Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

The Life of a Text: Performing theRamcaritmanasof Tulsidas
ISBN: 9780520909342
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of California Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Tulasidasa 1532—1623 -- Ramacaritamanasa; Tulasidasa 1532—1623 -- Stage history; Criticism Textual;

The Life of a Text offers a vivid portrait of one community's interaction with its favorite text--the epic Ramcaritmanas --and the way in which performances of the epic function as a flexible and evolving medium for cultural expression. Anthropologists, historians of religion, and readers interested in the culture of North India and the performance arts will find breadth of subject, careful scholarship, and engaging presentation in this unique and beautifully illustrated examination of Hindi culture.



The most popular and influential text of Hindi-speaking North India, the epic Ramcaritmanas is a sixteenth century retelling of the Ramayana story by the poet Tulsidas. This masterpiece of pre-modern Hindi literature has always reached its largely illiterate audiences primarily through oral performance including ceremonial recitation, folksinging, oral exegesis, and theatrical representation. Drawing on fieldwork in Banaras, Lutgendorf breaks new ground by capturing the range of performance techniques in vivid detail and tracing the impact of the epic in its contemporary cultural context.

Philip Lutgendorf is Assistant Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Culture at the University of Iowa.