In Chapters 1 and 2, I examined the self-designations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Rāmāyaṇa, and the Mahābhārata, and I adopted “epic” as an umbrella term for these poems, even as I recognized the reciprocal influences that these works and this rubric had upon each other. Yet my readings of the Greek and Sanskrit epics and of the royal poems that they include (see Chapters 3 and 4) lead me to conclude that the intercultural correspondences between these works warrant refinement of the epic category overspreading them. As a result, I regard the Iliad and the Rāmāyaṇa as affirmative epics that depict the ready realization of kléos and dharma, respectively, and the Odyssey and the Mahābhārata as interrogative epics that portray the difficulties in achieving these religious ideals.

I have taken this twofold approach to my metacomparison of the Greek and Sanskrit epics. In Chapters 3 and 4, I first compared the Iliad and the Odyssey and then the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata, while assuming that all four royal-poem-embedding works were comparable by virtue of having been labeled epics. Now that I have described the ways in which the royal poems within the Greek epics and within the Indian epics differ intra- and interculturally, I will refine the epic category, on the basis of the intercultural similarities between the Greek and Indian poems belonging to this category. By identifying both affirmative epics and interrogative epics across the Homeric and Hindu traditions, I will offer a new explanation of the complementarity that characterizes each tradition’s poem pair.

The Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata—in their different, though complementary, approaches to inculcating dharma—resemble the Iliad and the Odyssey, works that together affirm and interrogate kléos in a continuing effort to impress this ideal’s importance upon the minds of their attenders. The influences that the four epics have had on individuals open to the poems’ cultural instructions can be comprehended by recourse to modern theories of self and social psychology.

One way to assess the influences of the epics as religious instructors is to study the texts and practices of the communities in which the epics arose and persisted. But such sociological analysis constitutes only one of several stories that interpreters of the epics can tell about their educational role. My own account will center on the ways in which individuals who turned to the religious teachings of the epics interacted implicitly with these texts. Because I am interested in a set of psychological processes that are not attested outside of the epics themselves, my exegetical tale is, by necessity, hypothetical. Even so, this tale can explain in part the patent popularity and persistence of the ancient poems at this tale’s heart, much as contemporary fiction can shed light on the actual human condition.

At the core of my interpretative story, I contend that the epics’ heroes show, by their own example, how the epics’ audiences took to heart and put into practice these texts’ religious instructions. To actualize the religious ideals of the epics, the heroes first heed traditional tales whose protagonists demonstrate the epics’ ideals, tales that the heroes themselves tell (as in the case of the Greek epics) or that other displaced rulers tell (as in the case of the Sanskrit epics). Then the heroes follow in the footsteps of the tales’ protagonists.

Those audience members who identify most closely with and mirror a person who achieves his aims easily, a “mastery model,” probably are those people whose own lives have been eased by frequent peaks of pleasure. But those audience members who empathize most strongly with and emulate a person who attains his goals only by struggling, a “coping model,” probably are those people whose lives often have descended to nadirs of misery. Yet the memberships of these two groups may be identical, given that all human beings are likely to live through both highs and lows. The same people, depending on their moods, may respond to mastery models at certain times and to coping models at other times.

In any case, combining McAdams’ metaphor and Meichenbaum’s models illuminates both the influences that a mythical character can have on an individual and the influences that this individual in turn can have on those who hear the life story that he has put together, in part from the myths that he has heard. This influence chain itself has been depicted in the Greek and Sanskrit epics. In each of these four epics, a displaced ruler hears a myth that he himself (or his proxy) learns to tell and that he enacts eventually as an exemplar for others. Yet the emphases that each of the two epic pairs places on the processes of internalization and imitation depend on the pair’s particular religious ideal.

The Iliad and Odyssey accent the ability of their heroes to perform poetry themselves because Greek epic verse consists in, and thus preserves, the ideal that allays anxiety about an uncertain afterlife, namely, kléos. Accordingly, the Greek epics stress their successful protagonists’ identification with the poets who would celebrate them. Especially important in the Iliad and Odyssey, then, is internalization, the operation whereby the epics’ heroes anticipate their own poetic immortalization. Only by performing poems on their own, in the manner of traditional poets, can these heroes provide themselves with the proper scripts to perform unforgettably up to their potential as heroes and thus to take their rightful places on their culture’s stage of commemorated players.

By contrast, the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata highlight heroes who hear poems from other displaced rulers because the Sanskrit epics teach their ideal of dharma by example. Hence these works’ heroes not only hear about exemplarily righteous rulers, but also hear from monarchs who embody the hard choices that doing right requires in an age of increasing immorality. Because the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata underscore rightdoing, these poems spotlight their heroes’ imitation of dharmic paragons, rather than the heroes’ internalization of admirable episodes (which presumably precedes the heroes’ good deeds).

Although the Greek and Sanskrit epics, in accordance with their respective religious ideals, accentuate internalization and imitation differently, the epic pairs adopt analogous approaches to instill those ideals. In each pair, one epic features a hero who tells or hears a triumphal tale punctuated by peak experiences and who, by enacting this story, acts as a mastery model for the audience of the epic. The epic affirms its core ideal by exhibiting the ease with which this ideal is achieved to peak perfection both in the epic’s embedded tale and in the epic’s main story. But the poem with which this affirmative epic is partnered interrogates the same ideal. The interrogative epic focuses on a hero who relates or listens to melancholy accounts laden with nadir experiences and who, like the plaintive protagonist of the encapsulated narratives, attains his ideal with a great deal of difficulty. Consequently, he serves as a coping model for the epic’s audience.

