The Liminal on the Battlefield of Laṅkā in the Imagery of the Rāmcaritmānas

War positions societies, as well as individuals, in the transitional moments between the past and the future, between life and death as well as the spaces beyond, between the known and the unknown – both in the socio-political and the devotional and/or theological sense. According to Victor Turner’s classical definition, this means that during wars they enter the liminal phase, that «interval, [...] when the past is momentarily negated, suspended, or abrogated, and the future has not yet begun, an instant of pure potentiality when everything, as it were, trembles in the balance». In my analysis, based on Tulsīdās’s Rāmcaritmānas (1574), I focus on the elements of time, space, actors and artefacts that structure the imagery of Laṅkā battlefield as the liminal space, the “betwixt and between”. Different functions performed by these elements in the narrative of the poem are also addressed