ANCIENT INDIAN EPICS: ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the study of the place of the epics in social memory on the example of Indian society. The relevance of the topic is determined both theoretically and practically. The theoretical aspect is the epistemic dimension of narratives: how do they correspond to the reality and what is there from creative imagination? The practical aspect of research is related to the need to comprehend new myths in the conditions of global competition and cognitivism, when the border between fake and fact is marked with the fine line of narrativity.

In the midst of globalization, we have unprecedented opportunities to study the world epics and their influence on the dynamics of cultures, determine their internal institutional and structural conditions that influence the socio-political role of the epic in the development of civilizations; to fix the decisive factors in the modernization of myth; to outline the main directions of its transformation in the era of modernity.

The purpose of the work is to conduct a value-semantic analysis of the ancient Indian epic. The tasks of the work are: 1) to determine the place of the epic in the ancient Indian literature, 2) to propose the classification of the Indian epic from the point of view of the aesthetic attitude to the world, and 3) to characterize the aesthetic narratives.

The subject of the study: the semiosphere of ancient Indian epics. Research methods: structural, systemic and genetic types of analysis and philosophical hermeneutic.

Results: The Indian epic is presented as a value-semantic aesthesis, the evolution of the aesthetic attitude, the transcendence of the pragmatic and the Gnostic. The aesthetic dynamics of the epics is explained by the reaction to the routinization of texts, the loss of their ontopoietic significance.

The novelty of the article is determined by the following perspectives: 1) a special aesthetic type of myth-making is singled out, 2) the emphasis of the aesthetic meaning of the Bhagavata Purana is stressed, 2) the question is raised about the different ethos and aiesthesis of ritual, Gnostic texts and epic narrations. Prospects for the study: the study of socio-cultural innovation of India's epic texts, their participation in modern socio-cultural dynamics, the impact of Indian narratives on the noospheric processes of global cultural synthesis.

The study of the Indian epic is timed to coincide with the launch in 2018 on Russian screens of the grand Indian television project 2015-2016 “Sita and Rama”, which includes 304 series and is based on the ancient Indian epic “Ramayana”.

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