It's an ancient Hindu poem, so why does The Ramayana still resonate?

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Hello, it's Clare Nicholls filling in for Natasha Mitchell on Big Ideas, ABC Radio National's live events show.

You probably know me as the host of the book show, and I do love a book. And today on Big Ideas, we are diving deep into one of the most foundational stories of Asian culture. Now, if you're of Asian heritage, if you visited an Asian country, you've almost certainly heard of the Ramayana. It's like the Odyssey of the East, this ancient tale of kings, quests, heroism, romance, and important life lessons. So why is this tale so central to so many cultures? That's today on Big Ideas.

Bhupin (1:32)

The story begins with the prince and princess, and it starts with the beautiful marriage, and it ends with Rama being the king and Sita being basically absorbed and living in the forest by herself.

And Rama depicts all these male physical attributes of great archer and great hunter and understanding. And in my view, Sita represented the silent virtues like silence and observing and knowing what to do intuitively.

Claire Nicholls (2:05)

We're coming to you today from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as part of its current exhibition Avatar, Forms of Vishnu, showcasing 200 works spanning 15 centuries of South and Southeast Asian art and storytelling, and celebrating the Hindu deity who preserves order in the universe.

And this event, the Ramayana Reimagined Storytelling Across Cultures, features the exhibition's co-curator, Indian Australian academic and art historian from the Australian National University, Dr Chaitanya Sambrani. You're also going to hear from the Canberra-based award-winning contemporary visual artist Savanhdary Vongpoothorn, who was born in Laos but moved to Australia as a refugee with her family in 1979, and from Indonesian Australian Alfira O'Sullivan, who is the artistic director and a solo artist with Suara Indonesia Dance. The host is writer, broadcaster and academic Sunil Badami.

Sunil Badami (3:07)

Growing up, you know, I didn't actually listen to fairy tales, but stories from the two great Hindu epic poems, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. And like the Greek epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, they're sagas involving gods and demons, war and betrayal, exile and revenge.

Like those Greek classics, they're knotted with great valour, human frailty and moral ambiguity. And like the Iliad and the Odyssey are foundation stones for much Western culture. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are an integral part of cultures across South and Southeast Asia, from Laotian poetry and Javanese shadow puppets, the great temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia or Prambanan in Java. Even the name of Thai kings and the Indonesian national airline, Garuda, reflect the importance of the Ramayana to those cultures. Both those epic poems, Mahabharata and the Ramayana feature three of Vishnu's avatars, which you'll see in the exhibition. The eighth avatar, Krishna, and the sixth avatar, Parashurama. And in the Ramayana, the seventh avatar, Rama, the virtuous prince who epitomises Hindu masculinity and piety. So today with our wonderful guests, we'll be exploring storytelling, memory, migration, and interpretation and how the Ramayana continues to evolve as a living narrative that connects people through its continual retelling, reinterpretation, and reimagining. So Chaitanya, you give us a really great explanation about Vishnu and the meaning of avatar in a video that's up on the gallery's Instagram account. Please follow.

But for those of us who aren't so familiar with the Ramayana, what's it about?

Chaitanya Sambrani (5:04)

Thank you, Sunil. The Ramayana is one of these great romances. It's a story about human experience. It's about virtue, lack of virtue, doubt, suffering, privation, separation, reunion. It's a story of triumph, but it's also a story of defeat. It's a story that travels across different parts of the world and has been told differently in multifarious traditions. There's no singular Ramayana. There are multiple Ramayanas and different authors at different times and in different places in different languages have reconstructed that story. It's a journey. It's the story of Rama. It's the journey of Rama.

In the way in which it is conventionally told, it is also a geographical journey from north to south, and many people have read into it a story of conquest.

It's also a story of rivalry over possession, over kingdoms. It's a story of rivalry over various kinds of mortal, physical, worldly aims.

Ultimately, it's a story that speaks about aims that are beyond those of this world. It's a story that's been eulogized and idolized in different parts of the world. As holding forth the ideal kingship, ideal rulership, the ideal husband, the ideal wife, the ideal demon, the ideal royal servant, the best brotherhood, and various kinds of virtues. But it is at root a story about the transition through different stages of human life. That's why it continues to resonate, because it manages to capture many of those codes within human experience.