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The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are the great epics of South Asia: exciting mythological tales of romance, warfare, and adventure involving the Hindu gods and goddesses, human heroes and heroines, demons,talking animals, and a wide cast of other characters. The earliest known versions of these epics are ancient tomes composed in the classical Sanskrit language, which have long been studied and translated by scholars of South Asian religion and literature. Yet these epic tales are far more than relics of the distant past; for more than 2,000 years these and other mythological Indian tales have continued to shape religious, political, and social identities in South Asia.

Throughout the premodern period, these epic stories were told and retold as part of the living cultural and religious fabric of South Asia. They were performed as part of local ritual festivals, narrated in regional languages by traveling poetic bards, carved onto temple walls, and painted into illustrated manuscripts. In these many recastings of the classical mythological tales by different performers, artists, and authors, a strong tradition of narrative liberalism is evidenced. For instance, in addition to Valmiki’s Ramayana, the Sanskrit version that scholars believe to be the earliest narrative of the Hindu god-king Ram, hundreds of other versions of this story circulated in South Asia and beyond: early Buddhist versions that redefined Ram as the Buddha himself in a previous life; medieval vernacular performance traditions; regional versions that turned Ram into the villain and the antagonist Ravana into the hero; and women’s oral traditions that focused on the hardships that Ram’s wife Sita had to endure.

From the late nineteenth century forward, as major technological and cultural transitions took place in South Asia, these mythological narratives have been recast in a wide variety of modern media: performed on the proscenium stage, captured in lithographic prints and posters, given new prose renderings in printed magazines and ladies’ journals, popularized through Indian television serials and cinema, and even illustrated in children’s comic books.

The four speakers taking part in this series are among the leading scholars of media, religion, and culture in South Asia. Together, they will explore the relationship between media and myth in modern India. Key questions that this series will explore include: What impact do the various media technologies that we encounter in our daily lives have on religious traditions and narratives? How have traditional mythological narratives and storytelling patterns in turn impacted modern media in South Asia? And how are classical myths refashioned in order to mediate modern identities, including gender, class, caste, religious, and national identities?

Faculty Coordinator:
Karline McLain, Department of Religion