The Monk’s Podcast 97 with Shyamananda Prabhu – Examining mythology 1

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Hare Krishna. So, today I was thinking we could discuss on the topic of mythology, what it is, what it is not, and why it matters, something like that.
You have, I mean, we can ask something like an internal question. What prompted you to take this topic? Did you see something around or you see a rise of some kind of a phenomenon? Yes, two distinct things. One is that within the Bhakti tradition, the word mythology is associated with negativity.
Most devotees would recoil at having said the Ramayana or the Mahabharata or Krishna being called as mythology. And in that sense, the word has the association of something imaginary, something non-real basically. However, the mainstream intellectual discourse, mythology doesn’t have that connotation.
It’s a normal usage. Say for example, if you go on Quora somewhere, it’s Hindu mythology. And it’s understood that there’s a lot we can learn from mythology.
In fact, mythologist is like a profession of some people now. And there is a whole branch of thought which says that math is the rational way of learning. And myth is the way of learning through stories.
So math is the way we quantify and learn to quantification. And myth is the way through vivification or personification or narration. So myth is basically stories that tell you about the nature of reality.
And math is numbers and their relationship that tell you the story of nature of reality. So myth has its own respectability, but as a separate way from the scientific or the math-based way of knowing. Okay.
So since this is a big topic and we are trying to give it a little bit of a capsule format or a small structured format, when you suggested the topic, I did what I normally like to do, that is to go to the Wikipedia page. And first of all, I see whether there are any red flags. For example, they say, this entry is a stub or this entry looks like an advertisement.
So I try to avoid those pages where clearly the editors have set some red flags that please don’t expect any kind of objective scholarship or those kinds of things. So I just found out that there are six things which they say about myths or mythology and not necessarily in the priority order and not necessarily kind of deeply researched things. So when we talk of myths or mythology, we are talking in terms of narrative, which plays a fundamental role in any society.
The main characters are specially endowed persons. They may have extraordinary powers. They may show some miracles.
Again, what exactly constitutes a miracle could be another big discussion, but something which goes beyond the basic laws of material nature. The narrative is closely linked with religion or with spirituality in general. And now here is something which we need to either deal with or address.
Myths are widely believed that they are not objectively true. So there is no way you can objectively research them or find some evidence. The fifth point is, now this is something which, sorry, fourth or fifth, I got, first was, they are, first this plays a flounder, flounderish one in a role.
Second is, some supernatural, some extraordinary characters are having some special, see these the perfections, it is closely linked with the religion or spirituality in general. Fourth is the widely held belief that it is not objectively true. The fifth is a deep concern for us that the narratives of Abrahamic religions, they were gently nudged or kind of discussed in the province of theology.
You see, that whatever is within the Abrahamic tradition is considered part of theology, but anything else, and since we represent Hinduism, at least try to, Hinduism, all the narratives were relegated to the ranks of mythology, because they are seen as lower. So the narratives have nothing higher or lower between in them. But over the last centuries, there was a concerted effort in that direction.
And that needs to be addressed. And the sixth is how in the postmodern era, some people have started to deal with mythology, treat every mythology as a myth. And therefore they want to bring parity.
So that rather than saying that Hindu mythology is superior to Norse mythology, which is inferior to Tahitian mythology, or which is equal to Abrahamic mythology, just say that all of them are myths. None of them are essentially true. And if you find any entertainment value, or if you find any commercial value, good for you.
And this can be seen in the trend which seen Hollywood is now dabbling with Norse mythology with the Thor movies and Valhalla, the place of the dead warriors, and these movies are doing good. So good in the sense they are ringing in the box office to the cash registers. So there is a lot of interest in that.
That has triggered off a lot of interest in our homeland, India, where now people are interested in alternate histories. What if Draupadi had married Karna? What if this would have happened? What if that would have happened? So, would you like to take at least this one important thing that due to India’s being subjugated to foreign rule, everything that India had to offer was seen as belonging to a lower rank? Yeah. In general, the British had to assert their superiority over Indians to be able to rule.
And unlike Muslims who converted lots of Indians and Muslims who also made India their home, in fact, for most Britishers, a posting in India was considered to be like a punishment. Oh, this is so hot, so tropical, uncivilized people. And they said, Oh, we have to go and live there.
