Hiltebeitel Alf. Freud’s Mahabharata

Oxford University Press, 2018. — 337 p. — ISBN: 978–0–19–087835–1This book takes its title seriously, although since Freud never refers to the Mahābhārata, it might at first seem no more than a lure. The volume proceeds through an uneven three-part structure, with the first and lastchapters being the first and third parts, and the middle four chapters constituting the second part. Chapter 1, titled “Freud’s ‘The “Uncanny” ’ and the Mahābhārata,” examines Freud’s essay, “The ‘Uncanny,’ ” and works its way back from it to the Mahābhārata, as from time to time we see how Freud’s thoughts relate to that text. It thus offers only a pointillistic introduction, one in which most ideas hint at fuller treatment in later chapters. Chapters 2 through 5, then, are a medley of varied post-Freudian readings of Mahābhārata scenes, themes, and episodes, viewed through the lenses of authors who are sympathetic with Freud (myself included) and in chapter 5, this includes that of his Indian correspondent, Girindrasekhar Bose. Chapter 6 is titled “Moses and Monotheism and the Mahābhārata: Trauma, Loss of Memory, and the Return of the Repressed.” As the third part of the book, it provides the payoff, explaining what is suggested by the title. Drawing on all preceding chapters, it offers a new theory of the Mahābhārata that can be called “Freud’s Mahābhārata” because he inspired it.
As to the Mahābhārata, it is the “great epic of India,” both in its baseline text of the Poona Critical Edition and in the Mahābhārata tradition as it unfolds. Thus, I single out three different Mahābhāratas that I have come to study. That is, since 2011, I have made a distinction between text and tradition, pointing out that the tradition begins with the earliest known Sanskrit interpolations in the baseline text that are traceable to the epic’s Southern recension. I thus now call the baseline version, derived mainly from the epic’s Northern recension, the text, leaving all subsequent manuscript-based texts, beginning with the Southern recension, as tradition.