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Sorry, didn't mean to imply that you didn't know the story. I guess I was just saying that "I" really don't know much about the written version. My knowledge of the story is limited only to what was impressed on me by the mural paintings depicting the epic at Wat Pra Kaew, and the part of Hanuman fighting that is so popular with Thai dance.

Well, the question you posted here got me curious, and I found some interesting websites that gives a lot of information about both Ramayana, the origin of the story, and about Ramakien as well.

Here is a link to "The Ramayana, an Enduring Tradition: its Text and Context" a resourceful webpage by Syracuse University. In a subsequent link, The Oral Tradition and the Many "Ramayanas", I found the following paragraphy by Philip Lutgendorf (Chair of South Asian Studies Program, University of Iowa):

Quote:

Quote[/b] ]"the Ramayana" (in spite of the definitive article) is not a single book like "the Bible" but rather a story and a tradition of storytelling. For more than two millennia, this tradition has enjoyed a unique popularity throughout the subcontinent of South Asia (comprising the modern states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and beyond - for versions of the tale have flourished in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Although the core story of the travails of Prince Rama and Princess Sita and their companions remains much the same everywhere, storytellers and poets in dozens of languages have chosen not simply to translate some "original" version, but instead have retold the saga in their own words, often modifying and embellishing it according to regional traditions or their own insights and interpretations. At the same time, this tale has been continuously recreated orally - with all the fluidity we expect in oral performance - by a whole spectrum of tellers ranging from traditional bards and singers to modern film and video producers (an epic television serialization of the story held Indian audiences spellbound in 1987-89), and also including countless grandmothers. Indeed, for most modern Indians, the "original" Ramayana is as likely to mean a bedtime story heard in childhood as the 2000+ year old Sanskrit epic of the poet-sage Valmiki.

(I find it fascinating how stories can be told in so many different versions, and how there are recurrent themes in our stories around the world.)

In this other site: The Poetics of the Ramakian, Dr. Theodora H. Bofman gives line by line translation of King Rama I's version of Hanuman's journey to Lanka, each paragraph of translation following its Thai text. There are fourteen major divisions of the translation, which contain 212 consecutively numbered paragraphs. These divisions do not necessarily correspond to divisions intended by the author of the poem. The numbers of the paragraphs are also put in this corpus consecutively.

Lastly, this page of USMTA describes how the epic is related to Muay Thai.

Are you writing a book, or a magazine article? It sounds interesting. http://www.thailandguidebook.com/iB_...cons/smile.gif