Living Heritage of the Epics
‘Living Heritage of the Epics’ the twin epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata are the most important documents representing the civilization discourse in the Indian sub-continent. However, the two epics are not relics of the past but continue to throb in the living pulse of the Nation. No community or region can be said to have remained untouched by the stories and legends of Rama and Sita, and also Pandavas and Kauravas. These tales and their characters sung and celebrated in festivals, inscribed on to geographic landscapes, committed to memory as sacred genealogy, embodied in ritual and sculpted in shrines and temple constitute the very fabric of this plural and diverse nation. The paper looks at some of these living traditions of the twin epics to understand what makes a tradition living, perennial and continuous, responding both to its past and its contemporaneity.
Prof. Molly Kaushal