Assignment

Answer any two of the following questions.

Question 1:

The Mahabharata has always been an epic in reproduction. Throughout the centuries, the it has been translated and retold in part or full in new and interesting ways. Most people's experience of the epic is always through retellings whether it be in textual form or in audio or visual form. Please take any one episode (event, story) from the Mahabharata and examine and analyze them across the following three retellings.

a. Mahabharata by Ramesh Menon
b. Mahabharata by Peter Brooks
c. Mahabharat, The Hindi Television series.

In analyzing your story across the three retellings, please be sure to discuss the episode and explain why you chose it. Then follow up with a discussion of how the three above texts vary in their retelling of the narrative. Finally discuss the aesthetic and stylistic differences between the three texts.

Question 2:

What are the four ends of man? How do they shape the worldview and daily life of people of classical India? Please provide examples to support your argument from readings and lectures.

Question 3:

Explain the evolution of religious thought in classical India from the Vedic world to the Buddhist world. What, according to you, are the most important shifts that took place in how humans understood their relationship to cosmological world. In writing your essay, please provide examples from the first hundred pages of the Sources of Indian Tradition vol. 1.

Answer one question from each of the two sections below in essay form. Your responses should not exceed a total of 7-9 pages (typed, standard format). Responses should have the basic elements of a decent essay: a thesis statement (argument or position), body (evidence, expansion and illustration), and conclusion. Cite all your sources and readings you use for your essay. Do not use any external readings or websites.