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December 22 - December 26, 2021
Hence, to understand Hindu mythology—its sacred narratives, art, and ritual—a paradigm shift is required. One must move away from Western concepts of right/wrong, divine/diabolical, angel/sinner, heaven/hell, genesis/apocalypse, and fall/return.
The traditions were varied. There was no clear difference between the sacred and the secular, no consistency between philosophy and practice. In short, there was no “religion.” The British needed to construct a religious entity to make the complex beliefs and practices of the conquered people comprehensible. They needed Hinduism.
was a world where things were “right” and “real” only if they were logical or scientific. Scientific methodology demanded documented evidence, coherent translations, and objective analysis. This analysis was applied to Brahmanical scriptures, and soon the reconstruction of India’s past gathered momentum in European universities for the benefit of the colonial powers.
The Brahmanical texts were classified into two groups: the Veda (believed by natives to be shruti, or revelation) and the Shastra (smriti, or tradition). The Veda captured lofty philosophies and leaned toward logic and monotheism. The Shastra, on the other hand, supported social customs including idol worship (condemned in the Bible) and the caste hierarchy (distasteful in view of the liberal political philosophies emerging in Europe).
Unfortunately, the colonial discourse has played a significant role in reconstructing Hindu mythology for Hindus themselves. It has generated deep prejudices against Hindu art, ritual, and narrative. It is responsible for transforming Vedic philosophies into “true faith” while condemning tantric practices and folk beliefs as black magic and superstition. If one seeks to unravel the mysteries of Hindu mythology, coming to terms with this problem is essential.
The first Indians to be exposed to the Western system of education happened to be brahmanas from affluent and influential families. When confronted with the reconstructed vision of their religion that contrasted with the egalitarian political systems that evolved in nineteenth-century Europe, the brahmanas became defensive or apologetic. They led the Hindu Renaissance that would ultimately redefine Hinduism using biblical vocabulary (heaven, hell, god, demon, angel, sinner, prophet, evil, redemption, salvation) in a manner that met the approval of the West.
Exposure to the West also inspired practitioners of Indian traditions to make Hindu beliefs and practices more “scientific,” and hence “real.” This trend is perpetuated even today by a generation desperately seeking to reclaim the past.
The battle of the gods and demons is still viewed as the battle of good and evil—never mind the fact that all scriptures describe the demons as half-brothers of the gods and, very often, morally superior to the gods.
To truly appreciate the magnificence of myth, the logical mind has to suspend its dis-belief. The need to explain ideas and events through rationalization has to be abandoned.
An expression of myth becomes sacred when it is of anonymous origin, a revelation or a communication from a nonhuman source.
The name and the female form indicate that she embodies material reality. She is merely Brahma’s “observation.” Since observation has no existence independent of the observer, Brahma is Shatarupa’s creator and father. He is the subject who experiences life; she is a subjective phenomenon, the object that is experienced in life. She exists only to help him answer the question, Who am I? When the question is answered there is no need to observe, and no need for the observation. The observer is self-contained. He shuts his eyes and goes to sleep. The cosmos dissolves. It is pralaya.
Hindu metaphysics things exist only when they are observed. Hence, unobserved material reality remains uncreated. Creation is sparked when Brahma observes. Brahma observes to answer the question, Who am I? This question crops up as soon as he becomes aware of himself. Just as one is not aware of one’s own self in a deep dreamless slumber, the cosmos is not aware of itself during pralaya. This state of nonawareness is nonexistence. Then the spirit awakens. Awareness stirs. The question reemerges. The quest for the answer resumes, and material reality manifests itself once more as the daughter
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This incestuous passion is the transformation of the path of self-realization into the path of self-indulgence, the shift of the mind from the eternal, true identity (soul) to the ephemeral, false identity (ego). Shiva appears as an outraged response to Brahma’s misdirection and strives to correct it.
The difference is that Shiva seeks moksha by withdrawing from the paradigm, while Vishnu seeks moksha by staying within the paradigm.
Although Hindu demons oppose gods, the battle between them is not the battle of good and evil. The asuras Hiranayaksha and Hiranakashipu demonstrate viparita-bhakti, or reverse devotion. In hating God these villains remember the divine so many times that they attain enough merit to return to their posts in heaven.
In many rituals invocation is offered to devas and asuras. The devas govern the warmer, brighter half of the year, the Uttarayana, from the winter solstice to the summer solstice. The asuras control the other, colder and darker half known as Dakshinayana. Thus the demons of Hinduism complement the gods.
