Rama and Homer

This work is a most lively and readable repudiation of European scholars, led by Weber, contesting that Homer and Iliad exerted an impact on the Ramayana and the Mahabharata respectively. Lillie sought not only to refute Weber, a close friend of Max Müller, and a host of Indologists but also to prove that the Indian epics exerted a profound impact on the Iliad and the Odyssey. Lillie drew upon a wide range of sources and essentially argued that the similarities mentioned by Jones, Monier-Williams, Weber, Fauche, and other scholars pointed to the inescapable conclusion that the Mahabharata and Ramayana influenced Homer. The Indian epics, and not the Homeric poems, were the originals.

Lillie moved largely outside scholarly circles, and that makes finding scholarly reviews of Lillie’s work difficult. In that sense, his volume on Rama and Homer was part of a tradition going back not to Fauche’s research on the Ramayana but to E. Pococke’s India in Greece, which in 1852 tried to show that the similarities found in Greek and Indian texts were the result of colonization of Greece by Indians.

About the Author
ARTHUR LILLIE, Late Regiment of Lucknow of the British Indian Army, while there, he became a Buddhist. Author of “Buddhism in Christendom,” “Buddha and Buddhism;” “India in Primitive Christianity,” Etc.