Epics
Alf Hiltebeitel
In January 2023 the world of Indology lost Alf Hiltebeitel, prolific Mahabharata scholar who hewed new pathways through that thorny thicket to reveal fresh vistas of understanding. Freud’s India explored personal experiences following his father’s death and his own divorce that recalled Freud’s life and Freud’s connection with India through Dr. Girindrasekhar Bose (‘an extraordinary professor who had founded a local psychoanalytic group in Calcutta’—Freud, 1922). Bose sent Freud an icon of Vishnu seated on Ananta which he kept on his desk. This features as the cover.
Reviewed by: Pradip Bhattacharya