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BY: SUN STAFF
Ram and Lakshmana meet Hanuman, Sugriva Aug 07, 2011 — CANADA (SUN) — Reprise of a 2007 series on the Miracle Plays of Mathura. There is no need to retell here the familiar narratives which the Ramlila dramatizes. With a few exceptions of the kind just mentioned, they are the stories told by Tulsidas and may be read in various translated works. The scope and content of the whole of a city's observances may be seen in the translation of Mathura's day-by-day calendar, shown below. It will be noticed in that calendar that the presentations do not consist of only dramas.
On the opening day and on the final day, important rituals are also performed. On numerous occasions throughout the season, pageants and processions - spectacles rather than dramas - are held in the streets and other public places. For instance, the gods go in procession to plead with Brahma for help against the evil power of Ravana. Rama and the demoness Taraka lead their respective adherents through the streets and lock forces in decisive combat.
When Rama is to be married to Sita, he travels to her parental home in a colorful wedding procession like that of mortal bridegrooms. Later, Rama, Sita and Lakshmana walk barefoot to the edge of the city on the sad road to exile, amidst the genuine tears of many who line the streets. The citizens pour forth in a body to visit them at Citrakut, which is identified for the time being with a certain spot in the suburbs. And when all the trials of the heroic family are finished, the victorious Rama returns to meet his brother Bharata, traveling in triumphal procession with his monkey friends and allies.
Ramlila Spectacle at Benares (Ramnagar) The last and greatest of these vast open-air spectacles is the Ravanvadh, the great pageant of the slaying of Rama's demon enemy. In the Mathura festivities, this spectacle was massively and crudely presented under the open sky on the afternoon of the Vijayadasai day, before a crowd equal in number to the entire population of the city. The arena was a sunken field at the edge of town, surrounded by banks and hillocks from which a hundred thousand people looked on. At one end of the field, colossal paper effigies of Ravana and his brother Kumbhakarna (Kumbhkaran) manned the flimsy walls of a paper 'fortress' of Lanka. There was some semblance of mute drama as Rama and his monkey cohorts swarmed on the scene and prepared to attack. Two carriages bearing impersonators of Rama and Ravana circled round and round in lively imitation of the tactical gyrations of the chariots of the two champions in combat. A great shout went up as Ravana was struck down. The ebullient crowd swarmed through the lines of police, the walls of Lanka were torn to tatters, and the images of the demons went up in flames. On the evening of the day of the Ravanvah pageant, the conflict which had been shown roughly in the afternoon was given serious dramatic rendering on the Mathura Ramlila troupe's principal covered stage. In all Ramlilas of the author's experience, there existed this fundamental distinction between the outdoor processions and pageants, on the one hand, and the less spectacular but more polished stage presentations on the other. Jvalaprasad Misra in his Hindi manual for Ramlila troupes shows that this differentiation is widely recognized: "It is clear that the Ramlila can be of two kinds, the first on the open field, the second on a curtained stage. The lila that is performed on a stage goes on in the style of a play. …The first kind of lila takes place after a ring has been made in the open field. Only such action is performed in it as is suitable for common people to see." In Mathura, Vrindaban, and in all the towns near and far of which the author has direct knowledge, the festival involves performances of both sorts, and in no case are those of the first kind done in dumb show. The descriptions of the Ramlila's actors as voiceless is found in writers who were not mere transient aliens but careful, settled observers whom one would expect to be aware of the existence of spoken dramas if there were any. Narayana Sahaya Gosvami in the preface to this Sriram-lila Nataka Ramayana says that in some towns the acting of the Ramlila goes on in the manner of a play, but that "generally in the Ramlilas it is the pandits who recite the verses; the svarups are only made to sit in the guise of images." The Gosvami would not underestimate, of course, the need for the dialogue which he is publishing, but we must accept his statement about the frequency of the use of mute actors. The testimony of such well-informed persons leads us to believe that in the past (and perhaps even now) there have been many communities which attempt nothing beyond the public pageants, associating their reading of the Ramayana with these inarticulate outdoor shows. Some may even produce the smaller stage plays in pantomime. The idea suggests itself that the pantomime may have been the original form of the Ramlila and that the stage performance with dialogue may have made its appearance only through the influence of the modern Hindi play, which was nascent in the latter half of the last century. However, we have evidence that there were speaking actors on the Ramlila stage before the first Hindu prose dramas were written. Topinath Tivari in his recent Bharatendukalin Natak Sahitya relates the personal reminiscences of a very old man, born in 1826, who described to him the dialogue in both prose and verse which was used by the Ramlila actors of his childhood. And as we shall see, a comparison of the Ramlila with the modern play does not encourage the belief that the former if the offspring of the latter. The modern dialogue drama has exerted a marginal influence on the Ramlila tradition, but the product has been the class of aberrant Ramlila natakas mentioned above. So we shall assume that it is the pantomimic Ramlila which is the epiphenomenon. It is probably a local simplification, the resort of communities which undertake the observances with limited resources in training, funds, interest, or energy. At any rate, the dialogue drama which prevails in the Ramlila today is not a recent development. The Ramlila one may see today is full drama. Its dialogue is subordinated to textual recitation, it is true, but the subordination does not mean that dialogue is minor in quantity. Its dependence is functional. The recitation carries the thread of the story and thus determines the speech and action of the performers. The pandit, ever the key man in the proceedings, sings out the dohas, caupais and sorathas of the printed page in the every-recurring tunes appropriate to their meters. If the acting is being done on a proper stage, the pandit's lectern is usually seen at its right-hand border. He and his accompanists often sit on a small detached platform which projects into the audience slightly in advance of the main stage and to its right. Frequently he uses a microphone and amplifier to make himself heard above the sometimes boisterous chatter of the crowd. In Vrindaban, where most of the acting is done out-of-doors, the pandit seated himself on a table placed at the edge of the rectangle of dusty lawn which served as a stage. In swift-moving action scenes he sometimes descended to the sidelines and strode up and down with the tides of battle, holding his book before him and singing out the verses in a stentorian voice. As these pandits begin their scriptural chant from one of these vantage points, the performers on the stage begin to display in bodily motion the action being narrated, and when the verses of the Ramayana have reported the words of this or that personality, the pandit pauses while on the stage the appropriate actor repeats the substance of the speech in modern Hindi prose. Sometimes the actor's utterance is a fairly literal translation of the Ramayana passage; sometimes it is a paraphrase, and sometimes a fanciful elaboration along lines which the text merely suggests or provides with a reasonable occasion. How cantillation and dialogue are interwoven may be seen in the transcription to follow, of a sound-recording made at an actual performance. The recording was made on the Ramlila stage in Mathura. The occasion was the enactment of the Rajgaddi or coronation of Rama. In tomorrow's segment, we will explore the exact transcription of this recording. (A partial translation of a 1949 Handbill)
Reverence to Sri Ramcandra!
September 16: September 17: September 18: September 19: September 20: September 21: September 22: September 23: September 24: September 25: September 26: September 27: September 28: September 29: September 30: October 1: October 2: October 3: October 4: Source: 'The Miracles Plays of Mathura' by Norvin Hein
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