Re: Asura - Story from Ravana's side
A history about different versions and writers of Ramayan. Source: SITA - An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana by Devdutt Pattanaik
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Before 2nd century BCE: Oral tellings by travelling bards
2nd century BCE: Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana
1st century CE: Vyasa’s Ramopakhyan in his Mahabharata
2nd century CE: Bhasa’s Sanskrit play Pratima-nataka
3rd century CE: Sanskrit Vishnu Purana
4th century CE: Vimalasuri’s Prakrit Paumachariya (Jain)
5th century CE: Kalidasa’s Sanskrit Raghuvamsa
6th century CE: Pali Dashratha Jataka (Buddhist)
6th century CE: First images of Ram on Deogarh temple walls
7th century CE: Sanskrit Bhattikavya
8th century CE: Bhavabhuti’s Sanskrit play Mahavira-charita
9th century CE: Sanskrit Bhagavat Purana
10th century CE: Murari’s Sanskrit play Anargha-Raghava
11th century: Bhoja’s Sanskrit Champu Ramayana
12th century: Kamban’s Tamil Iramavataram
13th century: Sanskrit Adhyatma Ramayana
13th century: Buddha Reddy’s Telugu Ranganath Ramayana
14th century: Sanskrit Adbhut Ramayana
15th century: Krittivasa’s Bengali Ramayana
15th century: Kandali’s Assamese Ramayana
15th century: Balaram Das’s Odia Dandi Ramayana
15th century: Sanskrit Ananda Ramayana
16th century: Tulsidas’s Avadhi Ram-charit-manas
16th century: Akbar’s collection of Ramayana paintings
16th century: Eknath’s Marathi Bhavarth Ramayana
16th century: Torave’s Kannada Ramayana
17th century: Guru Govind Singh’s Braj Gobind Ramayana, as part of Dasam Granth
18th century: Giridhar’s Gujarati Ramayana
18th century: Divakara Prakasa Bhatta’s Kashmiri Ramayana
19th century: Bhanubhakta’s Nepali Ramayana
1921: Cinema, silent film Sati Sulochana
1943: Cinema, Ram Rajya (only film seen by Mahatma Gandhi)
1955: Radio, Marathi Geet Ramayana
1970: Comic book, Amar Chitra Katha’s *Rama
1987: Television, Ramanand Sagar’s Hindi Ramayana
2003: Novel, Ashok Banker’s Ramayana series
I'm adding one from my side. Rama Lila part in Madhuri Dixit starer 'Lajja'*
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With all this history and the reason that it remained oral for centuries, there can be different versions and interpretations.
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The Ramayana literature can be studied in four phases. The first phase, till the second century CE, is when the Valmiki Ramayana takes final shape. In the second phase, between the second and tenth centuries CE, many Sanskrit and Prakrit plays and poems are written on the Ramayana. Here we see an attempt to locate Ram in Buddhist and Jain traditions as well, but he is most successfully located as the royal form of Vishnu on earth through Puranic literature. In the third phase, after the tenth century, against the backdrop of the rising tide of Islam, the Ramayana becomes the epic of choice to be put down in local tongues. Here the trend is to be devotional, with Ram as God and Hanuman as his much-venerated devotee and servant. Finally, in the fourth phase, since the nineteenth century, strongly influenced by the European and American gaze, the Ramayana is decoded, deconstructed and reimagined based on modern political theories of justice and fairness.
The story of Ram was transmitted orally for centuries, from 500 BCE onwards, reaching its final form in Sanskrit by 200 BCE. The author of this work is identified as one Valmiki. The poetry, all scholars agree, is outstanding. It has traditionally been qualified as adi kavya, the first poem. All later poets keep referring to Valmiki as the fountainhead of Ram’s tale.
*Valmiki’s work was transmitted orally by travelling bards. It was put down in writing much later. As a result, there are two major collections of this original work – northern and southern – with about half the verses in common. The general agreement is that of the seven chapters the first (Ram’s childhood) and last (Ram’s rejection of Sita) sections are much later works.
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The brahmins resisted putting down Sanskrit in writing and preferred the oral tradition (shruti). It was the Buddhist and Jain scholars who chose the written word over the oral word, leading to speculation that the Jain and Buddhist retellings of Ram’s story were the first to be put down in writing in Pali and Prakrit.Regional *Ramayana*s were put down in writing only after 1000 CE, first in the south by the twelfth century, then in the east by the fifteenth century and finally in the north by the sixteenth century.
Most women’s Ramayana s are oral. Songs sung in the courtyards across India refer more to domestic rituals and household issues rather than to the grand ideas of epic narratives. However, in the sixteenth century, two women did write the Ramayana: Molla in Telugu and Chandrabati in Bengali.Men who wrote the Ramayana belonged to different communities. Buddha Reddy belonged to the landed gentry, Balaram Das and Sarala Das belonged to the community of scribes and bureaucrats and Kamban belonged to the community of temple musicians.
Keen to appreciate the culture of his people, the Mughal emperor Akbar, in the sixteenth century, ordered the translation of the Ramayana from Sanskrit to Persian, and got his court painters to illustrate the epic using Persian techniques. This led to a proliferation of miniature paintings based on the Ramayana patronized by kings of Rajasthan, Punjab, Himachal and the Deccan in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
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