Publication announcement

[Simon Brodbeck]

Dear colleagues,

I am delighted to announce the publication of a monograph proceeding from
the “Epic Constructions” project at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London (2004-2007):

Simon Pearse Brodbeck, “The Mahabharata Patriline: Gender, Culture, and the
Royal Hereditary”. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2009. Pp. xiv +
329. ISBN 978-0-7546-6787-2 (hbk). £55.

The book is a chronological survey of the Sanskrit Mahabharata's central
royal patriline. It explores the importance and implications of patrilineal
maintenance within the royal culture depicted by the text, and shows how
patrilineal memory comes up against the fact that in every generation a
wife must be involved, with the consequent danger that the children might
not sustain the memorial tradition of their paternal family. Studying the
Mahabharata as an integral literary unit and as a story stretched over
dozens of generations, the book casts particular light on the events of the
more recent generations and suggests that the text's internal narrators are
members of the family whose story they tell.


CONTENTS

List of figures; Preface; Sanskrit pronunciation guide; Map

Part One: A Royal Patrilineal Model
1. Analogical deceptions
2. Wide shots
3. The Mahabharata patriline
4. Shraddha in the Mahabharata
5. Marriage and the heir
6. The royal hunt

Part Two: The Distant Ancestry
7. Female links
8. Yayati
9. The Paurava stretch
10. Duhshanta, Shakuntala, and the Bharatas
11. Samvarana
12. Kuru

Part Three: The Pandavas and their Proximate Ancestry
13. Shamtanu and Bhishma
14. Dhritarashtra and Pandu
15. The Pandavas

Part Four: Janamejaya and the Sarpasatra
16. Parikshit
17. Janamejaya
18. Conclusion

Appendices; Glossary; Bibliography; Index.


ERRATA
p. 143: “TApatI” should read “TapatI”
p. 250: “Shaunaka’s” should read “Shaunaka”
p. 267: “uncle” should read “cousin”.


Simon Brodbeck
School of Religious and Theological Studies
Cardiff University
Wales