Collective Unconscious and the Hero Archetype: A Comparative Study of the Kyrgyz Epic of Manas and Ferdowsi's Shahnameh

Shojaei, Mohammad Kazem; Seyed Aghaei Rezaei, Seyede Mohanna

doi:10.22059/jices.2026.420536.1120

Collective Unconscious and the Hero Archetype: A Comparative Study of the Kyrgyz Epic of Manas and Ferdowsi's Shahnameh

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Mohammad Kazem Shojaei ¹

Seyede Mohanna Seyed Aghaei Rezaei ²

¹ Department of Political Sciences, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, University of Mazandaran.

² Department of Russian Language, Faculty of Literature and Foreign Languages, University of Mazandaran

10.22059/jices.2026.420536.1120

Abstract

For a long time, myths and epics have served as repositories of collective memory, safeguarding the beliefs, values, historical experiences, and cultural identities of human societies from one generation to the next. Although epic traditions reflect the distinctive features of particular civilizations, comparative studies show that geographically distant cultures can produce similar heroic narratives, symbolic structures, and mythological motifs.

Carl Gustav Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious provides a framework for understanding these recurring patterns. Jung argues that myths and epics express universal archetypes embedded in humanity’s shared psychological inheritance. Therefore, heroic characters from different civilizations may perform similar symbolic roles even when they emerge in different historical and cultural contexts.
Building on this theoretical foundation, the current study compares the Kyrgyz Epic of Manas with Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. The main question of this research is how these two epic traditions represent the Hero archetype through similar narrative patterns while preserving their cultural differences. Using qualitative comparative textual analysis, this study examines shared archetypal motifs, including noble ancestry, prophetic dreams, miraculous birth, threatened childhood, heroic initiation, national unification, and the hero’s death. Rather than proposing direct historical influence between the two traditions, the study argues that these parallels can be understood as expressions of universal heroic archetypes.

Keywords

Archetype

Collective Unconscious

Hero

Manas

Shahnameh.