The Life of a Text offers a vivid portrait of one community's interaction with its favorite text--the epic Ramcaritmanas--and the way in which performances of the epic function as a flexible and evolving medium for cultural expression. Anthropologists, historians of religion, and readers interested in the culture of North India and the performance arts will find breadth of subject, careful scholarship, and engaging presentation in this unique and beautifully illustrated examination of Hindi culture. The most popular and influential text of Hindi-speaking North India, the epic Ramcaritmanas is a sixteenth century retelling of the Ramayana story by the poet Tulsidas. This masterpiece of pre-modern Hindi literature has always reached its largely illiterate audiences primarily through oral performance including ceremonial recitation, folksinging, oral exegesis, and theatrical representation. Drawing on fieldwork in Banaras, Lutgendorf breaks new ground by capturing the range of performance techniques in vivid detail and tracing the impact of the epic in its contemporary cultural context.

Hanuman, the Hindu monkey-god, is best known in the west for his role in the ancient epic Ramayana (he is also considered the tales first author), in which, as the devoted servant of Rama, the tales hero, he leads a ferocious monkey army to help defeat the evil Ravana and rescue Ramas wife Sita. But because he does not figure as prominently as others in the ancient Sanskrit texts that have traditionally been studied by western scholars, Hanuman has often been relegated to the status of minor deity. Philip Lutgendorf moves beyond these texts to examine Hindu popular literature, art, and ritual, and shows that Hanuman is perhaps the most beloved deity in the Hindu pantheon. Far from being a mere sidekick, Hanuman is worshipped widely in India and the diaspora, across lines of caste and sect. There are more temples devoted to Hanuman than to any other god or goddess, and there has even been something of a competition to erect the largest statue in his honor (the tallest so far, in Paritala, stands 135 feet high). Lutgendorf offers a comprehensive examination of this remarkable figure, exploring every facet of his legend. Drawing on an enormous treasure trove of previously untapped sources that he has gathered through years of fieldwork, as well as on interviews with devotees, he traces the history of Hanumans character, teases out the many variations on his story, and examines the sources of his enormous appeal.