When we talk of the Western tradition, there are two main streams—the Greek and the Abrahamic—which formed the tradition of the Jews, Muslims and Christians. The Greek influence is very strong. Alexander too must have heard these stories and thus wanted to conquer the world. The most famous Greek stories are Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. There’s another called Argonautica. All these are stories of heroes. A hero has ambition and wants to achieve something. He goes on a journey during which he has many adventures. He battles demons, saves young damsels, meets learned ascetics and, by the end of the journey, achieves something big. He undergoes a transformation through his journey, but on his return home finds that his family has not changed, so a gap appears in his relationship with them.
There are many such stories. There’s one famous story of Helen of Troy. A prince comes to Greece and meets the extraordinarily beautiful Helen and they fall in love. As Helen is married they decide to elope on a ship to Troy. All the Greek kings decide to attack Troy to bring Helen back. Such was Helen’s beauty that she’s known as ‘the face that launched a thousand ships’. There are many dramatic stories within this epic story, one of which is of Achilles and the Trojan War. This story is told in the Iliad. Achilles fights on the Greek side but has an altercation with a general Agamemnon, after which he refuses to take part in the battle. The Greek army faces defeat. They plead with him to fight, but he refuses. His brother, or some say his lover, Petrolocus (homosexual relationships are common in Greek stories), believes he ought to fight. He wears Achilles’s helmet and goes into the field. The Greek soldiers think it is Achilles and they are inspired to put up a great fight against the Trojans. During the battle Petrolocus gets killed. Achilles is furious and returns to the field to seek vengeance. He defeats Hector, a Trojan hero, and ties the body to the wheel of his chariot and drags it through the city. Basically, he humiliates a dead warrior, which nobody did.
The Iliad is a story about a selfish hero who leaves and comes back to the battlefield because of personal anger. Achilles was Alexander’s favourite character. He wanted people to consider him as great a hero as Achilles. He wanted everyone to be afraid of him like they were of Achilles. He wanted to conquer all of Asia the way Achilles defeated Troy.
The story of Odysseus is famous in Greek mythology. Tell us about it.
Odysseus is one of the great warriors in the Trojan War, and it is his cunningness that leads to Troy’s defeat. He builds a huge wooden horse for the Greek soldiers to hide. The Trojans think the Greeks have retreated as they cannot see them or their ships. They are fascinated by the wooden horse and take it inside their fort, which no Greek has managed to breach for ten years. At night, Odysseus leads the men out of the horse and they unlock the main gate of the fort, leading to the downfall of Troy.
But the story of the epic Odyssey is of him returning home after ten years of war. It took him another ten to return home to Ithaca. For twenty years, he was away from his family. In the interim, he has numerous adventures: his ship gets wrecked; he gets into a fight with the Sea God; he battles demons like Cyclops (one-eyed demons); he escapes from the beautiful women at sea known as Sirens who can charm you with their melodious singing but are in fact demons who can swallow you up; he is lured by witches who try to make him forget his home but fail; his fellow travellers die, and so on.
Through all this time, his wife, Penelope, resolutely waits for him and refuses to remarry, despite many offers. Her son too is of marriageable age and her well-wishers worry that she’ll be left alone. Penelope tells her suitors that she’s weaving a cloth for her father-in-law and the day she completes it, she’ll remarry. But the cloth she weaves during the day she undoes at night after everyone is asleep so that her task is never completed.
At a dramatic moment in the story, Penelope finally agrees to remarry—on the condition that the suitor proves himself worthy of being the king of Ithaca and her husband. The challenge is to shoot a single arrow through the handles of twelve swords that have been lined up. Man after man fails. One of them succeeds. Penelope asks who it is as she does not recognize him. It is Odysseus. It is ironical that at last when he returns home, nobody recognizes him because he has grown old.
This sounds like a swayamvara from one of our stories.
There may have been some common thread between Greek and Indian cultures 2000–3000 years ago. They say that part of the Aryan tradition is in India and part in Europe. In the Aryan tradition there used to be a competition for the hand of the girl, similar to the concept of swayamvara. There are many similarities like this between the mythologies of the two lands. But these are superficial. When the British spoke about our culture, they compared the kidnapping of Sita to Helen’s elopement in the Iliad. But it’s not the same because Helen left of her own accord while Sita was kidnapped forcibly.