The heroes of the affirmative and interrogative epics serve as such different exemplars by virtue of having internalized differently the tales of their traditions. Achilles and Odysseus, for instance, both surely have attended to the kléa andrō̂n since childhood, but have drawn from these glorious deeds of men distinctively while crafting personal myths.

By the time that Achilles—sitting in the camp that his countrymen have pitched before battling the Trojans—takes up the lyre that he has looted from Thebe, he sings of the famous acts of his antecedents, even as he is poised to procure similar glory for himself (Iliad 9.185–189). Although the Iliad does not specify about whom Achilles is singing, its classification of his song among the kléa andrō̂n—the designation that this epic, like the Odyssey, employs implicitly for itself (Iliad 9.519–526, Odyssey 8.72–78)—suggests that Achilles is singing his own life story in advance of its celebrated completion. His story has little suspense even when he is absent from the Trojan War, for, during this nonfighting phase, Achilles cannot help but set in motion the divine machinery that fixes his own future fame. He asks Thetis to ask Zeus to help the Trojans so that Agamemnon will suffer enough losses to be punished for dishonoring Achilles, who has left the fray in protest. Moreover, even before Patroclus’ death draws Achilles back into battle to slay Hector and other Trojans soon before dying himself—and to obtain everlasting fame as a result—Phoenix foresees the Phthian king’s glorious trajectory, comparing Achilles to men who have been immortalized in past poems (Iliad 1.407–412, 335–344; 18.114–116; 9.412–413, 519–526). Hence, Achilles articulates at Troy a life story that probably consists of peak experiences and, in its emphasis on glory, corresponds to the full actualization of destructive power that Achilles himself is destined to accomplish there.

At the same time that the Sanskrit epics portray internalization, the poems’ distinct depictions of this process imply that it comes more easily to some characters than to others. Rāma, for instance, hears a dharma-affirming account directly from its princely performers. Their physical similarity to him, as well as the fact that they actually are recounting a story about him, suggests that he could take over for them and render his life story readily—a fitting outcome for a ruler to whom righteousness is always apparent. In contrast, Yudhiṣṭhira listens only indirectly when a bardic king laments losses that interrogate whether dharma can be attained at all. Yudhiṣṭhira’s lack of a blood relationship to this ruler, Nala, and Yudhiṣṭhira’s distance from Nala’s life (which is described to Yudhiṣṭhira by an intermediary, Bṛhadaśva, rather than by Nala himself) would limit Yudhiṣṭhira’s ability to reproduce Nala’s poems as his own—an appropriate problem on the part of a King Dharma who is unsure of how to act rightly.

While peak and nadir experiences alike appear in the royal poems that represent Rāma’s and Yudhiṣṭhira’s life stories, the experiences are distributed differently in these personal myths, which accordingly paint strikingly different portraits of the monarchs at the myths’ centers. Rāma, according to Kuśa and Lava’s Rāmāyaṇa recitation, suffers greatly when he is separated from Sītā through her abduction and interment. Even so, Rāma’s is much less a tale of lost intimacy than of power won, as his sovereign success attests. By contrast, the Yudhiṣṭhira seen in the shadows of Nala’s woeful tales has cause to lament the losses of his own land and family, even as he remains their ruler. The limited power in Yudhiṣṭhira’s possession does little to offset his lost opportunities for intimacy.

In comparison with Odysseus and Yudhiṣṭhira, Achilles and Rāma internalize their respective societies’ stories of glory and morality more readily because the affirmative Iliad and Rāmāyaṇa offer a different type of exemplar than the interrogative Odyssey and Mahābhārata do. Both Achilles and Rāma masterly model their religious ideals. Achilles, in effect, recites his fated fame as though it has long been a part of his society’s poetic repertoire. And Rama hears a tale about how he himself has done and will do right decisively, an account that represents the ease with which he will put into practice what he has heard and thus will imitate the king whom Kuśa and Lava limn. Odysseus and Yudhiṣṭhira, however, cope with adversity as they struggle to model kléos and dharma, respectively. Odysseus can realize his renown only after his narratives have moved Alcinous, Eumaeus, and Penelope to aid him in his effort to regain his throne. And Yudhiṣṭhira—after hearing the abbreviated narratives in which long-gone Nala questions whether he himself can do right by his kingdom and queen—treks uphill to heaven, while accompanied not just by Dharma but also by self-doubt.

By presenting these mastery and coping models simultaneously, the affirmative and interrogative epics increase the appeal of their ideals to their audiences, whose differential abilities to realize glory and to realize righteousness are implied by the disparities between the Greek paragons and between the Indian ones. While Achilles and Rāma demonstrate the mastery with which kléos and dharma may be achieved, Odysseus and Yudhiṣṭhira cope with the difficulties in the attainment of these ideals. Taking clear and occluded paths to reach their ideals, the affirmative and interrogative heroes allow contrasting kinds of audience members—those to whom the ideals come readily and those for whom the ideals are hard won—to follow in the footsteps of the corresponding heroes and to apply the lessons of their lives.

The effectiveness of the affirmative and interrogative epics as instructors explains their persistence and prominence now as in the past. These poems transcend the times and places of their makings, by meeting religious needs that human beings still have today. Whenever they encounter the epics, audiences can find existential comfort as their heroes counter by kléos the uncertainty that death threatens and defeat by dharma the forces of increasing immorality, whether these exemplars achieve their ideals easily or not. And audience members, by internalizing the stories of these rulers and by imitating their endeavors to some extent, can incorporate into their own identities those ancient narratives and paragons.