Download or read book The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics written by Ruth Vanita and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-31 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows that many characters in the Sanskrit epics - men and women of all varnas and mixed-varna - discuss and criticize discrimination based on gender, varna, poverty, age, and disability. On the basis of philosophy, logic and devotion, these characters argue that such categories are ever-changing, mixed and ultimately unreal therefore humans should be judged on the basis of their actions, not birth. The book explores the dharmas of singleness, friendship, marriage, parenting, and ruling. Bhakta poets such as Kabir, Tulsidas, Rahim and Raidas drew on ideas and characters from the epics to present a vision of oneness. Justice is indivisible, all bodies are made of the same matter, all beings suffer, and all consciousnesses are akin. This book makes the radical argument that in the epics, kindness to animals, the dharma available to all, is inseparable from all other forms of dharma.
Download or read book Re ending the Mahabharata written by Naama Shalom and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a fresh perspective on the Mah?bh?rata based on an exploration of its ending, the Svarg?roha?a parvan. This book challenges two prevalent assumptions about the Mah?bh?rata: that its narrativeis inherently incapable of achieving a conclusion and that its ending, the Svarg?roha?a parvan, is an extraneous part of the text. While the exegetic traditions have largely tended to suppress, ignore, or overlook the importance of this final section, Shalom argues that the moment of the condemnation of dharma that occurs in the Svarg?roha?a parvan, expressed by the epic protagonist, Yudhi??hira, against his father, Dharma, is of crucial importance. It sheds light on the incessant preoccupation and intrinsic dismay towards the concept of dharma (the cardinal theme around which the epic revolves) expressed by Mah?bh?rata narrators throughout the epic, and is thus highly significant for understanding the Mah?bh?rata narrative as a whole.
Download or read book The Sanskrit Epics written by John Brockington and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mahābhārata (including Harivaṃśa) and Rāmāyaṇa, the two great Sanskrit Epics central to the whole of Indian Culture, form the subject of this new work. The book begins by examining the relationship of the epics to the Vedas and the role of the bards who produced them. The core of the work, a study of the linguistic and stylistic features of the epics, precedes the examination of the material culture, the social, economic and political aspects, and the religious aspects. The final chapter presents the wider picture and in conclusion even looks into the future of epic studies. In this long overdue survey work the author synthesizes the results of previous scholarship in the field. Herewith a coherent view is built up of the nature and the significance of these two central epics, both in themselves, and in relation to Indian culture as a whole.
Download or read book The Sanskrit Epics written by J. L. Brockington and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1998 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive study of both Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata (including the Harivaṃśa) and the Rāmāyaṇa, surveys the current state of research and presents a coherent view of their nature and significance, as well as their influence on Indian culture.
Download or read book Dharma Disorder and the Political in Ancient India written by Adam Bowles and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007-10-15 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Āpaddharmaparvan, 'the book on conduct in times of distress', is an important section of the great Sanskrit epic the Mahābhārata which, despite its significance for Mahābhārata studies and for the history of Indian social and political thought, has received little attention in scholarly literature. This book places the Āpaddharmaparvan within its literary and ideological contexts. In so doing it explores the development of a conception of brahmanic kingship morally justifiable within the terms of a debate largely set by various alternative social movements of the period. This book further explores the implications for our understanding of the Mahābhārata that follow from the Āpaddharmaparvan's presentation as a poetically cohesive unit within itself and within the wider parameters of the Mahābhārata.
Download or read book Krishna s Mahabharatas written by Sohini Sarah Pillai and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Krishna's Mahabharatas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative is a comprehensive study of premodern regional Mahabharata retellings. This book argues that Vaishnavas (devotees of the Hindu god Vishnu and his various forms) throughout South Asia turned this epic about an apocalyptic, bloody war into works of ardent bhakti or "devotion" focused on the beloved Hindu deity Krishna. Examining over forty retellings in eleven different regional South Asian languages composed over a period of nine hundred years, it focuses on two particular Mahabharatas: Villiputturar's fifteenth-century Tamil Paratam and Sabalsingh Chauhan's seventeenth-century Bhasha (Old Hindi) Mahahbharat.
