Jan 03 2024 to Jan 03 2024 6:30 p.m.

EVENT HAS ENDED

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Kumaravyasa’s Bharata is a crown jewel of Kannada literature, beloved by scholars and common people alike. In this 15th-century classic, Kumaravyasa reimagines Vyasa’s epic, making it more compact, more dramatic, and closer to everyday life and language. He dispenses with most didactic material, cuts out subsidiary tales, and concludes with the end of the war. Here, Krishna, who is cool, clever, charming, and charismatic, is the central character, but many others, such as Draupadi, Karna, and Duryodhana leave an indelible mark. He narrates the story through fast-moving, deftly crafted situations, where characters confront grand conflicts and articulate subtle and complex emotions in brilliant metaphorical language. His vision and skill are comparable to that of the great masters, such as Shakespeare and Kalidasa, and demand recognition of this work as a classic of Indian and world literature.

In this series of masterclasses, Professors SN Sridhar and Krishnamurthy Hanuru will introduce the audience to several aspects of Kumaravyasa’s poetic genius, illustrating them with the modern English translations of his classic, of which the first volume has just been published as The Kannada Mahabharata by Harvard University Press in the Murty Classical Library of India series. 

The second class discusses some of the themes, characters and episodes in Kumaravyasa’s Bharata, such as the sexual harassment of Draupadi, the diplomacy of Krishna, the manipulative, determined Duryodhana, the tragedies of Abhimanyu and Karna, the killing of Shishupala, the tragic death of Pandu, and Arjuna’s confrontations with Shiva and Urvashi. We will also see the contemporaneity and universality of Kumaravyasa’s ideas about class, caste, war, power, human relations, patriarchy, women’s status, and so forth.

This session will be conducted in English and Kannada.