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Pradyumna in the Mahābhārata
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Abstract
This chapter introduces the earliest extant textual materials concerning Pradyumna in the Mahābhārata, and examines first the Saubhavadhaparvan of Book 3 and the club battle of the Vṛṣṇis in Book 16. In both of these episodes, Pradyumna doubles or stands in for his father in ways that prefigure later developments of the Pradyumna mythology. Second, the chapter pursues the connection between the physical evidence of the preceding chapter and the emerging Pāñcarātra movement as attested by the Mahābhārata’s Nārāyaṇīyaparvan. Finally and more broadly, certain patterns in the Mahābhārata’s discourses on sex and gender are introduced, which remain key reference points in all subsequent chapters. Most important here are a set of conflicting essentializations regarding the nature of women, and the ideological premises of the Mahābhārata’s universe that conduce to the association of sex with violence.
Title: Pradyumna in the Mahābhārata
Description:
Abstract
This chapter introduces the earliest extant textual materials concerning Pradyumna in the Mahābhārata, and examines first the Saubhavadhaparvan of Book 3 and the club battle of the Vṛṣṇis in Book 16.
In both of these episodes, Pradyumna doubles or stands in for his father in ways that prefigure later developments of the Pradyumna mythology.
Second, the chapter pursues the connection between the physical evidence of the preceding chapter and the emerging Pāñcarātra movement as attested by the Mahābhārata’s Nārāyaṇīyaparvan.
Finally and more broadly, certain patterns in the Mahābhārata’s discourses on sex and gender are introduced, which remain key reference points in all subsequent chapters.
Most important here are a set of conflicting essentializations regarding the nature of women, and the ideological premises of the Mahābhārata’s universe that conduce to the association of sex with violence.
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