Epics are among the lasting creations of many cultures. They have been a source of meaning and inspiration for people. They are also great works of lasting literature. /Ancient Greece had the Iliad and the Odyssey which tell the story of the Trojan War and its aftermath. We know little of historical authenticity about their alleged blind author Homer. Some have even questioned the existence of this personage. In Latin, Virgil’s Aeneid, much shorter in length, tells of how Romans emerged from a Trojan who came to the region of Rome. The medieval Nibelungenlied of unknown authorship was inspired by ancient myths about Siegfried and a dwarf people, and of tragic heroes. The Völsunga Saga of Iceland is a work of Norse mythology which talks about the great deeds of Sigurd and Brunhild. The Anglo-Saxon Beowulf extols a hero of another land. In all these instance, Helen and Aeneas and Siegfried and Odin and Grendel may all be imaginary characters for us, but there was a time when many believed they had really lived and died, with at least as much conviction as some in our own times who swear that the Lochness monster and UFOs exist.
Then there were the Chansons de Geste in medieval France which raised Charlemagne to lofty heights and spoke of happy days when in the morning birds sang sweetly in Latin, and joy inflamed the universe at large. They were semi-historical songs of the great gestures (actions) of heroes who fought the Moors and the Saracens, but aside from Islamic foes, it had its own versions of asuras and rakshasas also.
As Virgil did for Rome, Firdausi constructed a history – the Shahname– for his beloved Persia in 120,000 poetic lines, culling stones for his epic edifice from the folklore that pervaded the air about the origin of the world and the history of Iranians till its Islamization. He spoke with sureness about Jamshid and Rustam who lived on and on for centuries. At one time, the tragic battle between Rustam and his lost son Sohrab was no mere fantasy for one of truly Persian blood. They were as real in the Persian psyche as Achilles was in the Greek mind.
Many epics were once transmitted from generation to generation through the oral tradition. Thousands of lines of the Üligers of Mongolia, lengthy narratives of ancient deeds of glory, used to be recited from memory by native rhapsodists. Here may be found historical personages like Genghis Khan, but also manggus, the many-headed monster.
Indian culture and civilization owe much of their richness, ideals, and values to great epics: the Rāmāyana, the Mahābhārata), and the Kandapurānam, all magnificent and incredibly long poetic compositions.
The Mahābhārata consists of more than a hundred thousand couplets: the longest epic poem in any language. It is an epic with a hundred side stories, often suggestive of an insight or a moral principle, but always interesting. In some fundamental ways it set the pattern of all history. The work is described as one in which “Devas, Devarishis, and immaculate Brahmarishis of good deeds, have been spoken of; and likewise Yakshas and great Uragas.” It is the narration of the deeds of the good and the great, as well as of the evil and the ignoble in so far as they have had impacts on the course of human events. Is this not what history is all about?
Spurts of Thought 