Poison, snake, the sharp edge of a razor : yet the highest of Gurus defining female sexuality in the Mahābhārata

• Main Author: Dhand, Arti.
• Other Authors: Young, Katherine K. (advisor)
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: McGill University 2000
• Subjects: Women > Sexual behavior.; Women in literature.
• Online Access: http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=36761

This thesis theorizes the conceptual grid upon which discussions of sexuality are based in India's Great Epic, the Mahabharata . The Mahabharata contains complex multilevel taxonomies of sexuality, framed within hierarchies of religious experience. The thesis isolates two categories of religious experience: pravr&dotbelow;tti dharma ("involvement in the world"), and nivr&dotbelow;tti dharma ("renunciation of the world"). Within nivr&dotbelow;tti dharma, discourses on sexuality are inalienable from discourses on the body, and on asceticism. Within pravr&dotbelow;tti dharma, discourses on sexuality are anchored by parallel discourses on the dharmas of caste and stage of life (varn&dotbelow;asrama dharma), as well as on the dharmas based on sex and familial hierarchy. These subcategories are identified and the place of sexuality within them is drawn in detail.