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Literary Review
Play or chronicle?
M.S. NAGARAJAN
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T. Sriraman avoids needless embellishments and retains natural speech, marked by ease, grace, and unimpeded flow.
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Ramanujar; Indira Parthasarathy, translated by T. Sriraman, OUP, 2008. Rs. 495.
Neither by the Vedas, nor by austerities, nor by charity, nor by sacrifices…
but by single-minded devotion alone can I… be known and realised.
Shrimad Bhagvad Gita
From time immemorial, sadhus, sanyasis and saints have enriched India’s religious and cultural heritage, usually referred to as sanathana dharma. The venerated mystics, Azhwars and Nayanmars of Tamil Nadu, initiated the Bhakti tradition using Tamil, the vernacular of the region, as the medium.
The Azhwars, 12 in number, sang informed and spiritually edifying psalms (4000 Divyaprabandam referred to as Tamil Veda) in praise of Lord Vishnu. Of these, 11 of them sang inspired songs in praise of Lord Ranganatha, the presiding deity at Srirangam and 10 of Lord Venkateswara of Tirumalai.
Renowned descendant
Thus, we have a sacred and sanctified lineage of Acharyas, descending from Nadamuni of the ninth century to Manavala Mamuni of the 14th century. According to legend, Srirama Mishra, also known as Manakkal Nambi (929 AD?) the patron saint of the village named after him to which this writer is proud to belong, was one of the preceptors of the highly revered Alavandar. Sri Ramanuja (1017-1137), known by various honorific titles such as Yatiraja, Emperumanar, Udayavar, is indisputably the most renowned descendant of this glorious ancestry.
Set in four acts with 24 short scenes, Indira Parthasarathy’s Ramanujar dramatises the life and teachings of this illustrious Vaishnavaite Saint from the age of 25 in scene one to the ripe old age of 120, when he attains Tirunadu in Act IV with the following resounding words:
The Vaishnavaite never dies. He has no beginning, no end. .. If we are blessed with divine grace, all that we see is Vaikuntam. God is simply the ultimate bourne of all human possibilities. Let us continue our journey towards that goal. The journey has no end. Om Namo Narayanaya (94).
It is more in the nature of a chronicle than a play/drama in the strict sense of the term. This prodigiously long chronicle of a century is episodic in structure; the major incidents in Ramanuja’s life that took place in Kanchipuram, Srirangam, the forest in the Nilgris, and Melkote are dramatised with faithful adherence to the facts as known through the legends. All deviations and departures from the Guruparampara tradition are pointed out in C.T. Indra’s long introduction and equally long scenic analyses, which form the commentary of the play, as well as in the author’s preface.
The stage directions are elaborate, with an eye on minute details. Like a Shavian play, Ramanujar is a play of ideas: the aim, in the words of Parthasarathy, “is to make readers and audience see Ramanujar as our contemporary… It is my contention that we should rescue Ramanujar, a revolutionary in his own times… and understand him fully” (6).
Strengths
The best part of the play is the short prologue, which not merely strikes the proverbial keynote, but forms the bulwark on which the theme of the play rests: a Vaishnava is “not he who worships Vishnu. A Vaishnava is one who cannot see another man suffer” (102). The exhaustive glossary serves as a foothold for understanding allusions and terms like ‘prapatti’ the true import of which cannot be comprehended by a lay reader. The strength of the play in English lies in T. Sriraman’s translation, which is most felicitous in avoiding needless embellishments and in retaining natural speech, marked by ease, grace, and unimpeded flow, the most noteworthy feature being the re-creative transfer from the Tamil source to the target English text. The language is closer to normal speech, since there is a substantial reduction in the use of images and metaphors.
No drama
One may fault Ramanujar on some counts. It may not be effective on the stage. As a play, it lacks the basic elements associated with drama — climax, denouement, major tension and resolution of conflicts. As the saying goes, no tension, no drama! The action of the play — choice between a higher and a lower set of values — lacks sustained anticipation. Minor characters are not sufficiently separated from one another: they are not differentiated in their speech. They simply come and go as routine scenery changes. Ramanujar alone is represented as a dynamic character, full of majesty and dignity, with a determined and untiring zeal to reform society. Be that as it may, in all fairness, this didactic play has to be predicated in terms of its conscious, purposeful, and comprehensive scheme of compulsive moral and spiritual values.
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