Banishment and Belonging
Exile and Diaspora in Sarandib, Lanka and Ceylon

A ground-breaking exploration of exile and diaspora as they relate to place, language, religious tradition, literature and the imagination.

Ronit Ricci (Author)

9781108480277, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 November 2019

282 pages, 21 b/w illus. 3 maps
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.8 cm, 0.6 kg

'Ricci's book is a compelling account, beautifully written and full of original insights.' Nira Wickramasinghe, Society and Culture in South Asia

Lanka, Ceylon, Sarandib: merely three disparate names for a single island? Perhaps. Yet the three diverge in the historical echoes, literary cultures, maps and memories they evoke. Names that have intersected and overlapped - in a treatise, a poem, a document - only to go their own ways. But despite different trajectories, all three are tied to narratives of banishment and exile. Ronit Ricci suggests that the island served as a concrete exilic site as well as a metaphor for imagining exile across religions, languages, space and time: Sarandib, where Adam was banished from Paradise; Lanka, where Sita languished in captivity; and Ceylon, faraway island of exile for Indonesian royalty under colonialism. Utilising Malay manuscripts and documents from Sri Lanka, Javanese chronicles, and Dutch and British sources, Ricci explores histories and imaginings of displacement related to the island through a study of the Sri Lankan Malays and their connections to an exilic past.

1. Introduction
2. Diasporic crossing: Malay writing in nineteenth-century Ceylon
3. Remembering Java
4. 'Ceyloned': the view from the other shore
5. Exilic journeys in time, place and writing
6. Nabi Adam: the paradigmatic exile
7. Banishment and inter-religious encounters: a Malay Ramayana
8. Ceylon Malays: military and literary paths
9. Malay writing in Ceylon: roots and routes
Glossary.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]