fहndi - Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya

look towards future, through our present,our main concern is man's destiny. In thiscontext it would be right to say thatnowhere in the world we have anintellectual tradition that parallels India's.Our thinking is humanitarian, but thefocus of our thinking is man, our thinkingnaturally is different from others, by virtueof the fact that ancient India remainedintellectually insular, independent of therest of the world. Buddha Dev Bose'scomparative studies, whatever their aimmight have been, have drawn attention tothe richness and variety of Indian literature.Buddha Dev Bose understood India andits literature as did Rabindranath Tagorein an objective manner. Buddha Dev Boseintegrated the eastern and western tenetsin his studies of Tagore. Buddha Dev Boseunderstood Tagore's India. He has anunderstanding of India, gained traditionallyfrom others along with his personalexperience. All this finds expression in hiscomparative dialogics in his bookMahabharater Katha. His description of theendless expanse of the forest becomes anentry point to the complexity of the text.Mahabharat evokes a sense of wonderin its readers, especially among its westernaudience. The primordial emotions andsense of awe that Mahabharata deals withare very subtly evoked by Buddha Dev Bosein Mahabharater Katha. As far as the meretext of the epic is concerned, a reader candetach himself from it, but the internalconflict of the very human psyche in allfgndi •its complexity and variety lingers on; theyare part of our collective memory andconsciousness. Buddha Dev Bose'scomparison of Mahabharat with the forestsof India does not exist on a simple levelof finding parallels, but on a more complexlevel of philosophy. The details of thiscomparison embrace the very idea ofexistence, which is complete only if itincludes all living creatures — plants oranimals — the entire gamut of nature inall its hues. It is driven by a desire to create,to annihilate, to protect, to rule, to evolveand to grow. That unseen world of nature,living quietly, is an integral part inmaintaining the environmental balance.Modern science is aware of this fact, thoughit does not take into account ancientwisdom that is known through its mythsand its literature. This source of knowledgeremains untapped since it is not empiricallysupported. Should the knowledge of yorebe judged on modern scientific parameters.Not many are sure of this. This dilemmacan be resolved through comparativestudies. Since it is a study not merely offinding similarities but a study of relations.Buddha Dev Bose has followed thisvery same method to make the complexstructure of Mahabharat intelligible. In fact,to understand the epic with its multipleshades of meanings, this appears to be theright approach. B.B. thinks of Mahabharatas a text, which transcends all definitionsof literature not only of the present erabut also of the earlier times. MahabharatApril-June 2013 :: 27