Reference no: EM131351835

Assignment

This readings take us East of the Greek civilization. The Bhagavad-Gita is a central text to Hinduism, but also, an important text that had widely influenced thinkers world-wide. In the mid 19th century, for example, English translations of the text reached the US. Major American writers from Emerson to Thoreau to Walt Whitman were widely influenced by the text, and it surely played a role in developing the Transcendentalist movement (useful here is the ways in which Eastern ideas influenced the ways in which some Christians re-evaluated their conception of God and human experience).

On a more fundamental scale, the Bhagavad Gita is a philosophical text that unearths key understandings of the Hindu religion in a narrative form--but more widely than viewing this specifically in the context of religion, the text forces us to think about larger discussions of ethics and differences between what is right and wrong that pertain to all cultures. Likely, this is the reason for the text's popularity around the world: The simplicity of the two actors in the text, as well as the fundamental problem facing Arjuna, are compelling to anyone and everyone.
The reading here is challenging in that there are lots of new terms and ideas here. There is no way to become an expert on another religion in a week...do the best you can and look up words and terms as you need to. Please keep an open mind to this reading. I am in no way trying to challenge any kind of religious foundation you have, the point here is to read and to be exposed the world at large.

This second reading focuses on one of the most popular narratives to come out of (now) middle East--then part of Persia. The text, however, is a mix of stories collected from no singular cultural or linguistic group. Instead, the stories in the text suggest wide-flung influence, most likely stemming from the "Silk Road," a complex set of trade routes that bridged the middle East to India and Asia. The complex mix of cultures, then, are likely at the heart of this sometimes strange collection of stories. The manuscript for Nights is the most complete of any text from the middle ages, although the manuscript itself suggests that the tales were penned much earlier and, like Greek myth, began from an oral story-telling tradition.

As Europeans began trade routes with the East, by the 1700s early translations of One Thousand and One Nights were available in France, and soon after, in England, which helped set into European minds a complex set of stereotypes and images of the East that were culturally and historically inaccurate: flying carpets, magic lamps, hyper-sexuality are all stereotypes we can pull out of our own popular culture about that part of the world, and largely stem from this text. Differences between the East and West have often culminated in cultural misunderstandings: certainly after 2001 we understand this concept. In scholarly terms, the term "The Other" (Links to an external site.)refers to how this relationship works: when people define a foreign group of people they do not understand, they often attribute a set of qualities that directly contrast how that group thinks of itself. This often turns into a case of oppositions: we are good, they are bad; we are modern, they are uncivilized; we have the right religion, they are barbarians, etc. So then, some texts, like this one, when taken out of its cultural context, have the extreme power to both delight and partake in cultural stereotyping.

• Two points here: Even though the content of book is adult, it has, without a doubt, been a huge success in children's literature. Secondly, we can see the broad ways in which the magic lantern myth has permeated Western culture.

As you begin to read the text, a few notes:

o Likely, part of the appeal of Nights in 17th century France was likely due to the graphic sexual content in the narrative. Two opening scenes in the book are likely much more graphic than modern readers would ever guess.

o The book is violent, especially toward women, but there are also important moments of violence against men. We are going to discuss this in the forum.

o Shahrazad's story telling is critical to think about as we investigate this work. How do her stories reflect on her own circumstances? Do her stories work to "teach" the Shahrayar?

o The complete text, which is huge by the way, only documents around 270 nights, yet by the end of the original manuscript, there is no ending. As A.S. Byatt, a famous British novelist, notes (Links to an external site.), "Storytelling in general, and The Thousand and One Nights in particular, consoles us for endings with endless new beginnings."

However, English and French translations in the 18th and 19th centuries penned a variety of endings, the most common conclusion dating from 1850 (Burton trans.) (Links to an external site.) imagines that Shehrazad bore three children secretly and by the 1001st night, presented the King with his children & the sight of them changed his mind about killing Shehrazad (if we take the 1001 nights at a practical level, it would be impossible to bear three children in the time-frame). The "happy ending" motif here, however, fits more in line with Western story telling than it likely does to Persian/Eastern traditions. Other endings suggest that Shehrazad uses her story telling as a moral and ethical instructional device and convinces the king that killing wives is wrong. Still others see the lack of an ending as a larger symbolic point: the never-ending story telling is symbolic of our human ability to understand our lives, to formulate understanding, and to make the world safe.

Assignments

Read: Bhagavad-Gita, 1282+

Introductory video here (Links to an external site.) (https://learner.org/courses/worldlit/gita/watch/)

Note: This link allows you to listen to the text in Sanskirt (pretty cool to hear!) (Links to an external site.)

The Thousand and One Nights, pages: (Vol. B) 552-581 (end at the Night 10)

Discussion: The Bhagavad Gita and 1001 Nights

Question 1

Does the Bhagavad Gita support war? Does it, as some might argue, condone acts of violence by depersonalizing that actor from the actions? Does is support non-violence? Gandhi extrapolated his theory of non-violence from the text, was he glossing over important elements of Krsna's philosophy?

Question 2

Compare and contrast Arjuna's relationship to Krsna with that of Odysseus and Athena. How are relationships between Gods and humans different in these two cultural contexts?

Question 3

Part of the complexity with Krsna's teachings are a host of potential contradictions. To be a warrior, he tells Arjuna, he must be a yogi (practice yoga). However, in his details of yoga in chapter 6, do we get a standard picture of a warrior? How might this notion differ from the Greeks?

Question 4

Here are two of America's most famous 19th century authors on reading the Gita (Albert Einstein, The Beatles (Links to an external site.), to name a few, in the 20th century were also profoundly moved by this text). What do you think is the value of reading religious texts outside of one's particular culture/religion? Is religion a set of ideas that one must take up as a whole and fully adopt or can we pick and choose elements that are appealing?

Henry David Thoreau

"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.

Question 5

Post your own question about the text and as you do, respond to two other student questions. Monitor your own question and the responses you get through Saturday.

Question 6: Moving to 1001 Nights

What effect does the story-within-a-story structure does the narrative have on you, the reader? What is the relationship between the two sisters in terms of this on-going narrative?

Journal: Bhagavad-Gita and Thousand and One Nights

Instructions:Write out a short, meaningful passage from one of the texts we read this week here. It is important for this exercise that you type out your passage so that you have the experience of working with it word-by-word. Please note, the passage you select does not count in the 700-800 word response.

Passage:[Type it by hand here. Typing out the passage will make you very aware of what the text is saying-it's a great way to better understand a text.]

Response directions: The goal with this week's response is to take the general notice and focus approach from the last few weeks and push even further to notice ten things about the passage. Each one of the ten can be it's own mini paragraph, and can be disconnected from the other items in the list. The entire list should be 700-800 words. Push on your thinking to get ten, strong ideas out. Be sure to pay close attention to details, to work with specific language in the text, to look for things that repeat, to look for things that are unusual, and to look for a larger relationship between your passage and the rest of the text.