The writer narrates her experience at a Ramayan conference in China

For Prof. Jin Ding Han, the translator of Tulsidas’s Ramcharit Manas into Chinese, it was a not an easy job to have his book published in his country.

He told me: “It was not so easy. In Communist China, religious books are looked down on as opium. So, I had to convince the authorities that Tulsidas’s Ramayan held a place in the hearts of millions of Indian people. Were they all opium-eaters? Besides this argument, I could convince them about the literary excellence and beauty of this great creation of Tulsidas. In 1988, my book was published at last in China.”

But how did people react when the book was first published?

“The reaction was tremendous. The well-known paper of Communist China, the People’s China, praised it highly,” he said.

I personally feel that Jin Ding Han occupies the same legendary status as Alexey Barannikov, the translator of the Ramayan into Russian, and two other great scholars, F.S. Growse and Fr Camille Bulcke, for their devoted and dedicated works on the Ramayan.

Needless to say here that the 13th International Ramayan Conference was a great success.

It was held at the Shenzhen University in Guang-dong province of China in April 1996 and organised by the university and the China Indian Literature Studies Institute, in co-operation with the Institute of World Literature and Culture.

It was this conference which had given me an opportunity to meet and talk to Jin Ding Han and several other great scholars who had devoted their lives to the study and research on the Indian classic.

It was here that Prof. Yulongyu of the Shenzen University had presented a fascinating aspect of the Ramayan in a paper titled: Monogamy: A Major Theme of Ramayan.

The professor’s observations were profound, having a great bearing on our times.

“In modern times, many countries are developed in science and technology and affluent in material life. In many cases, however, the people are not happy; they are depressed instead. This manifests in wanton sensual desires, moral degeneration, prostitution, divorce, distorted forms of the family, serious generation gap. One major cause underlying this problem is the degeneration of monogamy. It is imperative to persist with the dharma of monogamy and to enhance, enrich and perfect it in the changing situations. In this sense, the Ramayan remains a work of great importance in its moral guidance.”

No wonder, it was such elevated thoughts which lifted the conference to great heights of scholarly and intellectual pursuit, of trying to understand the Ramayan and inherent meanings in the timeless classic of Valmiki.

(Concluded)