And when can I just go back? So they did not in that sense. We have a few Anglican Indians, but not many. So then what happened was they felt that if we are to rule India, Indians have to become voluntarily subordinated to us.
We cannot subordinate them politically. They had political power, but brute force will not work. And it was not just they wanted to subordinate, they also had the belief that our civilization is superior.
Rudyard Kipling had the idea of white man’s burden. The rest of the world is uncivilized and it’s our responsibility to civilize. So one way they did that was trying to reinterpret the existing thought systems, existing culture, existing philosophy, existing literature, in a way that made people feel that if you are really intelligent, you need to accept our way of looking at things.
So there are very provocative quotes by some of the Governor Generals of India, of Britishers. One of them said that the wisdom, the knowledge in all the sacred books of India is less than the knowledge in one primary school library of England. Something like that.
They were that dismissive. So because of that, now some of them did some serious intellectual work. Max Muller had his books of sacred books of the East, where he at one level seemed to be objectively translating, but his objective was very clear.
He had written his wife that he wants to show the Indians using their own books, how they will find fulfillment only in Jesus. So basically, there were two schools of thought, because Britain was also modernizing. So there were the rationalists in Britain, and there were the missionaries.
So both of them critiqued Indian tradition. Rationalists, because they wanted Indians to come over to science, and missionaries because they wanted Indians to come over to Christianity. So although there were battles among them, and the British elections were sometimes quite polarizing, sometimes one party would win, sometimes another would win.
So actually, when the East India Company lost its power after the 1857 revolution, just a year before that, the rationalists over there had lost. So that’s how then Christianizing started a bit more, because the Christian mission, the relatively Christian sympathetic government was there at that time. Otherwise, the trajectory would have been somewhat different.
But either way, the point is that they had to exert their intellectual superiority. And the way they did that was quite, you could say cunning. They said that the original Indian literature, the Upanishads, the Vedas, especially the Upanishadic narratives, they contain lofty philosophy.
But after that, there have been many stories that arise and many gods that arose from these stories. And that has become like a contamination of Hinduism. And somehow some Indian leaders also played into that narrative.
And so polytheism was something looked down upon by Christianity and the Abrahamic religions, because they said we are monotheistic. And they labeled India as polytheistic. And they had this idea, there is a school of thought called euhemerism, that is some person who dies after that others make him into a god.
So they considered Krishna. How is it different from anthropomorphism? Anthropomorphism is more of assuming that God has a human form so that that particular divinity might not have a historical appearance. So it’s ascribing human form to the divine.
That’s anthropomorphism. But this is more like after a person dies, then that person is considered becomes so heroic in people’s eyes that people start calling him God. So they hold this idea that Ram, Krishna, these are all euhemerisms.
So basically, that’s how their idea of myths was. And they had a quite a success, they could say. Of course, they’re not entirely successful, because many Hindu leaders tried to redefine Hinduism.
There’s the Bengal Renaissance, and Bhaktivinod Thakur was at the heart of that also, in some ways. So to the Bengal Renaissance, several Indian leaders, rather than rejecting Hinduism, they in some ways reinvented Hinduism. Now, in the reinvention, each of them tried to adapt, but most of them went toward the monistic understanding.
So within that monistic understanding also, epics were seen as not so much important in the literal value, but as symbolic teachings for something higher. So that’s my brief historical narrative. You would like to add something? I want one more clarification from you.
I went through that Gita Daily article. The point I’m taking now is the widespread belief that myth is good reading matter, maybe entertaining matter, good to teach morals, good for kids in that sense, if I can use that word, but not objectively true. And you cite Madhavacharya from his Mahabharata, would you like to take that point as how to see things three levels? I really like that point.
So firstly, it’s about not being objectively true. It’s something interesting that objectivity itself gained a lot of importance after Newtonian physics came into the mainstream. That means objectivity refers to literal facts.
This happened at this time, this happened this way. So not just in India, but if you consider Homer and other Greek historians, in general, in the past, the study of history was more for moral edification, not necessarily for factual precision, not that actual position was not there, but that was not the stress and that is universal. So moral edification, after all, which king died at what time, which king killed how many people and what happened and what date, how much does it matter for us today, primarily, but there’s something to learn.
So moral edification was considered to be the primary purpose for studying history. And it’s only after Newtonian physics, now that’s a whole big subject, which we could discuss some other time about science and spirituality. But basically what the physics empirical approach was that anything that is mathematical and measurable is valuable.
