The Concept of Hero in Indian Culture

The concept of the hero (vira, sura, nayaka) is of crucial importance in Indian civilization, from the Vedic to the present times. The authors of the papers in this volume include scholars of Indology, history, religion, literature, politics and anthropology. They explore the concept of the hero in written and oral sources, in different historical epochs and regions of India, from the Himalays to the South. Most of the contributions were originally written for a seminar organized by Gunther Dietz-Sontheimer at Heidelberg. He particularly stressed the continuities of the concept of hero in various realms of Indian culture, including folk religion, Strength, courage, fearlessness, self-confidence, righteousness, providing protection, special powers and feats, often a miraculous birth and a premature violent death, self-sacrifice or martyrdom are some of the features that heroes studied in the present volume share. Papers study ‘The Birth of the Hero in Ancient India’, including Vedic gods as well as the Jina and the Buddha (Bollee), ‘Heroes and Kings’ (Jansen), ‘Kings as Heroes’ in the Sanskrit carita literature (Thapar), and ‘Himalayan heroes’ (Zoller), as well as heroes in oral folk epics (van Skyhawk, Shankaranarayana), Tamil folk narrative (Ferro-Luzzi), modern literature (Gatzlaff, Oesterheld) and Sanskrit drama (Byrski). Other papers deal with political leadership (Shelke), with Hanuman as Mahavira (Duncan) and ‘from Sacrificer to Hero’ (Sakharov). This is an indispensable volume for the scholars of Indian religion and culture.