Beginning 1 October, the Faculty of Oriental Studies will be home to a three-year Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant (RPG-2021-177) on “The Mahābhārata’s Supporting Texts in Literary Culture and History.” The project seeks to understand the purposes and effects of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata’s commentaries and ancillary literature: versified summaries, indices, and other elements of its textual ‘permaculture.’ Sanskrit commentaries on the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa were produced in the same cultural moment, in late medieval and early modern India. The project seeks to understand how they became a vehicle for central debates over Hindu cultural value, and to delineate the implications for the Mahābhārata’s literary and reception history disclosed by its indigenous editorial, philological, and interpretative treatment. There will be two researchers: Chris Minkowski as Principal Investigator and Vishal Sharma as Postdoctoral Researcher. Each will write a monograph. They will jointly produce several journal articles, a bibliographical database of primary and secondary literature, and an edition of Vimalabodha’s commentary, the Durghaṭārthaprakāśinī.
For more information about the project please click here.
