In the past thirty-five years, there have been a plethora of scholarly studies of retellings of the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata epic narrative traditions. But what about retellings of Hindu stories outside of the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata such as the Upaniṣads, the Purāṇas, sthalapurāṇas, hagiographies, and other religious narratives? The goal of this panel is to highlight the outstanding diversity of premodern and modern retellings of Hindu narratives throughout South Asia. This panel brings together four scholars of religion who examine retellings of Hindu stories in multiple different languages including Sanskrit, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, and English and in several different mediums such as narrative poems, comic books, magazines, and television serials. The four papers in this panel span diverse locations in South Asia from Gujarat to Kashmir to Tamil Nadu to Andhra Pradesh and integrate approaches from different fields including comparative literature, anthropology, gender studies, and media studies.
Though narratives from the Purāṇas and epics are far more prevalent in Hindu imaginings, the Upaniṣads also provide a series of enduring stories. This paper focuses on modern refigurations of the didactic dialogue between Naciketas and Yama in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad. The narrative itself is relatively straightforward: a young child made to wait at Death’s doorstep is granted three wishes, one of which is to learn about death itself. However, its complex teachings, including the famous chariot analogy, have long invited reflection and interpretation. Exploring three different formations—in Advaita Vedānta storytelling, in a 1979 issue of the illustrated series Amar Chitra Katha, and in a 45-minute water and light show in Gandhinagar, Gujarat—I attend to how the chosen form of the retelling factors into differential emphases aimed at diverse target audiences.
The eleventh-century Kathāsaritsāgara of Somadeva is a magisterial narrative, so large as nearly to constitute an encyclopedia of Indian story literature, this even as it is likely to convey only a fraction of the original text of which it is a retelling, Guṇāḍhya’s perhaps sixth-century, Paiśācī-language narrative, the Bṛhatkathā. In this presentation, I identify unique features of what is in fact only one of many retellings of Guṇāḍhya’s now-lost work. I argue it presents a double narrative, transforming a text originally steeped in Buddhism and mercantile life into a Brahmanical work tied to a popularized understanding of Śaiva tantrism. Ultimately, the narrative claims that kings need Brahmins to succeed in the world and beyond, and that Brahmins need tantra—and the powers that can be furnished at the edges of polite society in the dangerous charnel grounds—if they are fruitfully to guide kings to the same.
This paper explores a retelling of the origins of the goddess temple in Tiruchanur (also known as Alamelumangapuram) a couple of kilometers outside of the bustling pilgrimage town of Tirupati. Though it is an oft overlooked story, this paper will explore 18th-century poet Tarigonda Veṅgamāmba’s retelling of this story found in her Veṅkaṭācala Māhātmyamu. This version of the story spends time not only describing the ascetic practices of the goddess Lakṣmī, but also exploring the domestic tensions that developed as a result of her separation from Viṣṇu. Through analysis of a prolonged discussion about the roles of wives and women, I argue, Vengamamba considers the possibility of a woman’s ability to simultaneously commit to asceticism and marriage. Further, because this conversation occurs between Lakṣmī and Kapila (a renounced sage, and an incarnation of Viṣṇu), I read their conversation as a kind of meta-textual commentary on the narrative.
The narrative popularly known as the Vetala Tales has unknown origins and prolific variations, including four Sanskrit recensions and several regional linguistic variations. In more recent times, the Vetala Tales have taken the form of children’s stories in Amar Chitra Katha comics and Chandamama magazines, two televised serials, at least three films (with a fourth in the making), and innumerable adaptations in print, including a Vikram and Vetala management training manual. In this paper, I ask two questions pertaining to this narrative: What makes this narrative possess such lasting influence and popularity? Secondly, why is a didactic narrative about ethics presented with the stylings of horror? I will explore two modern adaptations of the Vetala Tales to answer these questions – the long-running serialized children’s stories in the Chandamama magazines (specifically English and Tamil), and the Ramanand Sagar television serial Vikram aur Betaal (1985) telecast on Doordarshan.