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Academic Year 2003/2004

Mahabharata and Ramayana: The Sanskrit Epics and Indian Visual Culture
ARHA 290 SP

This course focuses on the multifaceted interface between literary text and visual image in traditional South Asia. Our primary focus is on the two Sanskrit epics, MAHABHARATA and RAMAYANA. Both epics will be read in abridged translation to provide familiarity with the overall narrative structure and thematic concerns of the two texts, and a number of excerpts from unabridged translations will be studied in detail to arrive at a fuller understanding of the contents of key episodes and of the style and texture of the two works. The first part of the course addresses a series of questions pertaining to the literary versions of the MAHABHARATA and RAMAYANA: What is epic as a genre, and what are its social roles? Do the MAHABHARATA and RAMAYANA manifest similarities that permit us to identify a distinctive "Indian" epic type? What are the connections between these epics and the early history of India? Why, and how, did the written texts we have today come to be redacted from bodies of oral tradition? What further transformations did the Sanskrit epics undergo as they were dramatized in the Sanskrit theater, recast in the form of lyric poetry, and "translated" into various vernacular languages such as Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu? In the second part of the course, we will shift our focus from epic as literature to consider different types of visual embodiments of the epics, ranging from spatial mappings of epic geography onto local landscapes to illustrated manuscripts and painted scrolls used as instruments for oral epic performance. Our overarching concerns will be to understand the shifting modes of relationship between image and text: does the image always follow and serve the text, suggesting that a textual embodiment of epic is primary, or are there cases in which the visual embodiment is primary and the text follows its lead?
This course requires no prior knowledge of Indian literature, history, or art, and may serve as an effective introduction to the culture and civilization of South Asia.

MAJOR READINGS

William Buck, tr. THE MAHABHARATA (abridged)
William Buck, tr. THE RAMAYANA (abridged)
J.A.B. van Buitenen, tr. THE MAHABHARATA
Robert Goldman et al., tr. THE RAMAYANA OF VALMIKI
Edward Dimock et al., THE LITERATURES OF INDIA: AN INTRODUCTION
Albert B. Lord, THE SINGER OF TALES
John D. Smith, "Scapegoats of the Gods: The Ideology of the Indian Epic"
Romila Thapar, "Society and Historical Consciousness: The Itihasa-Purana Tradition"
Barbara Stoler Miller, THEATER OF MEM ORY: THE PLAYS OF KALIDASA
Sheldon Pollock, "The Cosmopolitan Vernacular"
Sheldon Pollock, "Ramayana and Political Imagination in India"
Anna Dallapiccola et al, THE RAMACHANDRA TEMPLE AT VIJAYANAGARA
Joanna Williams, THE TWO-HEADED DEER: ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE RAMAYANA IN ORISSA
Vidya Dehejia, DISCOURSE IN EARLY BUDDHIST ART: VISUAL NARRATIVES OF INDIA
J.P. Losty, "Sahib Din's Book of Battles: Rana Jagat Singh's Yuddhakanda"
Vidya Dehejia, "The Treatment of Narrative in Jagat Singh 's Ramayana: A Preliminary Study"
Frederick Asher, "Historical and Political Allegory in Gupta Art"
Victor Mair, PAINTING AND PERFORMANCE: CHINESE PICTURE RECITATION AND ITS INDIAN GENESIS

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Two short essays; one research paper; midterm and final (both take-home)

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: NONE    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-19-2004

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