During a renaissance of Hindu mythology in the late colonial period, the Mahābhārata in particular was embraced as the essential account of the nation's ancient past. In the many literary retellings of the period, epic history is often recast as national history, even as the epic narratives themselves are inscribed with allegorical significance. Such is the case in the many poems and plays on the subject of Abhimanyu and his nemesis Jayadrath, including the most famous example in Hindi, Maithilisharan Gupta's narrative poem, Jayadrath-vadh (The slaying of Jayadrath, 1910). In this essay I situate Gupta's poem within the genre of paurāṇik or mythological literature and read the poem against the Abhimanyu-Jayadrath episode as found in the critical edition of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata to illustrate how Gupta both modernizes the poem and imbues it with nationalist ideology. I ultimately argue that Gupta's Abhimanyu is like a freedom fighter battling an imperial goliath, and his wife, Subhadra, a model for women dedicated to the cause. I also discuss some of the subsequent literature on Abhimanyu which was inspired by Gupta's classic work, and which also re-envisions the story in terms of contemporary political circumstances.

Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Picture Stories) is India's leading comic book series, featuring hundreds of mythological titles about the Hindu gods. Founder Anant Pai initially eliminated all miracles, believing them to be unscientific interpolations. But while producing Tales of Durga (no. 176, 1978), he declared that the comic must be an “authentic” recreation of the Devī Māhātmya scripture, and that all miracles in the classical Sanskrit text must be faithfully rendered in the comic. This article examines the discourse of authenticity that surrounds the production of Tales of Durga in particular and this comic book series more generally. Through a careful reading of the Devī Māhātmya, content analysis of Tales of Durga, a consideration of the unique characteristics of the comic book medium, and interviews with comic book producers, this study provides insight into modern interpretations of the Devī Māhātmya and evolving Hindu attitudes towards the martial goddess Durga.

The Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith, an indigenous Chinese composition written in the guise of an Indian Buddhist treatise, is one of the most influential texts in the history of East Asian Buddhism. Its outline of the doctrines of buddha nature (foxing), buddha bodies (foshen), and one mind (yixin), among others, served from the medieval period onwards as one of the main foundations of East Asian Buddhist thought and practice. The Treatise is putatively attributed to the Indian writer Aśvaghoṣa, and its current Chinese version was traditionally conceived of as a translation from an original Sanskrit text. In the course of the twentieth century, however, many important scholars of Buddhism have called into question the textual history of the Treatise. Even if the specific circumstances of its creation are still largely unknown, the view that the Treatise is an original Chinese composition (not necessarily written by a native Chinese) is now prevalent among scholars. Meanwhile, and for more than one hundred years, the text has also become a source of knowledge of Buddhism in the West thanks to a number of English translations. After examining the early textual history of the two existing versions of the text, this article will offer some examples of its modern appropriation by a novel group of readers and interpreters, an appropriation that took place during the first decades of the twentieth century amidst efforts to re-envision Chinese and East Asian Buddhist history and the place of Buddhism in modern society.

Korean Confucianism has been described as “the enemy of feminism”: feminists often argue that Confucianism is the source of the patriarchal society. Feminist scholars have produced significant works about Confucianism's role in preserving the idea of women's subordination to men; they argue that the idea of men's superiority to women is embedded in Confucian philosophy. In this article I will examine whether Confucian philosophy is responsible for women's subordination to men in such Confucian texts as Naehun, The Book of Change, The Book of Poetry, and The Analects. Naehun was written by the mother of King Sǒngjong in 1475, for the purpose of the Confucian education of Korean women; I will look also at other, related, Confucian texts used for Korean women's education. Confucian classics such as The Book of Change, The Book of Poetry and Confucian Analects will be included in the analysis to investigate whether Confucianism legitimizes women's subordination tomen. In the analysis of these Confucian classics, I will focus on the ongoing debate between scholars of Confucianism and feminism in Korea today.