Comparison of Rama and Laksmana to the Greek heroes Herakles and Iolaos on their respective Caeretan hydriae

Rama (left), the lead archer, hunts the deer with his brother Laksmana (right)

Rama and Laksmana (above) carry red and black colored bows, respectively, on the Caeretan hydria kept in Boston. Rama has red hair and Laksmana has black hair, which along with their painted weapons, serve to emphasize the distinction between the two heroes. 

The same distinguishing attributes are applied to another pair of heroes from Greek myth, Herakles and Iolaos, on a Caeretan hydria kept in Los Angeles at the Getty Museum.

See https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103VHE.

Herakles and Iolaos are featured on a famous Caeretan hydria in the Getty Museum. If we look closely at the painted colors, Herakles is dark-skinned (black) with reddish hair and holds a reddish-black colored weapon (club). Iolaos, on the other hand, is fair-skinned (whitish) with black hair and holds a black-colored weapon (sickle). Iolaos is like the Robin to Herakles’ Batman; they are comrades. Now, if we examine the painted colors for the two nude youths on the Boston hydria, we see that the lead hunter Rama has black skin with red hair and holds a red-colored bow while the second hunter Laksmana, who is Rama’s main companion in the Indian epic, has black hair and holds a black-colored bow. Laksmana, the nude youth behind Rama who is assisting him in the deer hunt, also used to have white-painted skin that has been lost due to degradation of the paint on the vase: “The skin of the hunter A 5 (second from the left) was white: white males are very common on the hydriae (e.g. Iolaos),” according to the Dutch scholar Jaap Hemelrijk. Laksmana is depicted as lighter skinned than Rama in medieval Indian painting, probably to highlight his subordinate status. Hemelrijk also recognizes the parallel with Iolaos but does not investigate further, a recurring tendency of classical scholars when faced with inconvenient evidence.

Heracles has red colored hair (like Rama) and holds a red colored club

Thus, the artists in this particular workshop must have selected their painted colors for Rama and Laksmana based on a certain palette for two male heroes that are striking a creature. This palette was designed to distinguish the major hero from the minor hero, and it was also applied to the later dated hydria in which Herakles and Iolaos fight the monstrous Lernaean hydra. The Busiris painter and the Eagle painter must have communicated with each other about such decisions, where clearly there was a preference for the pairing of black skin with red hair, weapons, and armor, as well as the pairing of white skin with black hair, weapons, and dress for heroic male duos. The firm conclusion from this comparison of painted colors on the Getty and Boston hydriae is that like Herakles and Iolaos, who have already been identified from Greek myth on the former, Rama and Laksmana should be identified from Indian myth on the latter. The artists used the same color scheme for both heroic pairs (Herakles-Iolaos, Rama-Laksmana) because they were all great mythological heroes who played similar roles in their respective stories. This discovery of mine debunks any nonsensical attempts to label the two nude hunters as generic figures chasing deer. Vermeule notices the “scarlet bows” of the hunters, but this is technically not correct, as it implies both Rama and Laksmana are using the same-colored bow (red). Thus, we have to be extremely careful in observing each detail.

Iolaos has black colored hair (like Laksmana) and holds a black colored weapon (sickle)

The Boston deer hunt painting is a detailed and very descriptive mythological hunting scene featuring two Indian heroes against the demon Maricha that parallels the dual efforts of Greek heroes such as Apollo and Artemis against the demon Tityos, and of course, Herakles and Iolaos against the monster at Lerna. The multiple serpentine heads of the Lernaean hydra are analogous in some sense to the multiple moving poses or heads of the golden deer Maricha and the ten heads of Ravana. This general iconographic feature of ‘multiple obstacles’ is meant to highlight the difficulty of subduing the enemy. After learning about the Indian legend of the Ramayana, I think the two East Greek artists who painted the Caeretan hydriae must have realized that the warriors Rama and Laksmana were best understood as the Indian Herakles and Indian Iolaos, respectively. Megasthenes centuries later explained Krishna to the Greek world as the ‘Indian Herakles’. Rama and Krishna are basically equivalent in their eminent stature and importance in the Indian religious myth, so naturally the Greeks matched both of them to Herakles, their greatest hero.