The Mahabharata Patriline: Gender, Culture, and the Royal Hereditary

– which I call ‘the Mahbhrata patriline’ even though (and partly because) it begins

before Bharata – and its implications and ramifications within the royal culture

that the text imagines, retrojects, and projects. Part One introduces the survey from

various angles. Part Two explores the patriline and the stories associated with its

characters, in chronological order, down to King Kuru. Part Three takes up where

Part Two left off, continuing down to the Pavas. Part Four explores the final

section of the patriline down through Parikit and Janamejaya. Summaries of each

part can be found at the end of Part One, and in the introductions to Parts Two to

Four.

What lies before you issued from a research project entitled ‘Epic Constructions:

Gender, Myth and Society in the Mahbhrata’, which ran from 2004 to 2007 at

the School of Oriental and African Studies in Bloomsbury, in association with the

Department of the Study of Religions and the Centre for Gender and Religions

Research. I thank Julia Leslie who set up the project; Brian Bocking who managed

it after her death; the Arts and Humanities Research Board who generously funded

it; and all those who participated in and supported the project, discussed my work

with me, and assisted this book’s production in so many ways, most particularly

my colleague Brian Black, who read the Mahbhrata with me and commented

on the book’s first full draft, and my co-conspirator Sîan Hawthorne, who has been

crucial at every stage.