Ramayana at the British Library

As the weekend rolled in, S wanted to see the Ramayana exhibition at the British Library. Now this sort of thing is not usually my cup of tea, I like museums in small doses and I tolerate exhibitions when there is something visually pleasing. The clincher for me was this was an exhibition of Rajasthani miniature painting depicting the Ramayana. Also having lived in London for nearly 4 years, I finally had a good excuse to visit the mother of all libraries.
Some facts about the BL which tickled the grey cells.
-they have 150 million items in their collection
-If you read 5 items a day it would take you 80,000 years to see the entire collection.


The Ramayana is one of the most famous epic stories from Hindu mythology that has been repeated over centuries. It is a classic old mythological fable about a super hero, his love, his dysfunctional family, his struggle, his war, his strange sidekicks, and his victory.

The British library has acquired the Ramayana manuscripts commissioned by Rana Jagat Singh of Mewar (1628-52). These manuscripts were acquired by the British Museum in 1884 and from there made their way to the British Library. The entire story has been illustrated in three different styles of Mewar painting. These beautifully crafted miniature paintings are bursting with colour and emotion, each page has a myriad number of characters packed in. The precision and detail with which each character was painted was a pleasure to watch. All the paintings were accompanied by little synopsis explaining each portion of the story.

Apart from the paintings, the exhibition also has evidence of this epic's influence on other regions of South east asia. I saw the Ramayana epic depicted in puppet form, on a 300 year old tapestry made in Sri Lanka, carved into stone walls of the temples of Angkor Wat, performed by ballet artisans in Java. It was amusing to see how strangely the characters were depicted in different regions, the Indonesian puppets seemed to favour long noses with a hunched posture and long limbs. Not the ideal superhero build but then who am I to judge.


In the foyer of the library they had a little video display of the Ramayana series that did the rounds on national telly in India during the late 80's. I remember those Sunday morning sessions when life came to a standstill in every Indian household as we watched the fine art of overacting with cheesy special effects. They even had a little DVD pack of the entire series at the BL shop, S was having none of it.

This rich old fable has now been brought into the 21'st century in a very stylish Virgin comic called Ramayan Reborn. As the years pass I see this story keeping up with times and lasting another 2000 years.