Protected: K

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Bhishma and Zeus

It’s long been theorized that Bhīṣma (“the terrible”, for the vow he had taken) Pitāmaha (patriarch) is an incarnation of the Vasu Dyaus; thus likely cognate to our ancestral PIE Sky Father (*Dyḗus ph₂tḗr). While we can look at many facets of this theorized relationship via the lens of comparative mythology – let us start with the circumstances of the Kuru patriarch’s birth itself. Then, let us compare this to the birth myth of Zeus Pater, King of the Olympians. If there are some similarities, then our hypothesis is reinforced: that the mighty Son of the Ganges is verily a reflux of the ancestral Sky Father. The word Zeus (Proto-Hellenic, *dzeus) is indeed a linguistic cognate of Dyaus (root: dyu) in Sanskrit; both are nominalizations and vriddhi derivatives of the PIE root (*dyeu) for the sky, heaven.

We shall assume that people reading this are familiar with the birth stories of both Bhīṣma and of Zeus. A short summary nonetheless: Bhishma is the Son of the River Goddess Ganga and the Kaurava Shantanu. He is born the last of eight male children born to the couple. However, Ganga drowns all of the previous seven ones. Then Shantanu has no more and asks her to stop when it is the turn of Bhishma, which she does. At that moment she reveals who she is and leaves him, as he had made the vow of never questioning what she does. The backstory is that the 8 children are the 8 vasus who were cursed for stealing the celestial cow, the Kamadhenu. The Seer Vasiṣṭha curses them to born as humans but says the 8th vasu will liberate them from the curse, though he himself will be cursed to spend a longer time on earth due to his primacy in the theft.

Similarly, Zeus is the son of the Titan Kronos and his sister Rhea. Kronos and Rhea themselves are the children of Ouranos (Uranus; Heaven) and Gaia (Earth). Kronos castrates his own father at the insistence of his mother. However, he is forewarned that just as he overthrew his father, his children will overthrow him. Because of this, he devours all his children the moment they are born; that is, except his last-born Zeus. Rhea gives birth to Zeus on Crete and tricks Kronos into thinking he has devoured him too. Eventually, Zeus grows up and gets Kronos to disgorge his 5 siblings. These 5 siblings:  Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades and Poseidon, defeat the Titans in the Titanomachy after which Zeus marries his sister Hera, just like his father.

Many similarities are visible, let’s list them out:

1. Many siblings are born (8 and 6 respectively), and are killed by one of their own parents (Ganga, Kronos). There is infanticide at birth itself.
2. All the victims are sequences of siblings
3. The last victim is the one that frees his siblings from the curse/doom that befell them.
4. The siblings are killed in the body of their parent (Ganga drowns them in her own waters, Kronos eats them and they are inside his stomach)
5. The other parent is extremley upset at this, but says nothing until the final sibling is about to be killed.
6. Temporary period where both surviving siblings are separated from their fathers (Ganga takes away Bhishma to educate him, while Rhea moves Zeus to Crete to protect him).

Thus, we find incredible homologies in the birth myths of the two celestial figures, which certainly cannot be purely coincidentary. There are a lot of other similarities in the life of Bhishma and Zeus (+Ouranos) as grown ups but we shall look at them in other posts, along with some of the differences. Conclusively, we show the case for Bhīṣma and Zeus Pater being homologous variants gains some reputable ground beyond mere linguistic association (Dyaus:Zeus)

We were only axes

न ध्यातं पदम् ईश्वरस्य विधिवत्संसारविच्छित्तये
स्वर्गद्वारकवाटपाटनपटुर्धर्मोऽपि नोपार्जितः ।
नारीपीनपयोधरोरुयुगलं स्वप्नेऽपि नालिङ्गितं
मातुः केवलमेव यौवनवनच्छेदे कुठारा वयम् ॥

We did not meditate on the feet of God
To cut away the cord of wordly existence
As had been required of us
We did not lead lives pious enough
To be worthy to walk through the gates of heaven,
Even in our dreams, we did not embrace those pair of wide breasts of damsels
We were only axes, cutting down the forests of our mothers youth.

(Bhratrhari, Vairagya Shataka 45)

_{Translation gloss–– na; no, dhyAtam; meditated, padam; feet, iishvarsya; of God, vidhivat; in accordance with our duty, saMsaaravichChittaye; to cut off worldly existence, svarga; heaven, dvaara; door, kavaaTa; gate, paaTana; asundering, paTuH; worthy, dharmo.api; even dharma, nopaarjitaH; not gathered, mAtuH; of mother, kevalameva; only even; yauvana; youth, vana; forest, Cheda; cutting, kuThaara; logs, vayam; we}

The Indian Tragedy

European literary critics and auteurs have considered the tragedy to be the sine qua non of drama inheriting some of the tradition of Greek and Shakespearean tragedy. As Oscar Wilde said, “There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.”

