Tradition · epic tradition & performance · Thailand
Rāmakien
Also known as Rāmakien — the Thai Ramayana
The Thai national Ramayana tradition 'Ramakien' — the Thai royal Ramayana recension codified under King Rama I (ruled 1782-1809) of the Chakri dynasty (Thailand's current royal house) after the 1767 Burmese destruction of Ayutthaya. The Ramakien is a 2,000-page Thai-language epic that integrates the Valmiki Ramayana core with Thai cultural adaptations: Hanuman is a mischievous warrior-general (unlike the celibate monk of the Hindu tradition), Ravana (Thotsakan) becomes a tragic royal figure, and the Thai royal city of Ayutthaya is identified with Rama's capital of Ayodhya. The Ramakien's reliefs are carved on the walls of the Wat Phra Kaew (the Emerald Buddha Temple at Bangkok) in a 2-kilometre continuous frieze — the largest Ramayana relief anywhere in the world. The Ramakien is central to Thai royal legitimation (all Chakri kings bear the royal name 'Rama'). The Thai Khon classical dance drama still performs Ramakien episodes.
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 13.752, 100.493
Worth knowing
Its Rama is a Buddhist king rather than an avatar of Vishnu, Hanuman is a considerably less celibate figure than in any Indian version, and the demon Thotsakan is given a sympathy Ravana rarely gets. The Thai kings take Rama as their regnal title, which makes the epic a constitutional document as much as a literary one.
Connections (4)
- Canonised by textReamker
The Thai Ramakien and the Khmer Reamker are close enough to be versions of one another, and both depart from every Indian telling in the same directions: far more space for Hanuman, more sympathy for the demon king, and an ending in which Rama and Sita's reconciliation does not hold. The Thai text was reworked under Rama I in 1797 after the older manuscripts were lost at Ayutthaya, and the Khmer one had to be reconstructed after the 1970s, so both are also survivals of catastrophe.
- Power passed toAyutthaya, Thailand
The Ramakien as it stands was composed under Rama I in 1797 because the older Thai manuscripts had burned at Ayutthaya when the Burmese sacked it in 1767. A king who had just founded a new dynasty and a new capital reconstructed the national epic and took the epic hero's name as his own title — which is about as direct a use of a story for legitimation as the record offers.
- Power passed toYama Zatdaw
The Burmese carried Siamese court dancers, musicians and manuscripts back from the sack of Ayutthaya in 1767, and the Yama Zatdaw is what grew from them — a Burmese national epic whose music, costume and choreography are recognisably Thai. It is the clearest case anywhere of a performance tradition transmitted as war booty, and the Burmese themselves called the resulting style Yodaya, meaning Ayutthaya.
- Shared sacred geographyThe coronation of the Thai monarch
The same Indian material does two jobs in Thailand and both are royal. The Rāmakien is the Thai Rāmāyaṇa, performed in khon masked dance and painted round the cloister of the Emerald Buddha temple, and every Chakri king takes the regnal name Rama. The coronation's Vedic rites, conducted by the court Brahmins, install him in that identity formally. A Theravada Buddhist monarchy uses a Hindu epic for its dynastic name and Brahmanical ritual for its investiture, without either being felt as a contradiction.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Ramakien”. Paula Richman (ed.), Many Rāmāyaṇas (1991); Santosh Desai and the standard Southeast Asian Ramayana literature.
Open Rāmakien in the repository →