Acknowledgments For my menfolk, with love I started writing this book when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago Divinity School. There, I found welcome support for my comparative project, even though the scholarly norm tended increasingly toward highly specialized studies. In my wider-ranging intellectual interests, I was encouraged by Wendy Doniger, my dissertation advisor, and by Anthony C. Yu and Laura M. Slatkin, the… Read more
Note on Texts and Translations The classical sources that I have cited are found in the following editions, unless otherwise specified: The Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra, ed. and trans. R. P. Kangle, 2nd ed., 2 pts. (Bombay, 1969–1972). Dhvanyāloka of Ānandavardhana, ed. and trans. K. Krishnamoorthy (Dharwar, 1974). Herodoti Historiae, ed. Karl Hude, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1927). Read more
Introduction. Defining Epics through Comparison An epic is an extensive poem that has been composed in an elevated style, that treats a pivotal epoch in the past of a particular people, and that endures because it both entertains its audiences and educates them on issues of ultimate importance. But the images that the term “epic” now evokes—mighty heroes who face fierce foes while traveling to exotic realms… Read more
1. The Epic Identity of the Iliad and Odyssey: Pindar and Herodotus’ Lofty Legacy The Homeric and Hindu epics appeal to their audiences as religious instructors by dint of addressing important existential issues in entertaining manners. Each pair of poems offers a couple of complementary solutions to a particularly pressing human problem. Because these solutions are found in the accounts that the epics place in the mouths… Read more
2. The Epic Metaphor of the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata: Ānandavardhana and Rājaśekhara’s Expedient Influence Like the Iliad and Odyssey, the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata are now considered to be epics. Yet this label does not suit the Sanskrit poems as well as it does the Greek works, for Sanskrit, unlike Greek, has no etymon for the word “epic.” Even so, the application of this term to… Read more
3. Listening to Achilles and to Odysseus: Poetic Kings on the Ideal of Kléos in the Homeric Epics The contrasting construals of kléos in the Iliad and the Odyssey are embodied by the poems’ bickering protagonists, Achilles and Odysseus, in the first song that Demodocus sings in Odyssey 8.72–82. In this performance, the singer does not specify the heroes’ quarrel’s source, but rather leaves it open to… Read more
4. Hearkening to Kuśa and Lava and to Nala: Poetic Monarchs on the Ideal of Dharma in the Hindu Epics The Hindu epics differ further from their Homeric counterparts by featuring rulers who are not merely similar to poets, but actually are poets. Yet these figures are not the heroes of the Hindu epics, despite resembling these leading men in their displacement from their sovereignties. In fact,… Read more
Conclusion. Affirmative and Interrogative Epics So far, I have discussed the Greek and Sanskrit epics largely separately. In Chapters 1 and 2, I examined the ways in which the Greek poems and their Sanskrit counterparts classified themselves, and I considered the effects that the reclassification of each pair of poems, as epics, had on their subsequent interpretation. In Chapters 3 and 4, I showed that each epic’s… Read more
Chapter 2. Erato To Erato, the cicadas report those who have honored her in the affairs of love Phaedrus 259d “Athens, N.M. 1260. RF hydria. From Vari. Group of Polygnotos. 440–430 (Beazley). Third quarter fifth. SUBJECT: in the center, a seated woman reading from a book roll; on the left, a companion holds out a wreath; on the… Read more
Chapter 3. Calliope and Ourania … and to Calliope, the eldest, and to Ourania who comes after her (τῇ μετ᾿ αὐτῇ), the cicadas report those who spend their time in philosophy and honor the music that belongs to them—who most of the all the Muses have as their sphere the heaven (οὐρανόν) and the logoi, both divine and human, and utter the most beautiful voice… Read more
