Foreword / Paula Richman
An introduction to the literature of the Mahābhārata / Nell Shapiro Hawley and Sohini Sarah Pillai
Part I. The manyness of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata. Ā Garbhāt : murderous rage and collective punishment as thematic elements in Vyāsa's Mahābhārata / Robert Goldman
The invention of Irāvan / David Gitomer
Bodies that don't matter : gender, body, and discourse in the narrative of Sulabhā / Sally J. Sutherland Goldman
Part II. Sanskrit Mahābhāratas in poetry and performance. The remembered self : Arjuna as Bṛhannalā in the Pañcarātra / Nell Shapiro Hawley
The lord of glory and the lord of men : power and partiality in Māgha's Śiśupālavadha / Lawrence McCrea
What are the goals of life? The Vidūṣaka's interpretation of the Puruṣārthas in Kulaśekhara's Subhadrādhanañjaya / Sudha Gopalakrishnan
How do you solve a problem like Śakuntalā? Considering alternative endings to Kālidāsa's drama on the contemporary Indian stage / Amanda Culp
Part III. Regional and vernacular Mahābhāratas from premodern South Asia. An old dharma in a new age : Duryodhana and the reframing of epic ethics in Ranna's Sāhasabhīmavijaya / Timothy Lorndale
Three poets, two languages, one translation : the evolution of the Telugu Mahābhāratamu / Harshita Mruthinti Kamath
The fate of Kīcaka in two Jain Apabhramsha Mahābhāratas / Eva De Clercq and Simon Winant
The power-politics of desire and revenge : a classical Hindi Kīcakavadha performance at the Tomar Court of Gwalior / Heidi Pauwels
Blessed beginnings : invoking Viṣṇu in two regional Mahābhārata Retellings / Sohini Sarah Pillai
Part IV. Mahābhāratas of modern South Asia. How to be political without being polemical : the debate between Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and Rabindranath Tagore over the Kṛṣṇacaritra / Ahona Panda
The epic and the novel : Buddhadev Bose's modern reading of the Mahābhārata / Sudipta Kaviraj
Many Draupadīs : representations of an epic heroine in three novels / Pamela Lothspeich
From excluded to exceptional : caste in contemporary Mahābhāratas / Sucheta Kanjilal
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away : the Mahābhārata as dystopian future / Philip Lutgendorf

Many Mahabharatas is an introduction to the spectacular and long-lived diversity of Mahabharata literature in South Asia. This diversity begins with the Sanskrit Mahabharata, an early epic poem that narrates the events of a catastrophic fratricidal war. Along the way, it draws in nearly everything else in Hindu mythology, philosophy, and story literature. The magnitude of its scope and the relentless complexity of its worldview primed the Mahabharata for uncountable tellings in South Asia and beyond. For two thousand years, the instinctive approach to the Mahabharata has been not to consume it but to create it anew.The many Mahabharatas of this book come from the first century to the twenty-first. They are composed in nine different languages—Apabhramsha, Bengali, English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu. Early chapters illuminate themes of retelling within the Sanskrit Mahabharata itself, demonstrating that the story’s propensity for regeneration emerges from within. The majority of the book, however, reaches far beyond the Sanskrit epic. Readers dive into classical dramas, premodern vernacular poems, regional performance traditions, commentaries, graphic novels, political essays, novels, and contemporary theater productions—all of them Mahabharatas.Because of its historical and linguistic breadth, its commitment to primary sources, and its exploration of multiplicity and diversity as essential features of the Mahabharata’s long life in South Asia, Many Mahabharatas constitutes a major contribution to the study of South Asian literature and offers a landmark view of the field of Mahabharata studies.