ABSTRACT
The vast Maha¯bha¯rata epic teems with interesting characters, and one of the most stunning and consistently intriguing is the centrally important figure of Bhı¯s
˙ ma, the ironic patriarch of the Bha¯rata clan, known to all as ‘grand-
father’, though in fact a lifelong celibate. Not only was Bhı¯s ˙ ma the most dom-
inating figure of the epic and one of its most thematically ‘male’ warriors, the very core of Bhı¯s
˙ ma’s persona was constituted by a tangle of issues that centre
upon the sexual dimorphism of human beings, human sexual experience, and intrafamilial and intergenerational conflict. And there is more to him than all this! A reincarnation of the god Sky, he was, at an age of about one hundred years (Allen 2005b: 23 n. 4), the most learned ks
˙ atriya sage of the passing age,
the man who taught the victorious new king Yudhis ˙ t ˙ hira after the war that the
rule of a kingdom could be understood as truly righteous (truly constituting deeds of dharma) in spite of all appearances to the contrary (Sinha 1991; Fitzgerald 2006: 280-2). And in the Sanskrit Maha¯bha¯rata Bhı¯s
˙ ma is one of
the principal and most open advocates of Kr ˙ s ˙ n ˙ a as a divinity.
