The Mahabharata and the Reappropriation of the Religious Rhetoric: An Exploration into the Connectivity of Literature and Health (original) (raw)

Abstract

Abstract The Mahabharata is generally interpreted as a discourse on caste construction and the respective duties. However, I have attempted to examine the Mahabharata to show how it projects the wild as an indispensable entity even for the existence of the urbanity amidst the growing human fascination of cultivation, possession, and empire formation. My argument has grown up after a thorough study of the text in which the characters living in the wild forests come out to be more powerful and more knowledgeable whereas those in the palaces and cities meet a destructive end. While exploring in this problem, the research came to a finding that the cause behind this problem is in cultivation. Cultivation, on the one hand leads to the notion of possession and hence inclusion, exclusion, deprivation, conflicts, and wars. The uncultivated wilderness does not include or exclude any creatures or humans on the basis of caste, class, nationality or sexuality. Nor does it have the exclusive anthropocentric notion of rationalism. In the wild, all creatures live abiding by the law of nature privileging true equality, inclusion, freedom, harmony, and justice contented with their real share. On the other hand, artificial cultivation leads to lack of the basic thing provided by nature. The artificially cultivated food stuffs are far weak in their nourishing and healing capacity compared to the wildly self-grown plants and food supplements. Thus the uncultivated self-existent wild is to be redefined amidst our notion of the wild as something barbarous, uncontrolled, fierce, dangerous and should be established as something really essential. Without the wild, existence of no life is possible. To convey such a message that the wild is truly essential for the sake of human health, for ecological harmony, and thus for the health of the planet, it is necessary that the ancient texts like the Mahabharata in which characters spend their significant life spans in harmony with wild nature should be preserved, translated, reproduced, and disseminated along with which new art genres including films and documentaries about the wild should be juxtaposed in university courses.

Loading...

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

References (47)