Download or read book Sanskrit Epics written by Danielle Feller and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an introduction to philosophy but with a difference. Through out the book metaphysical issues are shown to be rooted in the history of philosophy. At the same time the author`s tratment of each issues leads right into the contemporary situation. Philosophy can scarcely be defined,the author says, but philosophizing can be `shown`. The various section of the book show in a fresh way what such philosophizing can be like.
Download or read book The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy and Gender written by Veena R. Howard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'How do gender constructions transform religious experiences?' 'What is the role of bodily materiality in ethics and epistemology?' 'How does rethinking gender and sexuality force us to reconceptualise settled ontological frameworks?' This collection provides the first research resource to Indian philosophical gender issues, exploring a variety of texts and traditions from Indian philosophy where the treatment of gender is dynamic and diverse. Organised around three central themes - the gender dynamics of enlightenment in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions; the simple binary opposition of genders in Indian traditions; the ways in which symbolic representations of gender differ from social realities in Hindu and Buddhist practice – a team of respected scholars discuss feminist readings, examinations of femininity and masculinity, as well as queer and trans identities, representations, and theories. Beginning with the Vedic tradition and ending with sections on Sri Ramakrishna and Gandhi, this wide-ranging handbook encourages fresh inquiry into classic philosophical questions. Offering critical analyses relevant to literary, cultural and religious studies, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy and Gender opens up new ways of understanding gender and South Asian philosophy.
Download or read book Delphi Collected Sanskrit Epics Illustrated written by Valmiki and published by Delphi Classics. This book was released on 2018-05-19 with total page 8348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore Sanskrit literature, the classical language of India, representing a rich cultural tradition from the time of the Vedas in the second millennium BC until Late Antiquity. The leading works of Indian epic poetry are the ‘Ramayana’ and the ‘Mahabharata’, as well as The Five Great Epics of Tamil Literature and Sangam literature. These texts are among some of the oldest surviving epic poems ever written. The Delphi Poets Series offers readers the works of literature's finest poets, with superior formatting. This volume presents a comprehensive range of Sanskrit epics, including the complete ‘Ramayana’ and ‘Mahabharata’, with illustrations and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1) * Beautifully illustrated with images relating to the leading works of Sanskrit epic poetry * Concise introduction to the epic poems * Complete ‘Ramayana’ and ‘Mahabharata’, with scholarly footnotes * Excellent formatting of the poems * Rare other Sanskrit epics appearing for the first time in digital publishing - explore the rich heritage of Sanskrit literature * Easily locate the sections you want to read * Features a biography on the leading poet Kalidasa * Bonus text of Arthur Anthony Macdonell’s ‘A History of Sanskrit Literature’ * Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to see our wide range of poet titles CONTENTS: The Hindu Itihasa Ramayana by Valmiki (Translated by Ralph Thomas Hotchkin) Mahabharata by Vyasa (Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli) Other Sanskrit Epics Buddhacharita by Asvaghosa (Translated by E. B. Cowell) Saundarananda by Asvaghosa (Translated by E. H. Johnston) Selections from ‘Raghuvamsha’ by Kalidasa (Translated by Arthur W. Ryder) Selections from ‘Kumarasambhava’ by Kalidasa (Translated by Arthur W. Ryder) Shishupala Vadha by Magha (Cantos I-IV) (Translated by M. S. Bhandare) Kiratarjuniya by Bharavi (Translated by Romesh Chunder Dutt) Bhattikavya by Bhatti (Canto I) (Anonymous translation 1867) The Biographies A History of Sanskrit Literature by Arthur Anthony Macdonell Kalidasa: His Life and Writings by Arthur W. Ryder Please visit www.delphiclassics.com to browse through our range of poetry titles or buy the entire Delphi Poets Series as a Super Set
Download or read book Science and Society in the Sanskrit World written by Christopher T. Fleming and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-02-17 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science and Society in the Sanskrit World contains seventeen essays that cover a kaleidoscopic array of classical Sanskrit scientific disciplines, such as the astral sciences, grammar, jurisprudence, theology, and hermeneutics.