Even in the pre-Christian era, we had Aristotle saying “For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality“

Tragedy then for the western dramaturgist is the confrontation of the reality of the human condition on the stage. It is serious, sad and hapless. It is also then the gravest and hence the most philosophical expression of art there is. If the search is for a Hamlet or an Oedipus Rex in Indian kāvya, then it is not hard to see why westerners are so often disappointed with classical sanskrit kāvya. To them, the world of the kāvya is devoid of unhappy endings –– it is purely fantastical & magical. A fairy-tale in every play and every scene. A dance of the Gods. It catches the eye but it misses the mark as it isn’t real. There is no seriousness. There are no wellsprings of sorrow in kāvya, they say. A distinction is made between the Indian epics (itihāsa) and later classical kāvya. It is said that the former are much like the epics of Greece in content; they’re tipped to the rim with sorrow, blood, gore, violence and heartbreak. The myriad of emotions that make up the human condition. However, the latter (kāvya) is denigrated as the zenith of la-la-land. Judgement is laid down; grief is true confrontation with truth. As kāvya lacks tragedy, it lacks the means to use art as a medium to confront the truth of human nature.

This facile viewpoint, however, is flawed for some reasons. We must first understand what the tragedy really is seen from the western perspective. Western tragedy is understood with its design, the frame which is nihilistic. It has always the unhappy ending, with the debacle of death (lacking which it becomes a “tragicomedy”). Lofty characters with balanced emotional distributuons who with their own indelible hamartia (ἁμαρτία) or fatal flaw (or sometimes by pure chance) will unravel the whole narrative and end in a nadir of despair. There is one trope, which the characters will lead up to with suffering at the end of the play. There is existential anxiety and moral conflict, caused often by the tragic flaw of the protagonist.

Armed with this brief knowledge, we must ask ourselves how the ancient Indians viewed the tragic? In kāvya, tragedy is an inner process, an inner response to grief with its own telos. The human condition is tragic, (duḥkha the mark of life as the bauddhas say) and it is tragically subject to endless rebirth. Tragedy is not a structure or dramatic external trope, it is the inner failure that is experienced upon finding oneself in helpless circumstances. It is then the poet’s representation of the various states of consciousness as they confront and explain loss or failure. It’s a psychological perturbation that alters the spirit. We are dealing here with the phenomenology of grief. Tragedy is something that is a part of the narrative development and not the end of the drama in itself. The tragic middles of Kālidāsa are truly tragic for they deal with the character’s response to a tragic event, with the full kaleidoscope of experiences leading to a tragic breakage in the middle, which may lead to a structural resolution in the end. So, upon broadening our conception of what makes up the tragedy –– we think of it less as something structural defined by an ending and more as something experiential. As consciousness encountering & being readied by the world. The European conception of tragedy suggests that something is tragic not by virtue of how the character feels, however significant and altering, and how he or she may choose to learn from this feeling but by delimitation of the contextual structure that leaves them with no choice to respond but gives only one negative consequence: destruction. Western tragedy then makes the mistake of looking for suffering at the end of the play and not inside it.

It is fitting then that the traditional first-poet (ādikavi) of sanskrit kāvya, Vālmīki composed the first verse of classical sanskrit poetry (ādi-śloka) mired in grief upon seeing a hunter slay the male partner of a couple of krauñcha birds in the guileless act of lovemaking. Seeing the female bird heart-broken, her idyllic irreparably splintered – Vālmīki cursed the hunter.

mā niṣāda pratiṣṭhāṁ tvam agamaḥ śāśvatīḥ samāḥ
yat krauñcamithunād ekam avadhīḥ kāmamohitam

It was “grief that became poetry” (śokaḥ ślokatvam āgataḥ). Poetry then, arose from the tragic.

chANDala-kavi-leelaa

This lovely verse by the chaaNDala-kavi maata~Nga divaakara shows us the skill of poets even from the lowest varNas and flies in the face of allegations of social mobility in Ancient India. The kavi was the court poet of Emperor HarSha and one of his nine jewels, nava ratna.

