A study of the ritual reenactment of part of the Mahabharata epic as performed in the Tontaimantalam region of Tamil-speaking southern India. Frasca (religion, U. of California, Davis) explores the 2000-year history, the troupes, the literary corpus, performance techniques, and the significance to the place of performance. Includes a glossary without pronunciation, photographs, diagrams, and maps. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A unique dramatization of India's greatest epic poem, fifteen times longer than the Bible, The Mahabharata has played to enthralled audiences throughout Europe, the Far East and America. Regarded as the culmination of Peter Brook's extraordinary research into the possibilities of theatre, the production has been hailed as the 'theatrical event of this century' (Sunday Times). British audiences encountered The Mahabharata, on stage and television, in the late eighties. This volume contains the complete script of Carriere's adaptation in Peter Brook's translation, with introductions by each of them.

The internationally renowned team of Peter Brook, Marie-Helene Estienne and Jean-Claude Carriere together revisit the great Indian epic The Mahabharata 30 years after Brook's legendary production took world theatre by storm.Destruction never approaches weapon in hand. It comes slyly, on tiptoe, making you see bad in good and good in bad.The devastation of war is tearing the Bharata family apart. The new king must unravel a mystery: how can he live with himself in the face of the devastation and massacres that he has caused?An immense canvas in miniature, this central section of the ancient text is timeless and contemporary, asking how we can find inner peace in a world riven with conflict.

First published in 1991, Peter Brook and the Mahabharata is a collection of essays which contextualizes the production of Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata. Written by both scholars and collaborators on Brook’s production, these essays seek not only to discuss such issues as the politics of theatre interculturalism, but to describe the nature of the working process, and detail the technical problems engendered by touring a production of this size and complexity. Furnished with a new preface by the editor, the book continues to be crucial research work devoted to unravelling the mesmerising as well as the polarising enigma known as Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata. Thoroughly heterogenous and controversially irreverent, this book will be of interest to students of theatre, performance art, literature, South Asian studies and media studies.

A dazzling and eloquent reworking of the Mahabharata, one of South Asia's best-loved epics, through nineteen peripheral voices. With daring poetic forms, Karthika Naïr breathes new life into this ancient epic. Karthika Naïr refracts the epic Mahabharata through the voices of nameless soldiers, outcast warriors and handmaidens as well as abducted princesses, tribal queens, and a gender-shifting god. As peripheral figures and silent catalysts take center stage, we get a glimpse of lives and stories buried beneath the dramas of god and nation, heroics and victory - of the lives obscured by myth and history, all too often interchangeable. Until the Lions is a kaleidoscopic, poetic tour de force. It reveals the most intimate threads of desire, greed, and sacrifice in this foundational epic.

A contemporary dramatic take on a 4,000-year-old Sanskrit epic that is foundational to Indian culture. Why Not Theatre’s large-scale, once-in-a-generation retelling of Mahabharata brings together a cast of performers entirely from the South Asian diaspora, blending cultures and art forms in a spectacular production at the Shaw Festival and the Barbican Theatre in London. Over two parts (Karma and Dharma) and a communal meal (Khana), this translation and adaptation of Mahabharata spans generations and takes audiences into the hearts and minds of some of the most complex and enduring characters ever created. With warring families and devious revenge plots, Mahabharata tells the story of an ancient feud with philosophical and spiritual questions that are no less urgent today. In times of division, how do we find wholeness? Are we destined to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors? And how can we build a new world when we have nearly destroyed this one? Contains the full text of the play along with materials opening up the behind-the-scenes world of the production, including interviews with the creators, background and context about the source material, production photographs, a Mahabharata family tree, and glossary. "Ravi Jain and Miriam Fernandes’s contemporary take on the Mahabharata is one of the most beautiful emotional journeys I have had the privilege to witness. It is inspiring, mind broadening, and speaks to all the senses. It even brings you back to the origins of theatre itself, when people would gather in the quarries around a bonfire to tell stories. With their tasteful use of technology, dance, and opera, the 4,000-year-old Sanskrit poem comes to life and feels more universal than ever. A captivating theatre experience, from the first flame to the last pixel." – Robert Lepage "In their stunning rendition of the great Indian epic Mahabharata, Ravi Jain and Miriam Fernandes brilliantly reverse the whole concept of what Bertolt Brecht famously advised theatre directors: to make the familiar, unfamiliar. Jain and Fernandes have turned the unfamiliar into the familiar. The 4,000-year-old saga most Indians grew up with is made accessible to a contemporary audience the world over. No mean feat. ‘The play, true to its source, crosses all boundaries of culture, class, and geography. Its timeless storytelling and evocative stage design is transformed into a saga for the world, with its fundamental emotions of human nature – power, hate, jealousy, greed, and lust. To be gob-smacked by this innovation would be an understatement. Immerse yourself in this take on the Mahabharata and travel with it in time into the past, present, and future of humanity." – Deepa Mehta

Eleven year old Samhita Arni s beautifully illustrated version of the Mahabharatha is a bold and fresh re-telling of the great epic.

Saiva Philosophy is an outgrowth of the religion characterized by the worship of the phallic form of God siva. Saivasm as a religion has persisted since the pre-historic time of the archaeological finds of Harappa and Mohenjodaro. It has a continuous history of at least five thousand years. It is a living faith praciced all over India. AN OUTLINE HISTORY OF SAIVA PHILOSOPHY first appeared as part of Volume III of Bhaskari in 1954 in the Princess of Wales Saraswati Bhavan Texts Series. The work is now reprinted as an independent volume to meet an increasing demand of the interested readers and scholars.

Many Mahābhāratas is an introduction to the spectacular and long-lived diversity of Mahābhārata literature in South Asia. This diversity begins with the Sanskrit Mahābhārata, an early epic poem that narrates the events of a catastrophic fratricidal war. Along the way, it draws in nearly everything else in Hindu mythology, philosophy, and story literature. The magnitude of its scope and the relentless complexity of its worldview primed the Mahābhārata for uncountable tellings in South Asia and beyond. For two thousand years, the instinctive approach to the Mahābhārata has been not to consume it but to create it anew. The many Mahābhāratas of this book come from the first century to the twenty-first. They are composed in nine different languages—Apabhramsha, Bengali, English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu. Early chapters illuminate themes of retelling within the Sanskrit Mahābhārata itself, demonstrating that the story's propensity for regeneration emerges from within. The majority of the book, however, reaches far beyond the Sanskrit epic. Readers dive into classical dramas, premodern vernacular poems, regional performance traditions, commentaries, graphic novels, political essays, novels, and contemporary theater productions—all of them Mahābhāratas. Because of its historical and linguistic breadth, its commitment to primary sources, and its exploration of multiplicity and diversity as essential features of the Mahābhārata's long life in South Asia, Many Mahābhāratas constitutes a major contribution to the study of South Asian literature and offers a landmark view of the field of Mahābhārata studies.