South Indian art is the carving, covering a massive granite outcrop, of Arjuna’s
Penance or the Descent of the Gan.ga ̄ from the Maha ̄bha ̄rata carved at Ma ̄malla-
puram in the middle of the seventh century. Scenes drawn specifically from the
Maha ̄bha ̄rata andRa ̄ma ̄yan.a(not simply of the Ra ̄ma and Kr.s.n.a stories) are
carved on the outer walls of temples in many regions and at many periods.
Miniature painters in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries frequently illustrated
episodes from the epics, under both Mughal and Ra ̄jput patronage, with several
complete illustrated manuscripts being produced, some on a very lavish scale.
Adaptations of both epics into modern Indian languages were commonly
among the first significant works to be produced in each language; in all of these
adaptations the religious aspects are given greater prominence and the original
heroic emphasis is correspondingly reduced. The earliest examples come from
the Dravidian languages of South India but in due course, from about the
fifteenth century, adaptations in the languages of North India followed. Their
importance to the culture as a whole is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the
great Mughal emperor Akbar commissioned translations of both into Persian in
the 1580s as part of his strategy for understanding his subjects, just as the guru
of the Mara ̄t.hı ̄ nationalist leader, S ́iva ̄jı ̄, used the Ra ̄ma ̄yan.astory in the service
of Mara ̄t.ha ̄ nationalism against Muslim rule in the seventeenth century. The
popularity of the serializations shown on Indian television (the Ra ̄ma ̄yan.ain
1987–8, the Maha ̄bha ̄rata in 1989–90) and subsequently made available on
video (and so accessible to Hindus abroad as well) has been enormous, but one
of the most striking features about them was the extent to which their format
was dictated by traditional religious values and thus the viewing of them was
treated as a form of worship; much of the style and presentation of the Ra ̄ma ̄yan.a
serial was based on that of the Ra ̄mlı ̄la ̄, that traditional community-based dra-
matic presentation of the story which is performed annually in so many loca-
tions across North India and which has clearly played so major a part in the
popularity of the Ra ̄ma story and in particular in its broad appeal beyond sec-
tarian boundaries. It is no surprise, therefore, that various political parties have
appropriated the Ra ̄ma story and in particular the concept ofra ̄mra ̄j(ra ̄mara ̄jya,
Ra ̄ma’s righteous rule) for their own purposes, from the Ram Rajya Parishad
through to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Ramjanmabhumi agitation.
As the vital link between the Vedas, commonly regarded as the source of
authority within Hinduism, and the popular forms of Hinduism first found in
the Pura ̄n.as and still current today, the two Sanskrit epics have played a signifi-
cant role in shaping that family of religions. The designation of the Maha ̄bha ̄rata
as the “fifth Veda” makes a claim both to continuity and to the authoritativeness
of the Vedas – an authority which also includes a claim to comprehensiveness
(as in the assertion quoted at the beginning of this chapter). This continuity is
also implicit in the belief that the Maha ̄bha ̄rata was first recited by Vya ̄sa
(“arranger”), the sage whom tradition regards as the compiler of the Vedas and
often the composer of the Pura ̄n.as. The equivalent for the Ra ̄ma ̄yan.ais the tra-
dition, recorded late in its development at the beginning of the first book, that
its author Va ̄lmı ̄ki is granted a vision of Brahma ̄, the creator deity, who
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