Ramayana in Archaic Greek and Etruscan Art at Caere, Part II

Description (Main Presentation, Part II):

Analysis of the reverse side of the Caeretan hydria reveals that the Ramayanic characters of Sita and Ravana are the maenad and satyr, respectively, in both the left and right scenes. Valmiki's poetic description of the demon Ravana is similar to the description by classical scholars of the satyr or Silenus on the hydria. Indian and Asian art furnishes imagery of Ravana's abduction of Sita that matches the iconography on the Caeretan hydria. Based on her dress and association with hunting animals (including deer), the maenad was the perfect model in Greek art for Sita. Maenads were the object of pursuit of lusty satyrs, so the Ionian artists chose those mythological prototypes to depict Sita and Ravana.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M55AIvEpMkw

Transcript (Main Presentation, Part II):

So getting back to the Caeretan hydria, the conclusion firmly that I would make is that Ravana and Sita are the satyr and the maenad in both scenes on the left and the right. So each pairing on the left and right in the Caeretan hydria number two from Boston on the back side represents an interaction between Ravana and Sita during the golden deer chase. There’s an inherent duality between the two sides. You’ll see more static movement and activity on the right side and more dynamic movement and activity on the left side. And so what does that all mean? 

Well, on the right side, we see Ravana the satyr, so-called satyr. He’s walking or approaching cautiously with a flaccid or limp penis and holding or grabbing Sita by the arm and shoulder like a moment in time in a photograph. She is showing static resistance to moving from her position through her defiant stance with a closed fist in her left hand because she wants to remain in her home in the wilderness. And Ravana is basically still sort of in disguise as a mendicant because he doesn’t have an erect penis and he doesn’t have as monstrous a form as he has on the left side. And that definitely accords with the Valmiki Ramayana.

So, now on the left side, it’s different. It’s not static anymore, it’s more dynamic. And we have Ravana moving rapidly with a galloping gait that indicates continuous movement towards a destination. He is now sexually aroused with an erect penis. And he has firmly controlled her upper and lower body with his right and left arms, respectively. Sita is thus like a passenger in a moving vehicle with nowhere else to go. The researcher Jaap Hemelrijk does agree with my assessment here, stating that the satyr-maenad pair on the left side “form a compact, dynamic group” and the other pair of characters on the right side “are more widely spaced and seem more static.” (pg. 10, Caeretan Hydriae).

Now the wide spacing is intentional because Ravana approaches Sita cautiously in the guise of a priest and initially Sita resists his advances. The static nature of the scene also indicates that the setting is a place where the female victim thought she was safe, that is her home. And she stands with her arms raised, as if to say, how dare you put your hands on me in my home. Now getting back to the more dynamic scene on the left side, the key word is “dynamic” of course, because it confirms my view that the scene represents the beginning of a long journey to another place, or a constant progression in another direction. In this case it is south to Lanka, which is depicted as west on the hydria. Now the word “compact” indicates how Ravana wants to maintain possession of Sita and make her become his queen in Lanka forever.

The German author Konrad Schauenberg’s description of the satyr or Silenus on the Boston hydria accords with Valmiki’s description of Ravana. According to Schauenberg, the painter of the Caeretan hydria “by no means adhered to a consistently preserved, rigid pattern. This is particularly evident in the Boston hydria.” He says, “While a group of Silenus and maenad is depicted on each side of the vertical handle, the left depicts a kidnapping or abduction group as it appears primarily on northern Greek coins and archaic gems, while the right Silenus, adorned with a magnificent, gigantic head, pursues a maenad.” (pgs. 98-101, translation).

