Essays & Academic Papers
Great Bharata Introduction: Part 1. General Introduction to Maha-bharata
From the introduction to Great Bharata: The Invasion Begins, Volume 1 The words Great Bhārata translate the Sanskrit, Mahā-bhārata, the title of an ancient and extraordinary text that claims to tell the immemorial history of South Asia, of the Earth, and indeed of our...
Great Bharata: Introduction Part 2. The Problem of Dating the Text of Maha-bharata
From the introduction to Great Bharata: The Invasion Begins, Volume 1 Within the Mahā-bhārata itself, we find a clear recognition of the difficulty of transmitting a teaching over an extended time period. Importantly, this admission occurs in the sacred core of the...
Great Bharata Introduction: Part 3. DNA and Agricultural Evidence for Dating Maha-bharata
From the introduction to Great Bharata: The Invasion Begins, Volume 1 The Indo-European problem Before discussing what archeology, archeoastronomy, comparative linguistics, DNA analysis and other fields can, or cannot, tell us about the historicity, the historical...
Great Bharata Introduction: Part 4. Other forms of dating the Maha-bharata
From the introduction to Great Bharata: The Invasion Begins, Volume 1 I will give additional attention here to South Asian archeology. After all, one might think that regardless of who built and inhabited the Indus Valley Civilization, the great, ancient culture...
Great Bharata Introduction: Part 5. My approach to the Maha-bharata
From the introduction to Great Bharata: The Invasion Begins, Volume 1 My approach As my main sources, I have relied on the critical Sanskrit text of the Mahā-bhārata, which provides the most complete record possible of known text variants. I have also regularly...
Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavad Gītā: A Beginning Ontology from the Gauḍīya Perspective
Introduction I attempt in this paper to clarify certain essential teachings of the Bhagavad-gītā which are traditionally “zones of puzzlement” among scholars. These areas focus on a single point: the nature and status of God, Kṛṣṇa, according to the Gītā. My strong...
For Whom Does Hinduism Speak
Introduction In his remarkable work, India and Europe, Wilhelm Halbfass notes that, “…the critical, historical, and often reductive work of Western Indologists has met with passionate rejection by conservative Hinduism and been seen as part of a strategy of Western...
Prabhupāda’s Method of Translating the Śrīmad-bhāgavatam
Śrīla Prabhupāda often declared his greatest contribution to be his translation and commentary on the Śrīmad-bhāgavata-purāṇa, a feat which he accomplished, clearly, under the authority, and within the culture, of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava sampradāya. Prabhupada’s approach...