Tradition · epic text tradition · Indonesia
Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa
Also known as Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa — the Javanese Ramayana
An Old Javanese poem of the ninth or tenth century, based not on Valmiki but on the Sanskrit Bhattikavya — a grammarian's showpiece — and carved in relief around the Shiva temple at Prambanan. It is the oldest substantial work of Javanese literature.
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- -7.752, 110.492
Worth knowing
Indonesia is the largest Muslim-majority country in the world and the Ramayana is performed nightly at Prambanan by Muslim dancers, taught in schools, and used in wayang shadow theatre where the clown-servants who carry the moral weight of the story are Javanese inventions with no Indian counterpart.
Connections (4)
- Devotional corpus onPrambanan, Java
The Ramayana relief on the inner balustrade of the Shiva temple at Prambanan follows the Kakawin's narrative rather than Valmiki's, and both date from roughly the same central Javanese century. The panels stop partway through the story and the rest is carried on the Brahma temple — which is one of the arguments for the whole complex having been built and modified over several reigns rather than to a single plan.
- AnalogueReamker
The Javanese Kakawin and the Khmer Reamker are the two oldest Southeast Asian Ramayanas and they took different Indian sources: the Kakawin works from the Bhattikavya, a Sanskrit grammarian's showpiece, and the Reamker from a version closer to Valmiki with a large admixture of local material. Both give far more space to Hanuman than any Indian telling, and both survive partly in stone — at Prambanan and in the Angkor galleries.
- TransmissionMaharadia Lawana
Maharadia Lawana is the last link in a chain that runs Java to the Malay peninsula to Sulu to Lanao, and the names show the wear: Rama becomes Radia Mangandiri, Lakshmana becomes Radia Mangawarna, Ravana becomes Maharadia Lawana and is the title character. The Javanese Kakawin is the literary ancestor several removes back, and nothing in the Maranao version was ever written down until an anthropologist wrote it.
- Devotional corpus onBali
Bali reads the Old Javanese Kakawin Ramayana as liturgy rather than as heritage: it is recited in mabebasan sessions where a reader chants a verse and an interpreter glosses it in Balinese, performed in wayang kulit, and danced. The kecak, the chorus of men chanting the monkey army's sound, was devised in the 1930s in collaboration with the German painter Walter Spies and is now as Balinese as anything older.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Kakawin Ramayana”. Paula Richman (ed.), Many Rāmāyaṇas (1991); Santosh Desai and the standard Southeast Asian Ramayana literature.
Open Kakawin Rāmāyaṇa in the repository →