This is from the German journal Antike Kunst (1969). So what we have here is that Schauenberg, like so many European scholars, probably had no familiarity with the Ramayana of India. He therefore could only observe what are unmistakable characteristics of what Indians call the ten-headed Ravana, which is, you know, meant to be looked at metaphorically in some ways, and for some people, literally. But the ten-headedness of Ravana definitely is meant to tell us that he’s very big, or very large in the head. The magnificent gigantic head and the horse hooves with human-shaped forelegs - they all indicate his dual form as a brahmin mendicant in the beginning on the right side and then the monstrous, raksasa demon form that he has on the left side. To recap, he has a more harmless looking form of a (bearded) brahmin mendicant before the abduction of Sita. And that’s on the right side. And then on the left side he has that monstrous raksasa form with the really large (even larger) head and the erect penis, after he has abducted Sita.

Now let us actually delve into the Valmiki poem, the epic poem of the Ramayana, for an exact description of Ravana’s transformation during his abduction of Sita and compare that to the Caeretan hydria’s depiction. So in the Valmiki Ramayana it’s written thus: ‘Suddenly Ravana, younger brother to Vaisravana, abandoned the kindly form of a beggar and assumed his true shape, one such as Doom itself must have.’ (3.47.6). Now in the Etruscan depiction on the water jar from Caere, Ravana does not undergo as radical a transformation, but this more basic illustration (Ionian) is still clearly and unmistakably the abduction of Sita by the ‘brahmin’ Ravana. The hydria, because of its inherent limitations as a medium for artistic expression, represents a more primitive and less detailed version of Valmiki’s narrative.

Now getting back to the epic poem, there’s another verse which again in detail tells us: Ravana ‘had thrown off the guise of mendicant and assumed his own form again, the colossal shape of Ravana,’ (3.47.8), which matches well with the Caeretan water jar where Ravana is naked in his lust for Sita with an enlarged head and erect penis. His full transformation from human sage to lusty satyr is most evident in the subtle change in the size of his face, which if we measure it from the chin to the top of the forehead is noticeably larger on the left side actually, about a 3:2 ratio. The problem with the author Schauenberg is that when he mentions the “gigantic head” of the Silenus on the right, he seems to be missing the fact that the so-called Silenus on the left has an even bigger looking head!

The picture here is a medieval painting from India that actually depicts the same exact two-part sequence of Ravana abducting Sita that we see in the Caeretan hydria. The two-part sequence is Ravana grasping the lady’s arm, which we see on the right, and then taking her away to Lanka, and that’s in the flying chariot on the left. And we see that more primitively on the Caeretan hydria in Boston. And also if you want to, you can compare the left hand of Sita in this painting to the corresponding hand of the maenad in the Boston hydria, both of which indicate resistance to moving from where they are living or staying, which is a very simple hut in the wilderness. 

Now, unfortunately, we don’t have ancient contemporary depictions from the fifth century BC or sixth century BC from India of this same epic poem. And that’s the biggest problem when trying to confirm that this is a Ramayana scene in the Caeretan hydria. But other than that, given the fact that the Ramayana is a very old epic poem that most scholars would indicate dates to at least the middle of the first millennium BC, there’s no reason to think that this isn’t exactly the same as what we see in the Caeretan hydria. It’s just that we do not have existing artifacts from India from that same period that show this same scene.

So just to summarize, I want to reiterate that the reverse side of the Caeretan hydria metaphorically depicts Ravana carrying Sita away by painting him as a satyr with centaur-like horse hooves and long strides. But in the actual Indian poem, he takes Sita into his flying chariot drawn by donkeys up in the sky, as you can see on the left side here of this painting. And if you look closely at this painting just to the right of Ravana, you see the black vulture is attacking Ravana after his abduction of Sita and the chariot gets broken in Valmiki’s story after this battle. So after that, afterwards, Ravana, who is often shown with ten heads and multiple arms to highlight his gigantic size, as you see in this painting on the left, he literally carries Sita himself (once he has transformed this way and once his chariot has been broken down) and flies in the air towards Lanka. 

This is actually closer to the visual image that we see on the Caeretan hydria in Boston and many other depictions of this abduction, because there’s many variations of how they depict this abduction in South Asian and Southeast Asian art. If you want to examine this painting in particular, then you can see it in the book Ramayana in Indian Miniatures: From the Collection of the National Museum in New Delhi, which is edited by Dr. Daljeet and Dr. V. K. Mathur. So this book was published in 2015 and is an excellent source for Indian miniature paintings of the Valmiki Ramayana, including this painting on this slide.

