The Transformation of Cyavana: A Case Study in Narrative Evolution

Few will argue with the proposition that stories are fluid and continuously evolving; nor are many likely to deny that a successful narrative can spread like wildfire across time and space. Yet in spite of these two well-documented truths, attempts at the identification of borrowings and parallels (though a venerable scholarly pursuit) can be tricky. Few other common scholarly undertakings generate the level of resistance that the proposal of a set of parallels can, and perhaps with some valid reasons. Shared features that make an enormous impression on one scholar will strike others as insignificant or coincidental, and most comparativists have come to accept that many of our colleagues are completely uninterested in the endeavor, particularly when engaging with a borrowed narrative requires transporting their focus beyond the boundaries of their field. Normally at this point in an academic paper, with the introductory salvo concluded, one would begin grounding the issue within academic debate by quoting from the relevant literature. The state of the methodology for evaluating parallels is, however, such that there is scant literature on it to invoke. Tigay describes the situation facing scholars who work on literary parallels between the Hebrew Bible and other Near Eastern Literature (1993:250-51):