ABSTRACT
In the introduction to his translation of the fifth book of the Maha¯bha¯rata, van Buitenen writes: ‘Epic myth [as opposed to Puranic myth] has a different character: it is frankly more manly . . . Duryodhana’s final taunt to Yudhis
˙ t ˙ hira, “Show you are a man!” is the essence of the Maha¯bha¯rata as
epic’ (1978: 168). On the one hand, one might respond that van Buitenen is simply seeing the epic through masculinist lenses, and that a feminist analysis of the epic might reveal many rich currents of femininity animating and propelling the epic. This is partly what I am doing. Yet on the other hand, one might, also from a feminist perspective, agree with him, as I also do. Masculinity and its symbolic correlates are highly charged and contested themes in the epic, permeating the dharma that undergirds the Maha¯bha¯rata and constituting some of its most poignant preoccupations in a way that femininity does not.
