The Mahahabharata, a vital Indic epic and a flourishing influence on Indian culture past and present, has surprisingly enough hardly got much attention from scholars in the West. This latest volume in Brill's Indological Library convincingly fills this hiatus.
At that, at the hand of the hero Karna, Kevin McGrath develops a view on the nature and function of the hero in epic Indic poetry. Making use of models taken from Indo-European and preliterate studies, a model emerges for 'heroic religion', having to a large extent shaped not only the Indic epics, but also cognate Indo-European epics, such as Homer's Iliad.
As a result this work goes beyond Indology, but is of importance to classicists and comparative religionists as well.
- ISBN10 9004137297
- ISBN13 9789004137295
- Publish Date 25 March 2004 (first published 1 January 2004)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country NL
- Imprint Brill
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 260
- Language English
- URL brill.com/product_id18391