Coming to Terms with Death: Theodicy in Hindu Myth and Biblical Narrative

This article examines the manner in which two major world religions explain death. Bakshi claims that both religions make peace with the end of life through an overwhelming respect for nature, theodicy, and a masochistic attitude. Using the language and theories of Peter Berger, Bakshi examines the Hindu myth of Mahishasuramardini and the Biblical narrative of Job. The story of Mahisha, Bakshi explains, shows him as a half-brahmin, half-beast who desperately craves the immortality of the gods. All of his attempts fail under the overwhelming power of Durga, the creator and destroyer goddess. Right before Durga kills Mahisha, he surrenders his individuality to the whole of the religious experience and understands why his death is necessary, and accepts his decapitation. This, Bakshi explains, is what Berger terms the masochistic attitude the ultimate surrender of the self to find ecstasy in the greater religious experience. The biblical narrative of Job, the story of a good man on his death bed as he questions his fate and the workings of god, also has a sense of this masochism. Job\u27s friends tell him repeatedly that he must have done something to deserve his fate, but for the bulk of the story Job refuses to accept this answer. Through reflection, Job finally comes to terms with the fact that he must accept God\u27s will and the natural process. In both of these stories, Bakshi argues, the frailty of the human understanding of the moral order is destroyed through the overwhelming power of nature. These stories show that only through a respect for the power of nature and a complete surrendering of the self to the divine can religious people find honest acceptance of death

The Social and Political Life of a Relic: The Episode of the \u3ci\u3eMoi-e-Muqaddas\u3c/i\u3e Theft in Kashmir, 1963-1964

The present article is focused on the relationship between a sacred object: the moi-e-muqaddas (the Prophet’s hair), housed in the Hazratbal shrine in Kashmir, and the Kashmiri Muslim community. The relic, which was stolen from the shrine on 27 December 1963, lead to a massive protest in the Kashmir valley and in other parts of the subcontinent, as people demanded its immediate recovery. Such thefts, which have been reported from across the world and across centuries, point to the extreme value of the relics, and the additional value they generate when they are stolen. Similarly, the Hazratbal relic theft became a vehicle for reifying certain Kashmiri Muslim social and political sentiments. The incident also catapulted the issue of Kashmir’s political accession, which emerged in 1947 at the time of the partition of the subcontinent, to the forefront, alarming the Indian government. The Hazratbal relic episode is also reflective of the role of religious ideas and symbols in political action in South Asia

Reviews

Miscellany. . Reviewed by George Colvin. Wilkie Collins: A Critical and Biographical Study. Dorothy L. Sayers, ed. E.R. Gregory. Reviewed by J. R. Christopher. Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle. Ian Ousby. Reviewed by J. R. Christopher. The Dark Tower and Other Stories. C.S. Lewis, Ed. Walter Hooper. Reviewed by Nancy-Lou Patterson. The Mythology of Middle-earth. Ruth S. Noel. Reviewed by Nancy-Lou Patterson. Faeries. Brian Froud and Alan Lee. Reviewed by Robert S. Ellwood Jr.. Eschatus. Bruce Pennington. Reviewed by Robert S. Ellwood Jr.. The Lord of the Rings. Ralph Bakshi, director; Saul Zaentz, producer. Reviewed by Steven C. Walker. The Lord of the Rings. Ralph Bakshi, director; Saul Zaentz, producer. Reviewed by Dale Ziegler

A Generalization of the Gram determinant of type A

The Gram determinant of type $A$ was introduced by Lickorish in his work on invariants of 3 - manifolds. We generalize the theory of the Gram determinant of type $A$ by evaluating, in the annulus, a bilinear form of non-intersecting connections in the disc. The main result provides a closed formula for this Gram determinant. We conclude the paper by discussing Chen's conjecture about the Gram determinant of type $Mb$ evaluated in the Klein bottle.Comment: 17 pages, 19 figure