Bibliography on Mahabharata and
Pilgrimage
Compiled by Brian K. Pennington, Maryville College
From the Mahabharata:
Book 3.80-88 (Aranyaka Parva) (given as "Tour of the Sacred
Fords" in van Buitenen)
Book 13 (Anushasana Parva)(Bhisma's discourse on yatra and "manasa
tirtha")
Secondary Sources:
Bigger, Andreas. "Wege und Umwege zum Himmel. Die Pilgerfahrten im
Mahabharata." Journal Asiatique 289, no.1 (2001): 147-166.
Grünedahl, Reinhold. "Zu den beiden Gandhamadana-Episoden des
Aranyakaparvan." Studien Zur Indologie und Iranistik 18 (1993):
103-138
Oberlies, Thomas. "Arjunas Himmelreise und die Tirthayatra der
Pandavas: Zur Struktur des Tirthayatraparvan des Mahabharata." Acta
Orientalia 56 (1995): 106-124.
Oberlies, Thomas. "Die Ratschlage des Sehers Narada: Ritual an und
unter der Oberflache des Mahabharata." In New Methods in the Research
of Epic/Neue Methoden der Epenforschung, ed. Hildegard L.C. Tristram,
125-141. Tübigen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1998.
Vassilkov, Yaroslav. "Indian Practice of Pilgrimage and the growth
of the Mahabharata."
In Stages and Transitions: Temporal and Historical Frameworks in Epic and
Puranic Literature. Edited by M. Brockington . Zagreb: Croatian Academy of
Sciences & Arts. Pp. 133-58.
Additionally, the Shalya parvan chapters 35-54 of Nilakantha's
edition translated by Justin Meiland in the Clay Sanskrit Series,
Mahabharata, Book Nine: Shalya Volume Two (New York: New York University
Press,2007). This is the section that deals with
Balarama's (Krishna's brother's) pilgrimage. The critical edition of the
Mbh
contains the same cycle in 9.34-53, with only modest differences of
Nilakantha's version.
Alf Hiltebeitel, for example, discusses this cycle in Rethinking the
Mahabharata (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001), pp. 118-130.
Justin Meiland himself discusses this cycle briefly in his introduction
to
the volume.
Also see P.V. Kane, History of Dharmasastra
Volume 4 (Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Research institute, 1991 [3rd
edition]),
which contains a list of many pilgrimage sites from the Mbh as well as
many
other sources. One important section comes under chapter 16 titled:
"List of
Tirthas," pp. 721-825, but really much of that volume is dedicated to
pilgrimage in Indian tradition, and much of this about pilgrimage in the
Mbh. While of course, Kane is somewhat dated, it is still a worthy
resource,
in my view, for students to start from. As previously mentioned, the
section
on Tirtha's from Kane was also published out separately:
P.V. Kane, List of Tirthas (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research
Institute,
1953).
Revised: April 11, 2009
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