Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1. The Mahabharata and the Making of Modern India
- 2. ‘Epic’ Past, ‘Modern’ Present: The Mahabharata and Modern Nationalism in Colonial Western India
- 3. The Bhagavadgita and the Gandhian Hermeneutic of Non-Violence: Globalizing Selfless Action
- 4. A Nostalgia for Transcendental Closure: The Relationship between the Mahabharata and Notions of Nationalism in the Works of Friedrich Schlegel, Maithilisharan Gupt, and Jawaharlal Nehru
- 5. The Production and Deconstruction of the ‘Ideal Indian Woman’ on the Basis of the Mahabharata in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 6. Rethinking Transnational Intellectual History and Epic Nationalisms through Lithographic Labour: Persian and Urdu Mahabharatas in India and Iran
- 7. ‘Philosophical Poetry’ or a ‘Failed Beginning’? A Metaphilosophical Enquiry into Wilhelm von Humboldt’s and G. W. F. Hegel’s Perspectives on the Bhagavadgita
- 8. East Asian Uses of Indian Epic Literature: Refractions of the Mahabharata in Japan and China, Late Nineteenth–Early Twentieth Century
- 9. The Reception of the Mahabharata in Siam: Evolving Conceptions of Kingship
- 10. Understanding Global Intellectual Exchanges through Paratexts: Wadiʿ al-Bustani’s Introduction to His Arabic Translation of the Mahabharata
- About the Contributors
- Index
2. - ‘Epic’ Past, ‘Modern’ Present: The Mahabharata and Modern Nationalism in Colonial Western India
Published online by Cambridge University Press: aN Invalid Date NaN
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- 1. The Mahabharata and the Making of Modern India
- 2. ‘Epic’ Past, ‘Modern’ Present: The Mahabharata and Modern Nationalism in Colonial Western India
- 3. The Bhagavadgita and the Gandhian Hermeneutic of Non-Violence: Globalizing Selfless Action
- 4. A Nostalgia for Transcendental Closure: The Relationship between the Mahabharata and Notions of Nationalism in the Works of Friedrich Schlegel, Maithilisharan Gupt, and Jawaharlal Nehru
- 5. The Production and Deconstruction of the ‘Ideal Indian Woman’ on the Basis of the Mahabharata in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
- 6. Rethinking Transnational Intellectual History and Epic Nationalisms through Lithographic Labour: Persian and Urdu Mahabharatas in India and Iran
- 7. ‘Philosophical Poetry’ or a ‘Failed Beginning’? A Metaphilosophical Enquiry into Wilhelm von Humboldt’s and G. W. F. Hegel’s Perspectives on the Bhagavadgita
- 8. East Asian Uses of Indian Epic Literature: Refractions of the Mahabharata in Japan and China, Late Nineteenth–Early Twentieth Century
- 9. The Reception of the Mahabharata in Siam: Evolving Conceptions of Kingship
- 10. Understanding Global Intellectual Exchanges through Paratexts: Wadiʿ al-Bustani’s Introduction to His Arabic Translation of the Mahabharata
- About the Contributors
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Ancient epics have played a significant role in the growth of modern nationalism. At the time of their conception, epics possessed no notion of nationalism. However, over the past three centuries, they have been routinely invoked in many parts of the world for fulfilling modern nationalist claims and aspirations. Political and cultural unity, key features of modern nationalism, were found to be described in ancient epics. Therefore, epics were routinely invoked either as repositories of a nation's past frozen in time (as with Homer or Virgil) or as a genealogical exercise meant to reconstruct an unbroken national–cultural lineage (as with the Ramayana and the Mahabharata). Both processes helped in nationalist revival.
The two epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, were used by Indian subcontinental nationalists during the colonial and post-colonial periods to imagine a politically and ethnically (Hindu) unified image of the country. The study of Indian epics was facilitated by modern European Indology and the ‘discovery’ of India's ancient (largely Hindu and Buddhist) heritage during the late eighteenth century. Therefore, unlike the absolute devotional reverence and eschatological infallibility accorded to the epics during pre-modernity, Indians were open to investigating their historical context and using them for didactic–political purposes. History, coming to the aid of religious reverence, produced a strange concoction of nationalist rectitude and a strong antidote to colonial cultural hegemony. The fratricide depicted in the Mahabharata was seen as an act of reclaiming the unjust seizure of territory, rendering the epic's moral lesson ‘analogous to the colonial occupation of India’.
Epic studies developing during the nineteenth century drove European Indologists’ primary interest – namely, determining the remote antiquity of the Mahabharata, deciphering the urtext from latter recensions, and granting it lesser value in comparison to the Greco-Roman classics. European Indological discourses posited India as the opposite of ‘the West’ and hence inferior in character. Indian thought was presented as mythical and symbolic and therefore unworthy of the cold rationality articulated through logical arguments.
Indians attached multifarious significance to its epics. If the Ramayana was the adi-kavya (the original poem), the Mahabharata was varyingly rendered as an itihasa (history) and the ‘fifth Veda’ and even garnered equivalency to a Dharmashastra text. The Mahabharata also carried a powerful moral sermon on righteous violence (the Bhagavadgita), delivered by Krishna, the personification of the Absolute.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Mahabharata in Global Political and Social Thought , pp. 48 - 74Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025