Krishna's Mahabharatas : devotional retellings of an epic narrative /
"Recognized as the longest poem ever composed, the ancient Sanskrit Mahābhārata epic tells the tale of the five Pandava princes and the cataclysmic battle they wage with their one hundred cousins known as the Kauravas. This story of the Pandavas and the Kauravas is one of the most popular and w...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Oxford University Press,
[2024]
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| Series: | AAR religion in translation.
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| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | "Recognized as the longest poem ever composed, the ancient Sanskrit Mahābhārata epic tells the tale of the five Pandava princes and the cataclysmic battle they wage with their one hundred cousins known as the Kauravas. This story of the Pandavas and the Kauravas is one of the most popular and widely-told narratives in South Asia (let alone the world). Between 800 and 1700 CE, a plethora of Mahabharatas were created in Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, and several other regional South Asian languages. 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. While Krishna's Mahabharatas examines over forty retellings in eleven different regional languages that were composed over a period of nine hundred years, it focuses on two particular Mahabharatas: Villiputturar's fifteenth-century Tamil Pāratam and Sabalsingh Chauhan's seventeenth-century Bhasha (Old Hindi) Mahābhārat. Through close comparative readings, this book reveals the similar ways in which poets from opposite ends of the Indian sub-continent transform the story of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata into devotional narratives centered on Krishna. At the same time, it also shows how these Mahabharatas are each unique pieces of religious literature anchored in bhakti cultures that speak to different local audiences in premodern South Asia"-- |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xii, 278 pages) : map. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780197753576 0197753574 9780197753583 0197753582 9780197753569 0197753566 |