ABSTRACT
The forest hermitage (in Sanskrit tapovana, literally ‘woodof asceticism’, or dharmâranya, ‘forest of observance’) is afavourite theme in Indian literature, especially in Sanskrit literature.1 In the two great epics, the Mahâbhârata and the Râmâyana, in the dramas (several of which borrow their subject from one of these epics), in the ‘Antiquities’, the vast collection of cosmological legends that are the Purâna, in folktales, novels, and learned poetry (kâvya), the evocation of forestial loneliness and of the men and women who undertake a retreat there, be it voluntary or not, forms an essential ingredient. In these texts, the retreat into the forest is usually presented as a means of access to a purer or stronger form of their being.
