'Not the Rama we're familiar with': The different Ramayanas across South-East Asia

“You won’t find Rama in the palace; you must seek him in the forest.”

Tiao Nith knows both the palace and the forest. He grew up in the royal court of 1960s’ Laos. As an adult, following a period of exile after the overthrow of the royalty by the revolutionary party, he settled near the woods overlooking Luang Prabang, a temple town. Every day for the past twenty years, in the unfolding light of dawn, he climbs the wooded hill that rises across from his cottage. Trees, branches, thickly knitted vines, and undergrowth rustling with secret life slowly reveal themselves as daylight breaks over the hill. Tiao Nith examines the forest floor, carefully selecting fallen leaves to bring home.

“The forest is my teacher,” Tiao Nith once told me. “A carcass falls and becomes a feast. Bodies stop stirring and sprout worms. All death is turned to life.”

The Dasaratha Jataka

This is also the lesson of the Dasaratha Jataka, he explained. Over the next few days, the leaves from his morning expeditions are arranged on his desk like scripture to be studied. He reads their veins and dried, crumbling surfaces. He turns them around in his hands and in his mind before getting to work, drawing needle and thread...