किं वृत्तान्तैः परगृहगतैः किंतु नाहं समरथस्
तूष्णीं स्थातुं प्रकृतिमुखरो दाक्षिणात्यस्वभावः ।
देशे देशे विपणिषु तथा चत्वरे पानगोष्ठ्याम्
उन्मत्तेव भ्रमति भवतो वल्लभा हन्त कीर्तिः 

“Why bother with the affairs of another man’s house? But I cannot control myself
It is indeed my southern nature to be loquacious. Ah well, your intxociated lover, she wanders about everywhere: in market-stalls and in drinking parlors!

Such fame!”

Oh, so this is the ruler of the Sena dynasty!

भुग्न-ग्रीवम् भुज-बिस-लतासक्तवक्त्राम्बुजाभिस् सस् अयम् सेनान्वयनृपस् इति त्रासकौतूहलाभ्याम् विष्वक्-पीतस्-कुवलयदलश्रेणिदीर्घैस् कटाक्षैस् पौरस्त्रीभिस् सपदि नगरीविद्रवे विद्विषाम् यस्

The women of the cities of his enemy run quickly
to drink him in from all sides,
With their arms like fibrous stalks
fastened to faces of water born lotuses ,
Glancing as long at him as the lines of water-lilies
the bend their necks and say “Oh, so this is the ruler of the Sena Dynasty!”


यस्य औत्सुक्यात् असमसमरालोकनोन्मादभाजाम्+ स्वर्गस्त्रीणाम्+अपरिगणितस्रस्तचेलाञ्चलानाम्+मन्ये धाराचतुरतुरगोत्खातरेणुप्रतानस्+सद्योलग्नस्+स्तनकलशयोस्+अन्तरीयत्वम्+एति|

The innumerous ladies of heaven gone mad by their curiosity
Watch his battles of which there is no match
Little do they know the drapes of their robes fell off!
I like to think the dust excavated by the galloping horses
It diffuses immediately onto both the large round breasts on their chests,
Acting as their new robes,

End of the World

तस्मिन्युगसहस्रान्ते सम्प्राप्ते चायुषः क्षये | अनावृष्टिर्महाराज जायते बहुवार्षिकी ||५६||
ततस्तान्यल्पसाराणि सत्त्वानि क्षुधितानि च | प्रलयं यान्ति भूयिष्ठं पृथिव्यां पृथिवीपते ||५७||
ततो दिनकरैर्दीप्तैः सप्तभिर्मनुजाधिप | पीयते सलिलं सर्वं समुद्रेषु सरित्सु च ||५८||
यच्च काष्ठं तृणं चापि शुष्कं चार्द्रं च भारत | सर्वं तद्भस्मसाद्भूतं दृश्यते भरतर्षभ ||५९||
ततः संवर्तको वह्निर्वायुना सह भारत | लोकमाविशते पूर्वमादित्यैरुपशोषितम् ||६०||

“O Great King, on the end of that yuga of a thousand and on the destruction of the duration of life. A drought lasting many years was born. Then, those creatures of minute essence, afflicted with hunger on earth, are annihlated in the most abundant of numbers [pralaya] on the falling of this Earth. Then, O Sovereign of Men, by seven blazing suns the entire water in the oceans and in the rivers is drunk . [and] O Bhārata! O Bull of the Bharata-s! Then logs of wood, grasses, objects deprived of all moisture, We see them all become reduced to ash. Then, O Bharata, the world destroying fire accompanied by the wind enters the world, the world which has been dried up beforehand by the seven suns”

ततः स पृथिवीं भित्त्वा समाविश्य रसातलम् | देवदानवयक्षाणां भयं जनयते महत् ||६१||
निर्दहन्नागलोकं च यच्च किञ्चित्क्षिताविह | अधस्तात्पृथिवीपाल सर्वं नाशयते क्षणात् ||६२||
ततो योजनविंशानां सहस्राणि शतानि च | निर्दहत्यशिवो वायुः स च संवर्तकोऽनलः ||६३||
सदेवासुरगन्धर्वं सयक्षोरगराक्षसम् | ततो दहति दीप्तः स सर्वमेव जगद्विभुः ||६४||
ततो गजकुलप्रख्यास्तडिन्मालाविभूषिताः | उत्तिष्ठन्ति महामेघा नभस्यद्भुतदर्शनाः ||६५||
केचिन्नीलोत्पलश्यामाः केचित्कुमुदसंनिभाः | केचित्किञ्जल्कसङ्काशाः केचित्पीताः पयोधराः ||६६|| केचिद्धारिद्रसङ्काशाः काकाण्डकनिभास्तथा | केचित्कमलपत्राभाः केचिद्धिङ्गुलकप्रभाः ||६७||
केचित्पुरवराकाराः केचिद्गजकुलोपमाः | केचिदञ्जनसङ्काशाः केचिन्मकरसंस्थिताः ||६८||
विद्युन्मालापिनद्धाङ्गाः समुत्तिष्ठन्ति वै घनाः ||६८||

