[INDOLOGY] New Publication: Classical Sanskrit Tragedy

[Bihani Sarkar]

Dear All,

I am pleased to announce the publication of my next book *Classical
Sanskrit Tragedy: The Concept of Suffering and Pathos in Medieval India*
(Bloomsbury-IB Tauris):
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/classical-sanskrit-tragedy-9781788311113/

I express my heartfelt gratitude to the anonymous peer-reviewer for her/his
pertinent and knowledgeable suggestions in improving the book. I am also
grateful to Professor Sheldon Pollock and Dr. Csaba Dezso for kindly
endorsing the book. Gratitude is expressed in the book's Acknowledgement to
many invaluable *sahṛdaya*s and* hitaiṣī*s, who poured assistance like the
*megha* in the *Meghadūta* pours nourishing rain.

Details regarding content as follows:

*Book description*

It is often assumed that classical Sanskrit poetry and drama (*kāvya*) lack
a concern with the tragic. However, as made clear in this book, this is far
from the case. This re-evaluation of 'tragedy' in classical Sanskrit
literature draws on a wide range of Sanskrit dramas, poems and treatises –
many passages among which are translated for the first time into English –
to provide a fuller history and re-conceptualization of the tragic in
Indian literature from the second to the fourth centuries.



Looking at Kālidāsa, the most celebrated writer of Sanskrit poetry and
drama (*kāvya*), this book argues that constructions of absence and grief
are central to Kālidāsa’s compositions and that these ‘tragic middles’ are
much more sophisticated than previously understood. For Kālidāsa, tragic
middles are modes of thinking, in which he confronts theological and
philosophical issues. Through a close literary analysis of the tragic
middle in five of his works, the *Abhijñānaśakuntalā*, the *Raghuvaṃśa,*
the *Kumārasambhava,* the *Vikramorvaśīya* and the *Meghadūta,* the book
demonstrates the importance of tragedy for classical Indian poetry and
drama in the early centuries of the common era. These depictions from the
Indian literary sphere, by their particular function and interest in the
phenomenology of grief, challenge and reshape in a wholly new way our
received understanding of tragedy.


*Chapters and sub-headings:*

*Preamble: A note on the Indian 'Medieval'*


*Introduction Part I. The Tragic Middle*

The Legacy of Looking

The Cry of the Krauñca

The Politics of Looking

George Eliot and Endings

William James and the 'Second Birth'

Northrop Frye and unfinished comedy

Kālidāsa and 'the second birth'

Pathos in Indian Aesthetics

Looking Elsewhere


*Introduction Part II. Doubt, Obstacle, Deliberation, Death, Disaster: the
Trial in Indian Aesthetics*

Introducing the Trial

An overview of the theory of narrative structure

The *avasthā*s

The *prakṛti*s

The *sandhi*s

Abhinavagupta and controversies over the *avamarśa*/*vimarśa*

Character, survival and a universe of hazard

The Trial in the works of Kālidāsa

A précis of plots


*Chapter 1. Kālidāsa and his Inheritance of Grief*

Why Kālidāsa?

Bharata and Kālidāsa

The *Viśvantarajātaka *of Āryaśūra

The *Saundarananda* of Aśvaghoṣa

The *Rāmāyaṇa*

Fate in the *Rāmāyaṇa*

The curse in the *Rāmāyaṇa*

Fate (*vidhi*), cure (*śāpa*), retribution (*karma*), God (Īśvara): tragic
agency in Kālidāsa


*Chapter 2. The Map of Melancholy: Lamentation and the Philosophical Pause*

The joyous* kārya*s of the Raghuvaṃśa and the Kumārasambhava

Lamentation (*vilāpa*) and the 'tragic middle' in the* Raghuvaṃśa* and the
*Kumārasambhava*

Purposes of the tragic middle

Kinship between Aja's lament (*Ajavilāpa*) and Rati's lament (*Rativilāpa)*

The map of melancholy


*Chapter 3. On Losing and Finding Love: Conflict, Obstacle and Drama*

Divided heroes in the *Śakuntalā* and the *Vikramorvaśīya*

The Tragic Middle in the *Śakuntalā*

The knowledge of the heart

Not knowing correctly and doubt in the *Śakuntalā*

Awareness and the ring

Perceiving reality

A 'madman' sings and dances: the tragic middle in the *Vikramorvaśīya*


*Chapter 4. The Altered Heart: Anguish, Entreaty and Lyric*

The *Meghadūta* as a lament

The *Meghadūta *as the tragic middle made independent

'Internally liquid': cloud and* yakṣa* as one

Love messages and 'insentient' messengers in earlier poetry

The tragic middle in the *Meghadūta*


*Conclusion*


Thank you.


With best wishes,


Bihani Sarkar BA (English, First Class Honours), MPhil, D.Phil (Sanskrit),
(Oxon.)
Lecturer (hourly paid) in Religious Studies: Hinduism and Buddhism,
University of Winchester (January-May 2021).
Associate Faculty Member Oriental Institute, University of Oxford
(2019-2022).
Research Member of Common Room, Wolfson College, University of Oxford
(2020-2022).

*Heroic Shāktism: The Cult of Durgā in Ancient Indian Kingship*:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/heroic-shktism-9780197266106?cc=gb&lang=en&

Alokā: Online Lessons in Ancient Indian Texts and Traditions:
https://www.bihanisarkar.com/


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