Throughout India and Southeast Asia, ancient classical epics—the Mahabharata and the Ramayana—continue to exert considerable cultural influence. Rethinking India's Oral and Classical Epics offers an unprecedented exploration into South Asia's regional epic traditions. Using his own fieldwork as a starting point, Alf Hiltebeitel analyzes how the oral tradition of the south Indian cult of the goddess Draupadi and five regional martial oral epics compare with one another and tie in with the Sanskrit epics. Drawing on literary theory and cultural studies, he reveals the shared subtexts of the Draupadi cult Mahabharata and the five oral epics, and shows how the traditional plots are twisted and classical characters reshaped to reflect local history and religion. In doing so, Hiltebeitel sheds new light on the intertwining oral traditions of medieval Rajput military culture, Dalits ("former Untouchables"), and Muslims. Breathtaking in scope, this work is indispensable for those seeking a deeper understanding of South Asia's Hindu and Muslim traditions. This work is the third volume in Hiltebeitel's study of the Draupadi cult. Other volumes include Mythologies: From Gingee to Kuruksetra (Volume One), On Hindu Ritual and the Goddess (Volume Two), and Rethinking the Mahabharata (Volume Four).

The present volume studies three oral epic traditions in the Tulu language (a Dravidian language). They have been living performance traditions in the Tulu speaking coastal districts of Karnataka up to the present day. For the first time, Indian, European and American scholars working on Tulu oral epics, folklorists, anthropologists as well as Indologists are brought together. All texts discussed belong to the indigenous Tulu genre called paddana, which ranges from shorter invocations of local deities to texts of epic dimensions. Because paddanas had been transmitted exclusively orally until the 19th century, it is very difficult to assign their composition to a particular historical period. The social universe described in some of them may reflect a late medieval setting. Texts of one of the epic traditions have been collected over a period of almost 150 years, from the mid-19th century to the early 2000s. Two papers (H. Bruckner / V. Rai and V. Nandavara) deal with this tradition which is part of the oldest collections. In contrast, the popular epic of the Bant heroine, Siri, only attracted the attention of scholars from the 1970s onwards. In this book, the Siri tradition is studied by C. Gowda, A. Alva, and P. Schuster-Lohlau. Peter J. Claus' important paper introduces Koddabbu, the champion of a Dalit community. The wealth of texts and versions reflected in this volume allows, for the first time, to make systematic comparisons between different texts of the same tradition as well as between narrative elements and cultural concepts found in different traditions. Linguistic analysis, too, is just beginning to reveal possibly unique textual and narrative features.

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

How does an illiterate singer produce a long oral epic? What is the origin of his "text", available only for a fleeting moment at its performance? How can a multifaceted oral performance be transformed into a book? The primary oral textualization and the secondary written codification of the Siri epic, 15,683 lines, are described in detail in the present volume on the basis of recent fieldwork among the speakers of Tulu, a Dravidian language, in southern Karnataka, India. The "oral author", Mr Gopala Naika, is one of the many talented singers of oral epics in Tulunaadu and a possession priest in rituals which use oral epics as their mythical charter and a source of mental therapy.

With 600 signed, alphabetically organized articles covering the entirety of folklore in South Asia, this new resource includes countries and regions, ethnic groups, religious concepts and practices, artistic genres, holidays and traditions, and many other concepts. A preface introduces the material, while a comprehensive index, cross-references, and black and white illustrations round out the work. The focus on south Asia includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, with short survey articles on Tibet, Bhutan, Sikkim, and various diaspora communities. This unique reference will be invaluable for collections serving students, scholars, and the general public.

The Rajputs ruled the vast majority of the kingdoms that were joined together after Indian independence to form the state of Rajasthan, "Land of Kings." An important part of Rajput religion is the worship of "heroes" who have died in battle. This practice has attained new significance in recent years, as right-wing Hindu activists have deployed narratives about heroism in Rajput wars with Muslim emperors. In this book, Lindsey Harlan explores the idea of the Rajput hero. She is particularly interested in the role played by gender in stories about heroes and in their worship. She looks at the differences between female and male storytellers, the relationships of the hero to the women in his tale, and the relationship of the hero to the goddess for whom he is both sacrifice and henchman. She obtains her materials from interviews with Rajput families and their servants, from songfests, from bystanders at shrines, from ritual specialists. Ultimately she shows how heroic traditions encapsulate and express ideals of perfection and masculinity, defined most visibly against the backdrop of domesticity and femininity. More broadly she argues that heroes reflect ever-changing valuations of history, and serve as sources of inspiration for facing contemporary challenges (domestic, communal, national) and concerns about the future.