Raja Yudhisthira

In Raja Yudhisthira, Kevin McGrath brings his comprehensive literary, ethnographic, and analytical knowledge of the epic Mahabharata to bear on the representation of kingship in the poem.

Kevin McGrath is an Associate of the Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard University. He is the author of Arjuna Paava: The Double Hero in Epic Mahabharata; In The Kacch: A Memoir of Love and Place; Heroic Krsna: Friendship in Epic Mahabharata; Jaya: Performance in Epic Mahabharata; Stri: Feminine Power in the Mahabharata; and The Sanskrit Hero: Karna in Epic Mahabharata.

This is a remarkable, learned work that shows great sensitivity, born of very close reading, to the epic Mahabharata as an oral performative phenomenon. Kevin McGrath's arguments for the nature of archaic kingship envisioned by the poets of the Mahabharata as one in which 'sovereignty' is of a cooperative rather than absolute nature are persuasive and eye-opening. His exposition and clarification of the ideals of kingship in the Mahabharata are masterful: a better summing up of the complexity of the picture for the modern reader could not be found. Anyone interested in Greek epic poetry from a comparative perspective and, more broadly, in Indo-European myth and poetics will profit immensely from this work.