C is for Candravati's Ramayana (Women's Epics A to Z)

This year my theme for the A to Z Blogging Challenge is Women's Epics. My goal was to read 26 traditional epics from around the world that have women as their heroes. Because epics like this do exist, and they are fascinating! Read the intoduction post here.

A woman's Ramayana: Candravati's Bengali epic
Bengal

In the late 16th century in what is now east Bangladesh, a woman named Candravati rewrote the Ramayana. The Ramaya, one of the great epics of India, has had many retellings over the centuries, and yet hers stands out. She wrote it as a distraction from heartbreak. 

Candravati (or Chandravati) was the daughter of a famous Brahmin poet Vamsidasa, and thus well read and educated. Still young, she fell in love with a man, and their marriage was approved and arranged. However, just before the wedding the groom fell for a Muslim girl instead, converted to Islam, and married in secret. When Candravati found out about his betrayal, her heart broke, and she swore off marriage for good, instead devoting herself to Shiva. It was her father who suggested she should occupy her mind by rewriting the Ramayana. So she did. From the point of view of Sita, a woman who unduly suffers hardship and injustice.

(Her lover later repented and came back, but when Candravati refused to see him, he drowned himself in the river.)

Candravati's Ramayana was not preserved in a manuscript; it went into the oral tradition, and it was still sung among the people at the beginning of the 20th century, when it was recorded and reassambled. Women often sang parts of her epic on auspicious occasions such as weddings. Her telling of the story, still distinct after centuries, lived on in the oral tradition because it spoke to women's experiences.

The edition I read was excellent and informative. It has a detailed intro, and also several appendices: summaries of other Ramayanas that influenced Candravati, summaries of her other poems, details on literary parallels, glossaries, sources, and the summary of Candravati's own life as written down by a later poet (Nayancand Ghosa).

What is it about?

TL;DR: A retelling of the Ramayana from Sita's perspective, focusing on the suffering of women and the devastation war brings to innocents.

Candravati's epic is basically a retelling of the Ramayana, entirely from Sita's prespective. She skips the battles and heroics, and focuses on the heroine's suffering and loneliness, and the devastation of war on both sides. She omits several commonly known episodes and scenes, and implements others from various sources.

The story starts with Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, and his war against the gods. He plunders the heavens, enslaves the gods, and since they are immortal, he harvests the blood of holy sages to poison them and kill them for good. He entrusts the blood to his wife - however, she is already devastated by her husband consorting with captive goddesses and forgetting about her. She tries to poison herself by drinking the blood, but instead of dying, she gives birth to an egg. Ravana sets the egg afloat on the ocean. A fisherman finds it and delivers it to King Janaka - and from the egg, Sita is born.

Sita is raised as a princess, and in time she marries Rama, prince of Ayodhya. However, he is soon exiled into the wilderness by the scheming of his brother's mother. He is accompanied into exile by Sita and another brother, Lakshmana.

The middle part of the epic is a baromasi, a form of Bengali poetry that recounts events over the course of 12 months, like a poetic calendar. This is how Sita recounts her experience of being exiled, then kidnapped by the demon king Ravana, and rescued by her husband's armies. The account focuses on her suffering and loneliness, only mentioning the war by hearsay.

After the war, Sita and Rama are reunited. However, Rama's evil sister Kukuya decides to sow discord between them. She makes Sita draw a picture of Ravana (even though it's traumatic for her and she says so), and then uses the picture as proof that Sita is "enthralled" by her abductor. Rama thus falls for the idea that his wife was unfaithful while in captivity. He orders Sita to be exiled, five months pregnant, into the wilderness. There she is taken in and protected by the sage Valmiki - the first known author of the Ramayana. She gives birth to twins. However, due to her exile, the entire kingdom falls into ruin, so years later Rama is eventually forced to bring her back. He sets a condition: she has to prove, through trial by fire, that she was faithful all along. Bowing to this last, great injustice, Sita walks into the fire. The River Ganga bursts up from the ground, quells the flames, and the earth goddess Vasumati takes Sita away, leaving Rama and his people to contemplate their actions alone.

Image from here

The highlights

"Instead of glorifying battles, the poem mourns the victims." Even those lost during the fall of Lanka - the wives and children of the demons slain. Compassion in suffering is a running theme throughout the epic, especially the compassion of women. Sita even has compassion for Kukuya, her evil sister-in-law. When Kukuya is burned by the fire she tries to kill Sita with, Sita soothes her injuries. Sita's own mourning and suicidal thoughts in captivity are mitigated by the companionship of the demoness Sarama, Ravana's sister-in-law. Compasson thus transcends the battle lines of good an evil.

Honestly the best character in the epic is Lakshmana, Rama's brother. He cares for the exiled couple deeply and helps them in the wilderness, sacrificing his own comfort. Later on, when tasked with taking Sita into exile, he is the only one who shows compassion for her.

I also enjoyed the descriptions of pregnancy in this epic - how pregnant queens preferred to lie on the cool ground, were constantly sleepy, and craved certain foods.

There is a fun little scene in the story where Sita's twins encounter the monkey king Hanuman in the wilderness, and decide to capture him. Sita recognizes the king who once helped in her rescue from Lanka, and chastises her sons for not treating Hanu well.

I also appreciated the small detail where Sita, abducted by Ravana, tries to fight him off using her jewelry (even though she doesn't succeed).

THIS EPIC PROVES THAT POINT OF VIEW MATTERS.

What other epics would you like to know from a woman's perspective?