[INDOLOGY] Enkidu and Ṛṣyaśṛṅga

Tue Oct 20 07:45:34 UTC 2026

See also Asko Parpola's article (missing in Abusch & West  bibliography), "The Harappan unicorn in Eurasian and South Asian perspectives", in Toshiki OSADA and Hitoshi ENDO eds, Linguistics, Archaeology and the Human Past, Occasional Paper 12, Kyoto : Indus Project - Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, 2011, pp. 125-188 (repr. ID. eds, Current Studies on the Indus Civilization, Vol. 9, New Delhi : Manohar Publishers & Distributors);

Part 6: The Gilgamesh epic of Mesopotamia

tracing the history of the comparison to a personal communication of Edward Lehmann to Hugo Gressmann, published in 1911.

See p. 95 fn. 2 of Das Gilgamesch-Epos<https://dn721908.ca.archive.org/0/items/dasgilgameschepo00ungn/dasgilgameschepo00ungn.pdf>, neu übersetzt von Arthur Ungnad und gemeinverständlich erklärt von Hugo Gressmann. (Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 14) Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1911. And thereafter Jensen, Peter (1913) 'Review of Ungnad & Gressmann 1911', Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 67: 503-529.

Compare Abusch & West fn. 3. who assigns the origin of the comparison to Jensen (1913), quoting in the same time an extract of the latter's review of Ungnad and Greßmann referring to the mention of... Lehmann's previous communication.

Le 19 oct. 2026 à 23:50, Matthew Kapstein via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info> a écrit :

Jonathan - I suggest that you take a look at Himanshu Ray's work on The Archeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia. By the fourth century BCE maritime trade across the Persian Gulf was in full development, with much earlier roots. My point was not that the JAtakas were contemporaneous with this, but just that they reflect cultural flows that had a long history. Material related to the Gilgamesh epic, btw, was still in circulation in the near and middle east at least down to the cusp of the CE.

Matthew T. Kapstein
Professor emeritus
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL Research University, Paris

Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies Emeritus
The University of Chicago Divinity School

Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

https://ephe.academia.edu/MatthewKapstein

https://vajrabookshop.com/product/the-life-and-work-of-auleshi/

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501716218/tibetan-manuscripts-and-early-printed-books-volume-i/#bookTabs=1

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501771255/tibetan-manuscripts-and-early-printed-books-volume-ii/#bookTabs=1

https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/60949

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On Monday, October 19th, 2026 at 5:52 PM, Jonathan Silk <kauzeya at gmail.com> wrote:
I'm away from my desk so I can't check anything, but let's remember that the stories of the jātaka are not(nearly) as old as the verses. this fact may our may not be relevant in this case...

Jonathan

Prof. dr. J.A. Silk
Professor in the study of Buddhism
Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, LIAS
Herta Mohr building 2.142
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden
The Netherlands

Guest Professor, PI of ERC-Project BEST
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Department für Asienstudien, Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
80539 München
Deutschland

website: www.OpenPhilology.eu<http://www.openphilology.eu/>
copies of my publications may be found at
https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/JASilk

On Mon, 19 Oct 2026, 12:14 Matthew Kapstein via INDOLOGY, <indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:
I am not sure that there is an important spatial distance - it's quite direct from Mesopotamia to the Indus and beyond via the sea route. Recall that the Baveru JAtaka makes clear that seafaring to Babylon (Babbilu) was well-known to early Buddhists. And there are other cases in which apparently Near Eastern tales are found in Buddhist materials - another is Solomon's judgement, which has a well-known parallel in "Mahosadha's judgement," from the commentary on the MahomaggajAtaka and conveniently given in Andersen's Pali Reader.

Matthew T. Kapstein
Professor emeritus
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, PSL Research University, Paris

Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies Emeritus
The University of Chicago Divinity School

Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

https://ephe.academia.edu/MatthewKapstein

https://vajrabookshop.com/product/the-life-and-work-of-auleshi/

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501716218/tibetan-manuscripts-and-early-printed-books-volume-i/#bookTabs=1

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501771255/tibetan-manuscripts-and-early-printed-books-volume-ii/#bookTabs=1

https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/60949

Sent with Proton Mail<https://proton.me/mail/home> secure email.

On Monday, October 19th, 2026 at 7:40 AM, Hélène de Brux via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:
Dear Valerie,

You may look into Giacomo Benedetti’s 2015 article in the Journal of Asian Civilizations 38(1) “The story of Ekaśṛṅga in the Mahāvastu with its parallels,” where he discusses its similarity with the story of Enkidu and its line of transmission, as well as refers to previous studies on the subject.

With best wishes,
Hélène

Dr. Hélène de Brux
Postdoctoral fellow
École française d'Extrême-Orient, Paris

On Mon, Oct 19, 2026 at 12:54 AM Valerie Roebuck via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:
Dear Colleagues

While listening recently to a dramatisation of the Epic of Gilgamesh on BBC Radio 4, I was very struck by the similarity of the story of the taming of the wild man Enkidu with that of the (temporary) taming of the sage Ṛṣyaśṛṅga/Ekaśṛṅga (Pali Isisiṅga) found in the Mahābhārata and the Jātakas. In view of the rather large disparity in space and time between these accounts, is there any possibility of a common influence? Has anyone looked into this?

Thank you

Valerie J Roebuck
Manchester, UK

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