Free standard shipping on all orders

Exploring Agency in the Mahabharata: Ethical and Political Dimensions of Dharma book cover

1st Edition

Exploring Agency in the Mahabharata Ethical and Political Dimensions of Dharma

Edited By Sibesh Chandra Bhattacharya, Vrinda Dalmiya, Gangeya Mukherji Copyright 2018
    268 Pages
    by Routledge India

    The Mahabharata, one of the major epics of India, is a sourcebook complete by itself as well as an open text constantly under construction. This volume looks at transactions between its modern discourses and ancient vocabulary. Located amid conversations between these two conceptual worlds, the volume grapples with the epic’s problematisation of dharma or righteousness, and consequently, of the ideal person and the good life through a cluster of issues surrounding the concept of agency and action. Drawing on several interdisciplinary approaches, the essays reflect on a range of issues in the Mahabharata, including those of duty, motivation, freedom, selfhood, choice, autonomy, and justice, both in the context of philosophical debates and their ethical and political ramifications for contemporary times.

    This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers engaged with philosophy, literature, religion, history, politics, culture, gender, South Asian studies, and Indology. It will also appeal to the general reader interested in South Asian epics and the Mahabharata.

    Introduction: To Do

    Vrinda Dalmiya and Gangeya Mukherji

    PART I: ACTION

    1. Mahabharata. Itihasa. Agency

      2. Sibesh Chandra Bhattacharya

    2. In Search of Genuine Agency:

      3. A Review of Action, Freedom and Karma in the Mahābhārata

      Amita Chatterjee

    3. The Theory of Karma in the Mahābhārata

      4. Christopher Framarin

    4. Karmayoga and the Vexed Moral Agent

      5. Arti Dhand

      PART II: ACTOR

    5. Complexities in the Agency for Violence: A Look at the Mahabharata

      6. Gangeya Mukherji

    6. Irresolution and Agency: The Case of Yudhishthira

      7. Shirshendu Chakrabarti

    7. Can the Subhuman Speak or Act? Sagacious Serpents, Benevolent Birds, Rational Rodents, and a Mocking Mongoose in the Mahābhārata

      8. Arindam Chakrabarti

    8. Textual–Sexual Transitions: The Reification of Women in the Mahabharata

      9. Uma Chakravarti

    9. ‘Ekalavya and the Possibility of Learning’

      10. Sundar Sarukkai

      PART III: EPIC AGENCY AND RETELLINGS

    10. Tagore’s Readings of the Mahabharata

      11. Sudipta Kaviraj

    11. Answerability between Lived Life and Living Text: Chronotopicity in finding Agency in the Mahabharata

    Lakshmi Bandlamudi

    12. Dronòa in the Ekalavya Episode in Sāralā Mahābhārata

    B. N. Patnaik

    Index

    Biography

    Sibesh Chandra Bhattacharya is former Professor of Ancient History, Allahabad University, India.

    Vrinda Dalmiya is Professor, Philosophy Department, University of Hawai’i, Manoa, USA.

    Gangeya Mukherji is presently Visiting Professor, School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.

    Add to Cart