Southern Slavs and India : Relations in Oral Tradition

Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction/Zmago Smitek. 2. Parallels in Indian and Slovenian mythology: traces of common Indo-European tradition/Zmago Smitek. 3. Mahabharata and Serbian Kosovo cycle: the Indo European heritage/Aleksandar Loma. 4. Legendary song of St. Thomas: Medieval (Graco-Roman) vision of India in the Slovenian Folklore/Zmago Smitek. 5. The Ballad of the Walled up wife in the Balkans and in India/Lidija Stojanovic.

For several millennia there have existed significant ties between Europe and India. The may be attributed to the common Indo-European linguistic and cultural tradition, spreading through Eurasia by way of migrations, conquests, cross cultural borrowings and commercial contacts. This book investigates a small part of this broader theme, that of relations in folklore between Southern Slavs and peoples of North India. It reveals striking similarities and analogies between people’s myths and folklore.