SYMBOLISM IN RAMAYANA & MAHABHARATA
(Part II)
A quick preview for Warner Brothers' Ramayana to be released on Oct. 15, 2010
(SEE PART I AND POSTINGS IN JUNE, JULY & AUGUST 2010 ON THIS TOPIC)
By
Achintyachintaka
For Part I please click on:
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4160064815613449047#editor/target=post;postID=6522686463812268353
The simplified “matita-artha” (essential summarized meaning worth contemplating on) of symbolism in Ramayana was presented in Part I. Part II will require some prerequisite background.
The first fact that needs to be confronted is that once a translational flaw is entrenched then all semantics in the host language takes quite a different shape and distorts the appearance of the guest language and its perception. Here the host is the English or the European languages and the guest is the Sanskrit which is translated into English.
For example the word “deva” in Sanskrit is erroneously translated as “God” in English. God is an inoculated concept in Sanskrit. There is “Ishwara” in Sanskrit but even “He” is not a “deva for all” (more on it later – it is an optional “concept” –a vikalpa- as per sage Patanjali). The concept of “deva” clearly refers to an entity that is perceived as presenting “light” or “that which can enlighten”- an inherently bright one. Only when the human consciousness perceives this light in a “tatva,” these entities or tatvas can be called "Devas or Devis.” So, as an example, a mentally challenged individual (poor soul) who has no capacity to create poetry or appreciate a poem will never be in a position to comprehend “Saraswati” as a “Devi.”
On the other hand, a highly creative individual, who marvels at the speed at which he/she can create art, poetry, literature, poems, or even mathematics (as in the case of Ramaanuja, the mathematician) spontaneously without any efforts on the part of the creative individual, will begin to realize the power of Saraswati and if so enlightened will begin to understand the beauty of the concept of “Saraswati Devi.” In this sense, the deification (If you may call it) of the tatvas occurs purely in the subjective domain and whether the entity called Deva and Devi has a separate existence or not becomes a moot point for the individual who experiences it (anubhuti or anubhava). This concept is foreign to Western culture, and therefore, translation of deva and devi as God and Goddesses has led to great confusion in the English versions of Hindu philosophy. Western Theologists and Indologists have not comprehended this subjective domain of “God consciousness” as applicable to human mind including their own.
Another example is Agni. Ak (Ag) + Nee an agency named for that which transforms and takes one forward or beyond. Therefore, the entire universe that transforms from one state of existence to another, or even from nonexistence to existence, can be postulated to have a “transforming agency” like for example a catalyst or an enzyme (Jatharaagni, for example) that is a tatva which is universally essential. A tatva is a principle and cannot be put in a bottle to exhibit. It is an abstraction for those who have the capacity to abstract and comprehend. This tatva of Agni when recognized as essential for the manifest Universe to exist must be revered as a “deva” by only those who subjectively are enlightened to appreciate its existence in the Universe. It is so very important that the Veda (Knowledge) regards this principle as the foremost to be revered and the leader or in poetic term the “officiating principle” of the Universe. Hence, the very first declaration of the Rig Veda is “Agnim eele purohitam.” A gross injustice has taken place by translating Agni as the “Fire God,” it is needless to say for those who have followed the above discussion.
We now have to descend to Mahabharata wherein the author who composes it is Vyasa (Veda Vyasa meaning the one who is knowledgeable of Vedas) the grand-son of a “female fish.” His mother was the fisherwoman who was raised by a fisherman after she was found by him inside the mother fish. This symbolism would have escaped the mankind but for Darwin. The human race or species has evolved from the Pisces via Amphibians is a symbolism of Mahabharata. Of course, the son of a fisherwoman raised by his adoptive grandfather fisherman becomes the most knowledgeable scholar of the Vedas is a stunning challenge to those who harp on casteism in Hinduism. Vyasa had no caste and so also Valmiki. The usual wisdom is that one must not look for the origin of the Rishis and the (sacred) rivers. So, most Hindus habitually have repressed that Mahabharata was written by the grandson of a fish, the son of her daughter.
