analyses of many further passages, whether presented as additional
narrative or as In-tales (including the very rare transformation of the
human Rāma into an *avatāra* of Viṣṇu), that now colour, enliven or even
distort our understanding of the traditional narrative.  A tentative list
of such topics appears on p.103.

Chapter 6 ‘Looking backwards and forwards’ is a detailed analysis of
Agastya’s long-drawn-out narrative of the rise and fall of the *rākṣasas*,
followed by Hanumān’s rise to prominence (7,1—36), showing how their
contents are to a large extent a reworking of material culled from the
earlier core text, now mostly set in a context where Rāma is recognised as
an *avatāra* of Viṣṇu, with a number of unintended consequences to the
stature of gods and *rākṣasas* alike.

Work by JLB includes considerable further additions to all the
bibliographic sections of files within B. Bibliographic Inventory, as well
as re-ordering all documents in order to place the list of contents (with
page numbers) at the start of each; in particular, there are substantial
additions to the data within “10. visual (India)”.  Summaries of all App.I
passages have been added to “1. Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa”. The SE Asia section of
E. Development of the tradition has been updated and enlarged, with smaller
changes elsewhere in this document.

Within D. Ancillary material comments on a large number of versos from the
illustrated Bīr Singh Rāmāyaṇa in the National Museum, New Delhi, including
transcriptions, have been added to the background notes on JLB 2019 (“Bīr
Singh’s *Rāmāyaṇa*: a note on the text”).  Transcriptions of available
folios from the illustrated Uniara Rāmāyaṇa have also been added here in
“Further Notes (visual)”.

If you are aware of colleagues in other fields (for example Southeast Asian
languages or visual culture) who might be interested, do please pass the
information on to them – and similarly, if any of you have access to
suitable academic lists on which it could be posted, we would be grateful
if you would send it to them.

As always, we shall be grateful for any comments from anyone who has used
the material.

With all good wishes

John and Mary

John Brockington

Fellow, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

Emeritus Professor of Sanskrit, University of Edinburgh

Vice President, International Association of Sanskrit Studies

Mary Brockington

Fellow, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

Research Fellow, International Association of Sanskrit Studies

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end of forwarded message

Dominik Wujastyk
INDOLOGY list <http://indology.info> committee member
*Please do not reply to me personally: re*ply to
indology-owner at list.indology.info
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