Localizing India’s Values of Ramayana in Southeast Asia- The Case of Hikayat Seri Rama

Abstract

Intercultural communication is the communication among different cultures, different communities with different lifestyles and worldviews, which is a dispensable and unavoidable trend. The Ramayana is one of the largest ancient epics in world literature and has had an important influence on later Sanskrit poetry and Hindu life and culture because it presents the teachings of ancient Hindu sages in narrative allegory, interspersing philosophical and ethical elements. The characters Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, Bharata, Hanuman and Ravana are all fundamental to the cultural consciousness of India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and south-east Asian countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia and Indonesia. There are many versions of the Ramayana in Indian languages, besides Buddhist, Sikh and Jain adaptations; and also Cambodian, Indonesian, Filipino, Thai, Lao, Burmese and Malaysian versions of the tale. The paper analyzes the characteristics on receiving Indian culture in the case of Seri Rama - the Malay literary adaptation of the Hindu Ramayana epic in the form of a hikayat such as the receiving methods, principles in selecting, acquiring and localizing Indian cultural values.