Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) Tourist Guide


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THE RAMAKIEN:
The Epic that’s Fantastic Fun

by John Cadet

The Ramakien - The Story of Rama - is the most important non-religious theme in Thai culture. The secular arts and crafts are dominated by it, the dance particularly, and in the Khon (masked) dance-drama, this account of the struggle between the god-king Phra Ram and the demon monarch Totsagan for the hero’s beautiful and virtuous wife Nang Seeda comes to its fullest and most brilliant expression.

Benyagai instructed by her mother

The Ramakien is, of course, an off-shoot of one of the world’s great epics, The Ramayana. Attributed to the Indian poet Valmiki of two millennia ago, the theme may originally have arisen out of a struggle for cattle and women between Indo-European settlers on the bleak Anatolian uplands some two thousand years earlier, literary historians surmising that this may account for similarities they see between the Indian epic and Homer’s Iliad. However this may be, by about 800 AD the story was gaining popularity throughout Southeast Asia, and when the Thai arrived in the region, they certainly received a powerful Ramakien infusion from the court of the Khmer, whose capital Angkor they sacked in the fifteenth century, and whose arts and institutions they adopted and made their own.

Why the Ramakien should have been attractive to the kings of Southeast Asia - and elsewhere - is easy to see. It provides legitimation, identifying the monarch with the hero of the epic, and through him with a Hindu deity, Phra Narai (Vishnu), whose earthly avatar Phra Ram is. Even in present-day Thailand many of the forms and titles of divinity, and some of its ceremonies, are still found at court, and few of his subjects regard their king (Phra Ram ti Kaow - Rama the Ninth ) as an entirely mundane being.

But the Ramakien has always been (and still is) outstandingly popular not only at court but throughout Thai society and culture. Here too the reason is easy to find. Classic though it is, the epic manages to be at one and the same time extremely shrewd and realistic in its reading of human behaviour and character and also fantastic fun. The young Thai meet the story in comic strips and abridged tales, and later at school and university, where it’s taught through the poetic versions of the kings of the First and Second Reigns of the Bangkok dynasty. Shortened and adapted forms appear from time to time on TV and in the movies. The country itself bears Ramakien place-names: a mountain near Lopburi the location where Phra Ram’s monkey-ally Hanuman picks a curative herb, a cave not far from there the place where he entered the Underworld. The capital of Thailand, as well as being the City of Angels, includes in its titles the name of the hero’s city, Ayuthia. But it’s in the dance-drama that the epic has its securest tenure, spreading from there to form and influence music, poetry, sculpture, as also to the crafts of woodworking, silverware, jewellery and lacquer-ware. In addition to magnificent surviving panels depicting the epic at Angkor in Cambodia, fragments of the story appear on the restored stones of the temples at Phi Mai in Northeastern Thailand, while few tourists haven’t admired its fuller depiction in the bas reliefs of Wat Pho and the murals at Wat Phra Kaeow in Bangkok.

Even the plant world has its Ramakien-muster - Mayarap Yak (Lord of the Underworld) the tough bushy weed that spreads across any urban plot left untended: the delicate Seeda’s Basket Fern found growing on certain forest trees: and Hanuman Sits on the Stage a common gaudy garden plant. There’s also a popular sweet of boiled green peas called, somewhat irreverently, Phra Ram Takes a Bath (green being the hero’s distinguishing colour). On a more elevated moral level, those who know the story’s esoteric meaning can use the Ramakien to gain ‘the Crystal Globe of Immortality’…or so they say.

But it’s as a preceptor that the Ramakien makes its deepest impression. At this very moment, a thousand small boys are being told to behave if not with Phra Ram’s nobility and decorum, at least with Hanuman’s dash and resourcefulness. A thousand little girls, their fingers bent back by their grandmamas, their little elbows almost disjointed to reproduce the backward bend of the elbow admired in the dancer, are at the same time being enjoined to behave if not with Nang Seeda’s impeccability - that would be asking a lot - at least with her grace and demureness.

Which brings us back to the dance. If there’s one characteristic by which we recognise the Thai, it’s their meticulous attentiveness to grooming and deportment, to graceful movement. It’s the Thai art par excellence, and in the Ramakien dance-drama they express it - and themselves - perfectly.

But how about the story?

Wherever you see it - in restaurants, at hotels, in up-country temples, around such cult-centres as the shrine of the city pillar (lak muang) in Bangkok or at the National Theatre - the masked dance-drama is likely to stay in your memory as the most striking manifestation of Thai culture. The ornate richness of the costumes: the expressiveness of the masks of the animal, demon, angel, monster-participants, along with the impassivity of the faces of the humans: the stately, wheeling mime of the dancing: above all, the other-worldly bleat and patter of the phipat orchestra, the wailing chant of the chorus - nothing brings back more fully the feeling of having been somewhere different, somewhere more than a little out of the ordinary.

