On the Growth ami Composition of the Sanskrit Epics and Pin anas: Relationship to Kdvya; Social and Economic Context. Proceedings of the Fifth Duhrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Puranas, August 2008.

• Author: Sathaye, Adheesh

On the Growth ami Composition of the Sanskrit Epics and Pin anas: Relationship to Kdvya; Social and Economic Context. Proceedings of the Fifth Duhrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Puranas, August 2008. Edited by I VAN ANDRIJANIC and SVEN SELLMER. Zagreb: CROATIAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 2016. Pp. xxvi + 536. (Rpt. Delhi: Dev Publishers, 2020.)

This collection of nineteen essays constitutes the scholarly outcomes of the fifth "'DICSEP" conference--the Dubrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Puranas--held in the summer of 2008. It is a well-edited, wide-ranging, and valuable compendium that merits placement next to its predecessors on the bookshelf of any serious Sanskritist or historian of early South Asia. The welcome news that the entire five-volume DICSEP series is now being reprinted in India and distributed worldwide by Dev Publishers (https://www.devbooks.co.in) is certain to make this an easier task.

In what has become something of a tradition, the volume begins with a short preface by Mislav Jezic, the general editor of the DICSEP series, that summarizes each paper. This is followed by a comprehensive introductory essay by Greg Bailey that aims to synthesize this heterogenous corpus and to present a coherent vision of epic and puranic studies as a field. Perhaps it is more fitting to say that Bailey's essay captures the state ofone particular sector within the field, as most of the contributors to this volume hail from Europe or the United Kingdom, apart from Bailey and McComas Taylor (Australia) and Alf Hiltebeitel and Patrick Olivelle (United States). None of the contributors to the volume is based in South Asia. There is. furthermore, a noticeable absence of scholarship on early Saiva texts, not to mention goddess-centered traditions, medieval puranas and mahatmyas. and Jain puranic traditions. To be fair, such topics had been featured in previous DICSEP volumes and will undoubtedly reappear in future ones. It is important, however, to keep in mind that this particular volume captures a field of scholarship that is predominantly European in its constituency and whose focus is primarily on the Vaisnava epics and puranas--and especially the Mahabhdrata.

Bailey's introduction indeed regards the Mahabhdrata as a keystone for understanding the growth and development of the entire genre, and for assessing the cultural significance of this type of literature. As Bailey explains, the essays in this volume "contribute to the hypothesis that the MBh is somewhat of a clearing house for the presentation of a more expansive view of the world than what is found in Vedic literature, whilst simultaneously preserving the Vedic brahmin as an essential cultural marker in society" (p. 3). To that end, the papers conduct textually grounded investigations of how Vedic culture, normative Brahman identity, and classical Hindu society are imagined in the epics and puranas and how they are reconciled with alternative configurations of religiosity, community, and power found within Buddhist and other non-Brahmanical traditions. The DICSEP 5 volume thus sharpens our understanding of how the Sanskrit...