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You do realize that all that you said, and all that Wendy Doniger says can be simultaneously true? Attempts at a singular interpretation of the Indian epics wi
by shas3 12y ago
You do realize that all that you said, and all that Wendy Doniger says can be simultaneously true?
Attempts at a singular interpretation of the Indian epics will always be incomplete. As the late University of Chicago scholar, AK Ramanujan pointed out in his essay 'Three Hundred Ramayanas', these texts were written and rewritten in several historical, political, and geographic contexts. One can think of these different 're-writes' and 'edits' as an inseparable intertwining of threads. It is almost impossible to identify which epoch and political context each part of the Indian epics emerged from.
In short, no single mass of 'traditional understanding' can be considered as benchmarks.
[1] 'The Collected Essays of AK Ramanujan,' Ed. Vinay Dharwadker, Oxford University Press, 2004. http://trans-techresearch.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/three-hundred-Ramayanas-A-K-Ramanujan.pdf http://trans-techresearch.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/thr...
- ubasu 12y agoAre there alternate versions of the Mahabharat where Krishna does not go to the Kauravas with a peace treaty and where the war happens before such a peace effort? To whoever downvoted this: note that I was trying to highlight the logical fallacy in the parent comment, which was using the existence of different versions of the Ramayana to make a sweeping generalization about the Mahabharata without providing proof specific about the latter.