Duryodhana (Cambodia, ca. 900s AD) – friendship in ancient India
Friendship between men
We don’t know very much about friendships among poor people in ancient India, or among women. But the stories that Indian people told had examples of strong friendships between powerful men. In the Mahabharata, which was first written down about 300 BC, Karna and Duryodhana are famous for their friendship.
Karna and Duryodhana
What’s the Mahabharata?
Caste in ancient India
All our India articles
The Rig Veda on friendship
Early Indian philosophy in the Rig Veda draws parallels between speech and friendship: talking to each other, we make friends. But when we don’t listen, or we tell lies, the friendship fades.
What is the Rig Veda?
Hinduism in India
The Mahabharata’s views
The Mahabharata, a few hundred years later, sorted friendships into different kinds. The faithful prince Bhishma lists several types of friends (the Mahabharata is big on lists): natural friends, who are very similar to you or members of your family; ancestral friends, whose ancestors have been loyal to your family; business friends, who help you make a profit; and the lowest kind of friends, mercenary friends, who are only friendly because you buy them presents or pay them.
Bhishma adds, though, that the best kinds of friends are those who love you for your good character – your kindness, your generosity, your courage – but you can lose those friends by doing wrong.
Six characteristics of friendship
Indian people partying
A little further on, the Sanatsugatiya episode (probably inserted later into the text) has another list. This one names six characteristics of friendship:
- A friend is happy when something good happens to his friend;
- A friend is sad when something bad happens to his friend;
- A friend shares even his best things with his friend;
- A friend doesn’t keep count, waiting for his gifts to be repaid;
- A friend does his own work; he doesn’t count on his friend to work for him;
- A friend puts his friendship above profits.
Friendship and war buddies
Indian ideas about friendship may come from an older Central Asian idea of the comitatus, a group of close friends who formed a bodyguard for Central Asian leaders from at least 3000 BC onwards. The idea of the comitatus may have come to India with the Indo-Europeans about 1500 BC, and became part of Vedic and later Indian culture.
Who were the Ind0-Europeans?
Vedic period in India
Achilles and Patroclos
Or, the idea may have come to India with the story of Achilles, maybe with Alexander and his Greek settlers, about 300 BC – just about the time when the Mahabharata was being written down for the first time.
can u plz uplode the family system in ancient period?
Hi! I’m sorry, we don’t have an article about families in ancient India yet. I’ll get that on our list.