Free Download Alf Hiltebeitel, "World of Wonders: The Work of Adbhutarasa in the Mahabharata and the Harivamsa"
English | ISBN: 0197538223 | 2021 | 368 pages | PDF | 36 MB
In World of Wonders, Alf Hiltebeitel addresses the Mahabharata and its supplement, the Harivamsa, as a single literary composition. Looking at the work through the critical lens of the Indian aesthetic theory of rasa, "juice, essence, or taste," he argues that the dominant rasa of these two texts is adbhutarasa, the "mood of wonder." While the Mahabharata signposts whole units of the text as "wondrous" in its table of contents, the Harivamsa foregrounds a stepped-up term for wonder (ascarya) that drives home the point that Vishnu and Krishna are one.