Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-05T16:57:04.585Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Foreword: Śambūka’s Story across Time and India’s Regions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 February 2024

Get access

Summary

I commend Aaron Sherraden's Śambūka and the Rāmāyaṇa Tradition to you. This monograph takes as its starting point a terse account of Śambūka's decapitation, found in the earliest, extant, full literary telling of the life and deeds of Rāma in the ancient Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa attributed to Sage Vālmīki. One of Hinduism's two preeminent ancient epic narratives, Vālmīki's Rāmāyaṇa and its subsequent retellings have played key roles in later devotional practices to Viṣṇu and his avatāras. Textual historians generally date the text (which first circulated orally in several recensions) as taking its fixed form starting approximately the mid-sixth century BCE and ending no later than the second or third century CE. Śambūka's story appears in the final of the seven books of the Rāmāyaṇa attributed to Vālmīki, which many philologists consider a later interpolation.

Over time, however, Śambūka's story has grown into a narrative tradition of its own. During the last two thousand years, its events have appeared in multiple literary retellings characterized by literary strategies such as elaboration, concision, major reinterpretation, and alternate endings. These retellings depict Śambūka variously as a miscreant and enemy of the social and moral orders, a victim of upper-caste prejudice and violence, a pioneer who engaged in ascetic practices previously monopolized by upper castes, a recipient of Rāma's divine grace, one who has achieved release from the cycle of death and rebirth, a social and political revolutionary, a wise teacher and moral exemplar, and a venerated martyr in the cause of Dalit liberation. Accounts of Śambūka's rigorous asceticism have appeared in both cosmopolitan languages (e.g., Sanskrit and Prakrit) and regional literary ones (e.g., Tamil, Awadhi, Malayalam) across India from ancient times to the present. Moreover, in addition to Hindu texts, his story also appears in a lineage of texts composed by Jain authors in which Rāma does not kill Śambūka. Sherraden reveals how Śambūka's story continues to perform its cultural work in the twenty-first century, serving as the basis for ritual devotion, modern poetry, and even cover art for publications envisioned through a range of religious and social lenses.

Type
Chapter
Information
Śambūka and the Rāmāyaṇa Tradition
A History of Motifs and Motives in South Asia
, pp. xvii - xx
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×