The most important difference is the concept of rebirth and karma. In India, we talk of karma, that this particular life is one among many births. In Greek culture, there is only one birth, one life. You live only once. So there is a lot of drive and passion—there is only one life and so we have to achieve something. The Greek heroes are ferocious. Their gods and goddesses sometimes support them and at other times oppose them. This makes the heroes very angry. They feel they’re being toyed with, used like pawns.
According to their beliefs, they have three possible destinations after death. Those who have done great work in life and pleased the gods go to Elysium, a special kind of heaven. Those who’ve upset the gods go to Tartarus where they will have to do the same task over and over again, thousands of times, until eternity. Usually this task is one where you can only fail, like trying to fill a broken pot with water. Those who have lived average lives, done neither too well nor upset the gods, go to Asphodel. There is no return from any of these places.
Jews, Christians and Muslims believe that if you obey God and His commandments, He will be pleased and on the day of reckoning you will go to heaven. If not, to hell. In Hinduism, the concept is very different. If you’ve been good, you’ll go to heaven but it will be temporary. If you’ve been bad, you’ll go to hell but that too is temporary. You’ll keep getting reborn in different bodies and will be trapped in the cycle of life and death (ritu chakra). One day, when you attain knowledge and wisdom, after you’ve done tapa and yoga (forms of meditation and self-reflection), you’ll be released (mukti) from this ritu chakra. And you will find moksha (liberation).
So Greek mythology does not have the concept of moksha?
No. It’s always about achievement. The desire for revolution, for changing the world, comes from this belief system—that nothing in the world will change until the hero does something. Indians traditionally believe that the world is always changing, whether you want it to or not, so what will you achieve by revolting? That’s why in India, we don’t even have the concept of a hero.
But Rama is the hero of Ramayana.
In common understanding, he is seen as a hero. But this is wrong. Rama, Krishna and Shiva are all gods. They have the knowledge of all time (adi-ananta kaal) and are doing leela (simply participating in the illusion). A hero is one who undergoes an emotional transformation through his journey of victory or defeat. Our gods are stithpragnya, unaffected and stoical. They are the same in victory and defeat, in the forest and in the palace. The Greek statues show tension, style, attitude and musculature. Indian gods have no tension on their faces. They are peaceful (shanta rasa), their bodies are soft, etc. There is no concept of mad energy (junoon). A Greek hero has passion, a destination. People believe the Gita says that gods will appear on earth and defeat the wrongdoers (adharmi). What this really means is that these gods will reveal knowledge to the ignorant. The word ‘buddha’ means to awaken the sleeping one: ‘You are blind so I will reveal myself to you, give you darshan and open your eyes.’ There is no straightforward concept of good and bad or victory and defeat. In the Mahabharata, the Pandavas win but can it be called a victory when they lose their children? Rama �
��defeats’ Ravana, but basically he has done his ‘uddhar’—uplifted him. That’s the concept. We don’t look at these subtle differences; we look at stories from the outside, at their ‘bodies’. But this is the ‘atma’ of these stories.
I’ve heard that the practice of idol worship has come from Greece. Is this correct?
Good question. In Vedic times, we did not have images of gods. During yagna, gods would be invoked through mantras. After the Greeks came to India 2300 years ago, we started seeing statues in India—the images of Buddha, Vishnu and Shiva appeared in the Gandhara style, where the form and features were similar to Greek heroes. Gradually, an Indian style emerged, as in the art of Mathura, carved in red stone or black. So the practice may have been inspired from Greece but we have made it our own. Today, if you compare the forms, proportions and styles of the images, they are vastly different. By the time the Puranas were being composed, 2000 years ago, perhaps the tradition of having images and temples had come in through Greek influence. Greek theatre was famous too so the Natyashastra is supposed to have been inspired from there. We still call a curtain in the theatre ‘yavanika’, literally, ‘of Greece’. Perhaps the curtain which is used as the backdrop in the Shrinathji Temple—known as pichhwai—has also come from there.
