Indian Epic: Mahabharata and Ramayana

Catalog description

Students engage India”s two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. They analyze the epics on two levels: first, as historically situated and ideologically interested texts that reflect the social and political upheavals that occurred in South Asia between 500 BCE and 500 CE, and, second, as part of a living oral and scriptural tradition whose influence extends to contemporary Indian religion, ethics, and national consciousness.