Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c10.s3.t7: Ramayana
Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c10.s3.t7
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Ramayana
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Ramayana is one of the two great Sanskrit epics in ancient India, meaning “Rama’s Journey” or
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'The Ramayana', Chinese edition
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“Biography of Rama”. Rama is a legendary sageking and has been gradually deified. Ramayana belongs to the genre of *itihāasa* (a narrative of past events). It is written in verses and “sloka” meters, each stanza has two lines, and each line has 16 syllables. Originally it was recited orally, and was written down only from about 3^rd or 4^th century BCE to 2^nd century CE. Its creation is attributed to Valmiki. Given its combination of old and new contents, Valmiki might be the last who had compiled the whole epic. It can be divided into seven books, and has a variety of manuscripts and numerous publications. A modern version has been reduced from nearly 24,000 to 18,700 “slokas”, was published in a series from 1960 to 1975, and was well received in the Indian and international academic circles.
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Basic Plot
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*Ramayana* deals chronologically with major events in the life of Rama and Sita and narrates struggles. Rama, one of the protagonists, is the incarnation of Vishnu, was born to Dasharatha, the king of Ayodhya, and receives education from Vishvamitra. At a *swayamvara* held for his daughter Sita by Janaka, the king of Mithila, Rama gets married to Sita since he could wield the bow that once belonged to the god Shiva. Due to the tricks of Kaikeyi, one of Dasharatha’s wives, the old Dasharatha was forced to crown his second son Bharata as king and send Rama into wilderness for 14 years exile. Rama was a devoted son and decided to accept his father’s decree. He was joined by Sita and his younger brother Lakshmana. Soon after, King Dasharatha who was heartbroken, passes away. Bharata visits Rama in the forest and requests him to return to Ayodhya and be the king, but Rama refuses. Bharata had to rule as a regent while waiting for the return of Rama.
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Rama and his companions wander in the forest. Ravana, king of Lanka, sends the rakshasa Maricha, who assumes the form of a golden deer to entice Rama and Lakshmana to leave their hut in the forest while he takes the chance to abduct Sita back to [Figure: 'Sutra of Miscellaneous Treasures (Za Bao Zang Jing)', front cover]
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Lanka. Jatayu, a vulture, tries to rescue Sita but gets seriously wounded by Ravana. Sita refuses Ravana's temptation and is confined to a garden under heavy guard. Rama learns about Sita's abduction from Jatayu and attempts to rescue her. Rama and his brother meet Hanuman, monkey king and Sugriva his brother, who sends an army to help Rama. Hanuman takes a great leap across the ocean to Lanka, where he finds Sita and obtains a token of identity from her. Wreaking havoc at the palace of Ravana, Hanuman escapes amid chaos and returns to Kishkindha. Rama leads an arm of monkeys and challenges Ravana. With the help of Nal a bridge is constructed across the ocean. Ravana is killed, Sita is rescued, but Rama is doubtful of her chastity. Sita enters into a fire to prove her virtue, but Agni appears to attest to her purity, and thus, the husband and the wife are united. Since the 14-year exile expires, Rama returns to Ayodhya with Sita and his followers to be enthroned as king. Under his rule, Ayodhya is peaceful and prosperous. One day while learning that people still gossip about Sita's chastity, Rama orders Lakshmana to abandon Sita on the opposite side of the Ganges. Valmiki provides a shelter to the pregnant Sita. In a hermitage, Sita gives birth to twin boys, Kusha and Lava, who grow and learn *Ramayana* from Valmiki.
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When Rama holds the *Ashwamedha* prayer ceremony, the two boys go to his palace and recite the *Ramayana*. Rama on hearing them sing recognises them as his sons. In order to prove her innocence, Sita asks the earth to engulf her and the ground opens and she disappears in it. Rama resumes his image as Vishnu.
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In India, *Ramayana* is received with admiration and through the ages in history, has turned into a Hindu canon. From the perspective of literature, it is a direct forerunner for classical Sanskrit poetry, and a great number of Sanskrit plays and epics of later generations have drawn materials from it. It has been translated into many local languages, such as Tamil by Kamban, Bengali by Krittibas and Hindi by Tulsidas, and some of them have a great literary value as well as a very important status in corresponding languages. Rama's stories are spread across entire southeast Asia through a variety of artistic forms, including translation, sculpture, painting, dancing, drama, puppet show, shadow play and the like, and its influence is huge and far-reaching, especially in Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Laos.
