Don’t Know Much About® Mythology (46 page)

The main narrative of the
Mahabharata
is frequently interrupted by other stories and discussions of religion and philosophy, one of which is the enormously important work called the Bhagavad-Gita. Perhaps the most widely read, beloved, and significant piece of Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita (Song of the Lord) is presented as a conversation between the warrior hero Arjuna and the god Krishna, who has taken the mortal role of Arjuna’s chariot driver. The Gita, as it is known, sets forth Krishna’s teachings to Arjuna, who faces a moral crisis as the two armies prepare to do battle.

The second of India’s two epic poems is the
Ramayana
, which supposedly describes events that took place 870,000 years ago. The poem contains 24,000 couplets—again, originally written in Sanskrit—and attributed to a sage Valmiki, who wrote it about 500 BCE. Very simply, it is the story of Rama, a prince whose father exiles him for fourteen years because of a dispute over the throne. Like the
Iliad
, it is largely about a war over a woman, as the main plot line is about the conflict between Prince Rama and a demonic king called Ravana, who kidnaps Rama’s beloved wife, Sita. The Hindi translation, written by the poet Tulsidas in the late 1500s CE, remains the most popular version of the
Ramayana
today.

Finally, there is a large collection of Sanskrit texts called Puranas, which were compiled between the early centuries of the Common Era and as recently as the sixteenth century. Mainly written in verse, they present an encyclopedia of Hindu lore, often taking the form of a dialogue—just as the works of Plato do—between a sage and a group of disciples. There are eighteen major and eighteen minor Puranas, and each is a long book that consists of various stories of the gods and goddesses, hymns, cosmology, rules of life, and rituals. Essentially extensive references and guides to religion and culture, the Puranas also describe the Hindu beliefs about Creation and how the world periodically ends and is reborn.

Just as many Christian churches traditionally used a catechism to teach their basic tenets, the Puranas were used to disseminate Hindu religious principles and practices to the majority of illiterate people as well as those prohibited from the older Vedic traditions, including women and the socially inferior people in India’s strict caste system. Many of the Puranas are especially important in understanding myth, because they were composed to explain the connection between particular places with mythological events, such as the origin of a sacred site where a deity had manifested itself.

Words, of course, are not all that we have to go on when it comes to India’s vast mythology. Along with the thousands of Hindu temples still in active use, there is archaeology. During the late-nineteenth-century era of British colonial rule in Pakistan and India, British scholars were the first Westerners to discover vestiges of whole cities full of ancient artifacts buried in huge earthen mounds in the Indus Valley region. By the 1920s, archaeologists uncovered the remains of a previously unknown civilization, now called “Harappan,” in the area’s two central cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. (More recently, other significant discoveries have been made at sites including Kalibangan, Lothal, and Surkotada—in India and Pakistan.) Arranged around a citadel, and built on a grid, these carefully planned cities featured paved streets and underground sewage drains. Excavations have also revealed large baths with connecting rooms, where ancient purification rites may have taken place, along with prominent phallic symbols and large numbers of statues of goddesses, suggesting an early focus on fertility rites. With a uniform system of weights and measures, and covering a larger geographical area than either the civilizations of Egypt or Sumer did, Harappan civilization had broken down by about 1700 BCE. There are few records or historical clues to explain this decline, but the breakup may have been due to changing river patterns that disrupted local agriculture and the Indus Valley economy.

The demise of the Harappan civilization roughly coincides with the arrival of the Aryans. And from the fusion of these two ancient cultures came the eventual rise of Hinduism—a mythology, a religion, and a philosophy that completely shaped India’s future and identity.

What role did myth play in ancient India?

A better question might be, “What role didn’t myth play in ancient India?”

Although there is oddly no equivalent word for “myth” in India’s numerous languages, few other places were as engulfed and pervaded by their myths as was ancient India. From the vegetarian diet many Indians embraced, to their view of the Ganges River as sacred water, to the rigid social classes into which their people were divided, religious ideas born of myth completely dictated life in ancient India. As Anna Dallapiccola writes in
Hindu Myths
, “Myths permeate the totality of Indian culture, mementoes of mythical events dot the whole country, old myths are told anew and new myths are created…Each story is connected to many more, one more exciting than the previous; each merges in an ocean of stories.”

The power of myth in ancient India’s everyday life grew out of the Vedic traditions, which formed the heart of the country’s religious practices for centuries. Stretching back to before 1500 BCE, when the Vedas were written, the Vedic traditions were steeped in an older generation of gods, but were ever-present in the actions of priests who petitioned the gods for favors by chanting and making offerings of flowers, food, and gifts. They also oversaw such rites of passage as marriage, childbirth, and death, and—perhaps most important—made sacrifices at fire altars in the hopes of currying the favor of the gods. Tolerant of local customs and beliefs, the Vedic priests—later the Brahmins—accommodated the local cults that worshipped trees, snakes, mountains, rivers, and other regional deities as they spread across India. Bringing these localized cults into the Vedic fold not only expanded the number of worshippers in India, it also swelled the vast pantheon of gods.

