While Goethe's Faust stands with the classics as pillars in the canon of great Western literature, an entirely different epic poem of arguably greater impact remains largely ignored by scholars in the West, even though its influence over the millennia rivals that of the Bible and its length is four times that of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined.
That poem is the Ramayana, and it is the subject of a quarter-century-long translation project directed by Robert Goldman, a UC Berkeley professor of India Studies and Sanskrit, and his wife, Sally Sutherland Goldman, a lecturer in Sanskrit at Berkeley.
Americans likely will question the relevance of an ancient Sanskrit poem. "It means an extraordinarily great deal to many millions of people," explains Robert Goldman -- and that's probably an understatement. This Indian tale of love and war, first related nearly 3,000 years ago, has saturated the culture of India and other nations across Asia, affecting the beliefs, politics, aesthetics, and social relations of roughly one-sixth of the world's people. The poem's hero, Rama, is worshipped by Hindus as an earthly manifestation of their supreme god, Vishnu. Yet the Ramayana remains a masterpiece that few in America and Europe have heard of, let alone have studied.
Brahma and
the gods
summon
Lord Rama
to heaven.
See reference page
In an age of ever-increasing globalization, and at a time when large numbers of people from South and Southeast Asia have become an integral part of American society, Goldman calls it "a sad commentary on the persistence of parochialism that most of us know so little about a work that has so dramatically shaped the culture and society of one of Asia's most important powers."
The Goldmans are therefore making an exceptional and long-overdue contribution to Western scholarship by producing a highly readable and exhaustively researched translation of the epic. A handful of earlier English translations exist, but they are inaccessible, stylistically dated, and based on inferior textual sources.
The Ramayana translation is a highly collaborative undertaking. Robert Goldman, who chairs Berkeley's Center for South Asia Studies, began work on this massive project in 1974. Shortly thereafter he assembled a team of Sanskrit scholars that, in addition to Sally Goldman, includes a UC Berkeley emeritus professor and two professors from the University of Chicago and York University in Toronto. The consortium so far has translated five of the epic's seven books. (The Goldmans were responsible for the translation of Volumes 1 and 5 and are at work on Volumes 6 and 7. They also edited the translations of the other volumes.) Princeton University Press is publishing the work serially in its Princeton Library of Asian Translations. The entire translation, when complete, will exceed 3,500 pages.
Their project is the first to translate the critically edited text of the Ramayana that scholars at the Oriental Institute at the University of Baroda, India, prepared from 1960 to 1975. But it's much more than a line-for-line translation. The Goldmans build on the comprehensive work of the critical edition's scholars by considering a much broader scope of commentary about the poem, which over the centuries multiplied and differentiated into numerous regional renditions and was translated into every major language across South and Southeast Asia. Several of the centuries-old commentaries that they are studying have never before been published, and they bring this previously unknown scholarly discussion to the readers' awareness through their meticulous annotations.
"It
is a sad
commentary on the persistence of parochialism that most of
us know so little about a work that has so dramatically
shaped the culture and society of one of Asia's most
important powers."
Robert Goldman
"What we've provided, and what no other translation has ever provided, is a very detailed, dense annotation of every line in the text," says Goldman. "These notes are based in part on this very rich tradition of Sanskrit commentary, which provides us with a window into how this text was read, understood, and argued over for centuries by traditional Sanskrit scholars."
What, then, is this epic about, and why does it continue to capture the imaginations of so many people? It is a rich, colorful narrative attributed to the legendary poet-sage Valmiki that relates the adventures of Rama, the revered ruler of the kingdom of Kosala, and his devoted wife, Sita. On the eve of his consecration, Rama is forced into exile through an intrigue on the part of his stepmother and banished to the wilderness with his faithful wife and younger brother. There, his wife is kidnapped by a mighty demon king, whom Rama ultimately slays with the assistance of an army of fantastic and powerful monkeys. A complex series of events ultimately leads to a final episode of self-sacrifice and exile that casts the couple asunder until they ascend to heaven.
To appreciate the complexity of the translation project, one need only open one of the critical edition's three-inch-thick volumes and see that each page typically contains only a few lines of the poem. The rest of the large-format page is filled with a couple dozen variations of those lines and attendant notes about the variations. Picture each couplet resting on multiple layers of digressions, translations, and historical notes -- and then consider the fact that the entire Ramayana has some 25,000 couplets.
The Goldmans have translated these couplets into a compelling format. One can read a single line, such as "poor lovely Sita, lady of the sweet smile -- mourning for her husband and utterly devoted to him -- placed a straw between Ravana and herself. . . ," and then turn to the Goldmans' notes at the back of their book to read how generations of scholars have disputed the meaning of that gesture and the piece of straw. One commentator put forth no fewer than nine different interpretations of that seemingly simple act.
Goldman says the Ramayana has always been central to India's national identity, as evidenced by the fact that the editors of the critical edition subtitled it The National Epic of India. The poem's central characters embody an Indian -- specifically Hindu -- sense of social, political, and religious propriety. As an avatar, or manifestation, of the Hindu god Vishnu, Rama and his quest to save his kingdom have been an ongoing source of inspiration for anticolonial and religious nationalism. In India today, notes Goldman, leaders of the Hindu nationalist political parties have made the construction of a Rama temple at the supposed birthplace of the epic hero the centerpiece of their rise to power.
It is no wonder, therefore, that a basic knowledge of the poem is essential for understanding the region's politics, religion, history, and popular culture. Until Goldman began the translation project, however, the poem was out of reach to most scholarly communities outside Asia.
When the Goldmans' Volume 5 was published in 1996, a writer for the Los Angeles Times Book Review summed up its significance with the following praise: "Goldman and his team of translators. . . have made accessible a work that offers a unique window into a rich and ancient civilization. They present a carefully contextualized and densely annotated literal translation of a text which, like the Bible or the Koran, has profoundly shaped the world we share."