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Influence in China
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Along with sutras translated into Chinese, *Ramayana* and stories in it began to be known in China in the three kingdoms viz., the Eastern and Western Jin dynasties, Southern and Northern dynasties. According to *A life of Vasubandhu* translated by Paramartha, an Indian monk translating sutras under the royal decree, "the master went to Kashmira, listened to sermons at the assembly, but behaved in an odd manner. When the assembly focussed on vibhāṣā, and he would ask about Ramayana instead and thus was looked down upon". *Dasharatha*, a story told in *Za Bao Zang Jing* translated by Kinkara and Tan Yao in Northern Wei Dynasty, narrates the exile of Rama by his father, equivalent to the first half of *Ramayana*. Since this story is of valuable raw material for the study of *Ramayana*'s plot, formation and influence in China, an abstract is provided below:
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King Dasharatha rules Jambudvipa. He has four queens. Rama is born to the first queen, who is valiant and invincible, and Lakshmana to the second queen. Bharata is born to the third queen and Shatrughna to the fourth queen. The king adores the third queen and says, “If you have any wish, tell me and I will fulfil it.” She answers, “I desire nothing now. I will tell you if I have any wish in the future”. When the king falls ill, he summons Rama and wants to crown him. When the third queen discovers that the king wants to make Rama the king, she is extremely jealous of Rama. She then asks the king to fulfill her wishes: “crown my son instead of Rama”. The king thus is in a dilemma, whether to abandon his promise to his favourite wife or his own wish to crown Rama as king. Since he has always been faithful to his word, the king agrees to exile Rama. Lakshmana asks his brother: “Why not use your valour and strength, why get yourself humiliated?” Rama replies: “It is not filial to act against the father’s wish. Though she has not given birth to me, the queen is a favourite of my father, and so is my mother as well. Bharata, my brother, is very kind and obedient and does not entertain any disloyalty”. Hearing this, Lakshmana says nothing more. King Dasharatha then exiles the two brothers to a remote forest for a period of 14 years. They leave for the wilderness without any grudge. At that time, Bharata was away from home and is summoned back to be crowned. But, Bharata loves both his brothers, and when he returns back home, he finds that his father is already dead, and he learns that his mother has driven away his two brothers. Disapproving his mother’s actions, he kneels down respectfully to the first queen, Rama’s mother, rather than his own mother. Bharata leads an army, but stops at the verge of the forest to go into it alone. He tells Rama: “I bring an army for no other reason but for fear of being robbed. I wish you can return and rule the country”. He keeps on begging, but Rama is firm and refuses to return. Knowing that his brother will not change his mind, Bharata takes Rama’s sandals back to the palace and put them on the throne, while he rules as the regent as if Rama were on the throne. He often sent persons to ask his brothers to return, but his brothers insist on obeying the orders of their father. Later, when the period of exile expires, Rama returns and succeeds to the throne at the request of Bharata. Such brotherly love serves to improve popular morality. People are blessed and become more loyal, filial and liberal. Rama and Lakshmana treat Bharata’s mother without resentment. With such loyalty and filial piety, the country is blessed with good weather, bumper harvest and health. Within Jambudvipa, everyone is ten times prosperous than usual.
