Ancient Greece–Ancient India relations

For the Ancient Greeks, “India" (Greek: Ινδία) meant only the upper Indus till the time of Alexander the Great. Afterwards, “India" meant most of the northern half of the Indian subcontinent (including present-day India and Pakistan) to the Greeks. The Greeks referred to the Indians as "Indói" (Greek: Ἰνδοί), literally meaning "the people of the Indus River". Indians called the Greeks Yonas and “Yavanas” from Ionians.

Quotes edit

The West spoke fairly enough, talking of honor, the sanctity of the given word, and of promises; of freedom and enlightenment. It vaunted its poets, its philosophers, Its scientists, Its classical inheritance from that beautiful, far off Greece, whose greatest philosophers, it forgot to mention, had been inspired through Egypt and Persia, by India.
- Michael Pym, The power of India, quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture

Much of the narrative heritage of India and Greece goes back to shared ancestral narratives told in early IE times – to ‘protonarratives’. (…) the Greek tradition quite often fuses or amalgamates traditions that were separate in the protonarrative and remain separate in the Sanskrit... At first sight the similarity consists in little more than a conflict between protagonist and god, leading to a change in sacrificial practice. However, on closer inspection one can distinguish at least eighteen rapprochements.
- N. Allen (2015) quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins. quoting 2015: “Cyavana helps Aśvins, Prometheus helps humans: a myth about sacrifice”, Comparative Mythology 1, Harvard, Cambridge.

[Nick Allen has repeatedly shown that in many parallel motifs in the Mahābhārata and in Homer’s epics, the Indian version contains a spiritual element lacking in the European version:] “in parts of their careers, Arjuna and Odysseus show similarities so numerous and detailed that they must be cognate figures, sharing an origin in the proto-hero of an oral proto-narrative. (…) So, if both stories descend from a proto-narrative, there are two possibilities. Either the proto-journey was like the Greek and contained nothing relating to yoga, in which case the yogic aspect of the Sanskrit story was an innovation that developed in the Indian branch of the tradition. Or the proto journey was like the Sanskrit and was quasi-yogic or proto-yogic in character, in which case Greek epic tradition largely or wholly eliminated that aspect of the story. I shall argue for the second scenario, claiming both that the proto-narrative shared certain features with yoga and that the telling of such a story makes it likely that there already existed ritual practices ancestral to yoga. (…) I argue that some significant and fairly precisely identifiable features of yoga go back to the culture of those who told the proto-narrative (…) may well have been proto-Indo-European speakers.” ... “it is a priori quite likely that the account of the proto-hero's journey served as a myth explaining and justifying ritual practices ancestral to yoga as we know it.”
- (N. Allen 1998), quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins. also quoted in Elst K. in Udayanath Sahoo (editor), Shobha Rani Dash (editor) - Great Indian Epics_ International Perspectives-Routledge (2021)

'I like to think that someone will trace how the deepest thinking of India made its way to Greece and from there to the philosophy of our times.'
- John Archibald Wheeler In a foreword to (Jitatmananda 1986). Jitatmananda, Swami. Modern Physics and Vedanta. Mumbai: Paras Prints,1986. quoted in Malhotra, R., & Infinity Foundation (Princeton, N.J.). (2018). Being different: An Indian challenge to western universalism.

In parts of their careers, Arjuna and Odysseus show similarities so numerous and detailed that they must be cognate figures, sharing an origin in the proto-hero of an oral proto-narrative. For present purposes, many questions about this proto narrative can be left unanswered. Was it told in prose or verse or a mixture of the two? Was it told in the Urheimat or original homeland (whatever the location and date of that logically necessary zone of space-time), or did it diffuse somewhat after the dispersal began? It does not matter. The similarities cannot be explained either by chance, or by Jungian archetypes, or by diffusion of the Homeric epics from Greece to India. If they are as striking as I think, then, one way or another, they must be due to common origin in a proto-narrative.
- N. Allen 1998: 2, quoted in Elst K. in Udayanath Sahoo (editor), Shobha Rani Dash (editor) - Great Indian Epics_ International Perspectives-Routledge (2021) 55-6

External links edit

Encyclopedic article on Ancient Greece–Ancient India relations on Wikipedia