Table of Contents

Introduction: The Aesthetics of Suffering in the Mahabharata

Chapter One: The Implicit Literary Theory of the Mahabharata

Chapter Two: Dharma and Rupture in the Game of Dice

Chapter Three: The Eyesight of Insight: Dhrtarastra and Moral Blindness

Chapter Four: Time that Ripens and Rots All Creatures

Chapter Five: Heaven's Riddles or the Hell Trick: Theodicy and Narrative Strategies

Conclusion: Dharma and Suffering

Appendix: Glossary of Characters

About the Author

Before joining the Religion Department at Boston University in 2010, Emily Hudson taught at Harvard University as a lecturer in the history and literature program. Situating herself methodologically at the crossroads of religion and literature, the history of religions, and religious ethics, Hudson's teaching and research interests focus on South Asian literature and literary theory and comparative religious ethics.

Reviews

"Hudson differentiates her study [of dharma in the epic the Mahabharata] from previous works by examining the epic as a literary text, arguing that the dharma operates via 'narrative strategies' that convey ethical meaning... By combining reader-response and Sanskrit literary theory with narrative ethics, she is able to demonstrate the contentious relationship between suffering and dharma as experience by the characters in the Mahabharata and
the impact it produces on its audience... Highly recommended." --CHOICE
"Hudson s text is doing some 'disorienting' work of its own by opening up this space and allowing for the above reflections to take shape. It is work that is needed and welcome."--Journal of Religion