KENNETH VALPEY
Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies kvalpey@gmail.com
THE RHETORIC OF REVERSALS: BHARATA’S FOREST WISDOM IN THE BHĀGAVATA PURĀṆA The Bhāgavata Purāṇa’s eight-chapter narration of King Bharata’s yogic adventures and misadventures (BhP 5,7–14) includes a variety of didactic rhetorical moments that can be viewed as fractals of the BhP’s over-all message of renounced-and-passionate devotion to Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa-Kṛṣṇa. The cumulative force of these moments—including reversals of fortune prompting premodern displays of “care ethics” and “stoic” extreme tolerance—culminates in a teaching that takes the form of an extended analogy, a “forest of (temporal) existence” (bhavāṭavīm). Here my aim is to examine and reflect on the variety of implicit and explicit rhetorical features exhibited in this section of the BhP to ask the broader question of what it means to persuade and be persuaded, Purānic-style.