Ramayana was real: Prof Robert P Goldman

[Guest guest]

"Ashok Chowgule" <ashokvc@c...> wrote:

Ramayana was real: American professor

http://www.deccan.com/City/CityNews.asp?

 

Hyderabad, Sept. 24: Professor Robert P Goldman, director of the

University of California Education Abroad Programme, termed the epic

Ramayana a "real-life" account. Delivering a lecture on `Ramayana:

Medieval Indian Interpretations', organised by the University of

Hyderabad as part of its distinguished lecture series, Goldman

rejected

the Western view that Ramayana was a mixture of the real and the

mythological.

 

"There's clear-cut evidence to show that the incidents described in

Ramayana took place," he said here on Friday. Goldman said the

experts

had calculated the exact period in which the war between Lord Rama

and

Ravana took place and the time taken by Lord Hanuman to bring the

Sanjeevani herb and how long the demon Kumbhakarna used to sleep.

 

Goldman said he believed that Hanuman flew to Sri Lanka and spoke a

human language. "It is something supernatural and something

natural," he

said. "It is not myth as is generally claimed by some Westerners.

Rama-yana is a reality."

 

------------------------

 

More from Ashok Chowgule

 

Some ten years ago, when Prof Goldman was in Mumbai, the Times of

India

had a story about him where he was quoted saying as follows:

 

QUOTE

"Valmiki's Ramayan is the central document of Indian culture. The

book

and its message express in an aesthetically pleasing and emotionally

moving form what must be seen as the most powerfully hegemonic

discourse

of the brahmani­cal and kshatriya elites of India's epic age. It

continues to be the basic and the founding statement of social and

political order in India even today. Greek epics like Homer's Iliad

is

the book of a lost civilisation for today's Westerners. The Ramayan

is

unique in continuing unbroken over almost 3000 years as the living

document of Indian civilisation. The Doordarshan serial's massive

popularity only served to remind people how important it continues

to be

in shaping basic perceptions and social attitudes in India today."

 

"When groups disadvantaged by the social dispensation wish to

contest,

it has been seen in a number of contexts that they choose the Ramayan

both as the object of their rebellion and, ironically, as the medium

in

which their pro­test is couched. So powerfully hegemonic is the

Ramayan

paradigm that it seems to be contestable only through the creation of

counter-Ramayanas which, given the great diversity of Indian

tradition,

are in fact just new versions of the Ramayan."

 

"Ram's central act is not the destruction of the demon king Ravan,

but

his cheerful acceptance of his wrongful disinheritance and cruel

exile

to preserve the honour of his foolish father."

 

"It is no exaggeration to say that in India everyone knows the Ram

story. In one sense, one has to know it to be part of Indian

culture."

 

UNQUOTE

 

 

Unfortunately, I do not have the date of the publication.

 

Namaste.

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