{r}AmopAKyAna: the story of {r}Ama in the {m}ahABArata

  • US111.
  • The story of {r}Ama is the most popular story in all of India and a masterpiece of world literature. While in its most ancient extant version, it is told in about 25,000 verses in {v}Almiki's large epic poem {r}AmAyaRa, it is summarized in 705 verses in eighteen aDyAyas in the {r}AmopAKyAna in the great epic {m}ahABArata. There it is told to {y}uDizWira who is dejected over the recent abduction of his wife and the exile of his family to the forest. This course reads several chapters of the {r}AmopAKyAna to give intermediate Sanskrit students a firm grounding in the precise understanding of every detail of each verse including sandhi, morphology, and syntax.
  • Instructor: Peter M. Scharf.
  • Prerequisite: US101–102 or equivalent introduction to Sanskrit.
  • Schedule: To be announced.
  • Course fee: $2,500.
  • Express interest.
  • Course materials:
    Scharf, Peter M. Rāmopākhyāna—the story of Rāma in the Mahābhārata: an independent-study reader in Sanskrit. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002.
Lecture Topic
1 Introduction to the {r}AmopAKyAna and use of the independent-study reader.
2 MBh. 3.257: the context of the story in the {m}ahABArata.
3 The {r}AmopAKyAna.