Tradition · epic tradition & performance · Myanmar

Yama Zatdaw

Also known as Yama Zatdaw — the Burmese Ramayana

Function

Text & inscription

Confidence

Not assessed

Location

21.975, 96.084

Worth knowing

So the Burmese Ramayana is an Indian story that reached Burma through Thailand as war booty, and its music and costume are still recognisably Siamese. Burma had Rama material long before — Bagan has Ramayana relief — but the performance tradition dates from that one event.

Connections (2)

• Power passed toAyutthaya, Thailand

  The Burmese sacked Ayutthaya in 1767 and carried its court dancers, musicians and manuscripts back to the Burmese capital as captives, which is how the Thai Ramakien became the Burmese Yama Zatdaw. The music and costume of Burmese court dance are still recognisably Siamese. Burma had Ramayana relief at Bagan five hundred years earlier, so the story was not new; the performance tradition specifically is a spoil of war.

• Power passed toRāmakien

  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.

On these journeys

• The Ramayana across the eastern seas

Sources

Wikipedia, “Yama Zatdaw”. Paula Richman (ed.), Many Rāmāyaṇas (1991); Santosh Desai and the standard Southeast Asian Ramayana literature.

• Wikipedia — Yama Zatdaw