epics comparison

[gldnreef at primenet.com]

At 01:39 AM 6/6/97 BST, Klaus Karttunen wrote:
>
>Two comments to the question of epics comparison:
>The comparison between the Indian  and the Greek as well as Germanic 
>epics was rather common in early Indology. Adolf Holtzmann the Elder 
>made comparisons in the 1840s and some thirty years later Albrecht Weber 
>made an unsuccesful attempt to show Homeric influences in the plot of 
>the Ramayana.

As far as I am aware the first attempt at comparative mythology was by The
Brothers Grimm in the 1830's -- immediately after the development of Grimm's
law. It is interesting to note that comparative philology and "Universal
Folktale Origins" were one in the same project for many.  There is a
particularly distasteful exposition of this in Louis Renan's gushing "Sur la
Philologie."