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The Shi'a in Modern South Asia: Religion, History and Politics. Edited by Justin Jones and Ali Usman Qasmi. pp. 276. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015.

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A middle portion of the book is devoted to the visual artistic renderings of the Rāmāyan. a. John and Mary Brockington, and Rachel Loizeau-Pajaniradja discuss the role of visual narratives… Click to show full abstract

A middle portion of the book is devoted to the visual artistic renderings of the Rāmāyan. a. John and Mary Brockington, and Rachel Loizeau-Pajaniradja discuss the role of visual narratives in the arts across South Asia, in both paintings and textiles, while Anna Dallapiccola argues for an “artists Rāmāyan. a” through the consideration of South Indian mural and textile traditions. They argue that visual arts play an important role in determining which episodes of any regional tradition gain popularity and how limitations of artistic media (sculpture, etc.) might determine the narrative features. Because the episodes concerning these “minor” female characters are self-contained and transferable, they became favoured subjects for artists limited to a single panel of cloth or a solitary tableau to convey an enclosed narrative. Dallapiccola’s analysis emphasizes mural paintings (c. 16th-19th century) and temple cloth ‘kalāmkari’ (pictorial embroidery) in South India. The famous disfigurements of Mantharā, Ayomukhı̄, and Śūrpan. akhā at the hands of male heroes become favoured themes for representation in these traditions, revealing attitudes towards transgressive women of medieval South India. We hear about the narrative voice of women in the Bengali and Braj Bhās.ā traditions from Mandakranta Bose and Imre Bangha, respectively. Bose discusses the Bengali Rāmāyan. a of Candrāvat̄ı (c. 16th century), one of the few Rāmāyan. as written by a woman. Despite focusing on Sı̄tā’s story, Bose argues that Candrāvatı̄’s Rāmāyan. a is a bleak and pessimistic narrative in which both virtuous and malicious women suffer in a man’s world, subjects of social constraint and fate. Imre Bangha, presents a very different kind of argument than the rest of the book. By carefully considering the editing choices and contested passages of Tulsı̄dās’ Kavitāvali (c. 17th century), he argues for reading in the presence of “other” women, beyond the narrative, as narrators and onlookers. He considers the disposition towards women of the male compilers of the various Kavitāvali manuscripts and their choices of whether to include these voices. This chapter is rigorous in its textual analysis and offers a different perspective on the reception and motivations for certain vernacular textual traditions to adapt their language and narratives. In the concluding chapters, Mary Brockington and Mandakranta Bose assist the reader in grappling with the sheer volume of information about these “other women” from a variety of regional and temporal perspectives. Brockington focuses on a British fairy-tale retelling of the Rāmāyan. a epic collected by Susette Taylor in Bhopal (c. 1895/6). She argues that the only consistent element of the Rāmāyan. a tradition is inconsistency. The secondary women characters are manipulated so differently in various sources because of their disposability. They can change as the context of the adaptation required, entailing an element of challenge to the tradition itself. Bose concludes by defining the role of these “other women” as propelling the action and functioning as catalysts to the larger male narrative. This perspective is an exciting addition to scholarship which has sought to tease out the diversity of the “Other Rāmāyan. as” and challenges to the tradition (Richman, 1991 & 2001). For this review alone, it is exceedingly difficult to do justice to the disciplinary and geographic breadth of coverage that this intriguing volume provides. Despite the surface-level disparateness of the sources, the contributing authors, and especially the editors, must be commended for their intrepid effort to bring the “other women” of the Rāmāyan. a to the forefront.

Keywords: shi modern; tradition; modern south; south asia; cambridge; asia religion

Journal Title: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
Year Published: 2017

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