Narrating Shivaji the Great
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.34407Keywords:
Maharashtra, narrative, Shivaji, ŚivabhārataAbstract
This article investigates the narrative constraints that led Kavindra Paramananda to include accounts of family feuds in his epic poem, the Sivabharata, even while the purpose of the text was to praise the Maharashtrian king Shivaji (d. 1680) as a great epic hero. Written at the time of the king's coronation and presumably under his direction, the Sivabharata may have taken the Mahabharata as a useful model for dealing with family conflict when aspects of such conflict were impossible to ignore. The essay also considers the effects of assumed narrative frames when modern scholars, like the author himself, challenge those assumptions.
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