Ancestral Voices: Reflections on Vedic, Classical and Bhakti Poetry

This is an extraordinary attempt to record and recover the long neglected ‘ancestral voices’ of Indian civilization.  In the first chapter, Shah underlines the relationship between literature (art and truth.  Affirming the Vedic emanate from ‘Vac’, which he interprets not merely as the tool of communication, but as the primordial mystery, combining in herself three words of Time: past, present and future and revealing itself only to those who are worthy to receive her.  In the second and third chapters, Shah reads the epics and other poems in the context of textualising truth, self, world and cosmic order or Rta.  Texts as diverse as Bhagavatpurana, Yogavasistha, Ramcaritmanasa and songs of the siddhas and saints exemplify thisintegrated co-existence and co-operation of beauty and truth.  He highlights the relevance of the amazing wealth of perennially usable critical concepts evolved by Indian aestheticians.  The fourth Chapter presents a sensitive reading of the pan-Indian Bhakti movement, tracing its sources to the Vedas, the two epics and the Bhagavatpurana-its protestant character notwithstanding.