CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION The literary importance and magnificence of the ancient classics like the Iliad, the Odvssev. and the Valmiki Ramavana and the

Mahabharata have been universally accepted. Their creators, Homer and Vyasa are the greatest and the most revered poets in the respective traditions.

No other literary figure in Greek history occupied a place in the life of the people as Homer did. He was the pre-eminent symbol of nationhood, the unimpeachable authority on their history, a decisive figure in the creation of their pantheon as well as their most beloved and most quoted poet. For Aristotle, as to his world. Homer was "the

Poet" par excellence. It is said that Alexander carried the Iliad about with him in a jewelled casket. The Iliad is regarded as the beginning of the western literary tradition. It is an epic poem relating a part of the story of the Trojan war which was fought for plundering the prosperous city of Troy and also, supposedly, because of the abduction of Helen. It includes the wrath of Achilles, his withdrawal from the fighting and his

return to the battle to avenge his friend, Patroclus. The Odvssev describes the wanderings and adventures of Odysseus trying to return

home after the sack of Troy and also Penelope's plight while waiting for

him. The epics have been regarded for centuries as a treasure of

wisdom and knowledge of human nature. The Greeks regarded the

epics as something more than works of literature. They knew much of

them by heart and valued them not only as a symbol of Hellenic unity

and heroism but also as an ancient source of moral and even practical instruction. The epics had a profound impact on the Renaissance culture of Italy and also of the rest of Europe.

The Mahabharata of Vyasa is regarded in the same way in

India. It is said rightly in the Aadi Parvan—

(O king of Bharata dynasty, in the matters of dharma or path of righteousness, artha or material pursuits, kama or satisfaction of desires and moksha or freedom from bondage, [in short, in all the spheres of life] whatever is here, will be found at other places. Whatever is not here, cannot be found anywhere.)

It relates the story of the greatest war of ancient India and the

history of the Pandavas and of the Kuru clan. It is the largest epic of

the world, with one lakh verses and it is almost an encyclopaedia of

political and moral wisdom, psychology, philosophy and sociology.

Many parts of this epic such as the Bhaqavat Gita. Narada Niti. Vidura

Niti have obtained the status of independent works. Great literary

artists like Kalidasa, Bhasa, Magha, Bharavi, Shri Harsha chose stories

from it for their works of art. Innumerable plays, novels and poems on

the themes of the Mahabharata have been written in the Indian

languages. Its popularity in India is unparalleled and the mega-play and

mega-film of Peter Brooke on this epic is one of the proofs of its

worldwide appeal. What Jasper Griffin says about Homer is true about Vyasa, too.

He says,

"The Homeric poems do not tell us that the world was made for man, or that our natural state in it is one of happiness. They do say that it can be comprehended in human terms and that human life can be more than an insignificant or ignoble struggle in the dark. The human soul can rise to the height of the challenges and the suffering which are the lot of all mankind. That spirit, chastened but not despairing, which sees the world without illusion and confronts it without self-pity or

evasion, was the gift of Greece to the world, and it is the deepest

element in the thought of Homer." ^

Griffin has rightly explained why these epics have a perpetual

appeal for generations of people. Had Griffin read the Mahabharata. he

would have said the same thing about it. The Mahabharata also shows

that man is not the master of the world and his life is governed mostly

by fate. Perfect happiness is rarely to be found in life and yet man can

bear the suffering, fight and meet the challenges with a heroic and

noble spirit. Like the Homeric people the Mahabharata people too

confront life without self-pity and evasion. Naturally the epics of these

great poets are permanent challenges for the researchers and have

been studied from various angles. This present study has a further

defined scope.

It is true that the Mahabharata does not fit in the exact frame of

the western definition of the epic. That is why great critics of comparative literature like Auerbach, C. M. Bowra, Northrop Frye discussed the theory of epic without any consideration of the l\/1ahabharata. So it is more right to call it mahakavya but all these classics are referred to as epics because of a large number of

similarities between them and for the sake of convenience in this dissertation. All these epics are comparable for various reasons. All of

them are primary epics. Homer's epics are the fountainhead of the western literary tradition, and the Valmiki Ramavana and the

Mahabharata are the most important landmarks of the mainstream

Indian literary as well as cultural and religious tradition. All these four

epics are arsha as Lokamanya Tilak calls them in his editorials of

Kesari. Arsha suggests that they are composed by rishis and, naturally,

it is also suggested that their origins cannot be ascertained because of

their ancientness. There are a large number of similarities between

them. The themes of feats of a brave hero, his extensive travels, an

extraordinarily beautiful woman and a great war for her sake are similar

in almost all the epics. These themes express the two dominant

instincts of man-love and aggression. These epics have been enjoying

a similar status in both the traditions. The excavations and

archaeological findings at Troy and those at Hastinapur have shown

that they have an historical element in them, although the word history

does not have the modern meaning here. All the epics under

consideration here invoke notions from the patriarchal Indo-European

traditions like manly heroism and manly friendship, and womanly

endurance but there is a difference that makes the comparison more interesting. The Homeric epics represent an early, relatively, unsophisticated phase of the Greek civilization while the Mahabharata represents the Indian civilization that has already passed that phase and evinces greater moral and social awareness. These are some of the considerations that induced the undertaking of the present study.

What better aspect of the two epic worlds could be thought of for such a comparison than the treatment of the characters? The intention behind this study is to investigate and compare the prominent women characters depicted in the three classics belonging to the two major patriarchies of the past. Comparison of the treatment of women characters in the epics of two ancient cultures can be interesting from many points of view. The study of Homer's characters has been mainly about his men. For instance. Homer in English Criticism was published by Donald M. Forester in 1947. It studies the historical approach of

German, Scottish and English critics of Homer. None of these critics made a detailed study of Homeric women. Other critical books show the same lack. Selected women characters in the Mahabharata have been studied well by Indian critics but there has not been any comparative study of the characters of the epics in the two cultures, and of women characters particularly, as far as I know. Monier Williams

compared the epics of the two traditions in his Indian Wisdom in 1893

but the characters are not studied there at length. Durga Bhagavat in

her Vvasaparva and Iravati Karve in her Yuflanta have passed only

some incidental remarks in comparison. Nabaneeta Dev Sen has

compared epics in the east and in the west from the point of view of their thematic structure. Maeve Hughes has written a short essay "Epic

Women" in Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature and compared

Draupadi with Deirdre from the Gaelic tradition. The last sentence of the essay is-

"These great old tales with their rather uniformly heroic men and their fascinatingly enigmatic women are beyond the reach of our petty questioning. If we approach them with reverence in our critical hearts they will reveal to us something of their magic and mystery, enough, just enough to whet our appetite for more!" ^

So the writer has not studied the characters with a critical spirit.

Vijaya Guttal has compared the Iliad and the Ramayana in her Ph. D. thesis in the English Department of Karnataka University. Shilpa Desai

has compared the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Mahabharata from the

point of view of the heroic concept in her Ph. D. thesis in M. S.

University, Baroda. I felt therefore that the comparative study of women

in these epics can yield new insights in the study of these three

classics. Classics in any culture are the seminal sources of myths and

role making. They have a lasting influence on private, social, moral,

political, cultural attitudes of generations. Since women have played

important roles in many of the classics, it should be interesting and

instructive to study the prominent women characters of these classics

and compare their feats and fates. Projecting of the women indicates

the gender perspective. The three texts need to be placed in the

context of literary history and of social attitudes towards women. Classics are a mirror of society. So while studying ancient texts the

picture of that society also emerges graphically which can be observed

in detail. One of the objects of such a study can be the status of women in their respective societies and a comparison thereof. The

influence of the classics on societies is perpetual and, especially in

India, it has helped to form the ideas of the meaningfulness of life of

men and women. Therefore such a study is especially relevant in India.

The attempt that is made in this study is to compare the status

of women as they are seen in the epics written in two different

traditions and cultures—one of the west and the other of the east. The

twentieth century outlook and viewpoint is implicit in the study of the

ethical norms of the societies in which these women lived and had their

beings. This may seem to be an anachronism. It may be noted in this

connection that the comparison has no conscious feminist overtones.

These women characters cannot be expected to be governed by the

feministic aspirations of equal rights and status with men. Yet it is

interesting to watch them trying to assert their self-respect, to avenge

themselves and facing life nobly and heroically.

The epics are taken here as finished products, as they appear in

the texts. I have assumed, as it is almost unanimously believed, that

both the Greek epics were composed by Homer, and the Odyssey was

composed after the Uiad- Longinus has very convincingly explained in

his "On Sublimity" why the Iliad must have preceded the Odyssey. The

question of the number of their composers or compilers and their contributions is left untouched, and Homer and Vyasa are taken simply as "causative" poets. Within the limits of the purpose of this study, a consideration of this question is not necessary. All the four oral epics could have been compared suitably but the Mahabharata is a large epic and the inclusion of the Ramavana would have made the project rather unmanageable. Again the Greek epics are more similar to the

Mahabharata than to the Ramavana which is more idealistic and less

rugged than the other three epics. It would have been ideal to study the epics in the Greek original but the Greek of these classics is an archaic

language and not the Greek of today. Learning archaic Greek in India was not feasible. So it was inevitable to depend upon English translations of the Greek epics. Robert Fagles' translation of the Iliad

(1991; New York : Penguin Books, 1998) and Walter Shewring's

translation of the Odyssey (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1980) are

used in this study. I read the Mahabharata in Sanskrit and depended

on the Critical Edition of Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune.

A chapter outline of the present study is as follows. The second

chapter of the thesis is The Epic in Ancient Greece and in Ancient

India'. It describes the background of the epics in general. The origins

of the Greek and Sanskrit epics are similar because both of them are

the culmination of odes to or songs of heroes sung by bards before

feasting nobles, or before risis at the yajnas, sacrificial fire. A great war

is at the centre of the epics and this war is disastrous for a whole

civilization but the sagas do not remain mere war stories because

tragic awareness is an essential factor of these epics and it makes 10 them immortal. The endings of all the epics make the reader think about life and its supposed meaning. They also show deep sympathy of the epic poets for man confronting death or destiny. No ancient

civilization of the world was free of the evil of slavery in this or that

form. Yet the epic poets cannot help showing sympathy for the

sufferers even when they have a lower status in the hierarchy accepted

by the poets. Homer and Vyasa both possess this great attribute of a

classic poet.

All these epics have compositional layers because of

interpolations. It was inevitable in the oral tradition but the

Mahabharata has a far larger amount of interpolations than Homeric

epics. Lokamanya Tilak in his editorials and Romila Thapar in her

Shakuntala : Texts. Readings. Histories point out interpolations in this

epic. It seems that the interpolations were made with some particular

purposes. M. Winternitz asserts that brahmans wanted to propagate

their own superiority through the epics that had by now acquired a

semi-religious status. We can say that the persons who did the

interpolations also had the purpose of creating role models of

submissive wives. This kind of purposeful interpolation is a point of

contrast among the epics.

The Qdvssev shows a kind of evolution in many respects from

the Iliad. Some of them are attitude towards war, human life, common

people and women. Literature after the Greek epics presented stronger

and more powerful women characters than in the epics, e. g. in the 11

Attic tragedies, but Indian literature after the Mahabharata presented hardly any set of women characters who were as strong and powerful as the Mahabharata women.

The third chapter 'Characters in the Epics and their Presentation

: A Comparative Overview' discusses characterization in the epics in general. The nature of characters in these epics is considered in the first part. In the second part the modes of character presentation are considered. All these epics show a blending of realism and fantasy, though the poets could not have been conscious of it. In spite of the active presence of gods in all of them it is the human characters that impress the readers and become unforgettable with their grandeur of prowess, nobility and humanity. The modes of narration of characters of the two poets are discussed briefly.

The fourth chapter is 'Individual Women Characters in the Iliad

and the Odvssev'. It is a question whether Helen is a 'femme fatale'.

Helen's character is discussed mainly with respect to this question.

Penelope is an epitome of the faithful wife. Hecuba and Andromache

are victims of war and spell tragedy. Achilles' mother, Thetis, is another

woman who suffers because of war, and this, even though she is an

immortal nymph. Briseis and Chryseis are prizes of war, more like

objects than like human beings. Calypso is a "La Belle Dame 'with'

Merci" because she loves Odysseus dearly and wants to offer him

immortality. But when he insists on returning to his homeland, she

helps him generously to undertake his homeward journey. According to 12 many critics, the most remarkable of the characters in the Odyssey or in the whole of Homer, is Nausicaa. Nausicaa, Odysseus' mother,

Anticleia, Eurydeia, Circe, the goddesses and other women in the two

Greek epics are discussed in this chapter. The characterization of the

Greek women shows a great yariety. Although Homer's yiew is aristocratic eyen the slave women are treated with sympathy in the

Odyssey.

The fifth chapter is 'Individual Women Characters in the

Mahabharata.' Draupadi is the most important among them. She is like a flame of yajna and quite independent for the ancient times. Her relationship with Krishna is a beautiful aspect of her character. Kunti is a noble, strong and courageous mother. Gandhari is weak as a mother when compared to Kunti yet she has the nobility and tenacity to oppose the evil schemes of her sons against the Pandavas and try to support the just. A modern feminist may find some 'feministic' tendencies in

Kunti. Other women like Satyavati, Amba, Shakuntala, Savitri, Shandili are considered briefly. Most of them are strong and independent but there also are women like Madhavi who was made to stay with one

king after another for four years for obtaining eight hundred horses.

The sixth chapter is 'Comparison of Attitude towards Women in

the Iliad, the Odvssev and the Mahabharata.' In both the civilizations

women were taken to be inferior to men. This fact is reflected in the

epics but both the poets go beyond this view and show sympathy to

them for their suffering. The Greek women are not independent in their 13 life and thinking. Tlie excellence of a woman is decided in terms of her value to a man. Even in the families women have to bear the menace of concubinage. The wives of warriors are in a constant danger of becoming slaves after the death of their husbands. Even the queens are not spared. Hector and Andromache are suffering under the shadow of the same danger. The end of the Odvssev shows how

Telemachus performs a wholesale slaughter of the slave women.

Comments of C. M. Bowra, M. I. Finley, Gerda Lerner and others are considered in this chapter.

Religious element crept in the Sanskrit epics after they became popular and many verses seem to have been inserted to advocate the supposed great powers of brahmans. There is a great deal of verses in the Mahabharata. as in Shanti Parvan, that condemn women flatly.

These insertions must have got the purpose of creating convenient role models of wives with unilateral constancy towards the husband. The evidence of their being later insertions is that they do not match the strong women of the Mahabharata. Women like Draupadi, Kunti do not behave according to these models. In spite of these strong women the attitude of the Mahabharata towards women in general seems to be ambivalent. The examples of Madhavi, Bhangashwana, Gandhari and others show this.

The word ambivalence is used many times in this dissertation to

describe the attitude about women, expressed in the Mahabharata.

Here it does not mean moral condemnation but the tremendous

variety of and contradictions about the views are suggested. 14

Women are traditionally taken to be the causes of the great wars

In the east and the west. This traditional belief is based not so much on the facts of history as on traditional misogyny on the part of the males.

The causes of the wars are discussed in this chapter and it is shown that wealth, land and honour were the real reasons of these wars and women were only scapegoats. Against this background of total misogyny shine the rare sympathy and sense of woman's honour shown by some persons like Krishna, Hector and Patroclus in these epics.

The seventh chapter is 'Conclusion'. The comparison of these women shows that both the traditions assumed the inferiority of women to men. Women were assigned specific and comparatively unimportant tasks. Wars were frequent and, except for Amazons, women did not fight. So they were the weaker sex. Neither Homer nor Vyasa shows a romantic or chivalrous adoration for women. The attitude towards women in the Odyssey is slightly improved over that in the Iliad whereas the attitude in the Mahabharata alone is ambivalent. On the one hand there are strong women like Draupadi and Kunti who cannot fail to impress and, on the other hand, one finds Madhavi who is used like an object. Most of the Mahabharata women surpass the Homeric women in depth of thinking, forbearance and courage. As far as the portrayal of women characters is concerned, not only the number of women characters but also their variety is larger in the Mahabharata than in the Homeric epics. 15

Both the bards fully shared with their audience the conviction of natural inferiority of women yet as great poets they have universal minds and they do not fail to give justice to women. They know

humanity almost thoroughly and so they have also shown great

qualities or merit of women. In spite of their sharing of the audience's

views about women's inferiority, both the poets show sympathy for their

suffering. The Greek epics remained pieces of literature, at the most,

books of moral instruction in the ancient times and of inspiration in

Europe at the time of the Renaissance. They never became semi-

religious scriptures like the Indian epics that are still immensely

popular. Unlike the Greek epics, the Indian epics have contributed in

the formation of ideas of and about women. All one can say is--that

was the way women were treated then. Criticizing them is like

quarrelling with history and it is anachronistic. One has to and can

reject the injustices of the past without rejecting the flowers of those

partially sinful old civilizations. 16

NOTES

1. Vyasa, The Mahabharata (Poona : Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1971, 1975) 79 and also 2925. Hereafter cited as Mahabharata.

2. Jasper Griffin, Homer (Oxford : Oxford U. P., 1980) 78.

Hereafter cited as Griffin, Homer. 3. Maeve Hughes, "Epic Women", Jadavpur Journal of Comparative Literature. 23 (1985): 153. Hereafter cited as "Epic Women".

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