Krishna's Mahabharatas

Description

Recognized as the longest poem ever composed, the ancient Sanskrit Mahabharata epic tells the tale of the five Pandava princes and the cataclysmic battle they wage with their one hundred cousins, the Kauravas. This story 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. Examining over forty retellings in eleven different regional South Asian languages composed over a period of nine hundred years, it focuses on two particular Mahabharatas: Villiputturar's fifteenth-century Tamil Paratam and Sabalsingh Chauhan's seventeenth-century Bhasha (Old Hindi) Mahahbharat.
Through close comparative readings, this book reveals the similar ways poets from opposite ends of the Indian sub-continent transform the story of the Sanskrit Mahabharata into devotional narratives centered on Krishna. At the same time, it also shows how these Mahabharatas are each unique pieces of religious literature that speak to different local audiences in premodern South Asia.

About the author: Sohini Sarah Pillai is Assistant Professor of Religion and Director of Film and Media Studies at Kalamazoo College. Her co-edited volume (with Nell Shapiro Hawley), Many Mahabharatas, was published in 2021 by State University of New York Press.

Reviews

"“In Krishna's Mahabharatas Sohini Pillai takes the trajectory of bhakti as it winds its way through the sub-continent seriously, and examines its narrative path in very different geographical locations and languages, revealing its shared landscape, thus helping us theorize bhakti from the ground up in ways which have not been attempted before. This is a work of meticulous and deeply original, textual scholarship and a fitting successor to the work of those such as Friedhelm Hardy, showing us the pan-Indian shared literary landscape and tropes of Krishna-ite devotion, much after the Bhagavata Purana.” - SRILATA RAMAN, Professor of Hinduism, University of Toronto

"“Scholars of Sanskrit epics and devotional literature will welcome Sohini Pillai's insightful book which illuminates the epic's richness by analyzing Villiputturar's Tamil Paratam and Chauhan's Bhasha Mahabharat. She breaks down the rigid boundaries that separate south and north Indian bhakti texts by documenting the mythological, episodic, and rhetorical strategies that both poets deployed to transform a gruesome tale of war into a celebration of Krishna.” - PAULA RICHMAN, William H. Danforth Professor Emerita of South Asian Religions "

Table of contents

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Note on Terms and Transliteration
Introduction
Part I
1. Setting the Scene: Interpretations of Krishna in the Sanskrit Mahabharata
2. Many (Krishna-Centric) Mahabharatas: An Overview of Premodern Regional Retellings
Part II
3. Commencing and Concluding the Carita of Krishna: The First and Final Books of Villi's Paratam and Chauhan's Mahabharat
4. Prayers and Protection: Draupadi's Disrobing and the Book of Effort in Villi's Paratam and Chauhan's Mahabharat
Part III
5. Beginning with Bhakti: Invocations and the Shrivaishnava Tradition in Villi's Paratam
6. Remembering Rama: The Role of Tulsidas's Ramayanas in Chauhan's Mahabharat
Conclusion
Appendix: Glossary of Characters
Bibliography
Index