Publisher Description

A major contribution to the study of South Asian literature, offering a landmark view of Mahbhrata Mahbhratas is an introduction to the spectacular and long-lived diversity of Mahbhrata literature in South Asia. This diversity begins with the Sanskrit Mahbhrata, 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 Mahbhrata for uncountable tellings in South Asia and beyond. For two thousand years, the instinctive approach to the Mahbhrata has been not to consume it but to create it many Mahbhratas 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 Mahbhrata 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 of its historical and linguistic breadth, its commitment to primary sources, and its exploration of multiplicity and diversity as essential features of the Mahbhrata's long life in South Asia, Many Mahbhratas constitutes a major contribution to the study of South Asian literature and offers a landmark view of the field of Mahbhrata studies.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on TransliterationForeword
Paula Richman1. An Introduction to the Literature of the Mahbhrata
Nell Shapiro Hawley and Sohini Sarah PillaiPart I: The Manyness of the Sanskrit Mahbhrata2. Garbht: Murderous Rage and Collective Punishment as Thematic Elements in Vysa's Mahbhrata
Robert Goldman3. The Invention of Irvn
David Gitomer4. Bodies That Don't Matter: Gender, Body, and Discourse in the Narrative of Sulabh
Sally J. Sutherland GoldmanPart II: Sanskrit Mahbhratas in Poetry and Performance5. The Remembered Self: Arjuna as Bhannal in the Pañcartra
Nell Shapiro Hawley6. The Lord of Glory and the Lord of Men: Power and Partiality in Mgha's iuplavadha
Lawrence McCrea7. What Are the Goals of Life? The Vidaka's Interpretation of the Pururthas in Kulaekhara's Subhadrdhanañjaya
Sudha Gopalakrishnan8. How Do We Remember akuntal? The Mahbhrata and Klidsa's Drama on the Contemporary Indian Stage
Amanda CulpPart III: Regional and Vernacular Mahbhratas from Premodern South Asia9. An Old Dharma in a New Age: Duryodhana and the Reframing of Epic Ethics in Ranna's Shasabhmavijaya
Timothy Lorndale10. Three Poets, Two Languages, One Translation: The Evolution of the Telugu Mahbhratamu
Harshita Mruthinti Kamath11. The Fate of Kcaka in Two Jain Apabhramsha Mahbhratas
Eva De Clercq and Simon Winant12. The Power-Politics of Desire and Revenge: A Classical Hindi Kcakavadha Performance at the Tomar Court of Gwalior
Heidi Pauwels13. Blessed Beginnings: Invoking Viu, Ka, and Rma in Two Regional Mahbhratas
Sohini Sarah PillaiPart IV: Mahbhratas of Modern South Asia14. How to Be Political without Being Polemical: The Debate between Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and Rabindranath Tagore over the Kacaritra
Ahona Panda15. The Epic and the Novel: Buddhadev Bose's Modern Reading of the Mahbhrata
Sudipta Kaviraj16. Draupad, Yjñasen, Pñcl, K : Representations of an Epic Heroine in Three Novels
Pamela Lothspeich17. From Excluded to Exceptional: Caste in Contemporary Mahbhratas
Sucheta Kanjilal18. A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away: The Mahbhrata as Dystopian Future
Philip LutgendorfBibliography
List of Contributors
Index

Review

"Many Mahbhratas is aimed at specialists in the epic, who will appreciate this volume's inclusion of new voices alongside established ones, its expansion of disciplinary perspectives, and the satisfying continuities that unite the essays, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts." — Reading Religion"Overall, the anthology is an excellent read. It thoroughly enriches and updates the field of Mahbhrata Studies. This is a groundbreaking volume assembling a range of eminent scholarship." — Religious Studies Review

Promotional

A major contribution to the study of South Asian literature, offering a landmark view of Mahbhrata studies.

Details