Chapter Seven What Are the Goals of Life?

Chapters in this book

1. Front Matter i
2. Contents vii
3. Illustrations xi
4. Acknowledgments xiii
5. Note on Transliteration xvii
6. Foreword xix
7. An Introduction to the Literature of the Mahābhārata 1
8. The Manyness of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata
9. Ā Garbhāt 37
10. The Invention of Irāvān 53
11. Bodies That Don’t Matter 69
12. Sanskrit Mahābhāratas in Poetry and Performance
13. The Remembered Self 91
14. The Lord of Glory and the Lord of Men 117
15. What Are the Goals of Life? 135
16. How Do We Remember Śakuntalā? 151
17. Regional and Vernacular Mahābhāratas from Premodern South Asia
18. An Old Dharma in a New Age 171
19. Three Poets, Two Languages, One Translation 191
20. The Fate of Kīcaka in Two Jain Apabhramsha Mahābhāratas 213
21. The Power-Politics of Desire and Revenge 237
22. Blessed Beginnings 257
23. Mahābhāratas of Modern South Asia
24. How to Be Political without Being Polemical 279
25. The Epic and the Novel 305
26. Draupadī, Yājñasenī, Pāñcālī, Kṛṣṇā 325
27. From Excluded to Exceptional 343
28. A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away 361
29. Bibliography 385
30. Contributors 411
31. Index 415