Mythology Chapter_Aritra Basu

This paper looks at feminist retellings of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, tracing the scope and importance of retellings, acceptance of feminist retellings along with a look at examples from the works of Chitra Banerjee Divakurni, Sara Joseph and Mahashweta Devi. The central argument that this paper makes is that epics are not fixed texts and are subjectively interpreted which gives feminists the space to challenge and retell them, and such retelling, when it looks at women's lives-their place in gender relations, their status in family and society and the intersectionality of their marginalities-makes a great contribution to literature and history.

Purpose: Man, in contrast to other creatures, is concerned with spiritual issues such as cognitive, social, artistic, and political concerns. A deep relationship has existed between faith and humanity since the dawn of time, if not before. The various religious and cultural beliefs are reflected in myths. As a result, the history of civilizations is primarily linked to and identified with mythology and religion. With the guidance of mythology and culture, people can better understand their world and the meaning of life. Thousands of years had passed since the epic narratives were penned. However, the astonishing stories continue to uncover conspicuousness in every genre of art and continue to engulf and overwhelm us even today. Epic narratives are still loved not only for their poetic grandeur but also for the highest philosophical principles they contain, which educate us about the art of living. As a result, the Mahabharata is one of the most important writings in Indian culture, and its stories, which practically everyone has grown up hearing, are still relevant today. It is a true embodiment of a useful scripture that offers the modern man with a traditional, moral, and liturgical grounding even in the contemporary society. It is not just a story of morality to be narrated from the generations, but an unending source of study. Plenty of critics have studied the text from many perspectives, still much remains to be discovered and researched. The study intends to read four new retellings of the Mahabharata novels and look afresh into the four powerful female characters, namely, Sathyavati, Gandhari, Kunti, and Draupadi. The study discovers the quest for self-crisis of the four prominent female characters by applying feministic study, power politics, and gender views. The study mainly focuses on the comparison and contrast between the concept of western and Indian feminism. Methodology/Approach: The Literature Review is carried out by the information collected from different sources like educational websites, peer-reviewed journals, and online sources. The proposed research will be carried out relying on the data collected through research journals, doctoral thesis, scholarly articles, and websites. This qualitative approach is conducted mainly based on collecting, examining, and interpreting existing knowledge on the selected topic by focusing on the keywords "Feminism, Prominence, Relevance, Retelling, Self-Crisis, and Western". The methodology of the study is the textual analysis and comparative method. Findings/Result: Vast reading of mythology will enhance the further areas of study. The gap between western feminism and Indian feminism helps to identify the discrimination of women in a clear way. The detailed study of the construction of gender views over the years makes it insightful about the issue. Discover that there is a connection between feminist studies with other theoretical frameworks. Modern retellings of the epic novels widen the scope and understanding of the original work. The scope and relevance of feminism in India are become more clear by comparing and contrasting the Indian and western concepts of feminism.

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND HUMANITARIAN RESEARCH, 2023

Within this complex spectrum of "culture" Indian Literature has represented accurate sufferings of numerous characters. Identity and our skirmish in finding its appropriate nature, has often pressurized the psychic nature of humans, particularly women. To be precise the struggling of marginalized identities is more toilsome in comparison to the "centered" identities. In this phallocentric Indian society, the "white-cis-phallus" is the centre and the remaining becomes the "other". Marginalization can be considered as a chain of events taking place in a society to create certain restrictions for few and power for the rest. Gender, class and caste are further divided into layers, creating a stratified structure where power dynamics moulds and produces identities, not for recognition but for marginalization, oppression. Within this marginalized "remaining" the identity of women and their effort to break the imposed roles of Woman/Wife/Mother is somewhere trapped between the supposed links between "sex" and "gender" which then is to be inherently related and "culturally" bound. Therefore my paper would focus on politicized children"s literature-Brave Rajputs by Anant Pai, and presentation of Tilo in Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni"s The Mistress of Spices, gender-power dynamics in Mahasweta Devi"s Breast Stories, Jhumpa Lahiri"s Lowland, and Khaleid Hosseni"s A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Purakala (UGC Care Journal) Vol-31-Issue-41-May -2020, 2020

This article focuses on the unspoken women of Indian mythologies. It considers a few novels written by Indian women writers as 'Revisionist fiction' that subvert the male voices and offer readers the re-imagined stories in female voices. Revisionism is one of the techniques adopted by feminist writers to rediscover the old texts. It is to create a sense of history for seeking public recognition to own and determine that history. It analyses how Kavitha Kane Kane reconstructs a gynocentric version of the mythological stories with a feminist viewpoint.

