| Popis: |
This thesis tells two stories—one of how the god Kṛṣṇa’s humanity and divinity came to be defined in the aftermath of the Mahābhārata’s composition. Another is how the Mahābhārata itself was taken seriously as a Vaiṣṇava text in its reception history. Through a close reading of Sanskrit commentaries, polemics, and narrative texts, I examine how these texts—and the religious communities that composed them—developed a theology of a fully-divine Kṛṣṇa in late-medieval and early modern South India, and how the Mahābhārata became explicitly Vaiṣṇava through the reinterpretation of the god Kṛṣṇa’s humanity. With the proliferation of Sanskrit commentaries and treatises on the overall meaning of the epic in the medieval and early modern period, clarifying Kṛṣṇa’s role becomes an explicit part of explaining the Sanskrit epic. The theology of a fully-divine human incarnation of Viṣṇu required a justification of the conduct, censures, and diminishment of Kṛṣṇa in the Mahābhārata, and a clarification of his role. This included justifying his conduct, explaining why he is rebuked constantly, and reinterpreting his ‘human’ death and his worship of other gods. Through a study of late-medieval and early modern polemics, philosophical texts, and commentaries from the South Indian Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava communities (13th-17th c.), I posit that this discourse on Kṛṣṇa was important to the emergence of the Mahābhārata as an explicitly Vaiṣṇava text on the supremacy of Viṣṇu. Both in the Mahābhārata and in its reception in the early Vaiṣṇava Purāṇas and commentaries, readers sought to reconcile the humanity of the god with his divine status. For the Mādhva and Śrīvaiṣṇava communities, answering the ‘Kṛṣṇa question’ was a key component of articulating the Mahābhārata as a text that belonged to the Vaiṣṇava community, largely in contradistinction to the Śaiva polemics of Appaya Dīkṣita in the 16th century. This discourse on Kṛṣṇa gave rise to the emergence of the Mahābhārata as an explicitly Vaiṣṇava text on the supremacy of Viṣṇu in South India during this period. The end result is to posit a fully divine Kṛṣṇa who is less human than the Mahābhārata presents him and coincides with the emergence of the avatāra theology in Purāṇas. |
