Beyond Hindu and Muslim: The Courtly Ramayanas of North India

In the 17th and 18th century, artists produced gloriously illustrated Ramayanas for both Hindu and Muslim rulers. By comparing four illustrated Ramayanas, this talk explores the diverse meanings of the epic in this period. In a lecture titled Beyond Hindu and Muslim: The Courtly Ramayanas of North India, Debra Diamond, curator of South and Southeast Asian art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, considers how Sanskrit, Persian, and Hindi Ramayana manuscripts variously inflected the epic narrative, and what they reveal about the mechanisms though which a shared Indo-Islamic elite culture was forged.