There are many other modern and medieval Asian depictions of Ravana abducting Sita in painting and other forms of art (sculpture). But these are two examples in painting. One is from Southeast Asia, specifically Bali, Indonesia on the left. And here you can again see Ravana carrying Sita away with his arm around her waist, just as we see in the Caeretan hydria. And his face is hideous and enlarged to highlight his fear and excitement. And again, that’s comparable to the enlarged face of Ravana on the Caeretan hydria. Now on the right side you see another example in painting from Rajasthan in India. It’s Mewar, Rajasthan. Here it’s extremely similar to the right side of that side B of the Caeretan hydria (on the right-hand side). You can see how he’s grabbing her by the arm again and she’s turning away. Her feet are turned away and pointed in the opposite direction, just as they are in the hydria. So there’s really no reason to doubt that they’re depicting basically the same exact abduction.

Also, if you notice, Ravana’s ten heads are showing in the Rajasthani painting, as well as a donkey’s head above them to indicate his dual form like that of a Silenus or centaur in Greek myth, half-man (and) half-animal. So, it just indicates that he’s duplicitous, much like Maricha, who is also duplicitous with his golden deer form. These demons in Indian myth are also capable of having dual forms. 

There is also an interesting contrast that one can observe between these two paintings of Sita’s abduction. In the Southeast Asian painting on the left, we can clearly see that Sita is more of a sexual object of Ravana’s in a very violent act of rape as we would see in Greek mythology. Her bare skin in her lower limbs are more visible and that definitely emphasizes Ravana’s lust. But if we look at the right-hand scene from northern India, we see a more conservative approach, which is more in line with what you would expect in the Indian Hindu tradition, or in what you would call the devotional Hindu tradition. They depict her as a very chaste lady who is outraged at Ravana for even touching her. And you can see the very strong similarity once again that I would like to reiterate with the Caeretan hydria, where her face is staring back at Ravana with the same type of angry, scornful look that we see in the Caeretan hydria with the maenad and the satyr. So, it really is a remarkable similarity, thousands of years between them, but they’re almost exactly the same. It’s amazing how this artist independently depicted Sita in almost the same exact way as the Greek artist in Etruria, many hundreds of years before him.

The combination of these two paintings that I’ve shown here would be analogous to what we see on the left and right sides of the back side (B-side) of the Caeretan hydria. You have Ravana grabbing a hold of Sita on the right side and then on the left side he’s carrying her off, just like we see in the Caeretan hydria on the back side. So it’s like a two-part sequence. And so if we combine these two paintings together, we would have something that would be equivalent to it.

My book sources for these two paintings were the following: The left-hand painting was from the book title Ramkatha in Narrative, Performance and Pictorial Traditions, which is edited by Molly Kaushal and others. And the right-hand image (painting) is from J. P. Losty’s book The Mewar Ramayana, which is published by Roli Books. And these two sources are really good sources and have quite a bit of artwork depicting the Ramayana, especially the second one by Losty, which is all drawn from manuscripts from the region of Mewar, Rajasthan.

Now I’m going to continue with some more technical examination of the reverse side of the Caeretan hydria from Boston, focusing on the dress of the maenad and also the anatomical knowledge of the artist. The author Jaap Hemelrijk recognizes that the fine complexity of the dress the lady Sita wears in both the left and right scenes is quite remarkable. And in my opinion the Busiris painter was emphasizing the female character’s importance through his attention to detail regarding her dress and appearance, like the Athenian korai. We can confirm that Sita is not a generic maenad or nymph, just as much as the Athenian korai are not generic female figures, at least according to Mary Stieber in her book (The Poetics of Appearance in the Attic Korai). Jaap Hemelrijk also recognizes on page 130 of his book Caeretan Hydriae that the maenad is dressed a lot like the Athenian korai. So, as long as we recognize that this is not a generic female figure, we’re clearly one step closer to identifying her as a legitimate mythological character.

