【院生ゼミ】1月4日
【大学院】
We had the first class of the year today. In the class, we look into the second set of the Ramayana reliefs at the Prambanan temple.
The reliefs we looked at cover the episodes including Ravana's abduction of Sita, Rama's encounters with creatures in the forest, Rama's alliance with Sugriva and his army of monkeys, and Hanuman's discovery of Sita.
Interestingly, when Rama kills the creatures (a monster and a crocodile), their spirit, in the form of a heavenly being, departs from the body for heaven. We learn from the text that they are indeed heavenly beings, who have been forced as punishment to be reborn as unpleasant creatures on the earth. It is possible to point out there is a strong affinity between the narrative of the Ramayana and the animistic world view of the contemporary Javanese society. To support this interpretation, we look at video materials on Sanghyang, the trance dance in Bali, where the society holds an animistic world-view in the cultural context heavily influenced by the Hindu-Javanese culture.
The next class, the last in this semester, will be held on 18 January, as 11 January is a national holiday. The date for submission of the term paper is 25 January. Please refer to the messages in Slack for details.