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the Bhagavad Gita and the other in the work by the Australian sociologist David Tacey, Edge
of the Sacred: Transformations in Australia. Though written some two millennia apart, they
both set out to reconcile the relationship between man and his universe, and explain why
seeking to justify opposing world views should be an especially germane concern to Australian
writers. In addition, they both address other important perplexing Asian concepts which need
to be investigated in order to accurately criticise Koch and d’Alpuget—namely: time and
destiny; destiny and free will; the cyclical concept of history and the ‘Black Age’ of
destruction. Third, this chapter will give special attention to Billy Kwan, who of all the
protagonists of the studied novels best exemplifies the dilemma posed when contradictory but
equally valid systems demand non-reconcilable responses. It will show how Kwan finds
models for his decision in the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata, and the Gospels, supporting
Koch’s own conviction that the antagonistic systems of East and West are not only
reconcilable but closely related.
8.2. Critical Perspectives on Koch’s use of the Bhagavad Gita
Until now critics have generally dismissed or, at best, glossed over the importance of the
Hindu tradition in the works of C. J. Koch and Blanche d’Alpuget. In d’Alpuget’s case, such
recognition is non-existent; in Koch’s case, critics have bowed most often to the authority of
Paul Sharrad’s study of the intertextual relationship of The Year of Living Dangerously and the
Bhagavad Gita, ‘Echoes and their Distortions: The Gita in C. J. Koch’s Fiction’. The problem
here seems twofold. On one hand, most critics clearly have not studied the Eastern sources,
and therefore misinterpret Sharrad’s criticism of Koch’s intertextual use of Indian and Javanese
myths and symbols. On the other hand, many critics are too quick to rely on the intertextualist
trick of sticking a handy literary label on Koch—failing to consider his voice as author of one
in the line of texts, and reducing him, for instance, to a ‘post-colonialist’ or ‘neo-orientalist’
writer. This much is unfortunate enough, but has the graver consequence of interpreting his
protagonists as anti-heroes, degenerates or misfits, who suffer from bouts of extreme nostalgia
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