Similarly, the concept of test tube babies was totally a fiction until recently and even in current era it is still a science fiction. Those who have studied embryology will remember blastoma that has every cell capable of becoming an individual. The mother of 100 Kouravas raises them in the kumbhas. They are individual cells from the blastoma with one fifth not attaining full term.
The remaining one hundred are identical “centuplets” (one hundred simultaneously conceived babies) though raised in one hundred test tubes. Thus begins the story of Mahabharata giving details of science fiction around the mystery of reproduction.
Here one has to accept that there was no knowledge of “blastoma” with 128 equipotential cells that could produce identical 128 individuals and that each would need intrauterine environment for 40 weeks including continuous oxygenation with circulating blood exchanging oxygen from placental oxygenated blood for Oxygen (O2) and Carbon-dioxide (CO2) exchange and other nutrients and elimination of products of metabolic waste. However, one needs to marvel at the symbolism of biological adventure imagined in this story.
The symbolism here is the greed for hundred cloned male children to protect and expand the empire and how all hundred identical centuplet had all the instincts that could be qualified by the prefix “du” at the beginning of each of their names. This shows that there is a clear understanding that the human nature is biologically driven, potentially evil if unrestrained and all the “good” in human nature cannot be readily explained as a biological derivative. This is the mystery of Dharma in human beings and speculation regarding its origin. Mahabharata is the conflict between the Dharmic domain (Dharmakshetra) and the biological domain (We will call it Kurukshetra or the karmakshetra).
Let us not forget that the biological grandfather of all hundred Kaouravas and the five Pandavas, the main contesting characters at “war,” was no one else but Vyasa himself the grandson of the fish. Thus ironically the warring cousins are the fifth generation from the great-great-grandma fish.
Dhritarashtra stands for the blind (avidya) ego that holds on to the biological instincts and Draupadi stands for that aspect of ego who has access to Prajna that holds on to the five sons of the supramundane devas that guide the individual’s spiritual nature in the human beings. She is equally bonded to five of them. These five are the Pandavas who do not have the legitimate biological right to the rasthra but represent the Dharma and his brothers.
The story of Mahabharata is the eternal struggle in the human beings between the biological drives and the superior, uniquely human, qualities that make humans comprehend and follow Dharma. Draupadi is the Krishna Sakhi or the long time friend of Supreme Conscioiusness (that rescues her when abandoned by the five aspects of the human ego ideals or compassionate superego qualities that are essential to follow Dharma.) When so abandoned she becomes vulnerable to the abuse by all the base biological drives and needs to be rescued by the Supreme Consciousness (sublime or sublimated instincts which is possible only in the human beings and more so only in the civilized ones.)
This is also a psychoanalytic interpretation of the Ramayana and Mahabharata presented here as “Instant Ramayana and Mahabharata” in contrast to the “Id-Ball” Wendy Doniger’s interpretations. Wendy is preoccupied by all the morbid in the Id and sees no balancing act in her representation of these epics in her book, “The Hindus: An Alternative History”. If one focuses on the Id alone one is doing a great disservice to Freud and his psychoanalytic concepts. Hopefully Wendy and her children as well as all the Western Indologists who are lost in the Western Dandakaranya will come out of it one day to see the light which the beacons of Vedic wisdom presented as divya kathas in the form of Mahakavyas (epics) by the Rishis, Valmiki and Vyasa, both of whom were exalted long before Wendy’s empathy for the downtrodden Indians and Hindus emerged used by her as a justification to denigrate the divyakathas of Sanatana Dharma for focusing only on the imagined and alluded sexual aspects with her own imagination going wild.
Wendy does not recognize for a moment why there was not ever a single Mother Teresa in the Ghettoes of New York, Baltimore, and Chicago or in many Southern states or none was to be found in the Native American reservations when they faced the trail of tears, or when the slaves were lynched. Where is Wendy’s empathy for these down trodden or all the people subjected to genocides in the Western societies who consequently have no castes (?) because the unwanted were eliminated, segregated, aparthied, or extruded (into epileptic colonies or burned at the stakes as witches) for the elite to enjoy the fruits of their labor or their usurped land, properties, and even kingdoms, to be colonized and exploited? What moral ground does a Western Indologist like Wendy have to criticize the comparatively far less malignant “social evils” of other cultures when he/she has no awareness of the stinking excreta sticking to his/her own shoes?
