A01=Ann Grodzins Gold
adventure
Author_Ann Grodzins Gold
bengal
bharthari of ujjain
birth story
black hole of fate
Category=JBGB
Category=JHM
Category=NHF
cultural studies
detachment
divine
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnography
fatalism
folklore
gopi chand of bengal
gorakh nath
guru
hindu
hinduism
history
human existence
humanity
indian kings
madhu natisar nath
magical powers
melodrama
musician
north indian hinduism
oral performances
oral traditions
performance
pottery lessons
rajasthani farmer
singer
spiritual
storyteller
thrones
village bard
world renunciation
yogis
Product details
- ISBN 9780520075351
- Weight: 635g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 19 Jan 1993
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Madhu Natisar Nath is a Rajasthani farmer with no formal schooling. He is also a singer, a musician, and a storyteller. At the center of "A Carnival of Parting" are Madhu Nath's oral performances of two linked tales about the legendary Indian kings, Bharthari of Ujjain and Gopi Chand of Bengal. Both characters, while still in their prime, leave thrones and families to be initiated as yogis - a process rich in adventure and melodrama, one that offers unique insights into popular Hinduism's view of world renunciation. Ann Grodzins Gold presents these living oral epic traditions as flowing narratives, transmitting to Western readers the pleasures, moods, and interactive dimensions of a village bard's performance. Three introductory chapters and an interpretive afterword, together with an appendix on the bard's language by linguist David Magier, supply "A Carnival of Parting" with a full range of ethnographic, historical, and cultural backgrounds. Gold gives a frank and engaging portrayal of the bard Madhu Nath and her work with him. The tales are most profoundly concerned, Gold argues, with human rather than divine realities.
In a compelling afterword, she highlights their thematic emphases on politics, love, and death. Madhu Nath's vital colloquial telling of Gopi Chand and Bharthari's stories depicts renunciation as inevitable and interpersonal attachments as doomed, yet celebrates human existence as a 'carnival of parting'.
Ann Grodzins Gold is Associate Director of the South Asia Program and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University. She is the author of Fruitful Journeys (California, 1988).
