Visual Grammar of Ramayana Story Reliefs of Prambanan Temple

Abstract

Ramayana story reliefs in Prambanan temple complex is still a concern until now. Ramayana reliefs for researchers are considered information in visual form which narrates Ramayana epic. In visual context, Ramayana reliefs are illustrations transformed from a sacred book. The story is quite long in every part of the sacred book, thus the scenes were selected in order to be visualized on each panel. The visualized scenes on each panel and the arrangement of the transition of the scenes from panel one to the next panel made the reliefs form a complete Ramayana story. The series of scenes arranged to form the story, in the context of modern visual, resembles a film. The reliefs reading thus are done by using modern visual or aesthetic perspective. The way of characteristic drawing on reliefs is very different from the way of modern drawing. The way of characteristic drawing used by the past sculptors shows the arrangement of objects and characters on each scene, either on the panels or in the transitions between panels. In arranging each scene, the sculptors used certain visual grammar. Thus, visual grammar is used in this research to examine Ramayana story reliefs.

Keywords: visual grammar, Ramayana story reliefs, transformations, scenes

DOI: 10.7176/ADS/72-04

Publication date: April 30th 2019