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The ancient Indian epic, Mahabharata, was first composed in Sanskrit and then rendered into Indian vernaculars and other Asian and European languages. This book demonstrates how the epic has shaped the birth of modern politics and thought across India, Europe, Japan, China, Thailand, Iran, and the Arab world. It draws on methodologies of global intellectual and religious history. The contributing authors are specialists on various world-regions. They reveal how kings and peasants, statesmen and revolutionaries, intellectuals, and activists, have invoked the epic to forge their political visions over the past centuries. The epic has thus contributed to state formation, nationalism, as well as the decolonization and democratization of the modern world. This book helps us understand the non-Eurocentric roots of modern political and social ideas, in India and across Asia and Europe. We thereby understand the global origins of contemporary politics, society, and democracy.
Info autore
Milinda Banerjee is a lecturer in the history of modern political thought and political theory at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. His research interests lie in Intellectual History, Global History, South Asian history, and Political Thought. He is the author of The Mortal God: Imagining the Sovereign in Colonial India (2018).Julian Strube is professor of Religious Studies at the University of Göttingen. He works from a global historical perspective about the relationship between religion and politics, as well as debates about the meaning of religion, science, and philosophy. He is the author of Global Tantra: Religion, Science, and Nationalism in Colonial Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Riassunto
The ancient Indian epic, Mahabharata, has shaped modern Asian and European politics, and thought. This book studies the epic to show how kings and peasants, politicians, and revolutionaries, moulded this trajectory.
Prefazione
Demonstrates how the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata has shaped modern politics and thought across Asia and Europe.
