An interesting read. I was raised Hindu (and have read the Mahabharata. My interest in reading your piece was to learn a bit about how the story reads to a Westerner, without context of the culture and religion. My take-away from Hinduism and from the Mahabharata isn't that it hypothesizes that the world is just or rule-bound - though, Hindus call the religion "Sanatan dharma", which roughly translates to something like "the eternal law" or "the eternal path" - a set of rules and guidelines for living life, so to someone more familiar with the Abrahamic traditions Hinduism would probably appear quite rule-bound. The Mahabharata is a later epic, when the world was less rule-bound and more sinful or just than the Vedic era (etc), for example - it is set during the third of four eras. A bit more context: the story of Savitri and Satyavan is a famous one - most children already know it and it's frequently told.
Thank you for this comment. I can see how Savitri's saving of Satyavan would capture the imagination. Please make any corrections or suggestions you want, since, as you say, I don't have some important religious or cultural context to help me here. I'm only in the middle of the Udyoga Parva, but I agree with you that the world of the Mahabharata isn't coming across as rule-bound. I'm just trying to understand dharma from the context of the stories, because it seems untranslatable. All those mini-lectures the sages have given so far about dharma seem to avoid definition per genus et differentia and instead pile up hundreds of examples. So of course extracting a sharp definition from that flurry of examples would be a very Western thing to do. I'm not doing that, nor am I even trying to interpret what I read. Rather, I'm paying attention to what the stories are doing to me.
Dharma is a very untranslatable concept. It's one of those terms that used in so many contexts that it's hard to also explain without understanding the contexts behind it. It's something like "path", "duty", "law", "religion", "role in society and life", it's a lot, as are a lot of philosophical concepts. The lectures are philosophical, pondering the deeper meaning instead of giving you a definition, sort of dharma 3.0 instead of the basics, so I'd imagine not helping.
When I was a kid, I loved the story of Savitri. She stood up to her brothers and to the god of death himself for what she wanted. She rescued the prince, instead of the other way around. It felt very feminist (though I think a lot of people would read it very differently!).
An interesting read. I was raised Hindu (and have read the Mahabharata. My interest in reading your piece was to learn a bit about how the story reads to a Westerner, without context of the culture and religion. My take-away from Hinduism and from the Mahabharata isn't that it hypothesizes that the world is just or rule-bound - though, Hindus call the religion "Sanatan dharma", which roughly translates to something like "the eternal law" or "the eternal path" - a set of rules and guidelines for living life, so to someone more familiar with the Abrahamic traditions Hinduism would probably appear quite rule-bound. The Mahabharata is a later epic, when the world was less rule-bound and more sinful or just than the Vedic era (etc), for example - it is set during the third of four eras. A bit more context: the story of Savitri and Satyavan is a famous one - most children already know it and it's frequently told.
Thank you for this comment. I can see how Savitri's saving of Satyavan would capture the imagination. Please make any corrections or suggestions you want, since, as you say, I don't have some important religious or cultural context to help me here. I'm only in the middle of the Udyoga Parva, but I agree with you that the world of the Mahabharata isn't coming across as rule-bound. I'm just trying to understand dharma from the context of the stories, because it seems untranslatable. All those mini-lectures the sages have given so far about dharma seem to avoid definition per genus et differentia and instead pile up hundreds of examples. So of course extracting a sharp definition from that flurry of examples would be a very Western thing to do. I'm not doing that, nor am I even trying to interpret what I read. Rather, I'm paying attention to what the stories are doing to me.
Dharma is a very untranslatable concept. It's one of those terms that used in so many contexts that it's hard to also explain without understanding the contexts behind it. It's something like "path", "duty", "law", "religion", "role in society and life", it's a lot, as are a lot of philosophical concepts. The lectures are philosophical, pondering the deeper meaning instead of giving you a definition, sort of dharma 3.0 instead of the basics, so I'd imagine not helping.
When I was a kid, I loved the story of Savitri. She stood up to her brothers and to the god of death himself for what she wanted. She rescued the prince, instead of the other way around. It felt very feminist (though I think a lot of people would read it very differently!).
You are making progress! Always happy to read these :)
You are definitely The Man, RBS.