Nitesh Tiwari: Homer’s Odyssey has a 4,000-year-old Ramayana echo

Tiwari sees a tribute, not a coincidence

Just days after Ramayana opened in theatres on 5 November, director Nitesh Tiwari put a bold thought on the table: the West’s oldest adventure story may have borrowed from India’s. Speaking with Screen Rant, he said he noticed the equivalents between the two epics and felt happy that Ramayana has been given a tribute in another epic that belongs to the West.

Tiwari was specific: he believes Homer was inspired by Ramayana in some way when writing sequences in The Odyssey. He framed the similarity as a bridge rather than a dispute, arguing it will make the Indian epic easier for international audiences to connect with.

The bow test that links both worlds

The comparison turns on one memorable beat. In Nolan’s The Odyssey, Penelope sets suitors a challenge: string Odysseus’s bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe heads. In Ramayana, Sita’s swayamvar asks suitors to lift and string the mighty Shivadhanush. The hero’s success, and its consequences, make the two scenes feel uncannily aligned.

• Nolan’s Odyssey: Penelope’s suitors must string Odysseus’s bow and fire through twelve axe heads.
• Ramayana: Janaka asks Sita’s suitors to lift and string the Shivadhanush; Rama lifts it and breaks it.
• The takeaway: A bow as proof of worthiness, with the worthy hero revealed by it.

Ranbir calls it a sweet coincidence

Ranbir Kapoor, who plays Lord Rama, put the timeline in perspective: the story has been written in Indian texts for 4,000 years. When he watched The Odyssey, he said, his first thought was That’s from Ramayana. He still described the parallel as a sweet coincidence, and added that he loves both The Odyssey and Christopher Nolan.

He also spoke about filming the bow-lifting moment, recalling goosebumps and a weird current going up and down when he picked up the bow. It is a small production detail, but it tells audiences why the sequence carries weight for the cast.

Why the parallel matters for Indian fans

This is not just a trivia swap. For Hindi film fans, the exchange reframes Ramayana as a story with global echoes, not a local epic waiting to be explained. With Matt Damon as Odysseus and Anne Hathaway as Penelope in Nolan’s film, the bow challenge already has Western visibility. Tiwari’s point, if accepted, lets Indian viewers meet that conversation on equal footing.

Source: The Times of India