This book is a study of heroic femininity as it appears in the epic Mahabharata, and focuses particularly on the roles of wife, daughter-in-law, and mother, on how these women speak and on the kinship groups and varying marital systems that surround them. It portrays those qualities that cohere about women in the poem, which are particular to them and which distinguish them as women, and describes how women heroes function as crucial speakers in the generation and maintenance of cultural value and worth. This includes men who have been transformed into women and women who have been reincarnated as men. The overall method accomplishes an ethnography of text, describing a special aspect of the bronze age preliterate and premonetary world as it is represented by the actions and metaphors of Mahabharata. References to contemporary Indian cinema and popular culture support the narrative of the book, bringing modern valence to the arguments.

Strī: Women in Epic Mahābhārata (Ilex Series)

Literature & Fiction

McGrath, Kevin

History & Criticism

Ilex Foundation

JAYA is a study of how the four poets of the Indian epic Mahābhārata fuse their separate performances of the poem into a single and seamless work of art. The subtle poetics of preliteracy and literacy which are compounded in one performance are demonstrated and made distinct in both a literary and a conceptual light.

Jaya: Performance in Epic Mahabharata (Ilex Series)

Dramas & Plays

Heroic Krsna is a portrait of a pre-Hindu and pre-classical figure of a superhuman hero who in time became the divinity Krsna, an incarnation of Visnu. This is a picture, drawn from the epic Mahābhārata, of an archaic warrior who excelled as a charioteer; in fact this is the best depiction that we presently possess in any epic corpus of a charioteer type. Krsna is also described in his role of moral instructor, as poet and ambassador, and in the office of dual kingship with the dharmaraja Yudhisthira. There is no other representation of a complex friendship in the poem apart from what exists between Krsna and Arjuna, and this profound amity is completely founded on the activity of a charioteer and his hero. Cultural and poetic continuities from the Bronze Age Vedic world are shown to exist in this model of duality. Krsna is also an adept of the speech-act, for―apart from his charioteering―he accomplishes little in the epic except via the causality of speech: he is a master of “doing things with words.” This book illustrates a heroic life which pre-exists the divine status of one of the most popular Indian deities of today.

Heroic Kṛṣṇa: Friendship in Epic Mahābhārata (Ilex Series)

This personal narrative about life in a remote desert region of Western India tells of how love of place and love of person find their equilibrium in a world far removed from modernity. Yet this small, distant land of kingship and pastoral life is rapidly being eroded by the new India of commerce and industrialization. The author describes how an ancient society is transformed by the culture of consumption where the lyrical beauty of balance, exchange and loyalty is translated into a single market economy. The people and places of post-Partition Kacch, where even the land and value systems of a lately independent India now appear in a nostalgic light, are described in detail. This is a record of private emotion and physical terrain, of traditions and of profound social practice.

In the Kacch: A Memoir of Love and Place

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

McFarland Company

Protein-Based Materials (Bioengineering of Materials)

Nature learned long ago how useful proteins are as a diverse set of building blocks to make materials with very diverse properties. Spider webs, egg whites, hair follicles, and skeletal muscles are all largely protein. This book provides a glimpse into both nature's strategies for the design and produc tion of protein-based materials, and how scientists have been able to go beyond the constraints of natural materials to produce synthetic analogs with potentially wider ranges of properties. The work presented is very much the beginning of the story. Only recently has there been much progress in obtaining a molecular understanding of some of nature's com plex materials, and the mimicry or replacement of these by synthetic or genetically engineered variants is a field still in its infancy. Yet this book will serve as a useful introduction for those wishing to get started in what is sure to be an active and productive field throughout the 21st century. The authors represent a wide range of interests and expertise, and the topics chosen are comprehensive. Charles R. Cantor Center for Advanced Biotechnology Boston University Series Preface The properties of materials depend on the nature of the macromolecules, small molecules and inorganic components and the interfaces and interac tions between them. Polymer chemistry and physics, and inorganic phase structure and density are major factors that influence the performance of materials.

Science & Math

Kaplan, David

Biological Sciences

Birkhauser

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Gardening & Landscape Design

Song of the Republic

Poetry

Saint Julian Press, Inc.

Vyāsa is the primary creative poet of the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata and 'Vyāsa Redux' examines the many paradoxical dimensions of his narrative virtuosity in the poem where the poet is both the creator of the work and a character within it. The book also studies elements in the poem which have been received by the late Bronze Age poets who composed the figure of Vyāsa, elements that reflect kinship, polity and modes of mnemonic inspiration. Three paired concepts function within the poem's narrative process: first, the central approach of the book is founded upon the distinction between plot and story, that is, the causal relation of events as opposed to the temporal relation of events. Second, much of the argument then engages with how this distinction relates to the difference between the preliterate and literate phases of our present text. Third, the nature of how inspiration functions and how edition operates becomes another vital component in our analytic process explaining how Vyāsa becomes a dramatic, causal and at times prophetic character in the poem's narration as well as its originator.

Vyāsa Redux: Narrative in Epic Mahābhārata (Anthem Studies in South Asian Literature, Aesthetics and Culture)

Anthem Press

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