Alumni Sequence: Asian Classical Traditions Autumn Year 1

Autumn Seminar:

This course introduces Basic Program alumni to three ancient Indian classics: the Rigveda, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita. The Rigveda introduces readers to a world rich with mythic characters and stories, cosmic speculation, chariot warriors, horse sacrifices, cattle-raids, and ritual arcana. The Upanishads analyze those rituals and develop ideas like the transmigration of souls, karma, and the unity of all things. The Bhagavad Gita, a philosophical interlude from the epic Mahâbhârata (read in the tutorial), presents a conversation between the warrior Arjuna and the god Krishna about dharma (duty), touching on the nature of the self and the operations of the universe.

Autumn Tutorial The Indian epic poem the Mahâbhârata, which took shape over a thousand years, is “seven times the Iliad and Odyssey combined, and a hundred times more interesting” (University of Chicago scholar Wendy Doniger). Like the Iliad, this epic centers on a war. The five Pandava brothers struggle against their hundred cousins, and the world takes sides between them. But war makes up only about a fifth of the epic—which also includes moral and philosophical stories, hero tales, origin stories, and accounts of exemplary women such as the Pandava brothers’ wife, Draupadi. We will use a modern retelling by the poet Carole Satyamurti that contains material from all eighteen books of the original. The result is a poetic version that gives contemporary readers a sense of the power and wonder of the whole.

Notes

Online registration closes September 24 at 5 pm CT.

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