Dear Discussants,

 

In his letter (the first re) Jan E.M. Houben writes: "Then in the Mahabharata there is suddenly the major character of Draupadii/Krsnaa marrying all five Pandava brothers." 

 

Suddenly. The unexpected appearance of the motif.

 

Unexpected – and seen as such in the Mbh. (I, CLXLVIII);  the two mythological precedents given there seem to be unknown to those who participate in the exchange of opinions on the project.

 

The creation of the epic is in itself a political act. Why, then, shouldn't we treat the acts of its heroes as mirroring the political ethos of the era?

 

The question arises – why? Why would the epic makers want Draupadi to marry 'all five Pandava brothers'? To my mind – a signal, directed to the prospective audiences of the epic, confirming their belonging to.

 

You were kind enough to kill my supposition – using the philological/logical arsenal of counter-arguments.

 

The Mahabharatian stratigraphy. A difficult subject, in itself.

 

But – to my mind (again) – what is unexpected, devoid of precedents, might be rightly treated as belonging to the epic's later stratum. As something disturbing, a novelty, unsettling in its very unexpectedness. Demanding explanations – and given them, but – unconvincing and weak. Opening the space for the appearance of successive, ever new concepts of feminine power. And freedom. Vide the popularity of the motif of the Draupadi's svayamvara – in its modern film-and-theatrical versions.

 

https://www.google.pl/search?source=hp&ei=LZrUW4fFNLLPrgScvZHAAg&q=draupadi+swayamvar&oq=Draupadi+&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0l10.1903.4327.0.8316.10.7.0.2.2.0.177.634.6j1.7.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..1.9.642.0...0.Tidik47OxuA

 

[About 108,000 results !!!!]

 

A bit more on unexpectedness – no one called my way of thinking on the nature of Indian cultural processes (with their search for the ways of intercommunication) as racist. Not so far.


 

Regards –

 

Artur Karp


2018-10-27 1:30 GMT+02:00 Joydeep via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>:

Dear Andrew,

 

I agree that Oliver has done some careful and interesting work. But in “Stratifying the Mahābhārata,” he makes no claims about the MBh’s dates. Cf. the remark: “I would like to emphasize that these findings do not imply any statement about the sequence of events that led to the composition of the BhīP or of the Mbh. They can be reconciled [both] with theories that postulate a relatively short duration of composition [and] with temporally more extended models […], because the algorithm does not contain a temporal component” (ibid., 134). Oliver explicitly emphasized this point in our conversation in Vienna. See Philology and Criticism, 100, n. 81. I haven’t examined the other articles yet, but now that you have drawn my attention to them I will. A quick perusal reveals that “A Chronometric Approach to Indian Alchemical Literature” doesn’t mention the MBh at all, whereas “Etymological Trends in the Sanskrit Vocabulary” only places the MBh as a whole within a broad period (500 BCE–300 CE) and doesn’t make any claims about strata withinthe MBh. Oliver’s work is valuable precisely because it avoids speculation as to “redactors,” their motives, assumed sequence and rationale for interpolation, Besitzwechsel, etc.

 

All best,

Joydeep

 

Dr. Joydeep Bagchee
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
___________________
What, then, is Philosophy?
Philosophy is the supremely precious.

Plotinus, Enneads I.III.5


On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 6:20 PM Andrew Ollett via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Oliver Hellwig has written some very interesting articles on applying various statistical techniques to Sanskrit texts (including the Mahābhārata) in order to determine "authorial structures" and hence relative dating:


The last article presents a technique for distinguishing sections of a text based on several features (lexical, syntactic, metrical, etc.) while controlling for differences introduced by changing topics.

On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 5:25 PM Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:


On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 12:18 PM Joydeep via INDOLOGY 

How are you identifying the “earlier strata” of the epic? 

 
1) I'd be interested if someone could  point out the scholarly articles on  relative dating of different parts of the Mahabharata.?

2) Could the techniques Michael Witzel pointed out years ago in this posting  to relatively date the books or the Ramayana  be used.  I.e relative occurance of  vai or similar words in vedic position 2 versus elsewhere. ?

3) Could a similar technique be used with other linguistic characteristics.I.e. relative occurance of linguistic characteristics  that are uncommon in vedic but common in classical sanskrit.  Whitney noted use of passive constructions,  participles instead of verbs, substitution of compounds for sentences as characteristic of the change from vedic to the classical language.

Harry Spier

 

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