And now, a quote from Hemelrijk I’ll give you is the following on the right side here: “The most obvious indications of the date of the hydriae are provided by the Busiris painter, who was far more advanced in his pictorial and anatomical knowledge than his colleague. These indications are, in the first place, the fine dresses of the ladies on the reverse of No. 2 Boston deer hunt. Such complicated renderings of dresses and folds cannot be dated before 525 to 520 BC.” (pg. 65, More About Caeretan Hydriae: Addenda er Clarificanda)

So that tells us about the date that it must have been produced, which was very early for the Caeretan workshop. It was definitely one of the earliest Caeretan hydriae to be produced in that workshop. And it obviously really indicates strongly that this lady is not some ordinary lady. Reinforcing this opinion, Hemelrijk also adds later on that “the drapery of the two maenads is as developed as the most progressive drapery of the Siphnian treasury.” And he compares this elaborate rendering (of dress) to that of Hera and Athena of the North Frieze. And that’s high praise. It’s basically comparing Sita to goddesses of Greek myth.

So my main conclusion about the maenad in the Boston hydria is that she is a real female character, shown twice, and her name is Sita. And how am I certain of this? Well, I’d like to put forth a quote from an important author on archaic and classical Greek art, Robin Osborne, who gives us a really detailed explanation of the distinction between satyrs and maenads. That will help me, as I can now apply it to this example. So he says: “Satyrs and the female worshippers of Dionysus, known as maenads (‘mad women’), did not form a symmetrical pair (meaning there was a clear distinction between the two)… A man could never be mistaken for this composite creature, that is a satyr, with its horse’s ears and tail. But maenads were simply women. They (the artists) certainly enjoyed the freedom to turn a satyr into an actor or an actor into a satyr by the addition or removal of a pair of furry shorts with tail and phallus attached. But with maenads the possibility that the scene was of ‘real’ women was always present.” (Pg. 150, Archaic and Classical Greek Art)

So how do we apply this to this scene? Well, first of all, the freedom to turn a satyr into an actor or an actor into a satyr should immediately remind us of how Ravana changes his form from that of a simple brahmin sage (mendicant), and from there becoming a very monstrous demon. So in that case he goes from being (turns from being) a satyr to an actor and then he goes back to being a demon again (from an actor into a satyr). His phallus therefore becomes more pronounced when he goes from being an actor to a satyr. But the most important thing here is to recognize that Robin Osborne is clearly showing us that the maenads are not just generic female figures. They are likely often times to be real women or real female mythical characters. And that’s exactly what this person is, this maenad is. She’s not a generic figure, and I think this should clinch the issue, that this is a real person from a real epic mythical story, that is Sita from the Ramayana.

Another important point is that maenads by definition are ‘mad women’ and that can definitely be applied to Sita in the case of the Golden Deer episode, because as per Valmiki’s Ramayana, she becomes very madly attached to acquiring the golden deer. And that is why she asks her husband Rama to chase after it and hunt it, and then she also doubles down on that when she also gets angry at her brother-in-law Laksmana for not helping protect Rama and going after the deer as well. So in this specific event of the Golden Deer episode, Sita does behave like a maenad, literally. And I think that’s probably why the Ionian artists use the maenad as a frame of reference, as the perfect frame of reference, to depict Sita.

So, Sita behaves like a maenad with three different characters. With Rama, she starts to get very excited about the golden deer and forces him to go and chase after it. Then the second time she acts like a maenad when she irrationally and hysterically gets angry at Laksmana for not going to help Rama in the woods because she feels that her husband may be threatened and she feels that all of a sudden Laksmana may have plans to obtain her as his wife, which was obviously crazy. So she was acting very crazy and irrationally and those are the symptoms of a maenad. 

