THE present book is derived from a series of three invited lectures that I delivered at the Department of Philosophy at Jadavpur University in December 2016 when I had the pleasure and privilege of serving as Visiting Professor there.
I am grateful to the Department and to its Chair, Professor Atashee Chatterjee and her colleague Professor Madhumita Chattopadhyay for the invitation to address its faculty and students and for the opportunity to publish these lectures as an independent monograph.
The Sanskrit Epics as Poetry, History and Sastra
IN 1895 the German Jesuit scholar Joseph Dahlmann published his Das Mahābhārata als Epos und Rechtsbuch: Ein Problem aus Altindiens Kultur- und Literaturgeschichte (The Mahabharata as Epic and Lawbook: A Problem in Ancient Indian Cultural and Literary History). The work, although its understanding of the great epic's genetic history is now outdated, is noteworthy in that it is one of the first examples of Western scholarship on the Mahābhārata to treat the work as a uniform composition in which the narrative and didactic elements were thoroughly integrated with one another. Thus, Dahlmann viewed the poem as a moral and ethical guidebook couched in an engrossing and entertaining narrative of political intrigue and war which, in effect, made the work's moral teachings engaging to a broader, more popular audience than would be attracted to or knowledgeable about the actual, dry, prescriptive and proscriptive Dharmasastras themselves.
Dahlmann's thesis was, in this way, opposed to and a reaction to a number of interpretations of the epic that had been put forward by European scholars in the nineteenth century, interpretations that often saw the Mahabharata as an overgrown and ungainly pastiche of mythological, historical and didactic elements. This view can be clearly seen, for example, in the remark of Hermann Oldenberg:
The Mahabharata began its existence as a simple epic narrative. It became, in the course of centuries, the most monstrous chaos.
-Oldenberg 1922:1
Such a view is no longer maintained by most epic scholars.
On the other hand, Dahlmann's rather radical notion of a completely unitary composition of the poem at the hands of a single author is also now in the light of subsequent scholarship and especially since the appearance of the Bhandarkar Institute's critical edition - viewed as overly simplistic and untenable. Nonetheless, from the perspective of the receptive history of the epic, the way the poem has been received, read, performed and taught through various media in South and Southeast Asia, there can be little doubt that Dahlmann had hit upon a very critical element in the Mahabharata - its role as a guide to law and social practice one that goes a long way toward explaining the work's longevity, cultural importance and geographical spread.
Dahlmann's approach to the Mahabharata can, as seems apparent, have considerable application to a reading of the Valmiki Ramayana as well. Indeed, when it comes to reading and teaching the Sanskrit epic tales as didactic texts, especially suited to the moral education of children, there is a very widespread preference for the Ramayana over the Mahabharata. For, whereas the former poem is regarded as centred around idealized figures who embody socially normative roles, figures who serve as desirable role models for people of all ages, genders and social classes, the latter is, among other things, a veritable textbook on social disintegration and conflict.
Vedas (1207)
Upanishads (503)
Puranas (632)
Ramayana (749)
Mahabharata (365)
Dharmasastras (167)
Goddess (510)
Bhakti (248)
Saints (1520)
Gods (1299)
Shiva (383)
Journal (181)
Fiction (61)
Vedanta (372)
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