Prof. Dr.Satya Vrat Shastri's Thai Ramayana

It appears that the epics have taken hold of me. As I put the Mahabharata blogs together into a book form, I discovered that my rambling style has left many loose ends.  My friend Chandramouli offered to take a look at this book and edit. It is sure to make it more compact, readable and importantly gramatical.  He calls my blog 'Mahabharata as seen by an aam admi', a non-scholarly look. I am looking forward to it and hope it proves interesting in the book form.

During this hiatus, I also plan to delve into some aspects of the epic to obtain better insights. Raghu has gifted me a book, 'The pregnant king' by Devadutt Pattanaik, a fiction. He calls it the side view of a small part of Mahabharata. The title seems a bit tongue-in-cheek  I also picked up on the recommendation of Murali and others, 'The difficulty of being good'  by Gurucharan Das. A blend of scholarly and personal views. I have yet to read them!

Initially I thought to blog on Bhagavata or Vishnusahasranama, but as it happens sometimes, I was lead to think of Ramayana. While at a screening of a documentary, 'O Friend, This Waiting!', we bought this special issue on Ramayana, an IFA publication.Very interesting and scholarly articles on Ramayana and their influence on art and culture. They  tell us how our epics have inspired many versions and in many countries. I have lived in Thailand for many years, their constitutional king is Rama the 9th and the country has its own Ayuthaya. The city at its peak was one of the largest cities in the world at the time.

Ramayana in Thailand is known as Ramakien.  The version recognized today was compiled in the kingdom of Siam under the supervision of King Rama I (1736–1809), the founder of the Chakri dynasty, which still maintains the throne of Thailand. Between the years of 1797 and 1807, Rama I supervised the writing of the well-known edition and even wrote parts of it.

In 1989, Satyavrat Shastri translated the Ramakien into a Sanskrit epic poem (mahakavya) named Ramakirtimahakavyam, in 25 sargas (cantos) and about 1200 stanzas in 14 metres. This work won 11 national and international awards. (Wikipedia)

<sup>During his career he has won many national and international awards, including, the Sahitya Akademi Award for Sanskrit, given by Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, in 1968 for his poetry work, Srigurugovindasimhacharitam, then in 2006, he became the first recipient of the Jnanpith award in Sanskrit language (conferred in 2009 by his disciple and Thailand's Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. 


I plan to blog about, not the full story, but mainly on the differences between the Ramayana we know and Ramakien.</sup>