Download or read book Literature Against Fundamentalism written by Tabish Khair and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-18 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed novelist and academic Tabish Khair argues that literature as a distinct mode of thinking can counteract fundamentalism. Literature is a mode of thinking, stories being one of the oldest thinking 'devices' known to humankind. The ways in which literature enables us to think are distinctive and necessary, because of the relationships between its material ('language') and its subject matter ('reality'). Although present in oral literature, these relationships are exposed in their full complexity with the rise of literature as a distinct form of writing. Literature Against Fundamentalism argues that literature enables us to engage with reality in language and language in reality, where both are mutually constitutive, constantly changing, and partly elusive. Tabish Khair defines this mode of engagement as essentially an agnostic one, resistant to simple dogma. Hence, literature can provide an antidote to fundamentalism. Khair argues that reading literature as literature--and not just as material for aesthetic, sociological, political, and other theoretical discourses--is essential for humanity. In the process, he offers a radical re-definition of literature, an illuminating engagement with religion and fundamentalism, a revaluation of the relationship between the sciences and humanities, and, finally, a call to literature as in 'a call to arms'.
Download or read book Dharma s Past written by Vibha Krishnakumar and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sanskrit Mahabharata, an ancient epic that is sacred to the Hindus, is believed to have been composed based on the true events that happened in the Indian subcontinent around five thousand years ago. Scholars also believe Sanskrit Mahabharata to be the source for the scores of regional versions in the Indian sub-continent, which include the Draupadi cult version in the form of a sequel of dramas, the Villibharatam, Garhwal Pandav Lilas, Sarala Mahabharata, the Telugu versions, Pampabharata, Kumaravyasabharata and the Korava legends. The complexity and the contradictions in the stories of Mahabharata have inspired scholars over centuries to explore its roots, time, historic authenticity and evolution. The principal areas of this huge body of research include questioning its antiquity and the likelihood of the regional versions being the source for the Sanskrit version, apart from identifying the interpolations and exclusions. In this book, I am contributing further to this research: first, I would be claiming that the core story of Mahabharata is based on the ancient Egyptian story of Osiris and Isis; second, I would be showing that the so-called regional versions of Mahabharata are indeed the direct derivatives of this Egyptian story and that the Sanskrit Mahabharata is a scholarly construct based on the episodes of the regional versions. To the best of my knowledge, it is for the first time in this book that Egyptian origins are suspected for the epic of Mahabharata, although correlations and iconographic comparisons between the Egyptian and Indian civilisations can be found in literature. However, none of these earlier comparisons seem to have touched upon the story of Mahabharata as such, leave alone giving serious consideration to its Egyptian links. Nevertheless, several scholars have suspected the regional versions to be the source for the Sanskrit Mahabharata and have provided profound proofs to this end. I have tried to provide systematic proofs for each of the claims I make in this book with appropriate references. Also, I have discussed the contributions of earlier scholars in the appropriate sections and provided pointers to the interested reader. This book is self-contained with relevant portions of the different epics and myths discussed in sufficient detail. The methodologies employed are also suitably exemplified.
Download or read book Epic Undertakings written by Robert P. Goldman and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishe. This book was released on 2009 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have witnessed continued and growing interest in the massive and fascinating poems we know as the Sanskrit epics. This interest has manifested itself in the continuing translations of texts, a steady stream of publications and numerous scholarly meeting of Sanskrit epic scholars. A number of these scholars assembled in Helsinki to constitute the Epic Section of the 12th World Sanskrit Conference in the summer of 2003. The present volume places before the indological community the sixteen learned papers presented at the conference by the distinguished group of scholars who were in attendance. The topics and methodologies of the authors are as varied and diverse as the contents of the monumental poems themselves but each contribution sheds new light on some aspect of he genetic and /or receptive history of these works, their relationship to each other and to other index texts, or the representation and analysis of specific characters and episodes in the poems
Download or read book Rethinking the Mahabharata written by Alf Hiltebeitel and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-10-30 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient Indian Sanskrit tradition produced no text more intriguing, or more persistently misunderstood or underappreciated, than the Mahabharata. Its intricacies have waylaid generations of scholars and ignited dozens of unresolved debates. In Rethinking the Mahabharata, Alf Hiltebeitel offers a unique model for understanding the great epic. Employing a wide range of literary and narrative theory, Hiltebeitel draws on historical and comparative research in an attempt to discern the spirit and techniques behind the epic's composition. He focuses on the education of Yudhisthira, also known as the Dharma King, and shows how the relationship of this figure to others-especially his author-grandfather Vyasa and his wife Draupadi-provides a thread through the bewildering array of frames and stories embedded within stories. Hiltebeitel also offers a revisionist theory regarding the dating and production of the original text and its relation to the Veda. No ordinary reader's guide, this volume will illuminate many mysteries of this enigmatic masterpiece. This work is the fourth volume in Hiltebeitel's study of the Draupadi cult. Other volumes include Mythologies: From Gingee to Kuruksetra (Volume One), On Hindu Ritual and the Goddess (Volume Two), and Rethinking India's Oral and Classical Epics (Volume Three).
