Nabanita Debsen’s views on ‘Chandravati Ramayan’.
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Although “the” Ramayana is a fluid narrative, scholarship has traditionally recognized the Sanskrit Valmiki Ramayana as the most authoritative of Ramayanas. But recent studies have brought to light the hundreds of regional stories of Rama and Sita which are more popular with the masses. These would include Krittibasa’s Ramayana in Bengal, Kamban’s Tamil Iramavataram in South India, notably in the state of Tamil Nadu, Tulsidas’s Ramcharitamanas among the Hindi-speaking belt of northern India, and so on. But even here, a pattern seems to emerge; all the above-mentioned authors are male. Within this scenario, a rather unique text stands out, and that is Chandravati’s sixteenth century Bengali Ramayana, for its author was a woman. Even more fascinating is the double-toned nature of the narrative – through Chandravati’s own voice and through the voice of its tragic heroine, Sita.
Chandravati (ca.1550-1600) was born in a village in eastern Bengal, today in Bangladesh. It is impossible to ignore the tragedy of her own life which perhaps played a role in her re-fashioning a well-loved epic; her Ramayana is built on a recurring theme that defines women’s lives – the theme of sorrow. Born the daughter of a poor fisherman, legend has it that on the eve of her wedding, her fiancé ditched her for another woman. A devastated Chandravati vows to never marry, instead becoming a devotee of Shiva, and at the urging of her father, takes to re-writing the Ramayana. But rather than simply recount the traditional tale, Chandravati, through the Ramayana – that symbol of Hindu patriarchy – turns the story into one lamenting the pitiful lives of women by centering it on Sita. That it is a story by a woman and for women is evident in the fact that Chandravati addresses her narrative with the vocative, “Suno Sakhijana!” or “Listen, my girlfriends!” rather than to members of the court as was the traditional salutation for stories involving mythological characters.
Unlike normative accounts which begin with Rama’s conception and birth, Chandravati’s Ramayana starts with the back story to Sita’s birth. With this beginning, Chandravati intertwines the lives of two wronged women – Sita and Mandodari. Mandodari is the wife of Ravana, Sita’s abductor, and against whom Rama wages a mighty battle to reclaim Sita, although he later discards for her “sullied” reputation as a result of her abduction by Ravana. Mandodari’s own life is one of sorrow and neglect as her husband, Ravana, is more interested in spending time making love to the hundreds of women who make up his harem than with her. Chandravati links Sita and Mandodari’s fate together by presenting them as mother and daughter; Mandodari begets Sita through a special potion which leads to her giving birth to Sita.[1]
Part 1 which began with Sita’s birth ends with Rama’s birth, the traditional beginning of the Ramayana. It is in Part 2 that we get to Sita’s ordeals. Chandravati has Sita recount in her own words the twelve months of her captivity by Ravana. An example of Chandravati’s mastery over the symbolism of language is evident in the way she juxtaposes the month of ashadha which signals the arrival of the monsoons with Sita’s own heavy sense of being:
The month of ashadha brought in heavy rains, the clouds rolling in with roaring thunder. Yet no cloud held as much water as the tears in Sita’s eyes. I drenched the ground under the ashoka tree, at a loss to know if I should seek death by poison or by drowning, consoled only by the good Sarama.[2]
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