‘Sita’s Voice in the Assamese Ramayana’: A rebellious Sita and translating classical Assamese texts

In his famous essay, “Three Hundred Ramayanas,” (1987) AK Ramanujan ascertains the plurality of the Rama katha. While Valmiki, the sovereignty of the “original” Sanskrit text, created in Rama the epitome of “dharma,” regional trans-creations of the epic have seen him less ideal. Such a transcreation is the Assamese variation, Saptakanda Ramayana, ascribed to the 14th-century scholar, Madhav Kandali. Interestingly, Ramanujan’s essay merely hints at the presence of an Assamese variation but provides no further details. Despite predating Tulsidas’ translation Ramcharitmanas, little scholarly attention has been paid to the text. It is this lacuna in the scholarship of the Assamese text that Tilottoma Misra tries to fill with her book Sita’s Voice in the Assamese Rāmāyaṇa: Selected Verses from the Rāmāyaṇa of Mādhava Kandalī and the Uttarakāṇḍa of Śaṅkaradeva. However, she is quick to realise the enormity of the task and instead of rendering the entire text into English, tinkers only with the representation of Sita in the Assamese translation.

While the Assamese Ramayana is titled Saptakanda – a collation of seven cantos – only five kandas were written by Madhav Kandali. The Uttara and the Adi kandas were added by the two stalwarts, Sankaradeva and Madhabdeva respectively. Before beginning her translation, Misra elaborates on the causalities which led to the creation of...

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