Download or read book Disorienting Dharma written by Emily T. Hudson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the relationship between ethics, aesthetics, and religion in classical Indian literature and literary theory by focusing on one of the most celebrated and enigmatic texts to emerge from the Sanskrit epic tradition, the Mahabharata. This text, which is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important sources for the study of South Asian religious, social, and political thought, is a foundational text of the Hindu tradition(s) and considered to be a major transmitter of dharma (moral, social, and religious duty), perhaps the single most important concept in the history of Indian religions. However, in spite of two centuries of Euro-American scholarship on the epic, basic questions concerning precisely how the epic is communicating its ideas about dharma and precisely what it is saying about it are still being explored. Disorienting Dharma brings to bear a variety of interpretive lenses (Sanskrit literary theory, reader-response theory, and narrative ethics) to examine these issues. One of the first book-length studies to explore the subject from the lens of Indian aesthetics, it argues that such a perspective yields startling new insights into the nature of the depiction of dharma in the epic through bringing to light one of the principle narrative tensions of the epic: the vexed relationship between dharma and suffering. In addition, it seeks to make the Mahabharata interesting and accessible to a wider audience by demonstrating how reading the Mahabharata, perhaps the most harrowing story in world literature, is a fascinating, disorienting, and ultimately transformative experience.
Download or read book The Penguin Book Of Indian Poets written by Jeet Thayil and published by Penguin Random House India Private Limited. This book was released on 2022-04-25 with total page 1247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jeet Thayil has compiled the definitive anthology of Indian poetry in English. This monumental undertaking, two decades in the making, brings together writers from across the world, a wealth of voices--in dialogue, in soliloquy, in rhetoric, and in play--to present an expansive, encompassing idea of what makes an 'Indian' poet. Included are lost, uncollected, or out of print poems by major poets, essays that place entire bodies of work into their precise cultural contexts, and a collection of classic black and white portraits by Madhu Kapparath. These images, taken over a period of thirty years, form an archive of breathtaking historical scope. They offer the viewer unparalleled intimacy and access to the lives of some of India's greatest poets.
Download or read book Many Mah bh ratas written by Nell Shapiro Hawley and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2021-05-01 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Mahābhāratas is an introduction to the spectacular and long-lived diversity of Mahābhārata literature in South Asia. This diversity begins with the Sanskrit Mahābhārata, an early epic poem that narrates the events of a catastrophic fratricidal war. Along the way, it draws in nearly everything else in Hindu mythology, philosophy, and story literature. The magnitude of its scope and the relentless complexity of its worldview primed the Mahābhārata for uncountable tellings in South Asia and beyond. For two thousand years, the instinctive approach to the Mahābhārata has been not to consume it but to create it anew. The many Mahābhāratas of this book come from the first century to the twenty-first. They are composed in nine different languages—Apabhramsha, Bengali, English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu. Early chapters illuminate themes of retelling within the Sanskrit Mahābhārata itself, demonstrating that the story's propensity for regeneration emerges from within. The majority of the book, however, reaches far beyond the Sanskrit epic. Readers dive into classical dramas, premodern vernacular poems, regional performance traditions, commentaries, graphic novels, political essays, novels, and contemporary theater productions—all of them Mahābhāratas. Because of its historical and linguistic breadth, its commitment to primary sources, and its exploration of multiplicity and diversity as essential features of the Mahābhārata's long life in South Asia, Many Mahābhāratas constitutes a major contribution to the study of South Asian literature and offers a landmark view of the field of Mahābhārata studies.