With the introduction of the Upanishads between 800 and 500 BCE, a striking shift in India’s mythic mind-set took place. The emphasis was no longer on the simple, ancient belief in sacrificing to individual gods who could provide protection, send a good husband, or bring rain to make the plants grow. The emergence of the Upanishads ushered in a new era of far more abstract belief, in which the many gods of ancient times were reduced to the single concept called Brahman, and the emphasis was placed on escaping an endless cycle of death, rebirth, and reincarnation in order for the human soul to link with Brahman, the Absolute Godhead.

Making that cosmic leap involved another notion introduced with the Upanishads—that of karma, the law of cause and effect which dictates that every action has consequences that influence how the soul will be reborn. Unlike the Egyptian or Christian notion, in which proper behavior might guarantee a pleasant afterlife, this Indian concept—simply put—held that living a good life means the soul will be born into a higher state in its next incarnation. An evil life did not mean eternal damnation but a rebirth of the soul into a lower state, possibly even as an animal. This ongoing cycle of life-death-reincarnation continues until a person ultimately achieves spiritual perfection, at which point the soul enters a new level of existence called
moksha
(“release” or “salvation”), in which it is joined with Brahman, the divine godhead.

As these more abstract religious concepts took hold, the old rituals were not abandoned, but made part of a new order that was contained within a concept called dharma—an all-inclusive sense of moral and spiritual “duty” with implications of truth and righteousness as well. In essence, dharma means the correct way of living. Maintaining dharma is believed to bring rhythm to the natural world and order in society. When dharma is not upheld, the result is uncertainty, natural disaster, and accidents—what
Star Wars
would call “a great disturbance in the Force,” or as Lemony Snicket of children’s book fame might put it, “A Series of Unfortunate Events.” Essential to maintaining dharma was careful adherence to sacred religious observances and the social order. Every man was supposed to do his duty as defined by his station. For women, as Devdutt Pattanaik notes, “There was only one dharma: obeying the father when unmarried, the husband when married, and the son when widowed.” Not exactly a modern feminist’s idea of Nirvana, but certainly in line with the notions of most other male-dominated ancient societies.

The core of Brahmanism’s order was the Brahmin social structure, which evolved into the Hindu caste system. A highly rigid division of social classes, the caste system may have existed in some form before the Aryan invaders—or immigrants—arrived in the Indus Valley. But as the Aryans and their descendants gradually gained control of most of India, the caste system was used, at first, to limit contact between themselves and the aboriginal people known as Dravidians. The Sanskrit word for caste means “color,” and it is widely thought that the tall, fairer-skinned, and possibly blue-eyed Aryans imposed this system on the darker-skinned aboriginal Dravidians.

The three original divisions later became four principal castes—gradually divided into many layers of subcastes—each with its own rules of behavior, particularly regarding marriage. Marrying outside of one’s caste—like an English aristocrat marrying a “commoner”—just wasn’t done. It was not dharma.

On top of the caste system were the Brahmins, the priests and scholars concerned with spiritual matters; next came Kshatriyas, the rulers and warriors who administered the society; beneath them were the Vaisyas, the merchants and professionals who managed the society’s economy; and then the Sudras, the laborers who serviced the society. For centuries, one large group has ranked below even the lowest, Sudra caste. Known as Dalits (“broken” or “ground down”), they were the “untouchables” who performed the most menial tasks and existed outside the four castes—giving us the English word “outcast.”
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Just as priests ruled the European medieval world, and the imams and ayatollahs dictate to modern Islamic governments in places like Iran, the Brahmin caste of priests, philosophers, and scholars held the high ground in ancient Indian society. Elite and powerful, they attained and held their status through religious principle. In
Guns, Germs, and Steel
, his groundbreaking view of human history, Jared Diamond coined the word “kleptocracies” to describe powerful ruling classes and the ways in which they were able to transfer wealth—and power—from commoners to themselves. Far from limited to India’s Brahmins, Diamond’s fairly cynical view of these systems neatly sums up the underpinnings of the caste system: “[One] way for kleptocrats to gain public support is to construct an ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy. Bands and tribes already had supernatural beliefs, just as do modern established religions. But the supernatural beliefs of bands and tribes did not serve to justify central authority, justify transfer of wealth, or maintain peace between unrelated individuals. When supernatural beliefs gained those functions and became institutionalized, they were thereby transformed into what we term a religion.”

Whenever myth morphs into religion, elaborate rituals usually emerge.
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This was certainly apparent in India, where the sacred Ganges, a river originating high in the Himalayas and revered as the physical manifestation of the goddess Ganga, had been associated with purification since ancient times. Bathing in the waters of the Ganges is still a lifelong ambition for Hindu worshippers and, each year, thousands visit such holy cities as Varanasi (Benares) and Allahabad in pilgrimages to do just that. Temples line the banks of the Ganges and ghats (stairways) lead down to the river, where the pilgrims come to bathe and carry home some of its water. While some come only to cleanse and purify themselves, the sick and crippled come—just as thousands of Christian pilgrims flock to such “miraculous” sites as Lourdes—hoping that the touch of the water will cure their ailments. Others come to die in the river, because the Hindus believe that those who die in the Ganges will have their sins removed.
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