  1. Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. PDF file.
  2. Bate, Jonathan. "Foreword." The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. Ed. Lawrence Coupe. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. xvii. Print.
  3. Bealer, Adele H. "Reading Out Loud: Performing Ecocriticism as a Practice of the Wild." Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. (Winter 2012) 19 (1): 5-23. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.
  4. Beauvoir, Simon de. The Second Sex. Trans. & Ed. H. M. Parshley. London: Jonathan Cape, 1953. PDF File.
  5. Bergman, Charles. "Nature Is a Story That We Live: Reading and Teaching "The Ancient Mariner" in the Drake Passage." Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. (Autumn 2012) 19 (4): 661-80. Web. 12 May 2013.
  6. Bradshaw, G. A. Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us about Humanity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. PDF File.
  7. Buell, Lawrence. "Environmental Apocalypticism." The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Ed. Lawrence Buell. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1995. 280- 310. Print.
  8. Chang, Alenda Y. "Back to the Virtual Farm: Gleaning the Agriculture-Management Game." Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. (Spring 2012) 19 (2): 237-52. Web. 12 May 2013. Lamsal 77
  9. Cooke, Philip. "Modern Urban Theory in Question." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series. 1990 15 (3): 331-43. JSTOR. Web. 15 Apr. 2013.
  10. Coupe, Laurence. "General Introduction." The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. Ed. Lawrence Coupe. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. 1-8. Print.
  11. Cronon, William. "The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature." Environmental History. 1 (1) January 1996: 7-28. JSTOR. Web. 12 Apr. 2013.
  12. Danby, John F. "William Wordsworth: Poetry, Chemistry, Nature." The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. Ed. Lawrence Coupe. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. 44-49. Print.
  13. Dutch Committee for Long-Term Environmental Policy. "The Environment; Towards a Sustainable Future." Classics in Environmental Studies: An Overview of Classic Texts in Environmental Studies. New Delhi: Kusum Publishing, 2001. 406-14. Print.
  14. "Elephant Kills Elderly Woman in Sunsari." Rising Nepal 31 Jan. 2013: 3. Print.
  15. Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land. The Waste Land: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Michael North. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2001. 1-21. PDF File.
  16. Finley, James S. " "Who Are We? Where Are We?": Cantact and Literary Navigation in The Maine Woods." Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. (Spring 2012) 19 (2): 336-55. Web. 12 May 2013.
  17. Fisher-Wirth, Ann. Rev. of Can Poetry Save the Earth?: A Field Guide to Nature Poems, by John Felstiner. Interdisciplinary Studies in Liteature and Lamsal 78
  18. Garrard, Greg. "Wilderness." Ecocriticism: The New Critical Idiom. London and New York: Routledge, 2004. 59-84. PDF File.
  19. Good, Melissa. Ed. Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary. 3 rd Ed. Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print.
  20. Hannigan, John. "Environmental Discourse." Environmental Sociology. Reprint. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. 36-52.
  21. Haraway, Donna J. When Species Meet. Minneapolis and London: Minnesota University Press, 2008.
  22. Harrison, Robert Pogue. Forests: The Shadow of Civilization. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Print.
  23. Iovino, Serenella, and Serpil Oppermann. "Theorizing Material Ecocriticism: A Diptych." Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. (Summer 2012) 19 (3): 448-75. Web. 12 May 2013.
  24. Keller, David R. "Toward a Post-Mechanistic Philosophy of Nature." Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. (Autumn 2009) 16 (4): 709-25. Web. 12 May 2013.
  25. Kerridge, Richard. "Environmentalism and Ecocriticism." Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide. Ed. Patricia Waugh. New York: Oxford University Press: 2006. 531-543. Print.
  26. Lawrence, D. H. "Remembering Pan." The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. Ed. Lawrence Coupe. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. 70-72. Print.
  27. Menon, Ramesh. The Mahabharata: A Modern Rendering. 2 vols. New Delhi: Rupa, 2004. Print.
  28. Moily, M Veerappa. Shree Ramayana Mahanveshanam. 2 vols. Trans. C. N. Lamsal 79
  29. Ramachandran, Padma Sharma, Laxminarayan Bhat P, C Naganna, Vijay Sheshadri. New Delhi: Rupa, 2010. Print.
  30. Neupane, Rebati Prasad. "Rise of the American Consumer Culture in the 1920s: A Road to Decadence." Cross-Currents. 1.1 (2011): 205-220. Print.
  31. Palmer, Clare. "An Overview of Environmental Ethics." Environmental Ethics. Eds. Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston III. MA: Blackwell, 2003. 15-37. Print.
  32. Plumwood, Val. "Philosophy, Prudence, and Anthropocentrism." Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. 123-42. Print.
  33. Pokhrel, Hariprasad. Personal Interview. 25 July 2013.
  34. Prabhupada, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. Bhagavadgita As It Is. Mumbai: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1986. Print.
  35. Racevskis, Roland. "The Place of the Nonhuman in Madame de Sevigne's Letters: Toward a Transnational Early Modern Ecocriticism." Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. (Winter 2012) 19 (1): 141-161. Web. 12 May 2013.
  36. Rueckert, William. "Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism." The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmark in Literary Ecology. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1996. 105-123. Print.
  37. Sivaramakrishnan, Murali. "Toward a Spiritual Aesthetics of the Environment: Quality, Space, and Being in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri." Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. (Spring 2011) 18(2): 302-22. Web. 12 May 2013.
  38. Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990. PDF File. Srimadbhagavadgeeta. Gorakhpur: Geetapress, n.d.. Print.
  39. Srivastava, Vinay Kumar. "Malinowski and a reading of his Freedom and Lamsal 80
  40. Civilization." Dialectical Anthropology 1993 18 (2): 177-204. JSTOR. Web. 15 Apr. 2013.
  41. Tagore, Rabindranath. "Where the Mind Is Without Fear." Rabindranath Tagore: Poems. Poem Hunter.com, 2004. Web. 30 June 2013.
  42. Thompson, Allen. "Responsibility for the End of Nature: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Global Warming." Ethics &the Environment. (Spring 2009) 14 (1): 79-99. Project Muse. Web. 12 May 2013.
  43. Thoreau, Henry David. "Writing the Wilderness." The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. Ed. Laurence Coupe. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. 23-25. Print.
  44. Watson, Peter. Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud. New York and London: HarperCollins, 2005. PDF File.
  45. Whitman, Walt. "A Song of the Rolling Earth." Leaves of Grass. E-book. Project Gutenberg, 2008.
  46. "Wild Elephant Runs Amok." Rising Nepal 29 Jan. 2013: 3. Print. "Wild Elephants Give Sleepless Nights in Koshi Tappu." Rising Nepal 20 Jan. 2013: 3. Print.
  47. Wriglesworth, Chad. " "What the River Says": Reading William Stafford's The Methow River Poems as New Genre Public Art." Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. (Spring 2010) 17 (2): 349-71. Web. 12 May 2013.