And then the third time is actually in the Valmiki Ramayana that I’m going to give you an excerpt from, when she’s being accosted by Ravana and he is making advances on her and asking her to become his wife, when he is about to reveal his massive form. So I’ll just give you an excerpt from that. So in Sarga 46: “Vaidehi (Sita) was overcome with rage. Her eyes grew red and though all alone in the deserted spot she made this harsh reply to the lord of raksasas, that is Ravana. She says, ‘A man might abduct Indra’s wife (wife of the king of the gods in heaven), Saci herself, and still hope to save his life but he who carries me off, the wife of Rama, has no life left to save. And one might steal the incomparable Saci from the hand that wields the thunderbolt, and long remain alive, but violate a woman like me, raksasa, and even drinking the nectar of immortality will be no escape for you.’” (Verses 19, 22-23). So she becomes extremely angry and wild in her rage towards Ravana for even thinking that he could make her his own wife. And so that’s the third time that she acts like a maenad.

In the poem of the Valmiki Ramayana, Ravana himself actually addresses Sita as a ‘mad woman’ twice, right before he abducts her. He says to her and I’m quoting directly from the poem on Sarga 47 at the beginning: “Hearing Sita’s words, the awesome ten-necked Ravana struck his hands together and made ready to assume his massive form. Again he addressed Sita and far more severely than before: ‘It seems you did not hear, mad woman, when I spoke of my strength and valor. I can lift the earth in my arms while standing in the sky. I can drink up the ocean, and I can slay death in battle. I can shatter the earth with my sharp arrows, mad woman, or bring the sun to a halt. I can take on any form at will. You see before you a husband ready to grant your every wish.’ And as Ravana spoke thus in his wild rage, his yellow-rimmed eyes turned fiery red,” just like a satyr. Okay, so I just wanted to reiterate that the excerpt that I just quoted is from the Aranya Kanda, the Book of the Forest, Sarga 47, and verses 1-5. And how does this help us?

Well, the addressing of Sita as a mad woman, who is obviously showing belligerent resistance to Ravana’s advances, definitely agrees with the iconography of Sita as a maenad, which literally translates to the same term, as ‘mad woman’. And other definitions for maenad include ‘raving one’,’ frenzied or raging woman’, ‘an unnaturally excited or distraught woman’, etc. So maenads as wild followers of Dionysus were also viewed as sexually desirable like nymphs. And Ravana’s erect penis in the scene on the Caeretan hydria exemplifies his own sexual nature and the objectification of the maenad Sita. The fact that she’s a mad woman that not only is very attached to acquiring the golden deer skin, but is also very angry now that she is in a very threatening situation with Ravana about to abduct her, is notable.

Reviewing the definition of maenads, we learn that they were known as women who lived in the wilderness wearing animal skins, including deer and panther pelts. The artwork on the left displays one such maenad on a kylix from Vulci in Etruria with the deer skin on her back. And this is dating to the early 5th century BC. And the website that I’ve listed here from the University of Chicago, they summarize what maenads are. They describe this scene that you’re seeing on the left where she’s “draped in the skin of a fawn” and they show that unlike the satyrs who are “represented as beasts,” pretty much, the “maenads only take on the outward appearance” of such beastly satyrs. She has a serpent in her hair and she has the fawn skin on the back, and all that wild behavior and holding the panther as well, shows the closeness to nature of these maenads. And even on the right side, you can see a maenad brandishing a (tiny) fawn on another Greek work of art, which comes from page 151 of Osborne’s book. 

So it’s just something where the deer skin that Sita wanted, it makes her a natural match to these maenads, who would often wear such animal skins when they were living close to nature in the wilderness as devotees of Dionysus. I just want to quote another passage from Robin Osborne’s book Archaic and Classic Greek Art, page 149, in which he sums up the interaction between maenad Sita and satyr Ravana. He says that “often the female devotees of Dionysus appear as passive objects of satyrs’ attentions… as willing or unwilling partners in their revels.” And in this case, Sita is definitely an unwilling partner in Ravana’s scheme.