" Alas! It was not true,/But lulling phrase, my coming grief to soften:/Else in thy death my life had ended, too."" (Kalidasa 163). There, it is the wife of Love telling her husband that if he were to die, she would want to die as well.
Another thing that is common in both Indian and Greek religion is that they both have several different names for their gods. These names were incorporated in their poems. Each god has many names that their worshippers use to refer to them. So many of the poems use several different names for their gods within one poem. In Greek tradition, Dionysus, the god of wine, intoxication and creative ecstasy, was also known as Liber, Bacchus and Bromius. Krishna in Indian beliefs in also known as Rama, Ram, Dark Lord, Hari, Blue One, Dark One, Golden One and Madhava, just to name a few. Sometimes a god or goddess can have five or more aliases in one poem alone.
Lastly, the gods in both of the religions have different, specific functions set for them. Each god in Indian or Greek culture has a different talent, trait or job that he or she is to perform. In Greek culture, Hades is the god of death and the afterlife. In Indian religion, Yama is the name of the god of death. These separate functions of the gods come out aggressively in the poems. If the writer wants it to rain, he or she might write a poem praising the god of weather. However, in both religions many poems were written directly to the head god, or creator god. In the Indian tradition this god is Krishna, while in Greece their father god is called Zeus.
Although the poetry of both countries is strikingly similar, there are several differences in the religions and thus the poems themselves that are worth mentioning. These differences, as with the likenesses, are common in many religions besides the Greek and Indian ones. However, the traits that make the religions different also set the poems apart from each other.
