Place · Ramlila performance town · India
Rāmnagar (Kāshī) Rāmlīlā landscape
The Ramnagar quarter of Varanasi, where the Kashi Maharaja patronises the longest-running Ramlila in India since Maharaja Udit Narayan Singh founded it in 1830. The month-long open-air performance of the Ramayana remaps the epic onto the city's physical ground: specific neighbourhoods, ponds and platforms become Ayodhya, Chitrakoot, Panchavati, Kishkindha and Lanka in sequence. The crowd of thousands moves with the performance across kilometres of ground each night, chanting the Ramcharitmanas as the actors go. Nostalgic Hindu Benaresis consider the Ramnagar Ramlila the standard of all Ramlilas; it has been staged every year without a break for nearly two centuries.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Tradition
- Ramlila performance tradition; ethnographic study
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 25.276, 83.023
Connections (2)
- Performs as local replicaLankā / Sri Lanka
At Ramnagar across the river from Banaras, the month-long Ramlila maps the whole epic onto a few square kilometres: one neighbourhood is Ayodhya, a tank is the ocean, a field is Lanka, and the audience walks between them each evening behind the Maharaja's elephant. Distances of two thousand kilometres are covered in a twenty-minute walk. It is the clearest working demonstration of how Indian sacred geography treats place — as something that can be enacted anywhere.
- Site withinKāshī / Vārānasī / Banāras
Rāmnagar (Kāshī) Rāmlīlā landscape lies within Kāshī / Vārānasī / Banāras — the two sites sit about 7 km apart, well inside the city's historical boundary and part of the same urban or peri-urban landscape. Rāmnagar (Kāshī) Rāmlīlā landscape is one of the specific sites that give Kāshī / Vārānasī / Banāras its layered character, and reads differently when seen as a stop within the larger city rather than as an isolated monument on an open map. The surrounding neighbourhoods, roads and other heritage ensembles belong to the same single urban fabric.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Ramlila”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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