India and Greece: Methods and Models of Comparison in The Mahābhārata and Greek Mythology by Fernando Wulff Alonso

In his recent study of the Mahābhārata, Fernando Wulff Alonso compares systematically Indian “epic” and Greek mythology to support the thesis of the derivation of the former from the latter. The considerable space reserved in the book to the comparison and to the relationships between India and Greece invites, in the light of the role that such relationships have had in the history of studies of comparative mythology, careful evaluation of the use of the methodological forms and models the author has employed, as well as of his relationship with the main comparative “schools” and trends identifiable in modern and contemporary historiography. The rigorous discussion of the “isolationist” image of India suggests to reposition the culture, or rather the cultures, of the Subcontinent in the framework of the local and international networks of relationships, justifying the use of the heuristic tools developed in the studies on cultural cohabitations, in which assimilation of the “other” in not seen as a passive phenomenon, but as an active process of identity renegotiation, aimed at denoting differences at the scope of self-definition or self-representation.