Two asuras (Rahu, who causes eclipses, and Ketu, who manifests as comets) form part of the nine astral bodies. Prayers are offered to remove their baneful gaze. The nava-graha also include five gods (Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Saturn) and two rishis, one of whom is the guru of the gods (Jupiter) and the other of whom is guru of the demons (Venus).
Although the word paap is commonly translated as sin, its antonym punya has no synonym in English. In the biblical mythosphere, one either sins or does not sin. The concept of merit and demerit does not fit in with ease. While acts of kindness and devotion can determine one’s fate in the final afterlife on the day of judgment, they certainly do not influence future lives.
Asuras who fight gods Rakshasas who fight humans Pisachas who fight ancestors
Since devas are considered gods, asuras—the gods’ eternal enemies—are considered demons. But these demons are in no way morally inferior to the gods. In fact, in many cases they are superior. Asura kings such as Prahalada, Virochana, and Bali are associated with virtues such as devotion, justice, and generosity.
This story clearly suggests that to reduce the battle of devas and asuras into the battle of gods and demons or the battle between good and evil is more convenient than convincing. The battle of devas and asuras is a recurring theme in the Hindu mythosphere captured in the diagram on the next page. Typically it begins with the demons acquiring a boon that allows them to overpower the gods. It ends with a God or Goddess enabling the gods to outfox the demon. In the earliest versions of this battle, there is no intervention of God or Goddess. The participation of the latter began when theistic
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The peace that follows the defeat of an asura is only a temporary reprieve until a new demon appears and repeats the cycle of war and victory. War is a reaction to peace and vice versa.
Asuras are thus not evil creatures but sons of Brahma who drag the wealth of the cosmos to their subterranean realms. The sun god, moon god, rain god, fire god, and wind god release this wealth by pulling our plants, striking our water, and melting our rocks for minerals.
Depending on the memories of past deeds, the jiva can either remain in samsara, oscillating between the land of the living and the land of the dead, or he or she can break free and end up in one of the many heavens of the Hindu mythosphere.
Hell, known as Naraka, did not originally exist in the Hindu mythosphere; the concept of hell is believed to have entered the mythosphere following contact with Persians, Muslims, and Christians. Like the biblical hell it is located underground, but must be distinguished from Patala, the abode of
asuras and nagas. In Naraka, Yama punishes those who have n...
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Hindu flood myth recounts a recurring event, a function of time, an event that is bound to happen as the world goes through cycles of death and rebirth, just like every living creature. With every pralaya there is a fish to rescue and a Manu to rescue it. Thus the flood myth in Hindu narratives establishes a paradigm quite different from those of the Bible and Mesopotamian stories.
The word used for monkey in the epic is vanara. The word has been traced to the words vana, meaning “forest,” and nara, meaning “man,” thus suggesting that the vanaras were not monkeys but rather tribes whose totem was a monkey. Likewise, Jatayu was probably not a vulture but a tribe whose totem was a bird. The author of the epic probably identified non-Vedic tribes rather contemptuously as being animals since they seemed to follow the law of the jungle (might is right), unlike the protagonist Rama who followed the Vedic code of duty before happiness.
Several monastic orders emerged in India in the period following the disillusionment with Vedic ritualism. They could be classified into two groups: those who relied on the Veda in their quest for the truth and those who did not. The latter path was known as the path of the shramana or “strivers,” to distinguish them from the brahmana, who clung to the Veda.
Vedic brahmanas deemed the Buddhists and Jains nastika, or nonbelievers, because they did not accept the Veda as the repository of cosmic truths. Eventually the word nastika came to mean “atheist.” To believe in the Veda was to believe in God—so said the brahmana. This move from ritualism and speculation to theism was a deliberate one. It transformed Vedism into Hinduism and ensured that the latter became the dominant religion of the land.
Upon realizing the power of the folk gods and their hold on the minds of people, Vedic brahmanas made a conscious attempt to assimilate these gods into their ideology.
The metamorphosis from elitist Vedic ritualism to populist Hindu theism witnessed the rise of three theistic schools between 400 B.C.E. and A.D. 300, each of which visualized God differently:
In fact, Shiva’s wisdom reached humanity not through discourse alone, which appealed only to intellectuals, but also through dance, which was accessible even to the common person (see Fig. 2.9).
Yagna compelled gods to do humans’ bidding; through puja humans invoked god, appeased him, and sought his grace.
