Brahmins and Kings: Royal Counsel in the Sanskrit Narrative Literatures (Oxford UP, 2025) examines some of the most well-known and widely circulated narratives in the history of Sanskrit literature, including the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, Visnusarman's famed animal stories (the Panchatantra), Somadeva's labyrinthine Ocean of Rivers of Stories (the Kathasaritsagara), Kalhana's Chronicle of the Kings of Kashmir (the Rajatarangini), and two of the most famous plays in the history of Sanskrit literature, Kalidasa's Abhijnanasakuntala and Harsa's Ratnavali. Offering a sustained close, intertextual reading, John Nemec argues that these texts all share a common frame: they feature stories of the mutual relations of ksatriya kings with Brahmins, and they all depict Brahmins advising political figures.
Date: 17. April 2025
Similar Posts
See All →18. August 2025Ancient History
Learning Ancient Languages
Sanskritist and seasoned teacher Dr. Antonia Ruppel shares her views on the merits and pitfalls of academic enterprise, the brave new world of self-employed scholarship and the teaching of ancient languages.
14. August 2025Intellectual History
India and Its Intellectual Traditions: of Love, Advaita, Power, and Other Things
The book, the third volume to emerge from the enterprise known as 'The Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics', attempts to further the collective's ambition to put into question the certitudes of conventional social science discourse, decolonize …
07. August 2025South Asian Studies
Kalikrama and Abhinavagupta
The Krama School of the Trika Saivism of Kashmir, more familiar as Kalikrama in the contemporary parlance, has turned out to be the most crucial among the monistic Saiva traditions of medieval Kashmir after the Pratyabhijna school, a scenario people could …