17
Kingship
Our great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, are about kings and royalty, not about ordinary people. Why is that so?
It’s not so much about kings as about social structure—how it should be. The head or the leader of the structure, the pivot who holds it all together, is the king. According to experts, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata were written between 300 BCE (the era of Chanakya and Chandragupta of the Maurya dynasty) and 300 CE (the era of Samudragupta of the Gupta dynasty), a period of almost 1000 years.
What is special about this period? During the Mauryan era, there were two main forces. The first was the Buddha parampara or Shraman parampara which primarily believed that life was full of sorrow and it was better to renounce it. There was talk of viharas or monasteries. Dhamma means, ‘I am unhappy with the world and I am going to the forest or the monastery in search of truth.’ The second force was ambitious kings like Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka and Bimbisara who wanted to conquer the world. There was a tension between the two forces. In between this, people asked what the role of the king was. So royal stories became very important.
If you look closely, these are stories of kingship. What makes a good king? Is an ambitious king a good king? Buddha was a king too who gave it all up and eventually became a guru. Was he then a good king? The great epics were written in this social context. They are about politics, economics, administration and governance.
In the Puranic stories, Rama rajya is considered to be the ideal kingdom. Why so?
What is a successful kingdom? It is one wherein wealth and prosperity (Lakshmi) come to you without kalaha or conflict (Alakshmi). Saraswati also comes to this kingdom and there is a perfect balance of knowledge and wealth. There is power too which comes with Goddess Durga, a form of Shakti. So an ideal kingdom is where all the three goddesses—Saraswati (knowledge), Durga (power) and Lakshmi (wealth)—reside. This is what constitutes Rama rajya.
Rama is supposed to have been a great king because he cared only for his subjects—to the point that he destroyed his own life for their welfare. A king who keeps his word, listens to his people and is more concerned about them than himself is considered a great king. Rama’s is a tragic story because his personal life was miserable—he abandoned his wife because he listened to the people. A good king always keeps his word so there’s a sense of predictability, integrity and commitment about him.
Ravana is called Lankeshwara. Was he a good king of Lanka?
There are many fans of Ravana who would not like to hear any criticism about him! Now, why was Rama the king of Ayodhya? Was it because he wanted to be the king or because it was his duty or responsibility? Rama never says he wants to be king. He is Raghukul’s eldest son; at that time, the eldest sons were given importance. When his stepmother, Kaikeyi, wants her son to become king, Rama agrees. When he returns fourteen years later, he asks Bharata again, ‘Are you sure you want me to be king?’ Rama is not greedy for the throne. It’s not his ambition; it’s his responsibility.
Let’s compare him with Ravana. Ravana has an ambition to be king. He snatches Lanka from his brother, Kubera, who created it. This is the first point. Ravana then focuses more on himself than his kingdom and takes decisions that destroy it. Lanka burns, people (rakshasas) are killed and an unnecessary war is waged. The war happens because he kidnaps another man’s wife, then refuses to send her back and is willing to go to war for it. It’s a futile war which causes hardship to his people who have nothing to do with it. Where there is a big ego, there cannot be a good king. Is the king there for his subjects or the other way round?
In the Mahabharata too, when war is waged, nobody talks about Hastinapur. They talk of the kingdom as though it’s their property. It’s wrong to believe that it’s like a zamindari system. Looking after the kingdom is their responsibility. This is what the great epics want to show. Both the Pandavas and the Kauravas are guilty of this. When Krishna recites the Gita, he asks the Pandavas, ‘Why do you want to rule? You are talking of rights over the land, authority, but not about duty or responsibility.’
Thus a king is always given a Vishnu roop. The Vishnu who sits in Vaikuntha is called Daridra Narayan or the king of the poor. His wife is Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. But he does not consider the wealth she brings his property. He does not say, ‘Lakshmi is mine.’ He says, ‘I love Lakshmi. She comes to me because I am establishing dharma, order and harmony, an environment where all the people of a kingdom can perform brilliantly. Be it a potter, merchant or weaver, everyone will do their work well so that Lakshmi will come on her own. I am such a good man; I work hard so that prosperity will come to me.’
