An Episode of the Harivaṃśa in Siamese Literature

Although the popularity of the Rāmāyaṇa story beyond India proper, and especially in Southeast Asia, is well known, the popularity of Mahābhārata stories, especially in Pali Buddhist countries, is less so. Indeed, this has even led to the perception that the Rāmāyaṇa has a geographically transcendent quality, while the Mahābhārata was of less universal popularity because it is tied to Bhārat, or India. In this paper, I examine an interesting exception to this perceived tendency, the adoption of the story of Kṛṣṇa’s grandson Aniruddha from the Harivaṃśa into Siamese literature. I show that while it ultimately lost out to the Rāmakian—the Thai version of the Rāmāyaṇa—in popularity, it was at the height of Siamese power and prosperity a coequal partner in the adoption of Hindu mythology into elite Siamese courtly literature.