ABSTRACT
Other stories of patricide, again owing mostly to mistaken identities or curses, are in the variants or subplots of the Ramayana and Mahabharata sagas. In the Krittibas Bangla retelling, for instance, Lava and Kusha, Rama's estranged sons, not only defeat but kill their father unwittingly when he goes to retrieve the sacrificial horse from their custody. However, Valmiki, the 'author' of the story, who has contrived these events to reunite the family, revives Rama. If patricide is 'impossible' in Hindu thought, it is quite common in the Western tradition. There, the Oedipal myth is defining if not definitive, given the status of a master-narrative by Sigmund Freud himself. Even prior to Oedipus, an Oedipal pattern is already established in Greek mythology, with a series of patricides and infanticides from Cronos to Zeus. Uranus was both the son and husband of Gaea. He visited her each night, covering the earth with darkness.