Anything that is non-mathematical, non-measurable, that put it in the background. So now the reason for that is it’s objective, it’s repeatable. So if I say that this particular food item is delicious, now you may say, I don’t find it delicious.
But if I say this, if you take it, you take even one helping of this, you are consuming 400 calories. Oh, really? I want to think whether I want to take it or not. So now what happens is in the world of our daily experience, the objective reality is not what we primarily experience.
So if we meet someone, we don’t necessarily say, if I say someone, I met a very interesting person. So you tell me something about him. If I say I was five feet, four inches, and he was 150 pounds.
What? Okay, that’s not the primary thing of interest, you would like to know the qualities of the person. So the point is that objectivity itself has become excessively, excessively emphasized in the modern scientific way of looking at things. And so when somebody said this is not objective truth, that means it’s relegated to the idea of imagination.
But I think there’s a big room between so there could be subjective reality also. So the opposite of objective is not imaginary. The opposite of objective is you so if I find a particular food item bitter and you find it not bitter, well, I may not eat it because it is objectively bitter for me.
Sorry, it is, it is objectively bitter for me. And you may say it’s up, but it matters for me. If the taste is not good, why will I take it? So something being non-objective doesn’t necessarily make it false or imaginary.
So when it’s said that the myths are not necessarily objective reality, that means that their primary focus is not to give objective truth in terms of mathematically measurable points. So the way of doing history that say our tradition has or not just our tradition, any pre-Newtonian tradition had the way of doing history is different from the way post-Newtonian history is done. So there is a branch called historicity.
Historicity is historical authenticity. Did this really happen this way? So now, for example, the findings in marine archaeology on the side on the coast of Dwarka have proven more or less the historicity of a prosperous city that was devoured by the ocean as the Mahabharata describes. I was just about to come to that point that this documentary, I saw that this has to be Krishna’s Dwarka and the ASI kind of said, they didn’t say it is Krishna’s Dwarka, but they said that we have these pillars and we have shards and we have pots and whatever.
So it’s an interesting thing. Some people here in India were showing a picture of NASA from the tip of southern coast of India. There is an underwater construction and they say, this is Ram Setu.
So now, how much would you give a just an interesting, an interested reader today from India, maybe with primary scope of Indians, that he or she is a product of today’s educational culture. How much should they depend upon the pillars found near the coast of Dwarka or the NASA picture to believe either in Krishna or Ram? Okay. I think even in science, all the evidence is not equal.
So the marine archaeology findings in Dwarka are of significantly greater credibility for multiple reasons, because it’s not just one structure. It’s clearly a whole city. And there are several artifacts which have markings within ancient script written Vasudev.
And it is quite well indicative that it’s a reasonable correlation that it is Krishna’s Dwarka. You can never have in, when we go back into science, or sorry, because when you go back into history, even with this archaeological scientific approach, you can never have like a 100% reality because in Newtonian physics, if Newton said, if you drop a ball, it will fall down. Well, I can take a ball and make it fall down.
So there’s repeatability is possible. So in historical sciences, that kind of repeatability is not possible. So what they have is something called as IBE is inference to the best explanation.
So you see various evidences and see what, what is the best explanation for this? So the Dwarka evidence is because there are multiple lines of evidences over there that is the significantly persuasive. The Ramayana and the claim Ram Setu, I have my reservations about it. There are some people I have seen that within the tradition who would like to pounce on every scientific finding as evidence of, of our traditions authenticity.
But I feel we need to be a little careful about which evidence we use because what is found over there is a ridge. Now, what was, what the Ramayana says, it was a floating bridge. It was not like a ridge going to the ground.
So once research, which I have not got conclusive finding, a devotee scientist suggested that if actually you can study the rocks over there and find out whether the composition of the rocks is similar to the rocks in the nearby ocean bed, or is that radically different? Then we might be able to say if, if there were rocks brought by the Ravanaras and they brought it from various places. So I’m a little hesitant about that evidence because it is, it is, it is just one ridge. It is significant.
I wouldn’t want to just in a minimizing sense, but it’s definitely not as persuasive as the Dwarka thing. Now, having said that, coming to your question, how much could this be given credibility? So within the narratives that form a tradition score, like first thing you characteristically mentioned was that this is very important narrative for a particular civilization or a culture. So now the foundational role.
