ABSTRACT
While not dismissing loan phenomena, the chapter pursues a common-origin agenda, arguing that in certain respects Durgā and Athena share an origin within Indo-European tradition. Salient only since the Purāṇas, Durgā is absent from Vedic texts, but this does not rule out my approach: as Dumézil recognized, early Indo-European material often bypasses our earliest texts. As regards method, the comparativist seeks, not isolated similarities, but networks of similarities (which have argumentative priority over the inevitable differences).
In both the Mahābhārata and the Odyssey, the warrior goddess intervenes when the hero(es) begin a period of incognito. At the start of Mbh. 4, Yudhiṣṭhira invokes Durgā, who appears and offers help. In Od. 13, Odysseus encounters Athena on the Ithacan shore and receives her help. Before the encounters themselves are compared, they are contextualized within the heroes’ adventures: thus, each incognito includes a massacre of suitors wooing the hero’s wife (the Upakīcakas parallel the suitors at Ithaca), and the multiple lying stories of the Pāṇḍavas parallel those of Odysseus). Unlike Athena, Durgā is not in disguise, but just before invoking her, Yudhiṣṭhira encounters his divine father in disguise and is offered similar help. This Sanskrit–Sanskrit comparison complements the Sanskrit–Greek one.
