Gods, Men, and the Forgotten Voices: A Comparative Study of Power, Justice, and Gender in Mahabharata, Os Lusíadas, and El Cid

Abstract

This study undertakes a comparative reading of three canonical epics India’s Mahabharata, Portugal’s Os Lusíadas, and Spain’s El Cid to examine how divine justice is constructed, justified, and selectively distributed within epic traditions. Although emerging from distinct cultural and theological frameworks, each text articulates a moral universe in which divine authority legitimises human hierarchies. The central inquiry asks: Do epics truly represent divine justice, or do they reproduce the social and gendered hierarchies of their times under the illusion of moral order? The paper examines how heroism is sanctified through divine alliance Krishna’s counsel to Arjuna, God’s blessing upon El Cid, and the Olympian favour bestowed on Vasco da Gama revealing how divinity operates as both moral compass and instrument of exclusion. Women, meanwhile, are rendered sacred yet silenced: Draupadi’s public humiliation, Doña Jimena’s passive resistência, and the allegorical femininity of Os Lusíadas expose the gendered boundaries of virtue. Parallel to this, the marginalization of Karna and Ekalavya in the Mahabharata resonates with the racial and religious exclusions in Iberian epics, where Christian and European identities are exalted as divinely ordained. By juxtaposing these texts, the paper argues that epic literature encodes a theology of hierarchy an enduring structure that sanctifies inequality as divine will. The conclusion reflects on the persistence of these epic ideals in shaping modern conceptions of justice, morality, and gender, suggesting that the voices silenced in the epics continue to echo in contemporary forms of social exclusion.