What is written above represents only two rows of a verse in a shloka, that should consist of four rows of eight syllables in each. The entire Ramayana consists of 24000 verses. Together they form a single shloka, which in Sanskrit is called: I shloka Ramayanam.

In an introduction to texts from Ramayana, Måns Broo writes the following (translated from Måns Broo, 2010, p. 153):

”Thus the honourable and noble Valmiki created the glorious poetry of Rama

in hundreds of harmonious verses with pleasant lines of meters and meaning.”

It is very difficult to interpret the entire work in verse. This book is intended to illustrate Ramayana by pictures and to explain the episode behind each picture.

An Indian artist, Sugandha Iyer, became when  she was very young, as inspired by Ramayana that she painted images to various episodes from the epos. 

The pictures were painted in Paithani style, a traditional style going back two hundred years. This style is characterized by the following: Faces are painted in profile, with a marked nose and large expressive eyes. Nevertheless, the people seem to be numb. The ritual hand movements. are also noteworthy The images are painted with traditional materials in opaque colours (poster colours) on paper. 

Sugandha Iyer presented her pictures 1977 at an exhibition in Basel, Switzerland. She then left her pictures at the ethnographic museum in Basel (Museum der Kulturen). Before she did so, she took photos of them. This book is based on reproductions of her slides, which unfortunately had become badly devoured by time.

Two young art students, Rahul Satpute and Kiran More, got trusted to recreate Sugandha’s pictures. Their teacher in artistic creation is Radhika Malekar, who also explained how the images were to be painted. Their images have been photographed for this book.

Sugandha Iyer and Yvonne Wærn met when Sugandha was returning from Switzerland.  Thirty years have now passed. We want to celebrate our friendship anniversary with this book. With our hands stretched over continents we herewith pass the pictures and the story to the eyes of readers.

Poona Linköping November 1, 2017

Sugandha Iyer Yvonne Wærn