Homer’s Iliad and the Meghanādbadha Kābya of Michael Madhusūdan Datta

The debt owed to Homer’s Iliad by the Meghanādbadha Kābya (1861), Michael Madhusūdan Datta’s Bengali epic and masterpiece, has long been recognized but has never been examined with any close or academically sensitive reference to the Greek poem. This study sets out to examine the use of the Homeric epic as a model for the Bengali poem, with particular regard to character correspondences, the figure of the simile and narrative structure. In addition to this close analysis, Datta’s response to the Iliad will be set in the context of contemporary (and earlier) British receptions of the Homeric poem: the Bengali poet’s reading of the Greek epic, far from being idiosyncratic (“colonial”), in fact bears the marks of a close engagement with contemporary British appreciation of the poem.