Dhruv Nagar’s paper analyzes Nīlakaṇṭha’s 17th century commentary on the Mahābhārata, demonstrating how its non-dualist (advaita) philosophical framework is articulated, and addressing the commentary’s views on the meaning of the Mahābhārata. Nataliya Yanchevskaya’s paper examines the Mahābhārata’s cosmological framework, exploring the tension between human agency and cosmic predetermination in the Mahābhārata.
This paper considers the status of Nīlakaṇṭha Caturdhara’s Mahābhārata commentary, Bhāratabhāvadīpa (‘Illuminating the Inner Meaning of the Mahābhārata’), as a ‘meta-epic’, following Lena Linne’s articulation of the meta-epic genre as commenting upon the nature of an epic, a ‘medium’ or ‘locus’ of meta-generic reflection. Can such a framework be brought to bear upon attempts to comment holistically on the Sanskrit epic? A variety of works have alleged a meta-narrative of a deeper spiritual, typically (if not exclusively), non-dualist (advaita) core to an epic’s surface form (Adhyātmarāmāyaṇa, Mokṣopāya, Bhārtabhāvadīpa, the Gītā genre). Many often fall between the cracks of South Asian genre classification. A few significant features seem shared by them: they claim to be about the whole epic, revealing its hidden (gūḍha/rahasya) import, one that is necessarily spiritual (ādhyātmika) and often representative of a non-dualist (advaitic) framework. The following questions are addressed: What are the means and motivations of trying to read Mahābhārata as a mokṣaśāstra? How does this tally with the epic’s own self-understanding and purpose, given its rhetoric of despair and finitude? And what may be the stakes of incorporating an epic into a non-dualist canon?
Kālavāda, a doctrine of time, emerges as one of the central themes in the Mahābhārata. Through this conceptual lens, time functions as a fundamental regulatory force governing the universe and determining varying manifestations of dharma (righteousness) across successive cosmic cycles (yugas). Crucially, within this system that Ya. Vassilkov calls “philosophy of heroic fatalism,” time transcends its conventional understanding and becomes a supreme arbiter of human destiny—an omnipotent force predetermining the outcomes of all actions.
This paper engages with the conference’s presidential theme of ‘freedom’ by examining multiple complex tensions between human agency and cosmic predetermination that permeate the Mahābhārata. The investigation centers on several fundamental questions: To what extent do epic heroes exercise genuine autonomy? What forces ultimately determine their actions and afterlife? And perhaps most critically, how might we understand the concept of freedom within the Mahābhārata’s distinctive cosmological framework?