 YAKSHA PRASHNA
What is more delightful than a riddle, to child or adult, king or clown, or person-in-the-street, circa 2000 A.D. or B.C.? And what is more useful, as a medium of instruction, for children, for the unlettered villager or the most sophisticated student? The ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, like the Bible, the Greek & Roman epics and the chronicles of many many cultures, is a compendium of history, myth, folk tales, song and prayer, and discourses on "life, the universe and everything." In 18 books and over 100,000 couplets, the Mahabharata describes events that date no later than the 10th century B.C. The author, Dr. A.V. Srinivasan, who lectures regularly on the epic, has chosen to translate an episode from the "Book of the Forest", in which a prince is tested rigorously on his understanding of dharma, the Hindu code of conduct. " . ..he has chosen a story at the center of which is a series of 122 riddles posed by a powerful being, a Yaksha, to the eldest brother. The Yaksha has already killed the other four brothers, so the answers Yudhishthira gives are a matter of life and death, as, indeed, is dharma... Each set of riddles occupies two pages and includes the Sanskrit original in romanized form, a succint & accurate translation, a commentary, and a brief summary. He frames the riddles with a superb retelling of the story in which they are embedded, itself an instruction in dharma. This small book of 78 pages has several uses. It can serve a group of Hindus well as a basis of study and discussion. It can serve beginning students in Sanskrit as a reader. It provides the non-Hindu with an accessible version of a traditional Hindu method of teaching. Finally, it gives us all insight into what dharma can mean for any of us today... " Professor Dennis Hudson, Departmnt of Religion, Smith College Northampton, Massachusetts [ Periplus Home ] [ India Texts ] © Copyright Periplus Line LLC 1999 | Updated: 10/24/99 |
