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In a citation from the Satyricon of Petronius at the opening of T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land, the Sibyl—who has received a “gift” of immortality from Apollo and has thus been cursed to age forever, despairingly declares, “I want to die.” One might read this as a variant of the futility of the ego’s project of self-preservation, but there is a particular gruesomeness in the unchallengeable cruelty of the gods here. Dying would be a relief, and the world as it is seems to possess no ethical sensibility at all. Indeed, this is often how we feel in the face of suffering and death despite the most inventive protestations of discourses on divine justice. And, as we see in the above instance, there may even be fates worse than dying. In the Hindu-Buddhist imagination, death often comes as part of a package of inevitable “fourfold miseries” which include birth, disease, and old age; which in turn are part of another package of “threefold miseries;” those caused by nature, by gods, and by other beings. And while the specter of death haunts us as a species, when the righteous king, Yudhis≥èhira, is asked by the Lord of Death in the Maha\bha\rata: “What is the most wonderful thing?” He responds, “Day after day countless beings are sent to the realm of Death, yet those who remain behind believe themselves to be deathless.”1 Freud declared that the unconscious refuses to recognize death, and perhaps this is one reason that I want to write on dying, to work at making the unconscious conscious, to try and meet death in its multidimensionality , not just as a feared or denied end to a short, puzzling human life.2 I also want to meet death multiculturally, to look at imaginative discourse around death and dying (and there may only be imaginative discourse here) through a tradition which is neither my own by birth or by language. What is the draw here beyond an affinity for Indian languages and literatures, a penchant for the “exotic-other,” a training in Asian Studies, 1 INTRODUCTION MANY WAYS OF DYING and extended residence in India? At the center of this project, I imagine, is the tormenting truth of impermanence. And what I find so intriguing about Indian Epic and Pura\n≥ic discourse is their particular way of grappling with this universal: not by directly staring it down, or meditating on it in a cremation ground, but rather through performing another kind of meditation, an imaginative one that works through the presence and power of narrative, of stories. The Bha\gavata-Pura\n≥a, the focus of this work, does more than just relate stories. It is, after all, a “Pura\n≥a” and hence an immense compilation of narratives, genealogies, encyclopedic accounts of epic-lore, didactic teachings, philosophical polemics, legendary chronologies, platitudes of all kinds, and a host of other subjects. Moreover, as the great Vais≥n≥ava text of devotional theism, the Bha\gavata (as it is usually called) is filled with prayers, hymns of praise, and narratives aimed at inculcating a devotional sensibility in its audience. All of this has been much discussed in both scholarly and religious-devotional circles and is clearly “above board.” What is not often discussed is the fact that the Bha\gavata also contains a collection of narratives told to someone who is about to die, and for some reason or other (could Freud be helpful here?) this fact has rarely been made the center of any discussion on the Pura\n≥a. It is this fact and its possible implications that I address in the following volume, not only in terms of “Pura\n≥ic Studies,” but also within the discourse of mythic and narrative responses to death, dying, and loss. Can a meditation on this text speak through space and time? Without being hopelessly essentialistic, I would like to believe so. If religious texts (and experiences) were entirely culturally determined, they would not cross cultures and languages as easily as they do. What comes down to us as Pura\n≥a is, after all, already an amazingly variegated amalgam of previous discourse that has been (and continues to be) fluidly transmitted through time. Moreover, if religious texts and experiences were unequivocally unique to their place and time, they would not invite the ongoing interpretive traditions which continue to surround them. This is particularly pertinent with regard to the Sanskritic tradition, since commentaries...

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