The Odyssey and the Ramayana: The Comparison That Won’t Die
Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster revives a centuries-old question: are the two epics related?
In the climax of the Greek epic, The Odyssey, Odysseus strings a bow and shoots an arrow through 12 axes to win back the hand of his wife, Penelope. The written version of the tale, dated between the 8th and 7th centuries B.C., is as old as time. A godlike man has just helped win the Trojan War (with some deceit thrown in), and now must return home to Ithaca, his wife, and his son.
But for many familiar with an equally ancient epic from thousands of miles away, the Ramayana, the parallels are too eerie to be a coincidence. In the Ramayana, too, Rama effortlessly lifts a bow that nobody else can and strings it to win the hand of his wife, Sita.
“Does The Odyssey actually have a Ramayana reference in the climax?” one Indian user incredulously asks about Christopher Nolan’s latest film adaptation. “I’m 100% sure it’s inspired by Ramayana,” another responds.
But is that true? The Juggernaut spoke to experts to explain exactly how two canonical texts composed 3,500 miles apart — The Odyssey and the Ramayana — are linked across time, place, and people.