Narrating Shivaji the Great
Issue: Vol 10 No. 2 (2016)
Journal: Religions of South Asia
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Buddhist Studies Islamic Studies
DOI: 10.1558/rosa.34407
Abstract:
This article investigates the narrative constraints that led Kavindra Paramananda to include accounts of family feuds in his epic poem, the Śivabhārata, even while the purpose of the text was to praise the Maharashtrian king Shivaji (d. 1680) as a great epic hero. Written at the time of the king’s coronation and presumably under his direction, the Śivabhārata may have taken the Mahābhārata as a useful model for dealing with family conflict when aspects of such conflict were impossible to ignore. The essay also considers the effects of assumed narrative frames when modern scholars, like the author himself, challenge those assumptions.
Author: James W Laine
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