A Dove and a Nightingale: Mahābhārata 3. 130. 18–3. 131. 32 and Hesiod, works and days 202–213
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Andreas Zanker
Abstract
Hesiod’s Fable of the Hawk and the Nightingale remains a scholarly problem: its “might is right” moral seems to counteract the point that the poet appears to be making in this part of the Works and Days. Moreover, it is introduced with an address to the kings but finishes immediately prior to a dislocated appellation to Hesiod’s brother Perses. We have no clearly analogous fable to set next to this one. In this paper I step outside the Greek tradition and present a comparable story from the Indic Mahābhārata that involves not only a hawk and a dove but also a king who protects the latter. I argue that the material it supplies can help us in our interpretation of the Hesiodic fable by opening up the possibility that there is in fact a third character within the drama – absent from the text itself but essential for our understanding of it – who had the power to protect the nightingale from the hawk but who failed to do so.
© by Akademie Verlag, Berlin, Germany
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Zur Etymologie und Bedeutung des Adjektivs ἄποτμος bei Homer im Hinblick auf potentiell bedeutungsverwandte Begriffe
- A Dove and a Nightingale: Mahābhārata 3. 130. 18–3. 131. 32 and Hesiod, works and days 202–213
- Aeschylus, Supplices 40–85
- The ending of Sophocles’ Oedipus rex
- Leukippe as Tragedy
- Le ,verità nascoste‘. Consapevole appartenenza a un genere, autoinvestitura e bugie metapoetiche in [Mosco] III.
- Il nuovo Artemidoro
- Epictetus 3. 23. 33 and the three modes of philosophical instruction
- ‘Loving too much’: the text of Plutarch, Themistokles 2. 3
- Die providentielle Sorge der Seele um den Körper bei Plotin
- Zur Vergiftung des Germanicus (Tac. Ann. 2, 69)
- Zwei Bemerkungen zum Text des dritten Buches der hippokratischen Epidemien
- Zu Euripides, F 795
- Zum Berner Glossar
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Zur Etymologie und Bedeutung des Adjektivs ἄποτμος bei Homer im Hinblick auf potentiell bedeutungsverwandte Begriffe
- A Dove and a Nightingale: Mahābhārata 3. 130. 18–3. 131. 32 and Hesiod, works and days 202–213
- Aeschylus, Supplices 40–85
- The ending of Sophocles’ Oedipus rex
- Leukippe as Tragedy
- Le ,verità nascoste‘. Consapevole appartenenza a un genere, autoinvestitura e bugie metapoetiche in [Mosco] III.
- Il nuovo Artemidoro
- Epictetus 3. 23. 33 and the three modes of philosophical instruction
- ‘Loving too much’: the text of Plutarch, Themistokles 2. 3
- Die providentielle Sorge der Seele um den Körper bei Plotin
- Zur Vergiftung des Germanicus (Tac. Ann. 2, 69)
- Zwei Bemerkungen zum Text des dritten Buches der hippokratischen Epidemien
- Zu Euripides, F 795
- Zum Berner Glossar
