Book Review

Sohini Sarah Pillai, Krishna’s Mahābhāratas: Devotional Retellings of an Epic Narrative, Oxford University Press, 2024, xiv+278, Rs 1095.

As an epic tradition, the Sanskrit Mahābhārata has been narrated, retold, imagined and performed by poets, authors, composers, and storytellers, repeatedly, ever since its composition, till recent times. Sohini Sarah Pillai, in Krishna’s Mahābhāratas have explored these diverse regional retellings across premodern South Asia during 800-1700 CE. However, central to her study consists of a close comparative reading of two Mahābhāratas in particular, including Villiputturar’s fifteenth century Tamil Pāratam and Sabalsingh Chauhan’s seventeenth century Bhasha Mahābhārat. The book, while paying close attention to both of their individual regional and historical specificities, also studies how emotional bhakti functions as a shared literary mode between them.