(Part II)
A quick preview for Warner Brothers' Ramayana to be released on Oct. 15, 2010
(SEE PART I AND POSTINGS IN JUNE, JULY & AUGUST 2010 ON THIS TOPIC)
By
Achintyachintaka
For Part I please click on:
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4160064815613449047#editor/target=post;postID=6522686463812268353
The simplified “matita-artha” (essential summarized meaning worth contemplating on) of symbolism in Ramayana was presented in Part I. Part II will require some prerequisite background.
The first fact that needs to be confronted is that once a translational flaw is entrenched then all semantics in the host language takes quite a different shape and distorts the appearance of the guest language and its perception. Here the host is the English or the European languages and the guest is the Sanskrit which is translated into English.
For example the word “deva” in Sanskrit is erroneously translated as “God” in English. God is an inoculated concept in Sanskrit. There is “Ishwara” in Sanskrit but even “He” is not a “deva for all” (more on it later – it is an optional “concept” –a vikalpa- as per sage Patanjali). The concept of “deva” clearly refers to an entity that is perceived as presenting “light” or “that which can enlighten”- an inherently bright one. Only when the human consciousness perceives this light in a “tatva,” these entities or tatvas can be called "Devas or Devis.” So, as an example, a mentally challenged individual (poor soul) who has no capacity to create poetry or appreciate a poem will never be in a position to comprehend “Saraswati” as a “Devi.”
On the other hand, a highly creative individual, who marvels at the speed at which he/she can create art, poetry, literature, poems, or even mathematics (as in the case of Ramaanuja, the mathematician) spontaneously without any efforts on the part of the creative individual, will begin to realize the power of Saraswati and if so enlightened will begin to understand the beauty of the concept of “Saraswati Devi.” In this sense, the deification (If you may call it) of the tatvas occurs purely in the subjective domain and whether the entity called Deva and Devi has a separate existence or not becomes a moot point for the individual who experiences it (anubhuti or anubhava). This concept is foreign to Western culture, and therefore, translation of deva and devi as God and Goddesses has led to great confusion in the English versions of Hindu philosophy. Western Theologists and Indologists have not comprehended this subjective domain of “God consciousness” as applicable to human mind including their own.
Another example is Agni. Ak (Ag) + Nee an agency named for that which transforms and takes one forward or beyond. Therefore, the entire universe that transforms from one state of existence to another, or even from nonexistence to existence, can be postulated to have a “transforming agency” like for example a catalyst or an enzyme (Jatharaagni, for example) that is a tatva which is universally essential. A tatva is a principle and cannot be put in a bottle to exhibit. It is an abstraction for those who have the capacity to abstract and comprehend. This tatva of Agni when recognized as essential for the manifest Universe to exist must be revered as a “deva” by only those who subjectively are enlightened to appreciate its existence in the Universe. It is so very important that the Veda (Knowledge) regards this principle as the foremost to be revered and the leader or in poetic term the “officiating principle” of the Universe. Hence, the very first declaration of the Rig Veda is “Agnim eele purohitam.” A gross injustice has taken place by translating Agni as the “Fire God,” it is needless to say for those who have followed the above discussion.
We now have to descend to Mahabharata wherein the author who composes it is Vyasa (Veda Vyasa meaning the one who is knowledgeable of Vedas) the grand-son of a “female fish.” His mother was the fisherwoman who was raised by a fisherman after she was found by him inside the mother fish. This symbolism would have escaped the mankind but for Darwin. The human race or species has evolved from the Pisces via Amphibians is a symbolism of Mahabharata. Of course, the son of a fisherwoman raised by his adoptive grandfather fisherman becomes the most knowledgeable scholar of the Vedas is a stunning challenge to those who harp on casteism in Hinduism. Vyasa had no caste and so also Valmiki. The usual wisdom is that one must not look for the origin of the Rishis and the (sacred) rivers. So, most Hindus habitually have repressed that Mahabharata was written by the grandson of a fish, the son of her daughter.
Similarly, the concept of test tube babies was totally a fiction until recently and even in current era it is still a science fiction. Those who have studied embryology will remember blastoma that has every cell capable of becoming an individual. The mother of 100 Kouravas raises them in the kumbhas. They are individual cells from the blastoma with one fifth not attaining full term.
