Scholars have claimed that similarities between the Greek poem of Parmenides and the Indic Upaniṣads demand an explanation from either historical contact between Greece and other cultures, or a commonly inherited Indo-European philosophy. Several striking similarities between Parmenides and the Upaniṣads supposedly reveal borrowing or a genetic relationship: first, monism, the idea of metaphysical unity; second, the rejection of empirical knowledge; third, the potential for allegory; and fourth, the chariot imagery. This last similarity will be the focus of this chapter, which will argue that Parmenides’ poem engages with the chariot race during Patroclus’ funeral games in book 23 of the Iliad. Then, it will argue that the Kaṭha Upaniṣad's chariot imagery draws on the use of chariots in the Ṛgveda. Therefore, these supposedly anomalous chariots function perfectly well within their respective Greek and Indic intellectual traditions.

We contend that there is no need to posit Indo-European philosophy to explain the striking, but ultimately incidental parallels between these two texts. In short, an Indo-European explanation of the chariot in this case would only be applicable to Homeric poetry and the Ṛgveda. This itself is unlikely, because the earliest evidence of the chariot in Greece (sixteenth century BCE) long post-dates any speaker of late Indo-European.

There is perhaps even less of a reason to posit historical borrowing or ‘diffusion’ to account for the similarities in the chariot imagery. There is no historically reliable evidence for an extended conversation between a Greek speaker and Indic speaker before the time of Alexander. Nor is there any historically reliable evidence that any Pre-Socratic philosopher had any contact with Iranian, let alone Indic priests. Unless new primary source evidence from antiquity is discovered, there is no way to argue either point with probability. Contextualisation is source criticism: one must examine what a document is, how it relates to other evidence, and how it has come to us.

In the case of Parmenides, this chariot imagery, and indeed most of Parmenides’ language, has been analysed in terms of earlier hexameter poetry. However, there is an unrecognised density of intertexts between Parmenides’ poem and a limited episode in the Iliad, the chariot race in Patroclus’ funeral games.