Epics, Khilas, and Puranas: Continuities and Ruptures.

• Author: Rocher, Ludo

Epics, Khilas, and Puranas: Continuities and Ruptures. Edited by PETTERI KOSKIKALLIO. Zagreb: CROATIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AND ARTS, 2005. Pp. xxviii + 683.

In 2002, the same year in which the proceedings of the second Dubrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Puranas were published, the DICSEP group met for the third time in Dubrovnik. The group was larger than in 1999--there were now twenty-three contributors; the text of the resulting volume is longer--sixty-seven percent longer, to be precise.

In some ways this volume continues the tradition established by the two earlier ones. The general editor--Mislav Jezic replacing Radoslav Katicic--sets the stage with a preface that comments on every article in greater detail than is possible in this review. For the third time Greg Bailey writes the introductory chapter. There are again two exhaustive indexes, one of all passages cited (pp. 611-34), and one general index (pp. 635-60). Finally, Croatian summaries of all papers--except Bailey's initial one--prepared by Mislav Jezic, complete the volume (pp. 661-79).

New is the extension of research on the epics and puranas far into the past. In the longest essay of the volume (pp. 21-80), Michael Witzel examines in detail "The Vedes and the Epics: Some Comparative Notes on Persons, Lineages, Geography, and Grammar."

The most striking novelty of DICSEP 3, no doubt, is that, "due to the impulse given by the work of Horst Brinkhaus" (p. xi; Brinkhaus was the sole contributor on the Harivamsa in DICSEP 2, pp. 157-76; in DICSEP 1 the Harivamsa was hardly mentioned), in between nine articles on the epics (only one of these on the Ramayana) and eight on the puranas, there are now six contributions under the heading "Harivamsa, the Khila," which "attracted the contributions of the most prominent Ramayana scholars at DICSEP 3" (p. xiv): Mary Brockington (on the absent presence of Rama Dasarathi), Peter Schreiner (on Siva in the Khila), John Brockington (on Jarasamdha; cf. his article in DICSEP 2, pp. 73-88), Horst Brinkhaus (on duplicates in the Somavams'a account), Andre Couture (on the words yoga and yogin), and Christopher Minkowski (on Nilakantha's Harivamsa commentary). For a team of scholars so far mainly concerned with the Mahabharata and the Ramayana on the one hand, and the puranas on the other, no text could better serve the theme of their third conference, "Continuities and Ruptures," than the Harivamsa.

One continuing concern...