“Then that fire, having cleaved apart the Earth, enters the lower worlds. Great fear in the Gods, demons and the spirits is born [due to this fire] and O Prince! the nāgalaoka is being burnt up and whosoever is in dwelling here under the earth, all of them are destroyed in an insant. Therefore, thousands and hundreds of twenty yojana-s are burning up by the inauspicious wind and the fire of the destruction of the world. The God-s, asura-s, gandharva-s and with them the yakṣa-s, ugara-s and rākṣasa-s, the world pervading radiant [fire] burned them all indeed. Then, a marvellous sight.. giant clouds are rising in the atmosphere, clouds resembling the lineage of mighty elephants [in size] and clouds adorned with the garland of thunder on them.

घोररूपा महाराज घोरस्वननिनादिताः | ततो जलधराः सर्वे व्याप्नुवन्ति नभस्तलम् ||६९||
तैरियं पृथिवी सर्वा सपर्वतवनाकरा | आपूर्यते महाराज सलिलौघपरिप्लुता ||७०||
ततस्ते जलदा घोरा राविणः पुरुषर्षभ | सर्वतः प्लावयन्त्याशु चोदिताः परमेष्ठिना ||७१||
वर्षमाणा महत्तोयं पूरयन्तो वसुन्धराम् | सुघोरमशिवं रौद्रं नाशयन्ति च पावकम् ||७२||
ततो द्वादश वर्षाणि पयोदास्त उपप्लवे | धाराभिः पूरयन्तो वै चोद्यमाना महात्मना ||७३||
ततः समुद्रः स्वां वेलामतिक्रामति भारत | पर्वताश्च विशीर्यन्ते मही चापि विशीर्यते ||७४||
सर्वतः सहसा भ्रान्तास्ते पयोदा नभस्तलम् | संवेष्टयित्वा नश्यन्ति वायुवेगपराहताः ||७५||
ततस्तं मारुतं घोरं स्वयम्भूर्मनुजाधिप | आदिपद्मालयो देवः पीत्वा स्वपिति भारत ||७६||
तस्मिन्नेकार्णवे घोरे नष्टे स्थावरजङ्गमे | नष्टे देवासुरगणे यक्षराक्षसवर्जिते ||७७||
निर्मनुष्ये महीपाल निःश्वापदमहीरुहे | अनन्तरिक्षे लोकेऽस्मिन्भ्रमाम्येकोऽहमादृतः ||७८||
एकार्णवे जले घोरे विचरन्पार्थिवोत्तम | अपश्यन्सर्वभूतानि वैक्लव्यमगमं परम् ||७९||
ततः सुदीर्घं गत्वा तु प्लवमानो नराधिप | श्रान्तः क्वचिन्न शरणं लभाम्यहमतन्द्रितः ||८०|

minos – plato (I)

A review-summary of the platonic dialogue of Minos. This dialogue serves as a preview to Laws and the two speakers are Socrates & an unknown interlocutor [Friend]. Law in greek is nomos but a more accurate understanding is custom. Custom that is accepted, written down is accepted (nomizomenon) as written law. Laws is one of the late platonic dialogues & remained unpublished at Plato’s death. Socrates begins by establishing laws do not have sorts, they do not differ in the essence of lawness just as “what sort of gold?” is a silly question. A law is something different from what is accepted by the people. Just as speech is different from what is spoken, sight is different from what is seen. Laws cannot be resolutions, for some resolutions or political judgements of a city are wicked but the law is always good. Are not the law-abiding just & the lawless unjust? So wicked resolutions are not laws. Laws are still judgements & since it isn’t wicked judgement it is always the admirable or good judgement. Is not good judgement always true judgement? And is not true judgement discovery of reality ? So laws are discoveries of reality. If humans do not make use of the same judgements, then does it not mean that they are not capable of discovering what reality is?

On a side note, we find out the carthaginians did human sacrifices which the greeks condemned. In earlier times, the greeks buried their dead in the house. Socrates now says just as what is heavy or light does not change among the greeks or persians, similarly what is fine is fine and what is shameful is shameful. Just as there are laws of cookery and medicine that are common across the world. There are treatises written to expound those laws and classes of people skilled in using them (doctors, cooks). What is correct is simply the accepted idea in a given sphere. But whose laws are most authoritative? The shepherds’ for the sheep and the kings for human souls.