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An illustration from the 'Ramayana'
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An illustration from the 'Ramayana: army of monkeys helping Lord Rama in attacking the city of Lanka'
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An illustration from the 'Ramayana'
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Article 46 in *Liu Du Ji Jing* translated by Kang Senghui of Kingdom Wu in the period of the Three Kingdoms is equivalent to the latter half of Ramayana and a summary of its Book III, IV, V and VI. Since this story is of the same value with
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*An illustration from the 'Ramayana', early 19th century CE*
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Dasharatha, an extract is provided below:
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Bodhisattva once ruled with great reputation. Jiushi lives in another country and is a king as well, but he is covetous, shameless and cruel, and leads an army to seize Bodhisattva’s kingdom. Looking down from a great height, the king finds that the army is large, and he and the queen escape into the forest. As a conqueror, Jiushi governs with greed and cruelty, and he kills the faithful and promotes the cunning. People endure difficulties, and they weep and mourn for their old king. The king and the queen are in the deep forest. An evil dragon in the sea, captivated by the queen’s beauty, turns into a monk, and the king picks fruits every day to feed him. When the king is away, the dragon carries the queen away. On its way towards the sea, a huge bird appears to stop and fight with the dragon, but gets its right wing wounded, and the dragon returns to the sea. Back from fruit picking, finding that the queen disappears, the king brings a bow and arrows with him to find the queen. In the course of this, he follows a flow of water to find a monkey weeping. The monkey says: “I am also the king, but Jiushi seizes my followers. Why are you here?” Bodhisattva answers: “I have the same trouble. Now my queen has disappeared and I don’t know where to find her.” The monkey says: “You can help me fight and recover my followers, and I will help you recover your wife”. On the following day, the monkey fights with Jiushi, and the king draws the bow. The Jiushi fears and halts. Monkey king orders his returning followers: “The king has lost his queen in this mountain. Go and search her”. Monkeys disperse towards various directions, seeing a wounded bird, asks: “The queen has disappeared, and the king could not find her, and we are searching for her”. The bird says: “She is abducted by the dragon and now on an island in the sea”. After saying this, the bird dies. The monkey king leads the army to the sea but is at a loss how to cross it. Sakra assumes the form of a monkey and comes to suggest: “Our army is so numerous as to exceed the number of sea sand. Let everyone carry stones to cross the sea, and these stones will turn into a high mountain. In this way, access to the island will be easy”. The army thus cross the sea and come over to surround the island. The dragon produces poisonous fog, and monkeys all fall ill and scrawl on the ground. A little monkey puts a celestial herb into their noses. The dragon then produces wind, cloud and thunder, but the king shoots an arrow to the chest of the dragon and kills it. The monkeys are joyous, and the little monkey opens the door to let the queen out of her prison. The two kings return to the forest together. Since Jiushi has died without any heir, courtiers and people go to implore the king. The king returns and rules with amnesty and benevolence, and people lead a happy life. The king says to his wife one day: “People are doubtful when a wife is away is husband for one night, while you were separated from me for a number of days. As ancient customs requires, I cannot take you back”. The queen says: “While at that obscene place, I was just like a lotus in the mud. If my word is true, the earth will open and swallow me up”. Just then, the ground opens. The queen says: “My word is true”. The king says: “Yes, it is”. Since chastity is a Buddhist requirement. From then on, merchants surrender part of profit, the learned resigns their position, the noble can safeguard the humble, and the strong does not
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‘Six Paramitas Sutra’, translated by Kang Senghui, Wu, Three Kingdoms Period
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bully the weak, all due to the king. Lewd women turn pure, and swindlers become faithful, and the false turns truthful, all due to the queen. Buddha tells bhiksus: “Then, I was the king, Ju Yi the queen, Tiao Da was Jiu Shi and Maitreya was Sakra”. Bodhisattva requires endurance and patience in the face of humiliation.
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Combined, the above two stories can form a miniature *Ramayana*, even with some identical details. It might have been a preliminary framework at the beginning, since it had been widely told in India so that even Buddhist masters, rather overlooking it, had to borrow something from it to spread Buddhist ideas. It turns out that the Sutras in Chinese, have virtually, played an important role in preserving the epic’s original appearance. This can be said to have made a great contribution to Indian culture. It is reported, Raghuvira (1902-1963), a reputed Sanskrit scholar in India, visited China
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*Hanuman, the Monkey God*
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in the 1950s, and brought back this miniature of *Ramayana* to India and translated it.
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China has a mythical story, *Journey to the West*, and the protagonist Sun Wukong is related to *Ramayana* in respect of the image and many details. Before *Journey to the West*, Chinese sutras already had other monkey stories, for example, Article 47 and 56 and the like of *Liu Du Ji Jing*. In the Song Dynasty, the personality, ability and actions of the monkey king in *Liu Du Ji Jing* were reproduced in a fiction titled “*Da Tang Sanzang Qujing Shihua*”. Chinese scholars generally are of the opinion that, this fiction is the origin of *Journey to the West*. And so, the image of Su Wukong was produced under the influence of Chinese sutras as well as Hanuman in *Ramayana*. Another possibility is, Wu Cheng’en, the author of *Journey to the West*, might have heard from someone a detailed account of *Ramayana*, otherwise it is impossible to explain why this book is identical with *Ramayana* in some important details. In a research on *Journey to the West*, Hu Shi suggested that Su Wukong, as the most vivid character, may be borrowed from India rather than homemade. He thought that Hanuman in *Ramayana* was the predecessor of the monkey king, since they two have almost the same power. For instance, Hamuman could fly in the air, move big mountains, turn bigger or smaller, enter into others’ stomach, and fear no fire, and Sun Wukong also have these powers. As a result, he inferred that Sun Wukong was produced under the influence of *Ramayana*. On the contrary, Lu Xun thought Su Wukong was a native product of China. For a long time, academic circles in China have been arguing and debating over this issue.