So now there are three parts within these historical narratives. First is the historical authenticity. Second is their moral value.
And third is the miracles within them. So with respect to archaeological research, what we can find is the historical authenticity. Now, there is no empirical way by which anybody can, for example, verify that Krishna lifted Govardhan Hill.
What empirical research can tell us is that, okay, this particular hill, if we study its rocks and its composition, the composition, this hill was there for at least 2,000 years, 3,000, 5,000, 7,000 years, whatever. So we can get some historical evidence for the existence of certain characters or existence of certain places. But what those characters did precisely, especially if they did something which is miraculous, or the moral value of what they did, that is something which empirical research can never prove.
So now, earlier, when I would approach the study of the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, I would begin by very strongly emphasizing this is not mythology. This is real. This is historical.
But over a period of time, I have noticed that for many people, that is not a very big issue, in the sense that it’s not a big obstacle for them to benefit from the wisdom and even the devotion that might come when we see extraordinary feats being done. So the historical precision, for some people, it might be a big faith booster. For some people, it might not matter so much.
So depending on how important it is for someone, the research can be done and things can be on case by case accepted. Does that make sense? Yes, yes, yes, very much. So I have something straight from Prabhupada where he cautions the novice reader.
But before that, here is one author, Laurie Honko, and he has four statements about myths and mythology and maybe if interested, we can put some light on that, that a myth expresses and confirms society’s religious values and norms. So far so good. In fact, there is a Christian missionary who is a prominent missionary who said that if any Christian is to have any hope of converting Indians, they have to carefully study the Ramayana, especially the Ramcharitmanas.
This is why? Because this is the founding belief for all behavior and actions of people. And to understand how people think, you need to understand this one book. And in fact, in the Ramcharitmanas of translation which Gita Press has done, Gita Press has actually proudly quoted this author.
So his purpose was different. But to understand the Indian mind, you have to read this book. This is that you can say the shackles of British colonialism or empire building, imperialism, that in our Marathi Srimad Bhagavatam project for the BBT, we got a very old book, the Srimad Bhagavatam, the language was exquisite.
And it was printed in 1948. And that’s it is the second edition. So that means the first one suddenly was in pre-independence India.
And first, there were two scholars who were writing something about Srimad Bhagavatam. And one of them, at every point when he had to say that the Bhagavatam says this, it would always be punctuated by, oh, Carlyle also says something like that. So the Bhagavatam gets its importance, because Carlyle agrees with little bit of a part of it.
Or even Edward Gibbon would have said the same thing. Okay, so just imagine generations, four generations in a century. So at least 12 or 14 generations of Indians had kind of imbibed this thing that our Ramayana, our Mahabharata is good.
Because Max Muller says so. Because Wilson Jones says so. Because Carlyle also agrees with some part of Bhagavatam.
So now is the time to rethink and kind of come out of those shackles. So a myth expresses and confirms religious values. It provides a platform.
I’m not really sure whether that’s necessarily a bad thing, because every tradition has to appeal to the contemporary mind in each generation. And that knowledge system, which is considered respectable in that generation, if the traditions value, the traditions teachings can be explained or vindicated by the current knowledge system, that can be of help. Say, for example, we may give some scientific evidence for reincarnation.
Now, maybe Jiva Goswami or Madhavacharya, Ramacharya, they didn’t need to do that. And we may say, why do we have to do it? So science is the currently respectable form of knowledge today. So we may explain some of our truths, our traditions truths in scientific language.
And some people may need it, some people may not need it. But because of so are we necessarily valuing science more than more than our tradition? No, it’s just that for reaching certain people that might be helpful. There is a temptation over there.
Or there is a danger over there that we may start overestimating science, considering it to be the sole source of all valid knowledge. And like that, it may be that we may take, say, in that those times when, when at one level, the British achievements were extraordinary. It was one small country in one corner of Europe, and they had colonized the whole world.
So there was a lot of respect for Britain at that time. And say, if in if something from our tradition is necessarily a show that this is also what other person thought, I mean, I don’t see that necessarily as a bad thing. What are your thoughts about it? Yeah, I feel that this was used, this is not a product of just open minded scholarship that among so many thinkers, like, if Emerson also agrees, if Furrow also agrees, if Carnell also agrees, that means this person has just read these people, and then find that one or two of them agree.
