Arjuna-Odysseus: Shared Heritage in Indian and Greek Epic

Bringing together the study of the Greek classics and Indology, Arjuna-Odysseus provides a comparative analysis of the shared heritage of the Mahābhārata and early Greek traditions presented in the texts of Homer and Hesiod.

Building on the ethnographic theories of Durkheim, Mauss, and Dumont, the volume explores the convergences and rapprochements between the Mahābhārata and the Greek texts. In exploring the networks of similarities between the two epic traditions, it also reformulates the theory of Georges Dum?zil regarding Indo-European cultural comparativism. It includes a detailed comparison between journeys undertaken by the two epic heroes - Odysseus and Arjuna - and more generally, it ranges across the philosophical ideas of these cultures, and the epic traditions, metaphors, and archetypes that define the cultural ideology of ancient Greece and India.

This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of Indo-European comparativism, social and cultural anthropology, classical literature, Indology, cultural and post-colonial studies, philosophy and religion, as well as to those who love the Indian and Greek epics.

N. J. Allen is a social anthropologist and a retired Reader in the Social Anthropology of South Asia, University of Oxford, UK. His research interests are Himalayan studies, world-historical approach to kinship systems, sociology of Durkheim and more especially Mauss, and Indo-European cultural comparativism.