Tradition · epic tradition · Laos
Phra Lak Phra Lam
Also known as Phra Lak Phra Lam — the Lao Ramayana
The Lao version, in which Rama is a previous birth of the Buddha and the whole story is a Jataka — told in palm-leaf manuscripts, painted on monastery walls at Luang Prabang, and performed at the New Year.
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 19.887, 102.135
Worth knowing
The action is relocated entirely to the Mekong: Ayodhya is placed in Laos, Lanka downstream, and the geography of the epic is mapped onto the river the audience lives on. It is the clearest single example of what happens to the Ramayana when a place adopts it rather than importing it.
Connections (2)
- Canonised by textThe Jātakas
In the Lao Phra Lak Phra Lam and the Burmese and Thai traditions, Rama is a previous birth of the Buddha and the Ramayana is therefore a Jataka — which resolves at a stroke the problem of a Theravada kingdom telling a Hindu story. The Dasaratha Jataka in the Pali canon already does this in miniature, so the move is canonical rather than improvised, and it is why the epic travels so easily into Buddhist Southeast Asia.
- Craft tradition ofLuang Prabang
Phra Lak Phra Lam is painted on the monastery walls at Luang Prabang, recited from palm-leaf manuscripts and performed at Pi Mai, the Lao New Year, with masked dancers in the royal palace compound. The geography is relocated entirely to the Mekong — Ayodhya placed in Laos and Lanka downstream — so the epic happens on the river the audience is standing beside.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Phra Lak Phra Ram”. Paula Richman (ed.), Many Rāmāyaṇas (1991); Santosh Desai and the standard Southeast Asian Ramayana literature.
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