Maharadia Lawana: The Indigenous Filipino “Ramayana” by Way of Diaspora and Hybridity-Heteroginity

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-186-9_5How to use a DOI?

Keywords

folklore epic; heteroginity; hybridity; diaspora; The Ramayana

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the diasporic and heteroginity-hybridity interplay of a Filipino epic namely the Maharadia lawana. Maharadia Lawana is indigenous with the locality of the Philippines though resembling the tale of a folklore epic in India as its original counterpart—The Ramayana. It is also highly inarguable that Maharadia lawana is based on the Indonesian/Malaysian version of the adaptation. This paper discusses the Maharadia lawana’s main plots compared to the tree other versions of the epic namely Hikayat Seri Rama (HSR) or the Hikayat Maharaja Ravana (HMR), the Fairy Tale (Maxwell version) and the Sanskrit Ramayana (Ram.). There are characters in the four versions playing a similar role yet having different names. Maharadia’s main character who is Maharadia Lawana is a 7/8-headed king in the kingdom of Sultan Pulu Bandiarmasir. He is a monstrous ruler and lusts over a princess figure in the story. Such characteristics and role of the character is reminiscent of “Maharaja Duwana” of the Fairy Tale (Maxwell version) and “Ravana” of the Hikayat Seri Rama (HSR) or the Hikayat Maharaja Ravana (HMR), and the Sanskrit Ramayana (Ram.). These differences may involve linguistic and cultural elements which influence the origin of the four epics. For instance, since Maharadia Lawana is a product of the Philippines during the Islamic period, the allusion to a Hindu deity namely “Hanuman” who is also the Hindu God Monkey is replaced with “Laksmana” in Maharadia Lawana. This paper further discusses the influence of diaspora and heteroginity-hybridity in Maharadia Lawana as seen from its characters, settings and plots. Nevertheless, Maharadia Lawana still remains a great epic which enrich the cultural refinement of Filipino folklore. This is so since it is highly contextualized with the Filipino setting and cultural orientation.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Lukas Henggara Nandamai Herujiyanto
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/01/11
TI  - Maharadia Lawana: The Indigenous Filipino “Ramayana” by Way of Diaspora and Hybridity-Heteroginity
BT  - Proceedings of the Critical Island Studies 2023 Conference (CISC 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 33
EP  - 39
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-186-9_5
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-186-9_5
ID  - Herujiyanto2024
ER  -