The Mahabharata, one of the most popular epics, has had a remarkable impact on literary and cultural thought in India through the centuries. It is also of immense religious and philosophical importance and is considered itihasa, literally 'that which happened', or sacred history. Though the setting of the Mahabharata is distant in time, something of its indefatigable, insistent formulation of the pivotal dilemmas of our shared human moral imagination remains insistent and inextinguishable even today. The Moral Imagination of the Mahabharata closely reads the conceptual and narrative intricacies of the epic through the four foundational terms of dharma (law), artha (worldliness), kama (desire) and moksha (freedom), offering riveting insights on the moral psychology of Indic civilization. Drawing from scholarly forays in philology, history, religious studies and pre-modern Asian traditions, this critical attention by a literary scholar to the Mahabharata's narrative impulses and the internal vigour of select episodes brings to fore the gripping dilemmas that animate the epic. The book travels through an atmospheric and exuberant pre-modern milieu to provoke prescient metaphysical and ethical questions that are only accumulating in relevance in the contemporary world.

Here the collected papers explore the whole question of the relation between the mythopoetic and the moral in the context of the Mahabharata. Here we have a story of extreme complexity, characters that are unforgettable, and a cosmic context in which gods and men alike grapple with destiny. The obligations of kinship and friendship jostle with each other. The women characters, as in everyday life, seem to bear a very heavy load of the burden of life and to stand in a key position in almost every conflict. We are presented with predicaments at every turn. At times these predicaments seem to be aggravated by social structure. At other times they are cushioned by it. Philosophical tangles tied up with karma and dharma are interwoven with the mythopoetic material. Perhaps philosophical issues are pinpointed rather more than they are in Greek epic literature. The essays in this book treat the Mahabharata from an unusual angle, fastening on the moral dilemmas it presents. How universal are the dilemmas faced by the characters in the story, and are the dilemmas in fact resolved? In dealing with these questions, the discussions range over the meaning of the purusarthas, the institutions of marriage and the family, the concept of action in the Gita and the special predicaments faced by Draupadi, Arjuna and others. These studies invite the scholar to reflect afresh on the text and encourage the general reader to find in epic literature much that is relevant to life today.

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.

Argument and Design features fifteen essays by leading scholars of the Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, discussing the Mahābhārata’s upākhyānas, subtales that branch off from the central storyline and provide vantage points for reflecting on it. Contributors include: Vishwa Adluri, Joydeep Bagchee, Greg Bailey, Adam Bowles, Simon Brodbeck, Nicolas Dejenne, Sally J. Sutherland Goldman, Robert P. Goldman, Alf Hiltebeitel, Thennilapuram Mahadevan, Adheesh Sathaye, Bruce M. Sullivan, and Fernando Wulff Alonso.

"Spanning many historical and literary contexts, Moral Imagination brings together a dozen recent essays by one of America's premier cultural critics. David Bromwich explores the importance of imagination and sympathy to suggest how these faculties may illuminate the motives of human action and the reality of justice. These wide-ranging essays address thinkers and topics from Gandhi and Martin Luther King on nonviolent resistance, to the dangers of identity politics, to the psychology of the heroes of classic American literature. Bromwich demonstrates that moral imagination allows us to judge the right and wrong of actions apart from any benefit to ourselves, and he argues that this ability is an innate individual strength, rather than a socially conditioned habit. Political topics addressed here include Edmund Burke and Richard Price's efforts to define patriotism in the first year of the French Revolution, Abraham Lincoln's principled work of persuasion against slavery in the 1850s, the erosion of privacy in America under the influence of social media, and the use of euphemism to shade and anesthetize reactions to the global war on terror. Throughout, Bromwich considers the relationship between language and power, and the insights language may offer into the corruptions of power.Moral Imagination captures the singular voice of one of the most forceful thinkers working in America today"--

Publisher Description

Neither the title of the 35th Congress of the International Institute of Sociology, nor its timing and location were coincidental — The Moral Fabric in Contemporary Societies being discussed in 2001 in Poland, a country which had experienced two totalitarianisms in the previous century. The events of the new millennium thus far demonstrate that history is aimless unless the societies who are its agents have moral goals or visions which they pursue. The contents of this volume constitute the best evidence of a belief in the universality and importance of moral issues for the social sciences. The deliberations here cover the notion of trust, proceed with the issue of economic inequalities, discuss multiple modernities as a response to imposed modernization, debate postcommunism and corruption, and, finally, examine genocide and its social consequences. The book opens and closes with reflections on the theoretical aspects of what constitutes the moral fabric today.