Quotessence
Home / Topics / Epics Quotes

Epics Quotes

Browse 7 quotes about Epics.

Epics Quotes

“Whatever their DNA contribution to the region, the Brahmins did bring with them from India three crucial gifts that proved irresistible right across the region: Sanskrit, the art of writing and the stories of the great Indian epics. No Indian import had a deeper or more long-lasting impact than the deeds of the heroes of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. From the fifth century, right on through to the dance and shadow puppetry of the present day, these would remain a major feature in the art and culture of South-east Asia.26 In time, even the landscape of South-east Asia began to be renamed under the influence of the great epics and the stories of their respective heroes, the Pandava brothers and Lord Rama. The earliest inscription in Khmer territories dating from the fifth century records that a ruler in what is now Laos took the Indic name Devanika and the grandiose Sanskrit title Maharajadhiraja, ‘King of Kings’. This happened during a ceremony when the King installed an image of Shiva under the lingam-shaped mountain that towered over his capital of Champasak. There he consecrated a tank which he named Kurukshetra, after the plain to the north of Delhi where the great battle of the Mahabharata was fought”

IndiaCambodiaEpics
Book:The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World
Create image

“It is clear, therefore, that there is enough evidence of historical memory in India to render the line of investigation adopted here worth pursuing. It is true that Hindu India does not possess a sustained tradition of historiography of the kind we find in other ancient cultures such as Greece, Rome and China. Sometimes cultures exhibit such civilizational gaps. For instance, China has a long history, a history of warfare and chivalry as well, and of course a literary tradition right from Confucius onwards, but it did not produce an epic of the kind we find in Greece, Rome and India. One reason behind this histographic gap in India could be that historical events in ancient India were recorded on stone rather than paper. This renders the facts narrated above particularly signficant, as they are cut in stone. India has more than 90,000 inscriptions, most of which are still unread.”

HistoryIndiaEpicsManusmriti
Book:From Fire to Light: Rereading the Manusmriti
Create image