Thanks to the ennui caused by endless television reruns of B R Chopra’s Mahabharat (1988) and its later clones with their tawdry settings and costumes, overacting to the hilt, with sham Sanskrit-studded stilted dialogues, I found great joy in rediscovering a prize jewel in my library, Dr Iravati Karve’s magisterial essays on the epic titled Yuganta. I reread it slowly, savouring every nuance the learned social anthropologist brings out as a priceless nugget from her careful reading of the original text. That this should happen in 2020, the 50th anniversary of her death, is an apt coincidence.
Dr Karve was born
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