But somebody from India, and kind of telling something about Britain, till a proper values this in one conversation where the father of the first Prime Minister of India would come to that pharmacy where he would be managing that pharmacy. Yeah. And he would tell him that, so that particular medicine which you want is maybe out of stock, but there is an equally good India, Indian manufactured thing.
And he said, Oh, I never use Indian products. I will wait for 10 days, and I will just take that only. So the deeply ingrained thing is what is the worrying factor.
Okay, yes, I’m like today, if you say, my microphone is a German one. But my laptop camera is from China. And this particular software is made in Germany.
And this is this keyboard comes from America. It doesn’t mean you are a servant of these economies or you’re just being a smart person you are using best of the products available. But this was not the situation in India at that time.
That colonial yoke, as they say, that was there upon our neck. But of course, your point is important. So, secondly, myths provide a platform for behavior to be imitated.
I consider this a very significant thing. All over North India, especially wherever Ramcharitmanas is famous, Prachalit is relevant. You have this Raghukula Reet Sadachali, i.e. Prana Jai, Para Vachana Na Jai.
Now, of course, there can be some Sanskrit words, which exactly portrays this particular sentiment. But this, are you aware that Tutsidas wrote everything in Chowpai? It’s called Chowpai. Yeah, so these two lines, they kind of encapsulate an entire behavior to be imitated.
That once you give your word, you cannot go back. There could be other famous ones, but this, I feel, is a very, very prominent one. That a gentleman is as good as his word, which is an English saying, but it lacks that punch, it lacks that special flavor.
There is spirituality, there is religion, there is culture, everything just in these two lines. So there is an emphasis on which lineage you are from. And Bhima says that if I don’t avenge the insulting of Draupadi, I will not show my face to my forefathers.
So this is another ingrained thing that all that you do today here, you are accountable. You are accountable to your forefathers, not just on one particular day, you offer them some Shraddha or Pinda or something, but all the good qualities you have, they have contributed. So this point that a myth provides a platform for behavior to be imitated.
Any more thing you want to add to this? I think the second part I mentioned in the historical, moral and supernatural. So the moral was the most important aspect of what people assimilated from the myths and moral or ethical, we want to say that. So everybody needs some models, some inspiration and myths play that vital role.
And this was the point I was making earlier. And maybe I would like your comments on this also, that there are many people today who are open to learn moral wisdom and not just for children, even for adults, they are open to learning some wisdom from the epics, from the traditions, mythology as the word that is used, but they may or may not accept the literal historicity of those things, those stories. And I’ve seen that in the Christian tradition, a lot of self-help books are written by talking of the characters in the old testament, the new testament, and people by that start developing at least a connection and appreciation.
And over a period of time, they may come to, I want to know more about this. So I approach it from initially, not from the purpose of spiritual devotion or surrender, but more from the perspective of say moral improvement or even at a more utilitarian level, self-help, but not cheap help, self-help in terms of techniques, but more in terms of values. So that is that something which we have a major concern with, what are your thoughts? Yes, I have an example.
There is a very famous motivational speaker and his specialty is leadership. So the point you were discussing was a leader does deliver more than what is called for, going beyond the call of duty. So he says the manager today has to be like that.
If you’re a successful boss, you have to be like that. So there is a story from the old testament where a merchant comes in a town and is very thirsty and he goes in the first house which he sees, there is nobody to be seen, but there is a young girl and she is drawing water and very, I mean, he is very thirsty. So it shows he earnestly asks her that, could you please give me some water? And by his dress and everything, it is visible that he is not from the town, he is a stranger, could be a merchant or whatever.
She looks at him and says, not only I’ll give you water, I will have some special water drawn for your hearts. He came on a horse. So, oh, and he was very happy that, you know, seems like you are a very cultured, well-trained individual.
Your family tradition trains you to be so courteous to strangers and so on, that story is developed. So as you rightly pointed out, telling this story to young people today who are not acquainted with the message of the text, but then you know that, okay, this particular girl, whether she is, her name is Sarah or I don’t know exactly, I don’t remember, could be Sarah. So he called it a Sarah principle that whenever someone comes to you and like if somebody asks some bread, you say, okay, I have some buttered bread, would you like that? So that shows that you are giving something more.
