Velcheru Narayana Rao

Velcheru Narayana Rao in conjunction w/ the South Asian Studies Council
It is customary to consider Indian literature as one single unit with several regional segments. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, past President of India, famously said: Indian Literature is one, written in many languages. This has been the basis to analyze, discuss and interpret Indian literary genres, values, culture and ideology. Questioning this monolithic perspective, I suggest in this talk three ecological bases to the study Indian literary texts: land, pastoralism and trade. From this point of view, the Ramayana is a landed narrative, and the Mahabharata is a pastoral narrative and stories of the Kathasaritsagara represent the narratives of a trading culture. This presentation traces how each culture developed values of heroism, virtue and truth suitable to it. From this perspective, there is no such a thing as one Indian literature, nor a national epic, which is a development after the landed culture dominated the other two and the idea of a nation emerged.
For more information, please contact Phyllis Granoff.
SASC Colloquium Series