Ravana, the demon-king antagonist from the Ramayana, the ancient Hindu epic poem, has become an unlikely cultural hero among Sinhala Buddhists over the past decade. In Ravana's Kingdom, Justin W. Henry delves into the historical literary reception of the epic in Sri Lanka. charting the adaptions of its themes and characters from the 14th century onwards, as many Sri Lankan Hindus and Buddhists developed a sympathetic impression of Ravana's character, and through the contemporary Ravana revival, which has resulted in the development of an alternative mythological history, depicting Ravana as king of Sri Lanka's indigenous inhabitants, a formative figure of civilizational antiquity, and the direct ancestor of the Sinhala Buddhist people.
Henry offers a careful study of the literary history of the Ramayana in Sri Lanka, employing numerous sources and archives that have until now received little to no scholarly attention, as well as of the 21st-century revision of a narrative of the Sri Lankan people -a narrative incubated by the general public online, facilitated by social media and by the speed of information travel in the digital age. Ravana's Kingdom offers a glimpse into a centuries-old, living Ramayana tradition among Hindus and Buddhists in Sri Lanka-a case study of the myth-making process in the digital age.
This book was made possible through the input, guidance, and generous assistance of a great many people. The impetus for this research project must be credited to Larry McCrea, who some fourteen years ago when I was a master's student at Cornell University asked me if there was a Sinhala Ramayana. This monograph is a long answer to that question. The academic preceptors who have from that time provided me with invaluable council deserve special mention here. The influence of Steven Collins, my late doctoral supervisor, will no doubt be apparent in the pages which follow, as his ideas on historiography and the sociology of religion were formative to my own intellectual development. I extend extraordinary gratitude also to Anne Blackburn and to Charles Hallisey for devoting much time and patience in supporting me to this point in my career.
Several kalyāņa-mitrdh enriched this book considerably with notes on chapter drafts: Eva Ambos, Sam Fox, Carter Higgins, Dennis McGilvray, Ravi Ratnasabapathy, and Ben Schonthal. I am grateful to a number of people at the University of Chicago, where many ideas central to this book gestated during the course of my doctoral degree. I thank especially Whitney Cox for his careful feedback on my dissertation, E. Annamalai for his sustained interest in my work, and Wendy Doniger for her continued support. I fondly thank those fellow students and colleagues who indulged early versions of portions of this book through conference panels and informal conversation: Stephen Berkwitz, Jetsun Deleplanque, Dominick Esler, Philip Friedrich, Deborah de Koning. Eric Gurevitch, Neena Mahadev, Nabajan Maitra, Alexander McKinley, Adam Miller, Justin Smolin, Charles Preston, Paride Stortini, Sarah Pierce Taylor, Margherita Trento, Mark Whitaker, Bruce Winkelman, Jonathan Young, and of course many others.
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