Secondary Tales of the Two Great Epics

Author(s): Rajendra I Nanavati
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 42

29
The Tales in Ramayana
reciting the epic publicly. Once having heard them in the streets of Ayodhya, Rama brings them to the royal palace and asks them to sing the poem before the royal assembly. The poem which they are said to have sung before the assembly and which is thus actually claimed to be the creation of Valmiki-starts from Sarga 5 of BK. The thread of this incident of narrating the epic is again taken up in the later part of UK where not only the listener of the poem is confirmed to be the same as the hero of the poem itself, but even the narrators are revealed to be the twin-sons of the hero himself, as well as the assembly turns out to be the sacrificial assembly gathered at the Aśvamedha sacrifice of the hero. The first four Sargas of BK, therefore, are intended to provide a sort of frame to the epic-story. This device of framing the epic is comparable on the one hand to the similar attempts made in the MBh to frame. that epic with the story-cycle of Janamejaya's sacrifice; on the other hand, it strongly reminds us of a similar device adopted in the Kädambari where the listener King Śudraka and the narrator parrot Vaisampayana turn out in the end to be the hero of the narrative and his closest friend.
It also affords us a view of the progressively artistic use of the framing technique in the structure of the narrative. In a popular collection of tales like 'Canterbury Tales' or Decameron or AN or VP or PT, the framing story is only intended to provide a motive for collecting the various tales in one place. It need not have any inherent connection with the framed stories. In MBh also, the outermost frame-episode of Saunaka's twelve-year Satra provides the motive of the most natural human curiosity of the sages to hear the various stories which occasions the narration of the epic, but has no inherent connection with it. More closely related to the epic, however, is the second frame of the story-cycle of the Snake-sacrifice the hero of which, Janamejaya, has a direct patrilineal connection with the heroes of the epic. Even the narrator Vaisampayana is a direct disciple of sage Vyasa Parasarya, the traditional composer of the epic. In the RM, as we saw above, the hero and his sons themselves are the listener and the narrators respectively. The author of this episode tries to utilize a fine opportunity afforded by the event of Rama's Aśvamedha sacrifice by framing with it the entire story of Rama's past life. The framing technique here comes close to the powerful modern device of narration called 'flashback'. Not only that, but the framing episode itself-wherein Sitä ultimately returns to mother Earth thus ending the narrative with the tragic note of eternal separation becomes here the culminating point of the entire epic-story. It could give us a powerful tragedy with an excellent unity of form. The only fly but a big fly at that in the ointment is that the author's execution does not stand equal to his conception. His narrative skill lags far behind his conception. A grand conception, therefore, fails to achieve an artistic form on account of its author's lack of command over his means of expression. The superb narrative skill revealed in the central portions of the epic stands strongly contrasted with the inferior, puranic style of these parts, and whereas the conception of these events could have
4 vide AdiP. 1.3. Citraḥ śrotum kathas tatra....etc.
-
-