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origin. First, time-transcending
heroes in the major epics of the world
usually have a deviant or mysterious
history of birth. Sigmund Freud,
writing on Moses as the emancipator
of the Jews from slavery in Egypt and
their supreme lawgiver, finds enough
clues in the texts to propose that
Moses was a prince belonging to the
Egyptian nobility who rebelled
against his own kind. He was an
outsider who became an insider.
From the writings of Otto Rank and
Joseph Campbell, too, one learns that
there has to be some play of alien
selves within epic heroes to account
for the ever-intriguing mix in them of
the familiar and the unfamiliar, the
earthly and the unearthly, and the
intimate and the distant. Perhaps
that also is a reason why they are
open-ended enough to make sense to
diverse communities and cultures and
concurrently stand diverse
interpretations and uses. They cannot
be owned by any community or
culture; nor can any interpretation of
them be frozen or clinched.
Epic Culture – Ashis Nandy
A record of exile or a momentous
journey is another crucial feature of
epic heroes. In this respect, too, Indian
epics are not different. The exile can
be direct or indirect, territorial or
psychological, realistic or mythic. The
journey, too, is critical to the making
of the hero and often ends up defining
him. He is tempered by his experience
and reintroduced to himself by his
trials and tribulations. Both his
successes and his failures contribute to
the expansion of his self-definition
and this redefinition prepares him for
his larger-than-life role. It is during an
exile or a journey through a series of
events that he gets glimpses of his
extraordinariness by battling his own
ordinariness and human frailties. He
has to conquer his fears, anxiety and
cowardice, on the one hand, and his
numerous temptations on the other.
Sometimes he succumbs or falters.
After going through his unique
experiences, a hero’s heroic self
emerges but its connection with his
own mortality, too, is also
A record of exile or a momentous journey is another
crucial feature of epic heroes. The exile can be direct
or indirect, territorial or psychological, realistic or
mythic.
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