For a vivid study on the great living epic ‘Mahabharata’, the Indira Gandhi National Centres for the Arts (IGNCA) will visit five parts in the country and look into its similarities besides variations.
In a Mahabharata Mission, the IGNCA will hold a series of workshops in those places to gather varied elements of regional epics and compare them with the standard Mahabharata, which is written in Sanskrit language.
In a three-day workshop in Puri beginning from Monday around two dozens of delegates from West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Bihar, Odisha and Bangladesh attended the brainstorming session. It was decided that the delegates will visit five parts of India, which bear a sign of the Mahabharata. There, the team will start research works through workshops and collect materials related to the great epic.
While studying, the focus area would be the vernacular Mahabharata and their difference with the Sanskrit versions. The variations found in regional languages representing nativity of the culture would be studied. This apart, the IGNCA will look into the contributions to diversities found in regional write-ups. It would be examined if the uniqueness existing in vernacular epics has gone missing in the Sanskrit Mahabharata
The workshops in those places would also look into the tribal and sub regional languages and bring their distinctions with Sanskrit epic.
More importantly, the social and cultural influence in relation to beliefs, practices and rituals on other episodes would be thoroughly researched by the IGNCA. “Apart from the Sarala Mahabharata, we stressed on eight epics authored by Odia poets. Krusna Singh Mahabharata, Bichitra Bharat, Triguna Bharat, Koshali Mahabharata, etc., were among the Odia pieces came for discussion,” said Dr MK Mishra representing from Odisha. He pointed out that the six texts each three in Bangla and Mithila language came for research works. Among others, Jayant Chatterjee and Ramskar Pant from New Delhi, Dr SK Makbul Islam and Indranil Acharya from West Bengal, Dr Sakar Mustafa from Bangladesh, Dr Deo Sankar Nahir and Ramanath Jha from Bihar, Prof Chigtaranjan Kar and Dr PC lal Yadav from Chhatisgarh, Dr Abhmanyu Sahu, Dr BN Pattnaik, Prof Sudarshan Acharya, Dr Gauranga Charan Das, Dr Debendra Kumar Das etc from Odisha attended the IGNCA session.
President of Odisha Sahitya Akademi Dr Harihar Mishra inaugurated the workshop, assisted by Syam Senapati.
Notably, the delegations found the Ramayan and the Mahabharata, the two great epics of world, as live in the Indian tradition in their multi-forms. While some are oral and written, there are many in visual and ritual practices. The epics of different regions represent their cultural elements in the web of the Ramayan and the Mahabharata.
The aim of the workshop was to write research articles focusing on diversities of regional epics in respect of Sanskrit Mahabharata and explore originality of local texts in their cultural context.