This is the dharma of a king. Rama shows all these qualities. Governance is most important. Raj dharma means that the prosperity of the kingdom is not the king’s; it’s for the people. ‘I (Vishnu, king) attract Lakshmi so that there’s pleasure and happiness in my kingdom.’ Only in a prosperous kingdom can art flourish. There will be museums, theatres and so on. A king’s job is to create a happy ecosystem, called Vishnu charitra or vritti, which Ravana fails to do.
You spoke about tyrannical kings. Were there others like Ravana?
This is quite an important theme in the Puranas. It’s said that once Bhudevi goes to Vishnu weeping and complains that egoistical kings are exploiting her. She asks Vishnu to destroy them. So he takes various avatars—Rama, Krishna and Parashurama—to kill these adharmi (unconscientious) kings, those who don’t think about their kingdoms but only about themselves.
There is one King Ven who forces his people to worship him instead of Shiva and Vishnu, imposes arbitrary rules and bans pilgrimages. The rishis remind him of his duties as a king: ‘The people of the kingdom don’t have food to eat and houses to live in. There’s moral corruption everywhere. Instead of penalizing the oppressors, you’re interested only in your own wealth and pleasure.’ The king refuses to pay heed and the rishis kill him.
They then debate who can take over the kingdom as the king did not leave a direct heir. His ancestors were the kings Daksha, Dhruv and Anga—a great lineage—so the next king should also be of the same standing. As they’re left with no other choice, they decide to produce another king. They pray and a man appears with a chakra symbol on his hand. He is a Vishnu avatar. The rishis name him Prithu and pronounce him king.
So which kingdom did Prithu rule?
This story should be seen as an allegory. The rishis defeat a bad king and produce a good one from the dead king’s body. This is to show that our ‘default setting’ is that of adharma. We are inherently egoistical and hungry for power instead of being conscious of our responsibilities.
The story goes that Prithu takes a bow and chases
after Earth. Earth takes the form of a cow and runs away, fearing more exploitation. The king asks her forgiveness and says it’ll never happen again. So the righteous king is called Gopala and the earth, Gomata—cowherd and cow. Bhudevi calls herself Prithvi, after Prithu, because he is a good king. He is aware that she is a mother and should not be exploited and that a king is a caretaker of his subjects, not their master.
We’ve heard about Rama rajya but never ‘Krishna rajya’ although he too is an avatar of Vishnu. Why so?
Vishnu is associated with dharma and to establish it, he takes different forms. Sometimes he is a leader, sometimes a follower, sometimes a king and sometimes an advisor. Rama is king; Krishna is kingmaker. Krishna is also from Yadava Vansh, the Yadava clan, which is a kind of republic. There is no king amongst them; it is like a democracy. Krishna is also the younger brother, so he’s Dwarkadhish, that is, the protector or guardian of Dwarka, not king.
Kings have some symbols associated with them. For instance, fan made of yak tail (chamar) is used for a king, and thus it is Rama’s symbol, while fan made of peacock feathers (morcha) is used for a diwan or a person one rung below the king. This is used for Krishna, as he is like a king but not a king.
What are the other symbols for a king?
A king was believed to be god, a roop of Vishnu—Vishnuswarup—who will bring in Lakshmi. So most icons associated with Vishnu are used for a king—chamar, singhasana (lion throne) and paduka (royal footwear made of gold). Only royals were allowed to wear gold on their feet. Others are a footstool, an umbrella above his head. In Maharashtra ‘Chhatrapati’ is a title for Shivaji as a chhatri (umbrella) is a symbol of kingship. A king had a bow in his hand—a symbol of balance. The chakra is also very important as it suggests that the king is in the centre and his rule extends up to the borders. So a king is called ‘chakravarti’, the centre of the wheel.
I have read about Raja Bhoj and Vikramaditya in the Amar Chitra Katha. But these stories do not tell us about their origins.
Devlok With Devdutt Pattanaik: 3 Page 9
