husbands, in the case of the polyandrous Draupadı ̄ in the Maha ̄bha ̄rata) must
go in pursuit and recover her by force of arms.
Stephanie Jamison has shown how this scenario may be understood in
terms of the Indian warrior code.^85 Marriage by capture was a legitimate
procedure if carried out in the proper way. Even if the woman was already
married, you could take her for yourself provided that you announced your
identity and intentions and fought and defeated her husband. But if she was
taken without such a deed of valour, the abductor had no title to her. He had
to be made to fight, and only if he then vanquished the first husband could he
establish his position as the woman’s rightful lord. Poetic justice, however,
required his defeat.
The abduction of Helen can be seen in the same terms. Jamison
draws attention to the striking parallelism between the episode in the Iliad
(3. 161–244) where Helen, standing on the wall of Troy, identifies certain
Greek heroes to Priam, and a scene in the Maha ̄bha ̄rata (3. 254) where
Draupadı ̄ identifies to her abductor Jayadratha each in turn of her five
husbands, the Pa ̄n
̇
d
̇avas, who can be seen coming in pursuit. This, Jamison
argues, supplies what is required to legitimate the Pa ̄n
̇
d
̇avas’ marital
challenge, the formal announcement of their names and lineage. The corre-
sponding passage in the Iliad reflects the same situation, even though the
heroes that Helen identifies, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Ajax, and Idomeneus,
do not include her husband Menelaus. The ensuing duel between Paris and
Menelaus (3. 313–82), although aborted by the poet (otherwise the story
would have come to a premature end), represents an essential element of the
same complex. These sections of the Greek and Indic epics, Jamison submits
in conclusion, both ‘belong to an inherited Indo-European narrative pattern
that has its roots in a particular societal institution –– thefine line between
legal and illegal abduction in the typology of Indo-European marriage’.
The thesis is appealing, though for ‘Indo-European’ it would be safer to say
Graeco-Aryan. And a further reservation is in order. We shall see in the next
chapter that the Iliad and Maha ̄bha ̄rata episodes can be placed in a larger
category of heroic narrative scenes where a series of warriors are pointed out
in turn or identified by their descriptions. There is no necessary connection
with the reclaiming of a woman.
In another type of story the hero has been away for a prolonged period on
some journey or adventure. Eventually it is assumed that he is not going to
come back, and the woman, from choice or duress, is about to be married
to someone else. Typically the hero receives word of what is going on and
returns just in time, in disguise, because it is no straightforward matter to
(^85) Classical Antiquity 13 (1994), 5–16.
438 11. King and Hero