Hanuman is really the character who brings the colour and the joy in some ways to a lot of the story. He's essentially a monkey character, and he's part of this world that Rama enters into when he's exiled. Hanuman represents absolute affectionate strength of heart where Rama's emotions have to be muted sometimes because he's this ascetic. Interestingly, Hanuman is a god who's associated with kind of male friendship with strong men but he doesn't mean masculinity and strength as a kind of stoic, angry, brutish thing. It means education, it means an articulate expression of your affection and an absolute love that is not a shame, but is in fact part
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic which is regarded as one of the greatest works of world literature. Its importance in Indian culture has been compared to that of the Iliad and Odyssey in the West, and it’s still seen as a sacred text by Hindus today.
Written in Sanskrit, it tells the story of the legendary prince and princess Rama and Sita, and the many challenges, misfortunes and choices that they face. About 24,000 verses long, the Ramayana is also one of the longest ancient epics. It’s a text that’s been hugely influential and it continues to be popular in India and elsewhere in Asia.
With
Jessica Frazier
Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad
Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University
and
Naomi Appleton
Senior Lecturer in Asian Religions at the University of Edinburgh
The image above shows Rama, Sita, Hanuman, Lakshmana and devotees, from the Shree Jalaram Prarthana Mandal, Leicester.
Producer Luke Mulhall