The Mahabharata Patriline: Gender, Culture, and the Royal Hereditary
Simon Pearce Brodbeck– which I call ‘the Mahbhrata patriline’ even though (and partly because) it begins
before Bharata – and its implications and ramifications within the royal culture
that the text imagines, retrojects, and projects. Part One introduces the survey from
various angles. Part Two explores the patriline and the stories associated with its
characters, in chronological order, down to King Kuru. Part Three takes up where
Part Two left off, continuing down to the Pavas. Part Four explores the final
section of the patriline down through Parikit and Janamejaya. Summaries of each
part can be found at the end of Part One, and in the introductions to Parts Two to
Four.
What lies before you issued from a research project entitled ‘Epic Constructions:
Gender, Myth and Society in the Mahbhrata’, which ran from 2004 to 2007 at
the School of Oriental and African Studies in Bloomsbury, in association with the
Department of the Study of Religions and the Centre for Gender and Religions
Research. I thank Julia Leslie who set up the project; Brian Bocking who managed
it after her death; the Arts and Humanities Research Board who generously funded
it; and all those who participated in and supported the project, discussed my work
with me, and assisted this book’s production in so many ways, most particularly
my colleague Brian Black, who read the Mahbhrata with me and commented
on the book’s first full draft, and my co-conspirator Sîan Hawthorne, who has been
crucial at every stage.