This digital book reassembles the text and paintings of the fifth sub-book of the Ramcaritmanas—the beloved Sundarkand—as they appeared in the Chitra Ramayan, with accompanying notes by Philip Lutgendorf that identify the text accompanying each painting and point out some of the details of the artists’ interpretations. 

The late Maharaja Vibhuti Narayan Singh of Banaras agreed, in 1977, that a photographic record of the Chitra Ramayan be created in case its sole original copy was ever lost or destroyed. The Center for Art and Archaeology of the American Institute of Indian Studies photographed the entire manuscript volume-by-volume and page-by-page and carefully preserved the images for half a century in the CA&A archive currently located at the AIIS headquarters building in Gurugram, Haryana, India. A digitisation of this collection has been supported by the Modern Endangered Archives Program at the UCLA Library with funding from Arcadia, a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage, and promote open access to knowledge.

This digital flip book is composed of the text and painted folios of the Ramcaritmanas manuscript documented by the Center for Art and Archaeology (CA&A) of the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) in 1977 for the research project of a former AIIS fellow Professor Richard Schechner. The manuscript was created under the patronage of the King of Bananas in the 19th century. The Center archives hold the only complete, intact photographic documentation of this now dispersed illustrated Ramcaritmanas manuscript. A digitisation of this collection has been supported by the Modern Endangered Archives Program at the UCLA Library with funding from Arcadia, a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage, and promote open access to knowledge.