2008

Along with the heroines of strīdharma (women’s law), Indian Epics present a number of controversial, many-sided figures pointing back to female counter-archetypes. In spite of their unconventionality, these characters maintain an incisive influence over the collective imagination of both ancient and modern India. Moreover, they play a prime role in the debate between Tradition and innovation that goes on, as heated as ever, among the scholars as well as the public, in the West and in India. These anti-heroines (who are not only antithetical to the canonical champions of virtue of the Epics, but also fail to fit in the established nāyikā categories of Kāvya, art literature), are now finding a new lease of life in contemporary Indian literature. This is the case, for example, in works like Yajnaseni: The Story of Draupadi, of Pratibha Ray, and Kaikeyi of Amreeta Syam – not to mention many Bollywood productions. These “unique females” – to whom we must add women from different spheres of existence, like the demoness Śūrpaṇakhā – testify to the existence of voices who already in the Mahābhārata and in the Rāmāyaṇa, did not ‘join the chorus’. And it may well be for that very reason that also they are points of reference, albeit controversial, for the Indian civilization.

THE LITERARY VISION, 2023

Woman is said to be the most beautiful creation of God on this planet. She is herself the origin of life and ultimate creator. She is the foundation of family who embraces everyone with her unconditional love and care as a grandmother, mother, daughter, sister and wife. She forms nearly half of the total population and thus has always been a centre of study and discussion in Indian literature. The Indian writers have continuously tried to present the complicated world of women from different perspectives and points of view. They have responsibly taken up the various issues and problems of women, their anxiety, pain and suffering. These writers have expressed their views and concerns through their work. Woman's condition and position in Indian society have undergone many changes from ancient times to the present. This article is an attempt to critically assess the depiction of woman in Indian literature since ancient times.

Routledge, 2021

A country's culture is enriched by its literature along with other things. And ancient epics, mythological texts are also a crucial part of it. India has two such Sanskrit epics among many other excellent works by other renowned poets – Mahabharata and Ramayana. Of these Mahabharata is the tale of a war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas who were cousins on the question of empire. But it is also a saga of multiple stories – stories of exclusion, of deprivation and oppression, of domination and treachery. The very grand range of the Mahabharata provides scope for reading it from a diverse perspective – be it from a gender perspective, a caste based analysis or a materialistic interpretation. While it gave us heroes in the fringe like Eklavya and Karna whose destinies were decided by their caste backgrounds, it also gave us strong female characters like Kunti and Draupadi. It gave us interesting characters like Amba/Shikhandi which brought forth the fluidity of human sexuality. The multiplicity of characters and their stories rendered Mahabharata a peculiar complexity. This paper will relook at Mahabharata from one of the many possible perspectives. It will look at Mahabharata from a feminist perspective with special emphasis on the character of Draupadi. It will try to trace the feminist assertion and subversion in the epic through her role and her engagement with the male characters. This paper will try to situate this narrative in the larger tradition of multiple readings of Mahabharata.

Jilin Daxue Xuebao (Gongxueban)/Journal of Jilin University (Engineering and Technology Edition), 2024

By foregrounding Panchaali's voice, Divakaruni invites readers to reconsider the roles and agency of women not only in ancient mythology but also in contemporary society. Through an analysis of bliss and sadness, struggles and triumphs, heartbreaks and achievements, strengths and faults, the paper aims to uncover the depth and complexity of Panchaali or Draupadi's character, "It is her life, her voice, her questions and her vision that I invite you into The Palace of Illusions" (Divakaruni 15). Divakaruni's work unveils the narrative threads that have remained invisible within the male-dominated retellings of historical and mythological tales. By centring the experiences of women, she sheds light on overlooked aspects of these stories, offering fresh perspectives and insights that resonate with contemporary audiences.