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