The Ramayana in Myanmar | A Burmese Tapestry (Kalaga/shwe chi doe) | Curator's Corner S8 Ep10

So I'm here today to talk about this fantastic textile showing scenes of the Ramayana. My name is Alexandra Green and I'm the curator for Southeast Asia at the British Museum. I'm also the curator of this exhibition, Burma to Myanmar, and welcome to my corner. We are looking at a shoichido or kalaga, which is a textile hanging from the country of Myanmar. It probably was produced in central Myanmar, probably in the late 19th century or early 20th century. It is pieces of textile that have been sewn on top of a black velvet ground. It's also covered in sequins. It's been embroidered. It could be used as a wall hanging. It could be used as a backdrop. The long, thin nature of this particular example suggests that it was hung up in the eaves of a building, and the story that it shows is the Ramayana. The Ramayana is an ancient South Asian epic that arrived in Southeast Asia, including Myanmar, many, many, many centuries ago, and was adapted in Southeast Asia and Myanmar, as we can see here. So the scenes shown in this particular hanging are images of Prince Rama. In Myanmar, he is usually represented holding a bow, so we can identify him here, despite the fact that he's in non-royal clothing. Usually he's shown with a crown, but he was, of course, banished to live in a forest, and that could be indicated here. The story of the Ramayana is very much one of Prince Rama searching for his wife and the battles between good and evil. So when Rama is banished to the forest by his father, the king, because of palace intrigue, his wife is then kidnapped by the demon Ravana, and the story focuses upon Prince Rama's efforts to retrieve his wife. And in this, he's assisted by a monkey called Hanuman, who in Southeast Asia is represented in white form, so we can see Hanuman several times in the textile. Here, we see him as a white monkey. In one of the scenes when there's a great battle between Rama's forces and Ravana, the demon's forces, Rama's younger brother Lakshmana is wounded, along with, of course, numerous animals in Rama's army, because he's supported by monkeys and bears. And Hanuman is tasked with going to the Himalayas to retrieve the magical herb that will heal everybody, and he goes, he hops from basically all the way in the south up to the Himalayas in the north. He finds this medicinal mountain, but he doesn't know which of the herbs on the mountain will actually cure everybody, so he scoops up the entire mountain and carries it back. So this is an image of him going through the air, carrying what looks like a blue cloud. It's actually a mountain, and with the medicinal herb on it. This other scene here shows Hanuman confronting a holy man. You can tell that he's a holy man because of the type of hat he's wearing, a tall, thinnish hat. But then in the subsequent scene, we can see that this image of the holy man is now tipped back on his head, and he's actually revealed as a demon with his green face and big teeth and his green feet and his green hand. And this is a very typical way of representing characters in Myanmar, to show their inner essence. And then they have a headdress showing his fake fursona. This is a very typical method of showing the duality of somebody's nature. This textile is part of the Burma to Myanmar exhibition. It's actually our lead image, and we chose it because, well, A, it's an amazing textile, but also it's an amazing representation of the Ramayana narrative. And thirdly, it shows very clearly the main theme of this exhibition, which is telling a long history of Myanmar's many kingdoms and principalities and political networks through cross-cultural encounters. So Myanmar has oftentimes been thought of as isolated because of its more recent history, but in the past, it was very engaged with the world around it. And this textile is a fantastic example of that. So first of all, the narrative itself came from South Asia many, many centuries ago, and it was adapted for local contexts. Secondly, one of the things that's important to know about Southeast Asia is that it's been historically underpopulated. So warfare didn't so much involve taking other people's territories, it oftentimes involved going out and bringing other people back into your heartland and resettling them there. The people who make it back, of course, the process of being transferred was horrible. What's important about this textile is it reflects the 1767 attack on Central Thailand, the Kingdom of Ayutthaya. The Central Myanmar's armies went there, sacked the area, and brought lots and lots of people back, tens of thousands of people back to Central Myanmar. One of the groups of people that was brought back were Thai theatrical troops, and the Thai theatrical troops were then incorporated into the Burmese, Central Burmese court, and they absolutely took the court by storm. The court loved them. They performed and performed, and the main story that they performed was the Ramayana. So suddenly, the Ramayana, although it had been known in Myanmar prior to this, it became particularly popular after 1767. The other impact that the Thai theatrical troops had on the Central Myanmar court was the impact on court dress. With the popularity of the Thai theatrical troops, the Burmese court redeveloped formal court dress and copied elements of the Thai theatrical troops' dress. And, of course, the Thai theatrical troops had once performed for the Thai court at Ayutthaya, and their costumes were modeled on Thai court dress. So we have an incredible transfer of an adaptation of styles coming from Thailand, and we can see that also represented here on this textile, particularly in the clothing of Hanuman the White Monkey. So what you can see with Hanuman is a swag down the front of his outfit with then two upturned flame-like elements to each side, and you get a couple of those. And then also on his shoulders and elbows, you see these kind of flame-like extensions, and then around his neck is a cloud collar. And all of these elements were part of the Thai theatrical troops' dress, part of the Thai court dress, and these now became important elements in Burmese court dress as well. So we see here two rabbits in the lower left corner. Rabbits, again, were something that connected very strongly with this attack on Ayutthaya in Central Thailand in 1767. And after artists and all sorts of people, including the Thai theatrical troops, have been brought back to Central Myanmar, you start seeing things that you found in Thai art in Burmese art, and the rabbits are one of them. If you look at earlier Thai paintings, for example, you tend to get lots of playful animals, rabbits and squirrels, in the background, and suddenly now in Central Myanmar you're starting to see elements like that. So again, this instance of warfare then results in substantial cultural transfer, and this happened all over Southeast Asia. So the exhibition really is very much about looking at cross-cultural encounters, and this object shows that to us very clearly. We get a very strong sense of how people moved about, how ideas moved about, how techniques moved about through the objects in this show. If you would like to come and see the exhibition, Burma to Myanmar at the