Abstract
The name of Devabodha is well-known to specialists of Mahābhārata textual traditions: author of the Jñānadīpikā or “Lamp of Knowledge”, the earliest extant commentary on the Great Epic, he has been duly referred to by the critical editors of this text along with his successors such as Vimalabodha, Arjunamiśra and Nīlakaṇṭha. Yet Devabodha remains an almost complete mystery regarding the period or the place he lived in, or even the conditions that urged him to compose a commentary. Since he commented on a version of the Mahābhārata belonging to the Northern recension and was quoted by Vimalabodha between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, he has been approximately assigned to eleventh-century Northern India or Kashmir, but till now no positive evidence has been brought forth to validate this opinion. The purpose of the present paper is to shed some light on this important author by proving that, contrary to a prejudice rehearsed in every history of Indian literature, he is one and the same person with a medieval poet and dramatist called Devabodha or sometimes Devabodhi. Then follows a critical and synthetic account on what we can know about Devabodha’s life and career from all the available sources.
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©2016 by De Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research articles
- Towards a Relative Chronology of Śaṅkara’s Works
- Hinduism in the Roman Catholic Imagination between the Two World Wars
- Condition d’exilée: rapt, mariage et mysticisme au féminin dans la littérature indienne
- Charming bouquet or wedding garland? The structures of the Jain heroine ‘novel’ in Prakrit From Kuvalayamālā (779) to Maṇoramā (1082)
- Max Ladner (1889–1963) und die frühe Rezeption des Buddhismus in der Schweiz
- Urbanity in the Vernacular: Narrating the City in Modern South Asian Literatures
- Authorship and Authority in the Sanskrit Literary Tradition of the Swaminarayana Movement: Śikṣāpatrī and Satsaṅgijīvanam
- New Light on Devabodha, the Earliest Extant Commentator on Mahābhārata
- Après l’exil: l’ère du vide et de l’absence dans Khālī jagah de Geetanjali Shree
- A Note on the Analysis of Two Early Rājasthānī Dādūpanthī Manuscripts
- Indian Principal-Agent Theory, Or, How Varuṇa Helps the King to be Just
- Rezensionen – Comptes rendus – Reviews
- Altenburger, Roland / Wan, Margaret B. / Børdahl, Vibeke: Yangzhou, A Place in Literature: The Local in Chinese Cultural History
- Bossler, Beverly: Gender and Chinese History. Transformative Encounters
- Scherrer-Schaub, Cristina: Old Tibetan Studies. Dedicated to the Memory of R. E. Emmerick
- Schneider, Hanna: Tibetische Handschriften und Blockdrucke / Schneider, Hanna: Tibetische Handschriften und Blockdrucke
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research articles
- Towards a Relative Chronology of Śaṅkara’s Works
- Hinduism in the Roman Catholic Imagination between the Two World Wars
- Condition d’exilée: rapt, mariage et mysticisme au féminin dans la littérature indienne
- Charming bouquet or wedding garland? The structures of the Jain heroine ‘novel’ in Prakrit From Kuvalayamālā (779) to Maṇoramā (1082)
- Max Ladner (1889–1963) und die frühe Rezeption des Buddhismus in der Schweiz
- Urbanity in the Vernacular: Narrating the City in Modern South Asian Literatures
- Authorship and Authority in the Sanskrit Literary Tradition of the Swaminarayana Movement: Śikṣāpatrī and Satsaṅgijīvanam
- New Light on Devabodha, the Earliest Extant Commentator on Mahābhārata
- Après l’exil: l’ère du vide et de l’absence dans Khālī jagah de Geetanjali Shree
- A Note on the Analysis of Two Early Rājasthānī Dādūpanthī Manuscripts
- Indian Principal-Agent Theory, Or, How Varuṇa Helps the King to be Just
- Rezensionen – Comptes rendus – Reviews
- Altenburger, Roland / Wan, Margaret B. / Børdahl, Vibeke: Yangzhou, A Place in Literature: The Local in Chinese Cultural History
- Bossler, Beverly: Gender and Chinese History. Transformative Encounters
- Scherrer-Schaub, Cristina: Old Tibetan Studies. Dedicated to the Memory of R. E. Emmerick
- Schneider, Hanna: Tibetische Handschriften und Blockdrucke / Schneider, Hanna: Tibetische Handschriften und Blockdrucke