And through convoluted logic the brahmanas even succeeded in discrediting the teachings of the nastikas by calling them a philosophy taught by God to delude demons.
Others resisted assimilation or introduced new thoughts to the Hindu worldview. The most important of these was the idea of evil. The Manichaean idea that the cosmos is the battlefield of divine and evil forces has its origin in ancient Persia, where all good in the world was ascribed to Ahura Mazda while all bad was ascribed to the evil Angra Manyu. When these ideas came to India the cosmic architecture changed. Until then the celestial realms were the abode of the devas, the subterranean realms were the abode of the asuras, and the devas and asuras were just different beings populating the
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Naraka, a subterranean realm, came into being; it was equated with the biblical hell, where wrongdoers would be punished. Yama, the god who presides over death and rebirth, became the great moral judge.
Another major influence was the idea of a messiah who would come down and restore the world to its former glory. This idea probably reached India through followers of Zoroaster who migrated to India from Persia, or through Muslim and Christian migrants and traders. It gave hope to millions of Hindus who faced persecution following the establishment of Muslim kingdoms in India.
In support of the idea of a messiah, the Bhavishya Purana says that when dharma on Earth is totally abandoned and the ensuing disorder becomes unbearable, Vishnu will descend as a warrior called Kalki on a white horse, sword in hand (see Fig. 2.13). He will kill all wrongdoers, anarchists, and unrighteous people and then reestablish dharma.
Although Rama restores dharma on earth before returning to his heavenly abode, he does not arrest the natural degeneration of the cosmos as determined by time. In the Kalki story, however, Vishnu not only prevents the untimely death of the world, he also restores youth. The idea is reminiscent of the resurrection and the second coming: Christ helps in regaining paradise, though the return is informed by slavery in Egypt, exile to Babylon, and persecution by Rome.
According to the mythosphere Madhava established, only Vayu, the wind god, visualized as Hanuman, who was the son of Vishnu, could establish the connection between jiva-atma and param-atma. Madhava also believed in the doctrine of eternal damnation. Most beings go through cycles of life and death, but some—those who cross the line—end up in hell and have no hope of being reborn or released unless they appeal to Vayu.
Christian missionaries who arrived in India after Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India in the fifteenth century and were amazed by the similarities between the tale of Krishna, the cowherd, and Jesus, the shepherd. They did not rule out the possibility of a Christian influence in this Hindu tradition.
the former myth is reduced to history, allegory, or pseudo-or primitive science, and is seen as a medium for or a flawed version of an immutable, eternal reality created by or for unsophisticated minds. In the second school mythmaking is an essential function of the mind (conscious or unconscious) to express repressed needs and desires or to make sense out of life and resolve all conflicts therein.
The arrival of Vedic culture is believed to have replaced an earlier matriarchal culture with a patriarchal one. The Aryan invasion theory, based primarily on linguistic studies of the Vedic scriptures, is fraught with contradictions and controversies, for it suggests that the Vedic culture came into India from outside, an idea that is unacceptable to the traditional Hindu of modern India.
There is a stark contrast between the two halves of Krishna’s life, suggesting that there is a forced amalgamation of two biographies and the transformation of the amalgamated hero into a manifestation of God. Sometimes the
When scriptures talk of a Golden Age they refer not to an imagined utopia but a real period in human history whose memory remains only in myth.
The existence of the following narrative clearly indicates that the idea of female chastity was imposed on an otherwise free society.
Shvetaketu saw his mother in the arms of another man. When he complained to his father he was told, “All women are free to do as they wish.” Horrified by this statement, Shvetaketu realized that it was thus impossible for any man to know who his biological father was. Shvetaketu was determined to set things right, so he decreed that henceforth a woman could have sexual relations only with her husband or with whomever he selected.
Although Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth she is considered fickle and whimsical. She needs to be domesticated and controlled if her grace is to be obtained (see Fig. 2.17). Hence she was always visualized at the feet of Vishnu, the keeper of cosmic order. In the cosmic household he is the divine husband and she is the divine wife. The idea of controlling the wife for the sake of domestic bliss is thus given divine resonance.
During Uttarayana the sun moved into the house of Capricorn, which became the symbol of fertility and growth (as Capricorn was a combination of an elephant, goat, and fish). During Dakshinayana the sun moved into the house of Cancer, which became the symbol of infertility and bondage (crabs don’t let other crabs leave the basket).
