The Radheshyam Ramayan in Text and Performance

A new Ramayan for a new age. In the early twentieth century, the poet and singer-storyteller Pandit Radheshyam Kathavachak reimagined and published the classic story of the Ramayan with stunning success. Guided by Tulsidas's sixteenth-century Ramcaritmanasin Avadhi, Kathavachak composed his religious epic, the Radheshyam Ramayan, in Hindi-Urdu to make it comprehensible to modern audiences and to be able to sing and explicate it in devotional concerts (katha). Even so, the work was quickly incorporated into the scripts of annual Ramlila theatrical productions in the Rohilkhand region and beyond.

Based on extensive literary, archival, and ethnographic research,The Radheshyam Ramayan in Text and Performancetakes readers on a journey through Kathavachak's hometown of Bareilly and his cosmopolitan world of Hindi letters and performance. The book demonstrates how Kathavachak's Ramayan, a purported translation, departs significantly from Tulsidas's famous Ramayan, and includes personal vignettes of actors who have declaimed Kathavachak's verses on a Ramlila stage in Bareilly. While Kathavachak is primarily known for his mythological plays and contributions to the commercial theatre, The Radheshyam Ramayan in Text and Performance reveals other aspects of Kathavachak's world, illustrating how he left an indelible mark on India's distinctive "epic modernity."