The Mahābhārata holds a special place in the Indian imagination as an epic, a philosophical treatise, and a literary masterpiece. It is one of the early texts in the Samkhya tradition with deep philosophical reflections on the real world, the otherworldly, and the individual. For scholars, the Mahābhārata is a tour de force, at once forging a harmonious alliance between the spiritual, the real world, and the philosophical and literary plains. The epic has been the subject of philosophical interpretations in both Indian and Western traditions, leading to modern renditions and contemporary adaptations of the Mahābhārata. For instance, the core message of the Gītā (one of the fundamental teachings of the Mahābhārata) is viewed to be broadly revolving around two strands of engagement and disengagement, which manifest in the interpretation of Krishna as both a warrior and a philosopher.

In Freud's Mahābhārata, Alf Hiltebeitel engages with the Mahābhārata at multiple levels, especially locating it within the Freudian psychoanalytical world of “the uncanny” and “oedipal.” In charting these multiple relational terrains, Hiltebeitel rightly calls his introduction “pointillistic” (p. xvii). For instance, two concepts from Freud's The Uncanny (1919)—namely, heimlich and unheimlich, meaning “known” and “unknown” (or something that is supposed to be a secret that has been revealed)—can be seen in the light of the Mahābhārata's discussion of the divine plan or the “secrets of the gods.” This, according to Hiltebeitel, relates to the idea of conscious and unconscious—divine plans are “kept out of sight,” and yet they are “familiar.” The book's introduction initiates a discussion of Freud's three classes in The Uncanny, focusing on the oedipal, preoedipal, buried alive, and castration anxiety and juxtaposing these with the philosophical terrains inherent in the Mahābhārata, such as karma, reincarnation, and maya.

In chapter 2, Hiltebeitel holds that Diane Jonte-Pace's discussion of Freud's analysis in Interpretation of Dreams of a dream that his mother had died connects with Andre Green's exposition of the “dead mother complex.”Footnote ¹ While engaging with Green's dead mother complex, Hiltebeitel sheds light on one of the Mahābhārata's main mother protagonists, Kunti (mother of the five Pandavas). Interestingly, Hiltebeitel points out that Jonte-Pace has overlooked Green's pertinent ideas on the dead mother complex. The idea that the mother is alive but dead to her child is portrayed vividly through the interactions between Kunti and her eldest son Yudhishtar. These interactions are marked by palpable tension between the two, evident in Kunti's favorable view of her other sons: “she addresses all her maternal goodwill toward Arjuna and Bhima” (p. 47). Kunti's apathetic viewpoint emanates from her “lack of sympathy for Yudhishthira's inner world,” “hotblooded Ksatriya temperament,” and “her [Kunti's] solicitations of Draupadi” (p. 45). The strained relationship of mother (Kunti) and son (Yudhishthira) manifested in Yudhishtar's bad treatment of Draupadi is borne out during the disrobing of Draupadi and her manhandling by the evil Kicaka. Interestingly, Hiltebeitel juxtaposes this with Green's idea of “violence and hysteria” (p. 47). Here Hiltebeitel anthropologically connects Draupadi's disrobing with Draupadi cult performances of the dice match and the disrobing of terukkuttu dramas, in which some women in the audience become possessed during the performance.

Picking up the thread from Jonte-Pace's article on Freud's three texts about dead mothers based on his discussion of “mothers, dead mothers, matricide” (p. 55), chapter 3 traces a long lineage of mothers in the Mahābhārata. Hiltebeitel interrogates six dead mother texts, three each from Freud and the Mahābhārata, to define a point of departure by posing a searching question: “why is the Hindu Goddess, whom we will now begin to discuss primarily as she ‘develops’ in relation to mortal heroines, so ‘undeveloped’ in the baseline Mahābhārata text of the Poona Critical Edition (PCE) . . . ?” (p. 57). The first dead mother example appears in the Adiparvan (book of the beginning), the second reference comes in the Aranyakaparvan (book of forests) during the famous episode of Yaksha's five questions, and the third one reveals itself in the Virataparvan (book of Virata) (pp. 58–62). These stories provide a crucial link to explain the undeveloped treatment of the goddess in the PCE, which is regarded as a baseline text. Interestingly, such references find their way into Tamil folkloric accounts, which point to the presence of the goddess Kali (in the hollow of a tree). The fourth mother in the lineage is the Matsyagandha Satyavati, who was born of a fish and, in that sense, would make “Satyavati's own mother, the fish, the Pandavas fifth and final 180-year old mother” (p. 70).

Significantly, this discussion opens up yet another strand of inquiry about the goddess's emergence in “Indian history, culture, and literature” (p. 79). Delving into such an inquiry enables this work to add further nuance to the explanation of the “text and tradition” (p. 79). With historical robustness, Hiltebeitel argues that the “flowering of Mahābhārata tradition” (p. 80) and the goddess finding traction within this tradition was an incremental journey of the text from the north to the south. Subsequently, layers and varieties of interpretations and renditions in the south contained initial “uncanny” trappings of goddess domesticities. Such a pattern manifests in the example of the Indian goddesses Uma-Parvati and Ganga, both wives of Siva (p. 88). Hiltebeitel discusses this in the light of Fernando Wulff Alonso's conjecture that some narratives in the Mahābhārata drew on Greek mythology and the Iliad.Footnote ² For example, connections are seen between Ganga as an immortal goddess mother and her son Bhisma in the Mahābhārata and the sea goddess Thetis and her son Achilles in the Iliad (p. 97).

