The Betrayal of Krishna: Vicissitudes of a Great Myth (A Rare Book)

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Today's is a shattered world with the very survival of mankind menaced by nuclear war, pollution to high toxicity or rapid depletion of the life-support resources of the planet. What has led to this predicament and is now further aggravated by it is the loss of certitude about the meaningfulness of creation and consequently, of the life of man. But the Gita had taught that certitude can be won back by integrating knowledge with wisdom. Knowledge not integrated thus turns great possibilities into somber fatalities. And it is the Gita's precept that inspired Chaitanya to undertake the reconstruction of knowledge in his philosophical pentalogy. He returned to the extended study of the epic and its great inset dialogue to show that our crisis was anticipated there and its solution suggested.

But he feels that we have betrayed this precious heritage and in the present work, the most comprehensive on the subject ever attempted, he traces in detail the vicissitudes of the great Krishna myth, the subversion of its message by schoolman philosophy, the pollution of its poetry by a tradition of hyper-erotic dilettantism.

In deriving human imperatives from human nature and the nature of the world's reality from which it evolved, the Krishna myth has a genuine scientific validity. In dissolving the perceptions in poetry, it adds the fervour of the heart to the clarities of the intellect. And Chaitanya's final revelation, in which he ably draws upon philosophy, eastern and western, old and contemporary, is that, because of these unique features, the Krishna myth is not a denominational legacy but the heritage of mankind, vibrantly contemporaneous, universal in significance.

Recovery, of the real meaning of the Krishna myth can redeem not only India but the whole world today.

About the Author:

Krishna Chaitanya, whom a national periodical had described as "one of the most original and stimulating minds writing in the sub-continent today", and as "our nearest approximation to the Renaissance man", is the author of nearly forty books whose interdisciplinary range got him the "Critic of Ideas" award of the Institute of International Education, New York. The major categories are: a five-volume philosophy of freedom for which he got a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship and which has been compared by critics to the works of Thomas Aquinas, the French encyclopaedists, Herbert Spencer, Whitehead and Teilhard de Chardin; a ten-volume history of world literature in English and several Indian languages, which won a special award from the Kerala Sahitya Akademi, several books on Indian culture including a four-volume history of Indian painting; and books retelling Sanskrit classics or vividly recreating the life of past epochs for children, one of which got the Federation of Indian Publishers' award for the best children's book published during the International Year of the Child. As Chairman or member of functional committees, he has been associated with over twenty cultural organizations. He has traveled widely in Asia, Europe and the USA and is listed in several international biographies and directories. In 1986 the Rabindra Bharati University awarded him the degree of D.Litt (honoris Causa) "in recognition of the significant role played by him in the enrichment of human knowledge".