The Unburdening of the Earth: The Greek Structure of the *Mahābhārata*

From the so-called “Synthetic Paradigm” of *Mahābhārata* scholarship, this paper focuses on the motif of the Unburdening of the Earth (Dumézil, 1968) by reviewing five relevant passages structured as a form of *Ringkomposition* (Hiltebeitel, 2018): *MBh*. 1.58.3 – 59.6 narrated by Vaiśaṃpāyana, *MBh*. 1.189 narrated by Vyāsa, *MBh*. 2.33.10–20 narrated by Nārada, *MBh*. 11.8.20–38 again narrated by Vyāsa, and *MBh*. 18.5.7–25 again narrated by Vaiśaṃpāyana.

From an analytic perspective, this motif has been mostly dismissed, for instance by Hopkins (1915, pp. 78-79), Winternitz (1933/1934, p. 74), van Buitenen (1973, p. xx), Fitzgerald (2004, p. 99), and Hudson (2012, p. 137-138). On the other hand, researchers following a synthetic perspective have paid considerably more attention to it, as is the case with Scheuer (1982) and Brodbeck (2009), although perhaps not as much as it deserves, particularly when considering its implications for the overall structure of the *Mahābhārata*.

The major contributions to the analysis of the Unburdening of the Earth have come from a comparative perspective considering India and Greece – and sometimes Mesopotamia as well. The proposed solutions can be grouped into three categories: a Folk explanation based on universal story-patterns, an Indo-European explanation based on a common heritage, and a Greco-Indian (understood as a Greek influence in India) explanation based on cultural contacts. Schwarzbaum (1957) and more recently Ballesteros (2023) claim a Folk origin for the connections between different versions of the motif. De Jong (1985), Vielle (1996), Allen (2019), and Elst (2021) favor an Indo-European origin, a view that is however questioned by Pisani (1953), Ruben (1975), and West (2007).

Lastly, Wulff Alonso (2008, 2014) and to a much lesser degree Hiltebeitel (2018) discuss the Greco-Indian option, which would entail an influence resulting from the Greek presence in ancient Indian territory, especially during the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (3rd – 2nd centuries BCE) and the Indo-Greek Kingdom (2nd century BCE – 1st century CE). Ingenious as it is, this last solution has not been well received by the critic, especially by reason of some serious methodological concerns (Allen, 2015; Pisano, 2015; Karttunen, 2017; Stoneman, 2019, pp. 416-426, and Elst, 2021). Even though the hint to Dumézil and the mention of Greek in the title of this paper might suggest otherwise, what is proposed here is not an Indo-European connection, but a follow-up on this cultural contact theory implying a Greco-Indian connection. To that end, five relevant Greek passages are approached comparatively: *Iliad* 1.1-5, *Iliad* 2.1-6, *Iliad* 12.3-33, *Odyssey* 8.71-82, and *Cypria* fr. 1.

Greek influence in India has been claimed in broad terms (Jairazbhoy, 1963), as well as on a case-by-case basis for disciplines such as astronomy and mathematics (Pingree, 1971; Falk, 2002; Plofker, 2011), painting and sculpture (Nehru, 1989; Boardman, 2015), and even several literary genres, such as theater (Windisch, 1882), fable (Rodríguez Adrados, 1979), epic (Arora, 1981), and lyric (Morales Harley, 2023). Nevertheless, there have been very few methodological discussions about how such procedure would have taken place.

Considering that a solid case has for the most part been made for Mesopotamian influence in Greece (Burkert, 1992; West, 1997; López-Ruiz, 2010; Haubold, 2013; Metcalf, 2015; Clarke, 2019), and that some methodological principles have already been formulated for such projects (Bernabé, 1995), a methodological framework for Indo-Greek connections is discussed here, building up on Wulff Alonso’s (2019a, 2019b, 2020) own reflections that followed his critiques, and also putting forward some new ideas, mainly that of a threefold explanation: Folk, Indo-European, or Greco-Indian. Of course, this is by no means presented as a definitive solution nor as any sort of irrefutable “proof” that influence alone accounts for all parallelisms. The aim is, instead, to spark a debate about methods within what, by now and after nearly a couple of centuries of mostly isolated attempts, deserves to be treated as a full-fledged theory: bilateral cultural contacts between Greece and India.

In conclusion, it is proposed that the overarching nature of the Unburdening of the Earth in the *Mahābhārata* is the result of an auctorial decision of structuring this new text in parallel with the Greek texts that would have been known – and recreated – in India at that time.