The remaining one hundred are identical “centuplets” (one hundred simultaneously conceived babies) though raised in one hundred test tubes. Thus begins the story of Mahabharata giving details of science fiction around the mystery of reproduction.
Here one has to accept that there was no knowledge of “blastoma” with 128 equipotential cells that could produce identical 128 individuals and that each would need intrauterine environment for 40 weeks including continuous oxygenation with circulating blood exchanging oxygen from placental oxygenated blood for Oxygen (O2) and Carbon-dioxide (CO2) exchange and other nutrients and elimination of products of metabolic waste. However, one needs to marvel at the symbolism of biological adventure imagined in this story.
The symbolism here is the greed for hundred cloned male children to protect and expand the empire and how all hundred identical centuplet had all the instincts that could be qualified by the prefix “du” at the beginning of each of their names. This shows that there is a clear understanding that the human nature is biologically driven, potentially evil if unrestrained and all the “good” in human nature cannot be readily explained as a biological derivative. This is the mystery of Dharma in human beings and speculation regarding its origin. Mahabharata is the conflict between the Dharmic domain (Dharmakshetra) and the biological domain (We will call it Kurukshetra or the karmakshetra).
Let us not forget that the biological grandfather of all hundred Kaouravas and the five Pandavas, the main contesting characters at “war,” was no one else but Vyasa himself the grandson of the fish. Thus ironically the warring cousins are the fifth generation from the great-great-grandma fish.
Dhritarashtra stands for the blind (avidya) ego that holds on to the biological instincts and Draupadi stands for that aspect of ego who has access to Prajna that holds on to the five sons of the supramundane devas that guide the individual’s spiritual nature in the human beings. She is equally bonded to five of them. These five are the Pandavas who do not have the legitimate biological right to the rasthra but represent the Dharma and his brothers.
The story of Mahabharata is the eternal struggle in the human beings between the biological drives and the superior, uniquely human, qualities that make humans comprehend and follow Dharma. Draupadi is the Krishna Sakhi or the long time friend of Supreme Conscioiusness (that rescues her when abandoned by the five aspects of the human ego ideals or compassionate superego qualities that are essential to follow Dharma.) When so abandoned she becomes vulnerable to the abuse by all the base biological drives and needs to be rescued by the Supreme Consciousness (sublime or sublimated instincts which is possible only in the human beings and more so only in the civilized ones.)
This is also a psychoanalytic interpretation of the Ramayana and Mahabharata presented here as “Instant Ramayana and Mahabharata” in contrast to the “Id-Ball” Wendy Doniger’s interpretations. Wendy is preoccupied by all the morbid in the Id and sees no balancing act in her representation of these epics in her book, “The Hindus: An Alternative History”. If one focuses on the Id alone one is doing a great disservice to Freud and his psychoanalytic concepts. Hopefully Wendy and her children as well as all the Western Indologists who are lost in the Western Dandakaranya will come out of it one day to see the light which the beacons of Vedic wisdom presented as divya kathas in the form of Mahakavyas (epics) by the Rishis, Valmiki and Vyasa, both of whom were exalted long before Wendy’s empathy for the downtrodden Indians and Hindus emerged used by her as a justification to denigrate the divyakathas of Sanatana Dharma for focusing only on the imagined and alluded sexual aspects with her own imagination going wild.
Wendy does not recognize for a moment why there was not ever a single Mother Teresa in the Ghettoes of New York, Baltimore, and Chicago or in many Southern states or none was to be found in the Native American reservations when they faced the trail of tears, or when the slaves were lynched. Where is Wendy’s empathy for these down trodden or all the people subjected to genocides in the Western societies who consequently have no castes (?) because the unwanted were eliminated, segregated, aparthied, or extruded (into epileptic colonies or burned at the stakes as witches) for the elite to enjoy the fruits of their labor or their usurped land, properties, and even kingdoms, to be colonized and exploited? What moral ground does a Western Indologist like Wendy have to criticize the comparatively far less malignant “social evils” of other cultures when he/she has no awareness of the stinking excreta sticking to his/her own shoes?
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