Transforming Tradition: Cultural Essays in Honour of Mukund Lath

Mukund Lath 1937 is a scholar and a musician, a poet and a patron of art. He was trained in the classical Indian tradition, both literary and musical. A dominant recurring theme in his oeuvre has been tradition as a process of ongoing transformation. Re-creation by transformation is at the heart of tradition. Authored by international scholars, the papers collected in this volume were dedicated to Mukund Lath on the occasion of his 75th anniversary in 2012. Each of the contributions in some way or other reflects the principle of the ongoing transformation of ideas and identities. Systematically they range from the social sciences to philosophy and literature. The volume is rounded off by a number of poems by Mukund Lath that exemplify the way in which he himself transformed an ancient Prakrit model. While acknowledging the inspiration by that model, his re-creation of it claims the status of an independent work of contemporary poetry.