Justin Henry’s Ravana’s Kingdom: The Ramayana and Sri Lankan History from Below is a wide-ranging contribution to scholarship on popular Sinhala Buddhist religion, Sri Lankan cultural and religious nationalism, and the Ramayana. Henry explores the emergence of Ravana, the demon-king from the Ramayana, as a cultural hero for Sinhala Buddhists in Sri Lanka. The Ramayana is a famously multivalent story with countless interpretations over the course of centuries. Ravana’s personality has been construed in many disparate ways, including as a demon who kidnaps Ram’s wife Sita and holds her captive in his island kingdom of Lanka and as a valorized symbol of Dravidian identity in South India. Today, many Sinhala Buddhists believe that Ravana was a real historical figure who lived and ruled in Sri Lanka, and that they themselves are descendants of his “Yaksha tribe.” Henry argues that this reclamation took place over the course of centuries in oral and vernacular literature. It was influenced by exchanges between different cultures, regions, and languages, and has emerged as an important facet of contemporary Sri Lankan culture, as “a symbol of Lankan political sovereignty” and “as a metaphor for colonial loss and neo-colonial exploitation” (2). Henry’s research is primarily literary and historiographical and is informed by his study of social media and by his experience traveling throughout Sri Lanka, speaking with people, consulting archives, and visiting temples across the country.
Henry investigates the transmission of Indian Tamil ideas about Ramayana into Sri Lanka, beginning with the Cholas in the 9th century. Henry demonstrates the cross-fertilization of Tamil and Sinhala ideas in the late medieval and early modern periods and the necessity of examining “exchange between ordinary people” in informal contexts, designating the “Sinhala Buddhist image of Ravana as populist in its orientation” (53). From the 14th century onward, Sinhala Buddhist ideas about Ravana were primarily generated in informal contexts, such as in stories and dance dramas, in a gradual incorporation of Ravana into Sinhala culture. Henry looks at the domestication of the Ramayana in Sri Lanka and the incorporation of local legends and particular landmarks into the greater mytheme of the Ramayana. These sites were canonized by the Sri Lankan Ministry of Tourism with the creation of the Ramayana Trail in 2008 and are meant in part to attract Indian tourists to Sri Lanka, part of what Narendra Modi referred to as the “Ram diplomacy” between the two countries (135). The god Ram and the story of the Ramayana play an important role in contemporary Hindu nationalist politics and now influence India’s relationships with its neighboring countries.
Ravana’s role across Sri Lankan media is omnipresent. Ravana’s Kingdom gives an overview of the role of Ravana in Sinhala media in the modern era: he appears in television shows, theatre, popular literature, music, and film. Henry contextualizes this by studying the emergence of independent publishing firms, the Sri Lankan Sanskrit revival, and artistic experimentation in the late-19th century. This was a formative time for the development of Sinhala art and Sri Lankan Buddhist national imaginary, which took place in both Buddhist monastic colleges and the secular art sphere. Henry also examines “the purveyors of allegedly newly uncovered ancient documents” (101) widely shared on social media that are influential in the modern Ravana movement.
Henry argues that part of the reason Ravana has emerged as a cultural hero is because he is “fun” (6, emphasis in original). There has been an explosion of Sinhala Buddhist interest in Ravana since the conclusion of the civil war in 2009, and self-designated experts have created popular social media pages to document their practice of mixed martial arts (said to be passed down from the ancient Yaksha tribe) and their fantastical claims of lost technology, such as the idea that Ravana discovered nuclear power and created the first aircraft. Henry delves into the “prophetic, conspiratorial, and downright bizarre ideas constitutive of the global alternative media universe” related to the resurgence of Ravana, such as claims of Ravana’s connections to aliens, an ancient colony in Palestine, the Mayan prophecy of 2012, and 9/11 (154). He engages with theoretical scholarship on populism and draws comparisons with global political trends, including right-wing libertarianism in the United States and Hindu nationalism in India. Rather than dismissing these phenomena as nonsensical or unworthy of serious academic attention, Henry provides the framework to understand why outlandish claims about Ravana have become popular.
The book includes an appendix with the first English translation of the Rāvaṇa Katāva, a Kandyan period (late 16th to early 19th century) Sinhala telling of the Ramayana starring Hanuman and Ravana. This poem introduces an important theme in 21st century narratives - the idea that there is an underground lair that belonged to Ravana that is still accessible through caves in the central highlands, inspiring amateur Ravana researchers to go spelunking in search of treasure, often documented on YouTube. Although the end of the book addresses recent Tamil Hindu responses to the Sinhala Buddhist appropriation of Ravana, it would be interesting to explore this in more depth and provide more background information to frame these groups’ relationships, and to learn about Tamil responses to the increase in Indian religious tourism. Ravana’s Kingdom is an engaging read and is impressive in its scope, utilizing disparate research methods and tracing themes related to Ravana across centuries.
Anna Lee White is a doctoral candidate at the McGill University School of Religious Studies.
Anna Lee White
Date Of Review:
January 29, 2024