Among the ancient kings, plato says the minoans of crete had the best lawgiver – Minos [a son of Zeus and Europa]. Plato says Minos was educated by Zeus as mentioned by both Homer & Hesiod – and held in the highest regard by them. This is akin to Manu the divine lawgiver who possesses the rājavidyā in our tradition. Plato says the athenian poets demonize minos because crete went to war with athens. (story of the minotaur that was fed athenian youths).

mayUrashR^i~Ngara-rasa

एषा का भुक्तमुक्ता प्रचलितनयना स्वेदलग्नांगवस्त्रा
प्रत्यूषे याति बाला मृग इव चकिता सर्वतः शंकयन्ती
केनेदं वक्त्रपद्मं स्फुरदधररसम् षट्पदेनाइव पीतं
स्वर्गः केन अद्य भुक्तो हरनयनहतो मन्मथः कस्य तुष्टः

_{eSha = this; kA = who; bhukta-muktA = a woman enjoyed and let go; prachalita-naynA = wandering eye; sveda-lagna-a~Nga-vastrA = clothes clung with sweat to her limbs; pratyUShe = at dawn; yAti = goes; bAlA mR^iga iva = girl like a deer; chakitA = scared; sarvataH = from all sides; shaMkayantI = she being doubtful; kena = by whom [man]; idam = this; vaktrapadmam = face of a lotus; sphurad-adhara-rasam = throbbing nectar of her lower lip; ShaTapadena = by a bee [lover]; iva pItam = as if drunk; svargaH = heaven; kena – by whom; adya = today; bhukto = has been enjoyed; hara-nayana-hato = slain by shiva’s eye; manmathaH = God of Love [Kama, Lover]; kasya tuShTaH = satisfied with whom}

“Who is this damsel, tasted and set free, who is she with the wandering eye and garments clung by sweat to her limbs?
She wanders here and there at the break of dawn, a deer timid and anxious she resembles,
By which bee [lover] was the throbbing nectar of the lower lip of this lotus faced damsel drunk? By which man has heaven been enjoyed today? By whom was the God of Love, slain by the eye of Shiva satisfied?”

युधिष्ठिराकुल

aho bhavatyA mantrasya pidhAnena vayaM hatAH
nidhanena hi karNasya pIDitAH sma sabAndhavAH

Ah.. You might just as well have killed us now by revealing this. Kinsmen, the lot of us, were already tormented by the death of Karṇa

abhimanyorvinAshena draupadeyavadhena cha
pA~nchAlAnAM cha nAshena kurUNAM patanena cha

Tormented by the slaying of Abhimanyu & the sons of Draupadi. Tormented by the destruction of the Pāñcāla-s & the fall of the Kuru-s

tataH shataguNaM duHkhamidaM mAmaspR^ishadbhR^isham
karNamevAnushochanhi dahyAmyagnAvivAhitaH

And now.. a sorrow a hundred times greater I feel crawling up my body. While I mourn Karṇa, I burn as if I stood in a fire myself.

na hi sma ki~nchidaprApyaM bhavedapi divi sthitam
na cha sma vaishasaM ghoraM kauravAntakaraM bhavet

Nothing was unbobtainable for us, not even if it had been in heaven itself. And this terrible destruction and end of the Kuru would not have been.

evaM vilapya bahulaM dharmarAjo yudhiShThiraH
vinada~nshanakai rAjaMshchakArAsyodakaM prabhuH

In this manner, the righetous king Yudhiṣṭhira mourned manyfold. Then the lord, slowly performed the last rites, as he filled the space with his cries.

tato vineduH sahasA strIpuMsAstatra sarvashaH
abhito ye sthitAstatra tasminnudakakarmaNi

Then, men and women from all sides there cried violently as he [Yudhiṣṭḥira] did the last rites in the water.

tata AnAyayAmAsa karNasya saparichChadam
striyaH kurupatirdhImAnbhrAtuH premNA yudhiShThiraH

Then, the intelligent Lord of the Kuru-s [Yudhiṣṭḥira], due to love for his brother, had the wives of Karṇa in their dresses brought there.

sa tAbhiH saha dharmAtmA pretakR^ityamanantaram
kR^itvottatAra ga~NgAyAH salilAdAkulendriyaH

With Karṇa’s wives, Yudhiṣṭhira – the one with dharma in his soul, performed the funeral rites. Having done this, with his senses agitated, he emerged from the waters of the Ganga