Roundtable on Justin Henry's "Ravana's Kingdom: The Ramayana and Sri Lankan History from Below" (OUP, 2023)

Justin Henry's Ravana's Kingdom: The Ramayana and Sri Lankan History from Below (OUP, 2023), shortlisted for the AAR Best First Book in the History of Religions 2023 prize, offers an innovative study of the reception of the Ramayana, the famed Hindu epic, among Sri Lankan Buddhists spanning from the medieval period to the present day. Three panelists will offer critical perspectives on the position of Ravana’s Kingdom amid the theoretical spectrum of the History of Religions discipline, Henry’s engagement with "many Ramayanas" at the margins of the Indic world, and the relevance of the book to ongoing issues of interreligious antagonism and interreligious cooperation in Sri Lanka. The panel will contextualize Ravana's Kingdom alongside other recent monographs marrying rigorous, text-critical philological research with theoretical interventions related to contemporary "lived religion," populist movements, and religion and politics.