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According to Chen Yinque, stories of Xuanzang's three disciples are all from Buddhist sutras. Ji Xianlin thought, even the dragon king has a foreign origin as well. Chinese sutras have many stories of the monk fighting demons as told in *Journey to the West*. He also supported the connection of Sun Wukong with Hanuman in *Ramayana*.
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[Figure: 'The Ramayana and Mahabharata' (front cover)]
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Lu Xun thought highly of ancient Indian literature, including *Ramayana*. He wrote: "On the Power of Satanic School of Poetry" in 1907, and mentioned admiringly Kalidasa in this long article, "ancient India had four *vedas*, which are fascinating and profound; *Mahabharata* and *Ramayana* are two epics with charming beauty". The poet-monk Su Manshu, after studying Sanskrit and travelling in India, published *Yanzikan Suibi* in 1913, and praised the Indian epics *Ramayana* and *Mahabharata* as "grand and elegant", and "a great treasure in the eyes of European literary figures, just like Illiad and Odyssey were to Greece. These two Indian epics have not been translated into Chinese, and only in the book "Huayan Jingchao" it states, "*Ramayana* and *Mahabharata* are names of books. They were translated into European language a long ago, and the best is the translation made by Ramesh Dutt, with an introduction provided by the British scholar Max Müller, but it is a partial rather than complete version." Obviously, he realised the great value of the two Sanskrit epics and had a strong desire to translate them into Chinese.
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In March 1963, the People's Literature Publishing House published *The Ramayana & The Mahabharata* translated by Sun Yong from an English version of Ramesh Dutt. Sun Yong tried to reproduce "sloka", with 16 Chinese characters each line and two lines each stanza. His translation of *Ramayana* has about 4,000 lines and 2,000 "slokas". In September of the same year, Feng Jinxin and Qi Guangxiu translated *Ramayana's Stories* and published it through China Youth Publishing House, and it consists of more than 3,00,000 words. The original version was adapted by Shudha Mazumdar from Krittibas' Bengali edition of *Ramayana*. The Chinese version has a long introduction by Jin Kemu, "*Ramayana: A Great Indian Epic*".
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From 1980 to 1984, People's Literature Publishing House successively published *Ramayana* translated from a corrected Sanskrit edition. There are seven chapters and it consists of eight colossal volumes and nearly 90,000 lines, adopts a form of folk song and provides detailed notes, and thus reproduces the charm of the original poem. Ji Xianlin commenced the translation in 1973, originally only as a means to pass the time, and did not take it as a conscious effort until the end of the Cultural Revolution. After a decade of unusual diligence, he finished the final part of the whole works in early 1983. In the course of this, Ji Xianlin published *A Preliminary Probe into the Ramayana* (1979) and several articles, including *Ramayana in China*.
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Ramayana is not only popular among Han people, but also has a great impact on Dai, Tibetan and Mongolian people. Dai people in Yunnan have close economic, trade and cultural connection with India through the southwestern Silk Road, and enjoy a favourable geographic position in traffic with some countries in Southeast Asia. Here, *Ramayana* turns into *Lan Ga Xi He*. In other ethnic minorities in Yunnan, different Rama's stories are told. When Rama's stories are translated and adapted, local popular tales are added to give a localised colour. Geographically, religiously and culturally, Tibet is closely related to India, and translating classical Indian literature has been one of its traditions. Tibetan scholars translated and adapted *Ramayana*. In 1980, Sichuan Ethnic Publishing House published the Eulogy of *Ramayana* written by zhang-zhung-chos-dbang-grags-pa in the 15ᵗʰ century. It is reported, China has at least four Mongolian versions of Rama's stories. In Xinjiang, Rama's stories are preserved in ancient ethnic languages, such as Saka (Khotan), Tocharian and Agnean.
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'The Stories of Ramayana' (front cover)
Linked texts (4)
- Mahābhārata — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
- Vālmīkirāmāyaṇa — Vālmīki, Sanskrit
- Ayodhyā (Sāketa)
- Lanka