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As the population of the ancient cities rose, so great
was the din that it kept Enlil awake all night. Exasperated,
he convinced the gods to thin out the cities with a
visitation of plague. Fortunately, a wise man named
Utnapishtim or Atrahasis realized that everything was
not well with the cities. He consulted Enki, the god
of wisdom and the waters, and learnt about the impending
disaster. Utnapishtim warned the other citizens, who
responded by keeping quiet and propitiating Namtar,
the plague god, with offerings. The measures were effective
and the plague was averted.
Human memory, however, is short. The noise level rose
again and this time Enlil ravaged the cities with drought.
Enki bailed out the populace again by sending fish along
the rivers and canals for people to feed upon. But when
Enlil finally devastated the land with storm and flood,
only the creatures that Utnapishtim had managed to take
aboard a special ship survived.
Does the above tale sound familiar? It reminds us of
Manu and Noah, for one. The existence of similar mythical
matrices in different geographical locations and cultures
points to our shared humanity. If we differ as individuals
and as ethnic communities, we also share mental traits
and ways of thinking, hopes and aspirations, beliefs
and fears.
The predicament of the Mesopotamian cities is also uncannily
our own: Noise pollution, drought, and flood; containment
measures-both secular and religious-that are never quite
adequate; and devastation, which only the wise, the
prepared, and the lucky escape. This contemporaneity
is the unique feature of Puranic myths. Though unimaginably
old, they are ever new, pura api nava. The Ramayana
tale was an old story even in ancient India; but listening
to it, or seeing it enacted, is always a fresh experience.
Going through the Ramayana is not merely an aesthetic
experience. True myths supply clues to our own nature,
illumine the dark recesses of our mind harbouring desires
and conflicts, bring interpersonal and inter-communal
relations into focus-playing up the subtleties and tensions
underlying human behaviour, and the ethics and casuistry
underpinning it-provide access to spiritual verities,
and hold up morals and ideals as no human preacher could
do.
The ideal society of the Ramayana, Sister Nivedita points
out, is based on dharma. In the society that Valmiki
contemplates, 'the severity of social discipline increases
towards the summit: those who have the greatest power
must practise the greatest self-restraint, partly because
of noblesse oblige, partly because such austere discipline
is the necessary condition without which power would
rapidly melt away'.
Over against this human world of the silver age is drawn
the sinful and inhuman world of the rakshasas, where
greed and lust and violence and deceit replace generosity
and self-restraint and gentleness and truth. But these
evil passions are outwardly directed against men and
gods and all those who are, for the rakshasas, aliens:
amongst themselves there are filial affection and the
uttermost of wifely devotion, there are indomitable
courage and the truest loyalty. The city of the rakshasas
is pre-eminently fair, built by Vishvakarman himself;
they practise all the arts; they worship the gods, and
by austerity and penance win great gifts of them: in
other words, they flourish like the bay-tree, and if
they are evil, at least they are not ignoble. Amongst
them are found some, like Vibhishana, not evil at all.
After all, then, these rakshasas are not inhuman at
all, but their estate is the image of the adharmic,
unrighteous, aspect of human society-an allegory which
we should all understand were it presented to us today
for the first time, like the Penguins of Anatole France.
Though we might have gone through the Ramayana many
times over, it still comes as a surprise that many of
our ideals and aspirations are indeed asuric, demoniac,
not very different in nature from those cherished by
the cultured rakshasas of Lanka. The Bhagavadgita paints
a graphic picture of such aspirations: 'This I have
gained today, and that longing I shall fulfil. This
wealth is mine, and that also shall be mine in future.
That enemy I have slain, and others too I shall slay.
I am the lord of all; I enjoy; I am prosperous, mighty,
and happy. I am rich; I am of high birth. Who else is
equal to me? I will offer sacrifice, I will give, I
will rejoice.' 'Ostentation, arrogance, and self-conceit;
anger, rudeness, and ignorance' characterize the asuric
mind, and these are fostered by a supportive world view:
'The world is devoid of truth, without a moral basis,
and without a God. It is brought about by the union
of the male and the female, and lust alone is its cause:
what else?'
It is only against this background that the higher human
values represented by Rama and his companions stand
out as exceptional. In Rama, power is not vitiated by
arrogance or conceit, strength is not manifested through
anger, nor does lust masquerade as chivalry. For Sita,
suffering is not weakening or demeaning, and in Hanuman,
obedience is not servile. Such attitudes are born of
a concordant world view which sees the human being as
essentially divine and the Atman as deathless, which
apprehends all knowledge and power as being inherent
in the human soul and has access to the means to tap
it. The Ramayana provides us direct entry into this
world view. 'In these [the Ramayana and the Mahabharata]',
Lin Yutang observes, 'we are brought closer to the atmosphere,
ideals and customs of ancient Hindu life than by a hundred
volumes of commentary on the Upanishads.'
Can legendary personages and mythical ideals really
have a lasting impact today? This question keeps haunting
us because we take myths to be mere tales or a dated
way of viewing the world. On the contrary, all human
thought has a mythical dimension to it because 'myth
is that which is taken for granted when thought begins'.
Myths 'reflect, express, and explore' a people's self-image.
Edward Conze notes: 'Polytheism is very much alive even
among us. But where formerly Athene, Baal, Astarte,
Isis, Sarasvati, Kwan Yin, etc., excited the popular
imagination, it is nowadays inflamed by such words as
Democracy, Progress, Civilization, Equality, Liberty,
Reason, Science, etc. A multitude of personal beings
have given way to a multitude of abstract nouns.'
The paradigms of science are also analogous to myths;
they are likely to be replaced with advancement of knowledge.
Discussions on issues bordering on the limits of our
scientific knowledge-about the origin, nature, and locus
of consciousness, or about the boundaries of our universe,
for instance-are also bound to have a mythical character.
The ideals represented by Rama, Sita, and Hanuman are
not mere intellectual concepts. 'You partake of the
nature of him on whom you meditate,' Sri Ramakrishna
observed. 'By worshipping Shiva you acquire the nature
of Shiva.' More important, these personalities are spiritual
entities that can be directly accessed and which determine
and direct our spiritual being: 'A true Shaiva has some
of the characteristics of Shiva;
He who is a
true Vaishnava is endowed with some of the elements
of Nara-yana.' It would be a pity if we chose to ignore
these ideals. In doing so, we would be negating the
very core of our being.
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