And as you rightly said, this pays dividends in today’s commercial world or today’s career world. People could be attracted towards finding more about, oh, what happened to that girl after that? Or why was she, why did she give something more? Today people are seen as selfish primarily and why would she do that? So was she happy going the extra mile? And so at least in America, like, you know, that marshmallow experiment, those kids who showed self-restraint little bit only for 20 minutes, but then they took their data and followed them for the next two and a half decades. And then they found out that why is self-control important? Because all those kids who showed that they had better jobs, they had bigger homes, they had better family life, sports life or blah, blah, blah, whatever.
So in one sense, like we can use the narrative of our epics and that can be used effectively at least in today’s day and age when there is a renewed interest. That’s a fact. People are interested and well, we, from the Hare Krishna point of view, may not be just be happy with using Mahabharata or Ramayana for getting good grades that like, you know, that sometimes people say that, can you tell me which of the shlokas of the Gitas are mantras which I can use for improving my concentration? My exam is, the upcoming exam to give.
So generally today, as I find in Kora, most of the youngsters, and if Kora could be seen as a grain of rice in a pot of rice, more than 55,000 young engineers, and mainly engineers, but other doctors and computer science students are asking questions, lot of questions. But because of Hollywood, and because of that kind of atmosphere in India that Mahabharata was Vyasadeva’s myth, Valmiki’s myth is Ramayana. So if these two personalities wrote their stories, basically for entertainment and for moral value, what’s the harm if I write a Mahabharata from Duryodhana’s point of view? What if I glorify Ravan in my Ramayana? So this is where I tend to get worried.
And our next point of discussion is something which I found in the Bhagavad Gita. I’m just reading it. The general pattern translators have followed in rendering Bhagavad Gita into English has been to brush aside the person Krishna to make room for their own concepts and philosophies.
The history of the Mahabharata is taken as quaint mythology, and Krishna becomes a poetic device for presenting the ideas of some anonymous genius, or at best, he becomes a minor historical personage. But the person Krishna is both the goal and the substance of Bhagavad Gita, so far as the Gita speaks of itself. So Prabhupada used to take this point and used to take it very strongly that if you are interested in writing mythology, where good finally triumphs over evil, fine.
Then write something like J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote the Lord of the Rings, or C.S. Lewis, who wrote the Narnia Chronicles. So their two children are exalted to become good, speak the truth, then what happens if you tell lies? So the moral lessons are there. They didn’t claim that this has any reference to anything which has happened before.
Both of them said, these are stories we wrote to entertain ourselves. In fact, funnily, C.S. Lewis was on record saying that I was so bored with the stories which others were writing that, oh no, that was not C.S. Lewis, that was someone else. But the idea was, I love the stories so much that I wrote them primarily to amuse myself.
And if there is anything religious or spiritual, then you take it for yourself. But that was a ploy. Today, scholars are researching the C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia and they see a distinct Christian message in that.
So here is this thing where the author, maybe it is a sign of times, if the author would have said, I want to give theology in the form of a children’s book, people would not have taken it. So he is saying it is nothing but a tale for kids. But then when kids read it, they get the moral and spiritual message.
Yeah. So if to summarize, in my words, what you are saying is that to find moral utility is okay, but we shouldn’t violate the sanctity of the narrative. That is, in the name of utility, if it is simply seen as utilitarian, then those characters become just fictional characters.
And then you can make a story your way, I can make a story my way. And then, yeah, there can be… In fact, this is not just a modern thing. This is a well-known historical phenomenon.
It is called misappropriation or historical appropriation of a particular teacher or a particular saint or a particular narrative. For example, St. Augustine in Christianity, he tried to integrate biblical morality with Greek philosophy. And how does he do that? Because they are two very different.
There is no record of Jesus talking about Plato or Socrates or Aristotle or anyone. So what they did was, they said that in… St. Augustine said that in the historical master plan, these Plato and Socrates were basically pre-Christ Christians. And in many of the churches, often Plato and Socrates are depicted as if they are Christians, that they wear the dress or whatever, although there was nothing like that they were doing.
So that’s a historical appropriation. So there is also similarly a Jain Ramayana, where the basic narrative is similar to the Valmiki Ramayana. But there is, of course, there are some variants, but there are one major variant is when Ram goes to the forest, throughout he meets Jain sages and they give him instruction in Jainism.
