Poison, snake, the sharp edge of a razor : yet the highest of Gurus defining female sexuality in the Mahābhārata

This thesis theorizes the conceptual grid upon which discussions of sexuality are based in India's Great Epic, the Mahabharata . The Mahabharata contains complex multilevel taxonomies of sexuality, framed within hierarchies of religious experience. The thesis isolates two categories of religious experience: pravr&dotbelow;tti dharma ("involvement in the world"), and nivr&dotbelow;tti dharma ("renunciation of the world"). Within nivr&dotbelow;tti dharma, discourses on sexuality are inalienable from discourses on the body, and on asceticism. Within pravr&dotbelow;tti dharma, discourses on sexuality are anchored by parallel discourses on the dharmas of caste and stage of life (varn&dotbelow;asrama dharma), as well as on the dharmas based on sex and familial hierarchy. These subcategories are identified and the place of sexuality within them is drawn in detail