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

著者名：Bhattacharya, Sibesh Chandra (EDT)/Dalmiya, Vrinda (EDT)/Mukherji, Gangeya (EDT)

Routledge India（2018/03/19発売）

• 言語：ENG
• ISBN：9780367735050
• eISBN：9781351061407

Description

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction: To Do

Vrinda Dalmiya and Gangeya Mukherji

PART I: ACTION

1. Mahabharata. Itihasa. Agency

Sibesh Chandra Bhattacharya

2. In Search of Genuine Agency:

A Review of Action, Freedom and Karma in the Mahābhārata

Amita Chatterjee

3. The Theory of Karma in the Mahābhārata

Christopher Framarin

4. Karmayoga and the Vexed Moral Agent

Arti Dhand

PART II: ACTOR

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

Gangeya Mukherji

6. Irresolution and Agency: The Case of Yudhishthira

Shirshendu Chakrabarti

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

Arindam Chakrabarti

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

Uma Chakravarti

9. ‘Ekalavya and the Possibility of Learning’

Sundar Sarukkai

PART III: EPIC AGENCY AND RETELLINGS

10. Tagore’s Readings of the Mahabharata

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