Many Mahabharatas is an introduction to the spectacular and long-lived diversity of Mahabharata literature in South Asia. This diversity begins with the Sanskrit Mahabharata, 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 Mahabharata for uncountable tellings in South Asia and beyond. For two thousand years, the instinctive approach to the Mahabharata has been not to consume it but to create it anew. The many Mahabharatas of this book come from the first century to the twenty-first. They are composed in ten different languages- Apabhramsha, Bengali, English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu. Early chapters illuminate themes of retelling within the Sanskrit Mahabharata 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 Mahabharatas.
Why would a scholar of the Ramayana tradition agree to write a foreword for a volume about diverse tellings of the Mahabharata tradition, a work that she labeled "the other epic" decades ago when she studied it in a graduate seminar? After all, as many have pointed out, in Sanskrit literary culture, the two texts do not even fall into the same category: Valmiki's Ramayana is celebrated as the first Sanskrit kivya (ornate work of narrative poetry), while the Sanskrit Mahabharata is often viewed as itihasa (history). Moreover, the two texts differ in other ways as well. David Shulman sees the Ramayana as characterized by the "poetics of perfection" but the Mahabharata as informed by the "poetics of dilemma." Sheldon Pollock contrasts how each text describes its particular brand of conflict, arguing that Rama's enemy, Ravana, is "othered," but that the Kaurava and Pandava antagonists are "brothered" since they share familial bonds.
Vedas (1214)
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Goddess (525)
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Shiva (409)
Journal (176)
Fiction (72)
Vedanta (379)
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