@audreytruschke Are there resonances with epics from other parts of the world? (As with, for example, the Mahabharata and the Iliad.)

@SanSip Oh sure. This comes up in scholarly discussions in several ways. One is in the category of "epic," which is a Western category rather than an internal Sanskrit one. What makes them all epics? Another way it comes up is that we use similar philological strategies to parse epics from different parts of the world, including explaining the relationship with (and lingering indications of) oral storytelling, use of epithets, etc.