Yudhisthira

Though the Kuru family survived on Vyasadeva’s seeds, he never belonged to the house. Moreover, being an ascetic, he was even exempted from obligations of the complicated dynamics of human relationships. This armed him with a ruthless dispassion and he could go on telling his stories with stoical detachment, free from any bias and uncontaminated by quintessential human dilemmas. But had any of his characters given his own account of the story, would not that have lent a different dimension to the events seducing ordinary mortals like us to identify, if not compare, our private crises with those of our much celebrated heroes? The Unfallen Pandava is an imaginary autobiography of Yudhishthira, attempting to follow the well-known story of the Mahabharata through his eyes. In the process of narrating the story, he examines his extremely complicated marriage and relationship with brothers turned co-husbands, tries to understand the mysterious personality of his mother in a slightly mother-fixated way, conducts manic and depressive evaluation of his own self and reveals his secret darkness and philosophical confusions with an innate urge to submit to a supreme soul. His own story lacks the material of an epic, rather it becomes like confession of a partisan who, prevailing over other more swashbuckling characters, finally discovers his latent greatness and establishes himself as the symbolic protagonist.

In Raja Yudhisthira, Kevin McGrath brings his comprehensive literary, ethnographic, and analytical knowledge of the epic Mahabharata to bear on the representation of kingship in the poem. He shows how the preliterate Great Bharata song depicts both archaic and classical models of kingly and premonetary polity and how the king becomes a ruler who is viewed as ritually divine. Based on his precise and empirical close reading of the text, McGrath then addresses the idea of heroic religion in both antiquity and today; for bronze-age heroes still receive great devotional worship in modern India and communities continue to clash at the sites that have been—for millennia—associated with these epic figures; in fact, the word hero is in fact more of a religious than a martial term.One of the most important contributions of Raja Yudhisthira, and a subtext in McGrath's analysis of Yudhisthira’s kingship, is the revelation that neither of the contesting moieties of the royal Hastinapura clan triumphs in the end, for it is the Yadava band of Krsna who achieve real victory. That is, it is the matriline and not the patriline that secures ultimate success: it is the kinship group of Krsna—the heroic figure who was to become the dominant Vaisnava icon of classical India—who benefits most from the terrible Bharata war.

The most popular story in all of India and a classic of world literature is summarised in 728 verses in the great epic Mahabharata. Intended for independent study or classroom use for students of various levels who have had a basic introduction to Sanskrit, this fully annotated edition of the Ramopakhyana supplies all the information required for complete comprehension. It contains the Devanagari text, Roman transliteration, sandhi analysis, Sanskrit prose equivalents to the verses, syntactic and cultural notes, and the English translation, and word-by-word grammatical analysis.

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).

The third edition of this well-regarded introduction to Hinduism adds new material on the religion’s origins, on its relations with rival traditions, and on Hindu science.

Indian ethics is one of the great traditions of moral thought in world philosophy whose insights have influenced thinkers in early Greece, Europe, Asia, and the New World. This is the first systematic study of the spectrum of moral reflections from India

This book provides a much-needed thematic and historical introduction to Hinduism, the religion of the majority of people in India. Dr Flood traces the development of Hindu traditions from their ancient origins, through the major deities of Visnu, Siva and the Goddess, to the modern world. Hinduism is discussed as both a global religion and a form of nationalism. Emphasis is given to the tantric traditions, which have been so influential; to Hindu ritual, which is more fundamental to the life of the religion than are specific beliefs or doctrines; and to Dravidian influences from south India. An Introduction to Hinduism examines the ideas of dharma, particularly in relation to the ideology of kingship, caste and world renunciation. Dr Flood also introduces some debates within contemporary scholarship about the nature of Hinduism. It is suitable both for the student and for the general reader.

Using recontructive ideas available in classical Indian original works, this book makes a departure in the style of modern writings on Indian moral philosophy. It presents Indian ethics, in an objective, secular, and wherever necessary, critical manner as a systematic, down-to-earth, philosophical account of moral values, virtues, rights and obligations. It thereby refutes the claim that Indian philosophy has no ethics as well as the counter-claim that it transcends ethics. It demonstrates that moral living proves that the individual, his society and the world are really real and not only taken to be real for behavioral purposes as the Advaitins hold, the self is amoral being a non-agent, moksa is not a moral value, and the Karmic theory, because of involving belief in rebirth, does not fuarantee that the doer of an action is also the experiencer of its results, contrary to what is commonly held, and Indian ethics can sustain itself even if such notions are dropped. Rajendra Prasad calls Indian ethics organismic because, along with ethical concerns, it also covers issues related to professions, politics, administration, sex, environment, etc. Therefore, in one format it is theoretical and applied, normative and metaethical, humanistic and non-humanistic, etc., of course, within the limits of the then cognitive enquiry.