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Article: Young Svetaketu: a literary study of an upanisadic story.
- Article from:
- The Journal of the American Oriental Society
- Article date:
- January 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 American Oriental Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Of the many interesting individuals we encounter in the vedic literature, Svetaketu, the son of Uddalaka Aruni,(1) comes across as one of the most colorful and true-to-life characters, not least because he is frequently depicted as the vedic equivalent of a spoiled little brat. Although he appears with some frequency in vedic and later literature both as a young man and as a mature adult, his character is most fully developed and exploited for literary-cum-theological purposes in the story of young Svetaketu's(2) encounter with a king, a story that has become famous because it contains the important doctrines of "five fires" and the two paths along which the dead travel.
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