El Rāmāyaṇa en México: el despertar y ocaso de una fascinación (1870-1940)

The Rāmāyaṇa was one of the first works of Indian classical literature to attract the attention of European orientalism. In the 1870s, this interest reached Mexican cultural circles, as translations, journalistic notes, artistic expressions and other testimonies show. This article examines these testimonies, especially those of the intellectual José González de la Torre, and based on them reconstructs the reception, dissemination and representation of Rāmāyaṇa in Mexico in the last decades of the 19th century. The research reveals a fundamental episode of Mexican orientalism, since it was through the Rāmāyaṇa that India acquired a well-defined symbolic profile in the national cultural imagination. Cosmopolitan desires converged around this symbolism, but also a patriotic impetus. However, with the debut of the 20th century there was a sudden decline, suggestive of a paradigm shift, also outlined in the article.