The Ramayana and the Mahabharata: Comparative Popularity
In respect of quest for the value senses of life, the Mahabharata is an epic infinitely richer than the Ramayana, and yet the letter is more popular. How can it be accounted for? This monograph has tried to find and answer and has sought to demonstrate that the principal subject treated in the Mahabharata is crisis of faith, while manifestation of such a crisis are much fewer in number as well as thinner in importance in the Ramayana. In situation which makes it imperative to choose between conflicting value senses, the moral contradicitions inherent in that conflict propel a revaluation. The responsive reader is here confronted with a painful moral crisis. The common man's propensity shun it moral makes him content with the uniliner life-sense embedded in the Ramayana, and that explains its greater popularity. The very depth of the moral contradicitions manifested in the Mahabharata is what stands in the way of its popularity but it is precisely where the real glory of this, epic lies.
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Bibliographic information
Anirban Biswas
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