And that’s entirely appropriate, because the story of the Ramakien extends beyond the normal limits of time and space, bridging as it does the Three Worlds of this region. And while it can’t satisfactorily be evoked without music, movement, epic poetry and the flicker of torchlight, it can at least be summarised as follows:

A joke thoughtlessly played in at the heavenly court of Phra Isuan (Shiva) leads first to conflict and then killing, the only solution seen as coming from the rebirth in the human realm of one of Phra Isuan’s favourites, the becomingly green-faced Phra Narai (Vishnu), and the ill-favoured courtier most responsible for the discord, Nontuk. Narai accordingly becomes the son of the King of Ayuthia, Phra Ram by name, while his rival is born to rule the demon-island of Longka as the ten-headed, twenty-armed Totsagan.

Heir to the throne though he is, Phra Ram goes into exile following a dispute over the succession, his brother Phra Lak and his wife Nang Seeda (a reincarnation of his heavenly consort Lakshmi) accompanying him. They spend many years in the forest, often meeting and sometimes in conflict with the strange creatures living there. It is after one of their adventures that Totsagan hears of the beauty of his rival’s wife, and determines to make her his own. In the guise of a hermit, and having directed a subject in the shape of a golden deer to lure the royal brothers away, he approaches Nang Seeda, trying to persuade her to accompany him but eventually seizing and taking her by force back to Longka. There he imprisons her in an underground pleasance, leaving her to decide whether she shall become his first queen by choice, or a concubine by coercion.

Grief-stricken, Phra Ram and Lak search for their lost mistress, eventually meeting and acquiring as allies the monkey-inhabitants of the Keetkin and Chompu cities, the king of the former, the ruddy-faced Sukreep, son of the sun-god and of a hermit’s wife, becoming commander-in-chief of the monkey army. His nephew, the irrepressible white-pelted monkey Hanuman, becomes Phra Ram’s closest - if somewhat wayward - aide and adviser.

It is Hanuman who leads a reconnaissance party towards Longka and, son of the Wind-God as he is, nothing appeals more than this opportunity for movement and adventure. Having overcome monsters and received the aid of a giant bird, Sadayu, the party separates, the others returning, Hanuman going on alone, meeting a pair of enchanted - and enchanting - angels, and treating them as only he knows how. And continuing refreshed and better informed by these encounters, he flies across the Strait of Longka, killing its hideous she-guardian, on the demon island first besting, then being bested by a testy hermit who makes his home there, Nart by name.

Longka turns out to be a tougher nut than even Hanuman can crack alone. Nang Seeda refuses to be rescued by anyone but her husband, so Hanuman has to be satisfied with confronting Totsagan, destroying his parks and burning his city to the ground, then returning, pleased with himself, to his liege-lord.

The humans are less well-pleased, though, hearing his story, fearing that too soon in the campaign, these exploits will bring only misfortune. But mixed fortunes are what follow. First Pipeck, Totsagan’s brother, the greatest seer in the demon kingdom, is exiled as punishment for his negative predictions concerning the war ahead. He throws in his lot with the humans, proving an invaluable ally as the campaign goes forward. Then Benyagai, Pipeck’s daughter, is pressed by Totsagan to assume the form of Nang Seeda, to float as a corpse before the royal brother’s camp, the Longka ruler’s intention being to trick his enemies into calling off the attack on his city. Again, though, Hanuman is not deceived. His sharp eyes see the absence of corruption in the ‘corpse’; his speed of flight enables him to catch the demoness when she reassumes her form and tries to flee; and his charm and gallantry win him some agreeable moments of dalliance after Benyagai’s trial and acquittal, during her return in his company to the court of Longka. The crossing of the Strait, another of the white monkey’s triumphs, is followed by the many battles for Longka, which at last lead to confrontation between Phra Ram and Totsagan.

Pipeck informs Phra Ram that Totsagan is invulnerable to human weapons as long as his body and his soul (held in a crystal casket in the keeping of a powerful hermit) are not destroyed together. Hanuman is giving the task of gaining this casket. Having returned with it, he pretends to be dissatisfied with his rewards in the monkey-ranks, flying to the besieged city and pleading to be taken into the service of the demon ruler. Totsagan employs the plausible monkey and there follow a number of indecisive battles. Finally though the auspicious moment arrives when Totsagan can be cut down by Phra Ram’s Promart arrow, and the casket crushed. The ruler of Longka dies in his brother Pipeck’s arms, the kingdom passing to the demon seer, while the other spoils of war go to the monkey-victors. For Phra Ram and his brother, though, the reward of the recovery of Nang Seeda is more than sufficient, and they return to Ayuthia, their exile over.

There follows a final episode. After years of happiness, the hero and his consort are once more parted, this time as a result of the malice of a demon-servitor. In the Indian original, this breach is final, Seeda carried away to the Underworld, but the Ramakien has a softer, more agreeable outcome. The gods heal the rift between the couple, seal their marriage in a splendid ceremony on Mount Krailat, and their final years, so the Thai epic tells us, are burdened only by honours and achievement.

And if, suspending our disbelief, we’ve come this far through the epic thickets of fun and fantasy, we’re likely to feel this is the most suitable way for the story to end.