The Ramlila at Ramnagar 6. Census of India 1961: District Census Handbook, Uttar Pradesh, 53, Varanasi District, Lucknow, 1965, p. cxdi. 7. Uttar fradesh District Gazetteers: Varanasi, edited by Esha Basanti Joshi, Lucknow/1965, p. 414. 8. District Gazetteer, p. 295. 9. James Prinsep, Benaras illustrated in a Series of Drawings, Third Series, Calcutta, 1833; London, 1834, five unnumbered pages. These are drawings of Banaras as it appeared to him in 1825. Prinsep's unofficial census of Banaras is dated 1828-29. The three series of drawings of Benaras Illustrated are published in London in 1831,1832 and 1834. Presumably then the lila was well established by late 32 1820. 10. Thakur Prasad Dvivedi, Sri Ramlila: Ek Samajik Mahayagya, Royal Printing Works, Varanasi, no date, pp. 9-11. All the following accounts are to be found in Dvivedi. 11. Mentioned during interviews held with the author over the course of two years, 1978 and 1979. All further references to the Maharaja will be on the basis of these interviews. 12. James Prinsep, op. dt. 13. Induja Awasthi, Ramlila: Parampara aur ShaUiyan, Delhi, 1979, p. 78. 14. District Gazetteer, p. 506. 15. See Kier Hiam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, London and New York, 1980, pp. 117-119 for four kinds of timing. 16. Tulsidas, Ramacharitamanasa, p. 459. 17. Shukracharya, in Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Transformation of Nature in Art, New York, 1956, p. 162. 18. Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge, New York, 1983, p. 101. 19. Norvin Hein, The Miracle Plays ofMathura, Delhi, 1972, p. 88. 20. Tulsidas, Kavitavali, translated and with a Critical Introduction by F.R. AUchin, London, 1964, pp 85-86. 21. See also Richard Schechner and Linda Hess, "The Ramlila of Ramnagar', Drama Review, 21, no. 3, September 1977,51-82 (p. 77). 22. See Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society, Ithaca and London, 1974; The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, London, 1969; Process, Performance and Pilgrimage: A Study in Comparative Symbology, New Delhi, 1979. 23. Patrice Pavis, Languages of the Stage, New York, 1982, p. 128. 24. For Gilbert Ryle's discussion on 'thick description' see Gilbert Ryle, Collected Papers, Vol. II, London, 1971, pp. 465-495. See also Clifford Geertz, The Interpretations of Cultures, New York, 1973, pp. 6-7. 25. Paul Ricoeur on the inscription of action says the following: "What in effect does writing fix? Not the event of speaking, but the "said" of speaking, where we understand by the "said" of speaking that intentional exteriorization constitutive of the aim of discourse thanks to which the sagen -— the saying — wants to become Aus-sage — the enunciation, the enunciated. In short, what we write, what we inscribe, is the noema of the speaking. It is the meaning of the speech event, not the event as event." (Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, edited and translated by John B. Thompson, Cambridge, 1981, p. 199. 26. Rustom Bharucha, "A Collision of Cultures: Some Western Interpretations of the Indian Theatre", Asian Theatre Journal, I, no. 1, Spring 1984,1-20 (p. 16). 27. Roland Barthes, The Reality Effect', in French Literary Theory Today: A Reader, edited by Tzvetan Todorov, Cambridge, 1982, p. 14. Journal of Arts & Ideas