Paolo Magnone
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474410991
- eISBN:
- 9781474426695
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410991.003.0011
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy
This chapter discusses the similarity between the allegories of the soul as chariot in Plato's Phaedrus and the Katha Upanishad. It begins by investigating the methodological assumptions underlying ...
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This chapter discusses the similarity between the allegories of the soul as chariot in Plato's Phaedrus and the Katha Upanishad. It begins by investigating the methodological assumptions underlying such cross-cultural comparison in the absence of pertinent historical documentation. Then the congruences and discrepancies between the two texts are reviewed. The allegory is integral to Upanishadic thought in a way that is unparalleled in Greek thought, and this supports the conjecture of diffusion in a westward direction. The paramount difference between the two texts is the idle passenger, absent from the Phaedrus but central to the allegory in the Katha Upanishad. This difference is significant as a watershed between Upanishad-based Indian and Plato-influenced Greek philosophy.Less
This chapter discusses the similarity between the allegories of the soul as chariot in Plato's Phaedrus and the Katha Upanishad. It begins by investigating the methodological assumptions underlying such cross-cultural comparison in the absence of pertinent historical documentation. Then the congruences and discrepancies between the two texts are reviewed. The allegory is integral to Upanishadic thought in a way that is unparalleled in Greek thought, and this supports the conjecture of diffusion in a westward direction. The paramount difference between the two texts is the idle passenger, absent from the Phaedrus but central to the allegory in the Katha Upanishad. This difference is significant as a watershed between Upanishad-based Indian and Plato-influenced Greek philosophy.
Alexander S. W. Forte and Caley C. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474410991
- eISBN:
- 9781474426695
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410991.003.0013
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Ancient Greek, Roman, and Early Christian Philosophy
The genealogy of chariot imagery in India and Greece is best explained not by influence between the cultures but by understanding the place of each text within its own cultural tradition. The chariot ...
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The genealogy of chariot imagery in India and Greece is best explained not by influence between the cultures but by understanding the place of each text within its own cultural tradition. The chariot journey described in the prologue of Parmenides is influenced by the chariot race in Iliad book 23, which also influenced Empedocles and Socrates. In the Katha Upanishad the chariot is a metaphor for sacrifice and fire altar, and a redeployment of the chariot imagery and narrative setting used in the earlier Katha Brahmana.The metaphysics of the Katha Upanishad should be contextualised as the component of a hieratic canon.Less
The genealogy of chariot imagery in India and Greece is best explained not by influence between the cultures but by understanding the place of each text within its own cultural tradition. The chariot journey described in the prologue of Parmenides is influenced by the chariot race in Iliad book 23, which also influenced Empedocles and Socrates. In the Katha Upanishad the chariot is a metaphor for sacrifice and fire altar, and a redeployment of the chariot imagery and narrative setting used in the earlier Katha Brahmana.The metaphysics of the Katha Upanishad should be contextualised as the component of a hieratic canon.
