ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the forest-dwelling hermit figure appearing throughout epic and puranic literature through the lens of Hinduism's dual religious inheritance as articulated in the Mahabharata: one leaning toward world-affirmation, termed pravrtti dharma, the other leaning toward world-abnegation, termed nivrtti dharma. It examines the manner in which the disparate religious strands of brahmanic ideology are collectively encoded in the figure of the forest-dweller. The opposition between these two ideologies is tantamount to the opposition innate to the associations of two spheres, grama and aranya, village and wilderness. The ideological beauty of the forest-dweller within the religious imagination is his ability to simultaneously embody the religious impulses of renouncer and householder, rejecting the specific sphere of the village, without rejecting the core elements of villager religion. The religious modus operandi of forest hermits is murky, and intentionally so.
