I commend Aaron Sherraden's Śambūka and the Rāmāyaṇa Tradition to you. This monograph takes as its starting point a terse account of Śambūka's decapitation, found in the earliest, extant, full literary telling of the life and deeds of Rāma in the ancient Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa attributed to Sage Vālmīki. One of Hinduism's two preeminent ancient epic narratives, Vālmīki's Rāmāyaṇa and its subsequent retellings have played key roles in later devotional practices to Viṣṇu and his avatāras. Textual historians generally date the text (which first circulated orally in several recensions) as taking its fixed form starting approximately the mid-sixth century BCE and ending no later than the second or third century CE. Śambūka's story appears in the final of the seven books of the Rāmāyaṇa attributed to Vālmīki, which many philologists consider a later interpolation.

Over time, however, Śambūka's story has grown into a narrative tradition of its own. During the last two thousand years, its events have appeared in multiple literary retellings characterized by literary strategies such as elaboration, concision, major reinterpretation, and alternate endings. These retellings depict Śambūka variously as a miscreant and enemy of the social and moral orders, a victim of upper-caste prejudice and violence, a pioneer who engaged in ascetic practices previously monopolized by upper castes, a recipient of Rāma's divine grace, one who has achieved release from the cycle of death and rebirth, a social and political revolutionary, a wise teacher and moral exemplar, and a venerated martyr in the cause of Dalit liberation. Accounts of Śambūka's rigorous asceticism have appeared in both cosmopolitan languages (e.g., Sanskrit and Prakrit) and regional literary ones (e.g., Tamil, Awadhi, Malayalam) across India from ancient times to the present. Moreover, in addition to Hindu texts, his story also appears in a lineage of texts composed by Jain authors in which Rāma does not kill Śambūka. Sherraden reveals how Śambūka's story continues to perform its cultural work in the twenty-first century, serving as the basis for ritual devotion, modern poetry, and even cover art for publications envisioned through a range of religious and social lenses.