Chapter 5 establishes an intricate relationship between the text and their interpretations as cults by examining the Kali and Aravan-Kuttantavar cults in Tamil Nadu. At this juncture, Hiltebeitel delves into a detailed anthropological exploration of the cult of Kali (an Indian goddess) as a Bosean “Oedipus mother” and the cult of Aravan who sacrificed himself to Kali in the Mahābhārata. It is noteworthy that one can see the difference between the text and how the rituals are played out in the cults.

The book culminates in a broader argument about Freud's Moses and Monotheism (1939), which holds that religious traditions should be studied not only for their conscious associations but also how they are unconsciously shaped by the history of past traumas, loss of memory, “defense, outbreak of neurosis and the partial return of the repressed” (p. 204). Hiltebeitel argues that the “Mahābhārata story is thus the ‘recovered memory’ of a Vedic past just as it is a return of partially unconscious and forgotten meanings about that past” (p. 263).

Hiltebeitel's Freud's India serves as a crucial connecting link to its companion volume by tracing the correspondence between Freud and Girindrasekhar Bose, one of the early Indian psychoanalysts. These letters provide a fascinating lens through which to understand the distinction between the monotheistic paternalism of the West and pluralistic maternal Indian traditions.

The correspondence between Freud and Bose is divided into three phases. In the introductory phase, from 1920 to 1923, they exchanged ideas and shared their own and related works. There was a hiatus afterward and the correspondence resumed in 1929, breaking again until 1933, after which it continued until 1937 and then eventually stopped. In the backdrop of the final break was Bose's proposed article on the theory of “opposite wishes,” which Freud had encouraged for publication, albeit with modifications to stand up to the scrutiny of peer review. Bose responded by providing an uncompromising defense of his views, decidedly expressed in an earlier letter to Freud dated April 11, 1929: “The Oedipus mother is very often a combined parental image and this is a fact of great importance. I have reasons to believe that much of the motivation of ‘maternal deity’ is traceable to this source.” Bose added, “My theory of the opposite wish is not a mere formal philosophical statement as you suppose it to be. Like any other scientific theory it is a specific formulation that will explain many facts of mental life” (p. 31). After waiting for the imminent article, Freud answered after four and a half years in German, completely ignoring the article and instead focusing on the work of S. C. Mitra (one of Bose's colleagues). The theory of “opposite wishes” is explored further in chapter 4 through the work of Tarun Chandra Sinha, a disciple of Bose.

This book engages with another set of correspondence between Freud and the French Nobel laureate Romain Rolland, well known for his work on “oceanic feeling” and his deep knowledge about the Indian tradition. In Rolland's words, “oceanic feeling” is a subjective feeling or sentiment free of any “dogma, all credo, all church organization, all sacred books, all hope in personal survival etc., the simple and direct fact of the feeling of the ‘eternal’”—an oceanic feeling (p. 60, Rolland's letter to Freud dated December 5, 1927). Freud initially expressed his disagreement with Rolland but later, with reluctance, Freud admitted the “oceanic feeling” as part of the metapsychology. However, Freud did not accept the claim that this feeling is “the source of religious needs” (p. 65).

Interestingly, the last part of the book reenters the “Oedipus” debate through Bose's gift of a Visnu Anantadeva statue to Freud. Ananta is the snake whose coil serves as Visnu's seat and can be regarded as symbolizing “unconsciousness” (p. 195). Hiltebeitel provides a fascinating account of the backstory of the Visnu statue being presented to Freud by the Indian Psychoanalytical Society (perhaps with an oblique objective of making a symbolic argument about the goddess and the mother deity through the gift).

In the end, one is left wondering about the title Freud's Mahābhārata, given that Freud never engaged with the Mahābhārata directly, even though Hiltebeitel concedes this at the very outset in the preface. On reading Freud's India, I am also inclined to muse on the state of psychoanalysis in India after this initial phase. Perhaps it would have been prudent to give brief consideration to post-Bose developments in the book. Nevertheless, both volumes push the boundaries, further providing a glimpse of a unique sangam (a holy intersection) of Western and Indian philosophical traditions. In Hiltebeitel's words, “it [the book] is meant to catch the eye of two chief groups of prospective readers: those interested in Freud and Psychoanalysis, and those interested in India” (p. ix). In my view, both books deploy an extraordinary blend of history, anthropology, and inherent ideas about religious distinction between the East and the West in the ancient texts and the writings of the modern thinkers (Freud and Bose). They provide a comprehensive and deep analysis of the historical landscape of psychoanalysis through Freud, Bose, and the Mahābhārata. These works will prove valuable for students interested in religion, history, rituals, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. An additional treat is Hiltebeitel's own reflections and takeaways.