RAMAKIEN

(I it's simple and short enough for everyone to understand lol 😭) My motive is to bring more awareness to dying traditional dances of the khmer, cambodians and thailand.

Important info! I live in Malaysia where a state banned menora (a religious and respected traditional dance) as it is haram for islam, though of course they stand by their own feet, making sure that their traditions are still ongoing. Khon drama is only in thailand, but if I'm free, I will write about menora soon.

Ramakien is a khon drama (masked drama). It tells the story of two lovers and well, another male lead who didn't succeed lmao. It's based on ramayana india, it's hard to find all the information so I'm trying to recall and dug into all I could find when I heard about this.

Many ramakien articles, info and so on were destroyed by revolutionary. It was only brought back to life in the Ayutthaya period to entertain the royals.

RAMAKIEN (thai version)

Nang Sida(Sita) and Phra Ram(Rama) are married. Nang Sida was kidnapped by Tosakanth after he fell in love with the married princess, he locked her up underwater. Phra Ram brings his brother, Lakshman (I forgot the thai ver name) to help fight Tosakanth to recuse his wife. While doing so, they travelled for many days and met a white monkey named Hanuman.

Surprisingly, Hanuman was cursed by Phra Uma, Lord Shiva's wife, aka Phra Ram's mother. His curse was the cause of him recklessly entering the garden of Phra Uma to pick some fruits from the trees, when the apsaras(dancers in heaven for pleasure, desire and lust) shooed him away, he ran around, teasing them which resulted him to get cursed. Phra Uma appeared and curse him, she told him that he will only regain his powers back which meant the curse will be removed if he finds her son, Phra Ram and pledge loyalty to him and help with the war. Then, once Phra Ram caresses his Hanuman's back 3 times he will be back to normal.

Moving on, he meets Phra Ram and does as what he should do to get rid of the curse. Hanuman, ecstatic with the curse removed, also had a duty. He brought his troop to help Phra Ram fight Tosakanth. But,, while he was throwing rocks in the sea with his troop to build a stone bridge for the search of Phra Ram's wife, they realised that there must be some mermaids stealing the rocks and hiding it somewhere. With that, Hanuman dives into the sea.

Now, Suphan Matcha is a mermaid princess. She was stealing the rocks with her nymphs to stop the stone bridge to be built, following the rules of Tosakanth. However, Hanuman finds them. They scurry around. Hanuman aims to find the princess first, chasing her around. He lost her for a while until he found her letting her guard down, he caught her by her tail until Suphan Matcha agreed to his terms to not steal the rocks, submitting to his orders. But.. plot twist, they fall in love.

Now the war beginsss, the stone bridge was built and finally, Tosakanth was defeated. Phra Ram rescued his wife. However.. he was unsure of Nang Sida's loyalty. So she told him to be a witness, a fire was created, angels were witnesses too. She says, "if I walk through this fire without any burns, it means I had been loyal to Phra Ram." She walks through the fire without any danger. Phra Ram was happy about it. However.. Tosakanth's sister(forgot her name) wanted to get revenge. No one had the knowledge that Tosakanth had a sister. She tricked Nang Sida into drawing Tosakanth in which Phra Ram finds out about it. He was upset and exiled her. There are two versions of the ending of their love story. 1, they reconcile and remarried again. 2, Phra Ram or Nang Sida refused/failed to meet each other again nor reconcile.

I hope this was interesting, thanks for reading :)

There are more to this story but this is the main.

Sources!

https://youtu.be/E4tWHYfbuhg?si=CL14rNBW95KlVcs1

https://mysakonnakhon.com/ramakien-story-thailand-khon-drama-summary/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramakien