Contents: Preface. Introduction. I. The Mahabharata: a challenging Itihasa: 1. Interpreting the Mahabharata/Madhav M. Deshpande. 2. Born old: story, smrti and the composition of the Sanskrit Mahabharata/Barbara Gombach. 3. Kapila in the Mahabharata/Knut A. Jacobsen. 4. Ramopakhyana: the story of Rama in the Mahabharata a web-based and printed reader for Sanskrit students/Peter M. Scharf. II. Dharma interpreted: 5. The Mahabharata's simultaneous affirmation and critique of the universal validity of Dharma/Greg Bailey. 6. A Magadha tale and some reflections on the many-sidedness of the Mahabharata/Gerald James Larson. 7. What is Dharma? ethical tensions within the Mahabharata/Nick Sutton. 8. Destiny and human initiative in the Mahabharata/Julian F. Woods. III. Bhisma, Karna, Dharmaputra: three characters, different viewing lenses: 9. Karna's choice: courage and character in the face of an ethical dilemma/Aditya Adarkar. 10. Karna and the Mahabharata: an ethical reflection/Christopher Key Chapple. 11. The ethical foundations of Bhisma's promises and dilemmas/Gautam Chatterjee. 12. Bhisma and the Vratya question/Edel-Traud Harzer. 13. Dharmaputra in the context of the Rajadharma and Apaddharma of the Santiparvan/T.S. Rukmani. IV. Ethics has many faces: 14. Duryodhana's Pride and perception: the dynamics of distrust in the moment of counsel at the Kaurava Court/Lisa W. Crothers. 15. Ethical discourse in Udyogaparvan/Patricia M. Greer. 16. Heaven's Riddles or the hell trick: theodicy and narrative strategies in the Mahabharata/Emily T. Hudson. 17. The episode of the Mausalaparvan/Benjamin Preciado-Solis. V. The Mahabharata: new perspectives: 18. Planetarium software and the date of the Mahabharata War/B.N. Narahari Achar. 19. Voices from Hinduism's past: Kunti and Gandhari's Victory over infertility/Swasti Bhattacharyya. 20. The critic of ritual as ritual reviler in the Asvamedhikaparvan/Tamar C. Reich. 21. The living legend of Raja Duryodhana: socio-historical constructions on Mahabharata in Himalayan society/Atul Saklani and Rajpal Singh Negi. Bibliography.
"The Mahabharata is an Itihasa which holds fascination for scholars of different disciplines. There is material here, in this vast text, for anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, scholars of religious studies, astrophysicists and many more. While earlier scholarship has mainly been in the fields of religion and philosophy and in the dating of the Itihasa, since the publication of the critical edition, scholars have been engaged in researching its contents both critically and comparatively in very many areas and in novel ways.
This book, which is a collection of essays by scholars reputed in the area of Mahabharata studies, belongs to this new genre. There are chapters, here, that explore the hermeneutics of dharma, others which try to analyze different characters from many perspectives, one which revisits the dating of the Kuruksetra War using latest computer technology, another one which discusses the birth of the Pandavas and the Kauravas in modern bioethical terms, and many other topics as well. This book is thus an addition to the ongoing scholarship in understanding the inexhaustible material available to us in this unique Mahabharata text that represents in many ways, the cultural history of India. Though ancient, the Mahabharata is modern in the challenges it presents to scholars of all ages. It is a book which also caters to the general reader interested in the Itihasa tradition." (jacket)
