Kinship, Caste and Class (600 BCE to 600CE)
Textual sources : Written recordes including books and inscriptions
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Importance of Textual sources to understand social behavior of early historic period
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1. Texts lay down norms of social behavior
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2. Texts describe about social situations and practices.
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3. Mahabharata is one of greatest textual source
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, Mahabharata
➔ Mahabharata helps us to to understand social histories.
➔ Mahabharata is a colossal epic over 100,000 verses
➔ Mahabharata was composed over a period of about 1,000 years (500 BCE to 500CE)
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➔ Mahabharata depicts a wide range of social categories and situations.
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The central story is about two sets of warring cousins. (Kouravas and Pandavas)
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➔ The Kouravas and Pandavas fought over land and power
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➔ The text also contains sections laying down norms of behavior for various social
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The Critical Edition of the Mahabharata
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➔ The critical edition of the Mahabharata was prepared by a team of scholars of Bhandarkar
Oriental Research Institute Pune (1919)
➔ A noted Indian Sanskritist, V.S Sukthankar was leader of the team
, ➔ They collected manuscripts of the text, written in a variety of languages, from different parts of
the country.
➔ The team compared verses from each manuscript.
➔ They selected the verses that appeared common to most versions
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➔ Published these in several volumes, running into over 13,000 pages.
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➔ The project took 47 years to complete.
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➔ There were several common elements in the Sanskrit text
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➔ They found regional variations of the text
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➔ These variations were documented in footnotes and appendices to the main text.
Kinship and marriage many rules and varied practices