Chropher Nolan’s The Odyssey shares 4 striking similarities with the Ramayana | Hollywood News

Chropher Nolan’s action adventure fantasy epic The Odyssey had India as a pitstop on its global tour last week. It makes sense at multiple levels, since culturally, the story adapted from Homer’s ancient Greek text have certain striking parallels to the Indian epic, Ramayana. The similarities range from the primary character journey of homecoming as well as a very crucial motif associated with Rama.
Homecoming
At their core, both Odyssey and Ramayana are stories of homecoming. The former traces the 25-year journey of King Odysseus (played Matt Damon in The Odyssey) back to his kingdom of Ithaca. After conquering Troy in the Trojan war, he undertakes a long, gruelling voyage back home with his army, facing mythical obstacles as well as logical nightmares.
These include a Cyclops in the cave, getting chased away a larger and superior race, encountering a deceptive witch, shortage of food supplies, being stranded on an island because of unfavourable wind for days, as well as turbulent storms unleashed Zeus, the Greek god of thunder. At long last, Odysseus manages to make his way back to the castle, but not without sacrificing his men and a lot of his ‘honour.’
The Ramayana is a homecoming story as well, and it starts right when Rama, along with his wife Sita and brother Lakshman, decide to go on a vanvas (forest exile). Their exile ends in an unfortunate place as Sita gets abducted Ravana. So, Rama has to first rescue her from Ravana’s captivity in Lanka before making his long-awaited return to the kingdom of Ayodhya, an occasion which is celebrated as Diwali in India today.
Both Odyssey and Ramayana trace the protagon’s homecoming.
Wife in captivity
In both the epic tales, the protagon’s wife is held captive, although the circumstances are quite different. While Sita is abducted Ravana and held captive in his state of Lanka, Odysseus’ wife, Queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway in The Odyssey) continues to live in her palace, but is constantly surrounded as set of suitors, actively and desperately trying to woo her into marrying them so that Ithaca has a king again. While Rama travels to Lanka in order to rescue his wife, Odysseus must return home to protect and prevent his wife from committing an excess in his absence. Till the very last moment, both women hold to their deep beliefs that their respective husbands will arrive soon to save the day.
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Stringing of the bow
Stringing of the mighty bow is a common motif in both The Odyssey and the Ramayana. In both tales, the practice serves as a competition, which is a part of the swayamvar conducted the queen/princess. In the latter, Sita’s swayamvar takes place in her kingdom of Mithila, where a host of men are unable to even move Lord Shiva’s celestial bow, let alone string it, to secure the right to marry the daughter of King Janak. It’s only Rama who not only manages to lift the bow, but also break it into two halves while trying to string it, thus securing Sita’s hand in marriage.Story continues below this ad
Anne Hathaway as Penelope in The Odyssey.
In The Odyssey, the stringing of bow happens at a very interesting juncture. Towards the end of the tale, when Penelope, done with waiting for her missing husband, conducts stringing of the bow as her very own swayamvar, none of the suitors manages to achieve the feat. Again, it’s only the returning Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, who does that successfully, revealing in the process to everybody present that he’s indeed alive and back, before proceeding to kill all the lecherous and power-hungry suitors with his incessant raining of arrows.
Chasing a deer
Another interesting motif common to both the epics is the protagon’s act of chasing a deer, only to fall prey to an illusion. In the Ramayana, Rama chases a deer only to realise that it was merely a draction caused Ravana, who then abducts an isolated Sita from their cottage. Similarly, in The Odyssey, the king chased down a deer at an island and manages to catch it with an arrow. But when he gets a closer look at his target, he realises it was a man in disguise. It’s only then that he gets an inkling that his army men have also been converted into pigs a deceptive witch who offered to feed them.

So, did Ramayana come first or The Odyssey?
The Ramayana is set in the Treta Yuga, an age that came occurred many millennia before The Odyssey. But it’s also believed that Homer documented the Odyssey first, in 750-650 BCE (7th or 8th century BCE), as opposed to the Ramayana, which in its present form, is believed to have been documented first in 500-750 BCE (3rd-4th century BCE).
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It should, however, be noted that both the tales were conveyed orally for centuries before they were first documented in text. It’s also believed widely that Homer was, in fact, a group of poets which evolved into this homogeneous singular identity with the passage of time. Sage Valmiki is said to have penned the Ramayana, but there ex various versions of both the epics that have co-exed over time.