Brian Griffith's Blog - Posts Tagged "mahabharata"

The great Hindu epic the Mahabharata mentions a clash of ancient cultures over the issue of respect for dogs. In the epic’s final scenes, the hero Yudhisthira journeys high into the Himalayas with his loyal dog. The Aryan god Indra appears unto him, offering a chariot ride to heaven. But when Yudhisthira tries to bring his dog, Indra forbids it, explaining that no dogs can enter heaven. Yudhisthira replies that he would rather stay with his dog than enter such a heaven. And with that, the dog is suddenly revealed as the very soul of the Dharma, devotion to which is the true path to paradise. Indra was a chief god of the Aryan invaders from Inner Asia, who despised the dark-skinned “nose-less” Dravidian villagers, and treated the villagers’ dogs as even more untouchable. The Mahabharata signals popular rejection of the conqueror’s sentiments, with an assertion that a ruler’s heaven for supposedly superior beings is nothing but an egoic illusion.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals