This volume examines The Rāmāyaṇa traditions of South India and Southeast Asia. Bringing together 19 well-known scholars in Rāmāyaṇa studies from Cambodia, Canada, France, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, UK, and USA, this thought-provoking and elegantly illustrated volume engages with the inherent plurality, diversity, and adaptability of the Rāmāyaṇa in changing socio-political, religious, and cultural contexts. The journey and localization of the Rāmāyaṇa is explored in its manifold expressions – from classical to folk, from temples and palaces to theatres and by-lanes in cities and villages, and from ancient to modern times. Regional Rāmāyaṇas from different parts of South India and Southeast Asia are placed in deliberate juxtaposition to enable a historically informed discussion of their connected pasts across land and seas. The three parts of this volume, organized as visual, literary, and performance cultures, discuss the sculpted, painted, inscribed, written, recited, and performed Rāmāyaṇas. A related emphasis is on the way boundaries of medium and genre have been crossed in the visual, literary, and performed representations of the Rāmāyaṇa. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Cambodian epic poem, based on the Sanskrit's Ramayana epic. The name means "Glory of Rama". It adapts the Hindu ideas to Buddhist themes and shows the balance of good and evil in the world. Like the Ramayana, it is a philosophical allegory, exploring the ideals of justice and fidelity as embodied by the protagonists, Prince Rama and Queen Sita. The epic is well known among the Khmer people for its portrayal in Khmer dance theatre, called the L'khaon, in various festivals across Cambodia. Scenes from the Reamker are painted on the walls of the Royal Palace in Khmer style, and its predecessor is carved into the walls of the Angkor Wat and Banteay Srei temples. It is considered an integral part of Cambodian culture.

This book considers painted representations of characters from the Khmer version of the Ramayana, the Reamker. The book opens with an edited version and translation of the Reamker, written in the early 20th century by Thiounn, Minister of the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, to celebrate the painting of the famous Reamker murals on the Palace walls. A catalogue of more than sixty individual characters from the Reamker, painted by Chet Chan (a contemporary painter trained at the School of Fine Arts in the 1960s) follows. This catalogue of characters is accompanied by a illustrated essay discussing ways to differentiate and recognise individual characters. A final photo essay details the process through which Chet Chan makes one of his tempera and gold-leaf paintings on silk.

A book studying the history and significance of shadow puppet theater in Cambodia. Khmer and English texts, as well as 153 full-page photographs, describe the Khmer Reamker, an ancient story whose episodes and characters have figured in Cambodian shadow theater pageants for centuries. Published jointly by UNESCO and the Cornell Southeast Asia Program.

With nearly 400 pages, Out of the Shadows of Angkor: Cambodian Poetry, Prose, and Performance through the Ages is an outstanding collection of classic and contemporary writing. The volume emerges from the thirty-year effort of a community to gather Cambodian literary and cultural works. In doing so, they not only translated rare works into English for the first time, but also helped to rescue writing lost during the Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1979). Readers will find the following and more: –Cambodian writing ranging over fourteen hundred years, from the seventh century to the present; –translations of classical texts;selections of modern Cambodian poetry, prose, and folk theater; –contemporary writings by Cambodian refugees and children of the diaspora living in countries from Australia to the United States, Canada, and Europe; –visual art, including oil paintings by Theanly Chov and excerpts from a graphic novel by Tian Veasna. “The work included in Out of the Shadows of Angkor is just a part of the vast, diverse repertoire of Cambodian literature created by those born in Cambodia, in the camps, and in new lands. Soth Polin once told me, ‘What we have lost is indescribable . . . what we have lost is not reconstructable. An epoch is finished. So when we have literature again, it will be a new literature.’ We hope this book brings out of the shadows some of the lost, hidden, and emerging gems of Cambodian literature—past, present, and moving into the future.” —From the overview essay by guest editor Sharon May

14 leading 'Ramayana' scholars examine the epic in its myriad contexts throughout South and Southeast Asia. They explore the role the narrative plays in societies as varied as India Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia. The essays also expand the understanding of the 'text' to include non-verbal renditions of the epic.

This work challenges the widespread belief that Cambodia's education crisis is part of the dreadful legacy of the Khmer Rouge holocaust in which thousands of students, teachers and intellectuals perished. It draws on an extensive range of sources.