%0 Journal Article
%T Augmenting the Past: Historical and Political Consciousness in V¨¡lm¨©ki¡¯s Uttarak¨¡£¿£¿a
%A Robert P. Goldman
%J Studies in History
%@ 0973-080X
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0257643018772406
%X The R¨¡m¨¡ya£¿a of V¨¡lm¨©ki, although widely renowned as a k¨¡vya, and, indeed, as the very origin and inspiration of the entire genre of poetry, is also understood to be an itih¨¡sa, a history. It shares, in fact, both non-mutually exclusive genre designations with its sister epic, the Mah¨¡bh¨¡rata. Nonetheless, the central books of the work, particularly k¨¡£¿£¿as two through six, in large measure read as much like a romance as they do an account of human military and political history. In this article, I argue that the lack of such history in these books was a concern of the authors of the epic¡¯s seventh and final k¨¡£¿£¿a, the Uttarak¨¡£¿£¿a, and that one of the several functions of this important but generally understudied, frequently criticized and often excised book is to remedy this perceived lack. In support of this argument, I compare the treatment of history in the R¨¡m¨¡ya£¿a and the Mah¨¡bh¨¡rata and examine a series of largely ignored Uttarak¨¡£¿£¿a passages in which the authors appear to revise and extend the military and political history of the earlier k¨¡£¿£¿as in ways suggestive of their reading of the Mah¨¡bh¨¡rata
%K Genre
%K history
%K Mah¨¡bh¨¡rata
%K poetry
%K R¨¡m¨¡ya£¿a
%K Uttarak¨¡£¿£¿a
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0257643018772406