TY  - GEN
UR  - https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/13176/
Y1  - 2012///
N2  - What happens when a vernacular literature represents a ?Great Tradition? in a different time in history? Does it signal the end of a great tradition, or an extension, proliferation of that tradition?  Take for example, the case of the Indian epic, the Ramayana. Composed about three thousand years ago in Sanskrit the lure of this royal story hardly requires an introduction: the story of Prince Rama, the protagonist of the epic, replicated in hundreds of languages, the vernaculars of India and beyond over the last two millennia.  One such Ramayana is in Awadhi (a variation of Hindi), the Ramcaritmanas, arguably the most popular among all other versions of the story. This essay attempts to discuss the grammar of genealogy, the structure of the narrative and the power of the story in the vernacular.  Is it the vernacular, like Awadhi, which has turned the story into the proverbial narrative of the houses of millions of Indians? Or, is it the majesty of the story of Rama itself, which makes the Ramcaritmanas so popular?  The essay argues that power of the vernacular works at three levels: the nature of language, the memory or the structure of the story and the felicity of the medium; the connecting thread at these levels I argue is the tradition of storytelling. 
KW  - Literature 
KW  -  Memory 
KW  -  Ramayana 
KW  -  Ramcaritmanas 
KW  -  Tradition 
KW  -  Vernacular
TI  - Language, Memory And The Vernacular: The Power Of The Ramacaritmanas In India?s Epic Culture
A1  - Tiwari, Heeraman
SN  - 1617-5069
AV  - public
ID  - heidok13176
T3  - Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics
ER  -