By P.K.Balachandran/Daily News
Colombo, December 22: Sri Lanka is central to the Hindu epic the Ramayana, being the scene of the battle between the Indian king Rama and the Sri Lankan monarch Rawana. However, the Ramayana story has never been part of the lived culture of the Sinhalese, the majority community in the island.
Traditional Sinhalese Buddhist literature had ignored the Ramayana condemning it as “idle talk”, though in the Kelaniya temple, Rawana and his brother Vibhishana were worshiped as devotees of the Buddha.
But, strangely enough, the Ramayana had an important place among the Malays, an entirely Muslim community, till the second half of the 19 th.Century.
Ronit Ricci of the Australian Nation University in her book: Banishment and Belonging (Cambridge University Press and Tambapanni Academic Publishers) says that the Malays brought the Ramayana with them when they were brought to Sri Lanka by the Dutch in the 17 .th., Century. Most of the Malays served in the army of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and some were Javanese rebels who were exiled to Sri Lanka by the Dutch.
The Malays of Sri Lanka are not from Malaya but from Java in present-day Indonesia which the Dutch ruled from the 17 th. Century to well into the 20 th.
The Malay or Javanese Ramayana
Back in their homeland –Java- the story of Rama, Sita and Rawana, was part of the Malay or Javanese lived-in culture, inherited from their past which was heavily influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism.
In Java, as in the rest of South East Asia, the Ramayana was part of the local folk culture from the 9 th.Century AD onwards due to the influence of Hindu traders from India. Ricci says that the earliest written version of the Malay Ramayana was the Kakawin Ramayana. The author of this poetic work was Yogiswara.
According to Ricci, the location of the 9 th.Century Parambanan temple in Java, which is associated with the Ramayana, was originally known as “Langkapura”. Therefore the Malays had a long cultural, if not a physical, connection with the island of Sri Lanka.
The next major version of the Javanese Ramayana was the Hikayat Seri Rama (Chronicle of The Great Rama)written in phases between the 13 and 17 th. Centuries.
The Hikayat Seri Rama is generally regarded as an embodiment of the cultural ideals of the Javanese ruling elite. These ideals were an admixture of Hinduism and Islam.
Integrating Islam with Ramayana
Though the Ramayana is a Hindu epic, the Hikayat Seri Rama uses Islamic terminology and Islamic references. Ricci describes it as “a monument to the kind of connections and syntheses that were forged during the transition from pre-Islamic to Islamic culture in the Malay world.”
The influence of the Ramayana survived in Java over centuries despite conversion to Islam which took place between the 13 th. and the 16 th.Centuries due to the influence of Muslim traders from South India and the Arab world.
These traders brought with them an Islam which combined Islamic and non-Islamic folk beliefs. It is in this context that Javanese/Malay Islam accommodated the Ramayana and other Hindu beliefs.
For example, Cerat Cabolek is a Javanese manuscript that illustrated the dialectic between Islam and Javanese traditions in the 18 th and the 19th centuries. According to Cerat Cabolek the Ramayana and the Arjuna Wiwaha were works of Islamic mysticism that “contained all the necessary teachings for one to lead a virtuous life.”
The Babad Tanah Jawi (History of the Land of Java) also has stories paralleling the Ramayana. One of the stories is that of Bharata and his brother Rama.
Just as in the Ramayana, Bharata refused to sit on the throne of Ayodhya saying the rightful king was not he, but his exiled elder brother Rama, Pakubuwana II of the Javanese kingdom of Kartasura refused to sit on the throne saying the seat should rightfully go to his elder brother, Pangeran Arya Mangkuagara. This happened in 1726.
Trauma of Exile
In Sri Lanka, the Ramayana was very much a part of Malay culture from the 17 th. to the late 19 th. Century, even as the Malays practiced Islam.
In the Ramayana, banishment to Lanka was very hard on Sita. Similarly, the banishment from Java to Sri Lanka was hard on the Malay exiles and soldiers until much later when conditions improved. The yearning to go back to Java was strong in the 18 th.Century, just as Sita’s yearning to go back to Rama and Ayodhya in India was.
For the Malay expatriates (soldiers) or political exiles in Sri Lanka, the Hikayat Seri Rama was more than the story of the banishment of Rama and Sita to “Langkapura”. It seemed to parallel their own banishment from Java as both the political exiles and the soldiers felt that they were forced to leave their homeland by the Dutch.
And just as the “Lanka” of the Ramayana was ruled by a powerful demon-king Rawana, the Malays’ “Langkapura” was also ruled by a demon, and that demon was the intolerant and exploitative Dutch.
The Malays of Sri Lanka welcomed the defeat of the Dutch by the British at the end of the 18 th.Century and the establishment of British rule. The first Sri Lankan Malay language newspaper in the Jawi script Alamat Langkapuri, was started in 1869 by Baba Ounus Saldin. His paper described British rule as “bright sunshine” in contrast to the “darkness” that marked Dutch rule.
An expert on the Malays in Sri Lanka under British rule, Prof. B.A.Hussainmiya, pointed out that the community gained from British rule because of recruitment to the Ceylon Rifle Regiment, also called the Orang Rejimen. The children of Malay soldiers in the regiment got an English education which enabled them to enter government service when the British opened it to Sri Lankans. The Malays became Westernized under British rule and were a large component of the colonial police force.
Malay Lakshmana Rekha
In the texts known as Wasilan (containing charms and incantations recited in life-threatening situations) the Ramayana’s concept of Lakshmana Rekha (the line one will cross only at one’s peril) is evoked.
The Lakshmana Rekha was a boundary drawn around Sita in the forest that would have saved her from the abductor Rawana had she not been careless and crossed it. The Malay Garisan Laksamana is a Wasilan chant that was used by Malays in situations of mortal danger. It was believed that chanting it would result in the perceived danger disappearing or the aggressor dropping dead. Malay soldiers in battle were advised to recite the Garisan Laksamana at the right moment for maximum effect.
Rawana and Nabi Adam
The Hikayat Seri Rama has a story which draws a parallel between Rawana and Adam (referred to as Nabi Adam in the Islamic way). According to the Hikayat Seri Rama, both Rawana and Adam defied a solemn pledge and incurred banishment.
The Hikayat Seri Rama, says that Rawana was a very strong child but was also wild. For this, he was banished by his grandfather Bermaraja, the ruler of Lanka. Rawana, then just 12, indulged in the severe penance of hanging upside down from a tree at the foot of Mount Sarandib (present-day Adam’s Peak) for twelve years continuously.
Nabi Adam, who was also there, having been banished from heaven by Allah for disobeying him, spotted Rawana and told him that he could help him get his rightful place in his kingdom if he would only promise to strictly obey a set of divine commandments that would make him a just ruler of a vast domain. Rawana took the pledge and got to rule his kingdom. But he broke the pledge by abducting Sita. And in the war with Rama, which followed, Rawana suffered a humiliating defeat and lost his kingdom.
With Islamization beginning in Sri Lanka in the late 19 th. and early 20 th. Centuries, and getting a boost in the second half of the 20 th.Century, non-Islamic traits disappeared from Sri Lankan Malay culture. And these include the Ramayana as told in the Hikayat Seri Rama.
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