The Great Indian Novel

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A hasty note of disclaimer is due to those readers who may feel, justifiably, that the work that follows is neither great, nor authentically Indian, nor even much of a novel. The Great Indian Novel takes its title not from the author’s estimate of its contents but in deference to its primary source of inspiration, the ancient epic the Mahabharata. In Sanskrit, Maha means great and Bharata means India.

The Mahabharata has not only influenced the literature, art, sculpture and painting of India but it has also moulded the very character of the Indian people. Characters from the Great Epic. . are still household words [which] stand for domestic or public virtues or vices. . In India a philosophical or even political controversy can hardly be found that has no reference to the thought of the Mahabharata.

C. R. Deshpande,Transmission of the

Mahabharata Tradition

The essential Mahabharata is whatever is relevant to us in the second half of the twentieth century. No epic, no work of art, is sacred by itself; if it does not have meaning for me now, it is nothing, it is dead.

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