And finally, at the end when Sita enters into the earth, Ram renounces the world and becomes a Jain. So that way it has been done in the past also by people who have their own agendas. But the tradition itself has, could say, a mechanism by which certain narratives which enhance the rasa, they are accepted and others are put aside.
So Jain Ramayana never gained the kind of prominence or it never engendered devotion because it was just completely different. Its purpose was different, its mood was different. So, but the idea that, so tradition getting, especially the myths of a tradition getting misappropriated is a major danger.
So then that means there are two, three different, there’s one, the moral value is there, the historical authenticity is there, and then the, we could say the devotional or spiritual sanctity is there. So, there could be the moral lessons are fine, but the spiritual sanctity also needs to be emphasized. We cannot just neglect it and make this only into a self-help kind of lessons from that alone.
Isn’t it? Yeah, just like to add to this point that Prabhupada would emphasize that what business Vyasdev, a person like Vyasdev has in concocting something merely to entertain or merely to give a course in ethics, it is not like talking to his language. He was not an author who was trying to write a New York Times bestseller or trying to pay a loan off, pay off a loan based on the proceedings coming from a book sale. These people were total renunciants, they were transcendence of the highest order.
So, going beyond the understanding of rituals coming from a epic or the moral values is, what was the basic motive in giving this particular narrative? So, this is what Prabhupada is emphasizing that Bhagavad Gita essentially the text aims at telling the reader that just like Arjuna accepted Krishna, you have to accept Krishna and the benefits which Arjuna accrued from that acceptance, they will be yours. So, that kind of spiritual upliftment which occurred with Arjuna is the basic narrative of the Bhagavad Gita. Anything else, some may look at it as a psychotherapy session, some may look at it as an interesting dialogue, some may look at it as from the point of view of Sanskrit poetry, it is marvelous poetry.
But all of this falls short of this one major goal which Vyasadev had and I think that kind of gives a fully rounded picture of the culture, ethos, pathos, logos of the Mahabharata to any lay reader today. The aim is not to make scholars, the aim is not to make historians, but the aim is just to invite the feeling and the philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, the mood of devotion which like a simple point Krishna is telling that Arjuna I am telling this, I am giving this knowledge to you because you are a close friend and a devotee and you are not envious. I have not seen this point emphasized by many of the so-called successful commentators that what is so big about being non-envious, everybody is envious today, so what is wrong with that? But if the Sanskrit word rahasyam, confidential meaning of something is important, then one has to follow the narrative of Bhagavad Gita the exact way which Arjuna followed.
So scholars tend to understand and those who support reading the Mahabharata, like three weeks ago someone sent me some statistic that the Game of Thrones, another so-called epic based storyline had 10 million viewers and that was seen as a record and Ramayana in the lockdown period shown again after a gap of I think 18 or 19 years or 30 years maybe, it gathered 77 million viewers in India. It’s a record everywhere in the world, nothing like that. Exactly, the Kumbh Mela withdraws more than 35 million people on one special day where we have hundreds and thousands of Akhadas, camps and almost every tent in the evening there is either Ramakatha, Siddharkand or Mahabharata.
So the subcontinent is kind of, people don’t need to be told that Krishna was a living personage, Ram also was a living person but it’s only when the study goes in the hands of empiricists today, then all these questions do arise. So any thoughts on that before we end? Yes, so that means that depending on how somebody is approaching the myth, then we have to present it appropriately to them. So one definition of outreach that I heard a few years ago was that outreach means to find out what are the obstacles keeping your particular audience from appreciating that wisdom or reaching spiritual maturity and removing those obstacles.
So whether the stories of the Ramayana are literal historical occurrences or not, may not be an obstacle for millions of people and that doesn’t in any way make them less intelligent that they’re not thinking about it. It’s just that that is not the way they think. So these are sacred narratives for them and so with them trying to emphasize the rationality and the historicity of them may be unnecessary but it could happen that especially even among it could be happen to say the parents in a particular family might have a natural faith in the Ramayana but the children when they grow up, they grow up in the modern educational system with the rational approach and they may think this doesn’t make sense and then they need answers.
So the same way the parents approach the epics that way may not work for the children. Yes and for them there has to be a different way of approaching and this is what I sometimes maybe actually in our next session we will need one more session on this I feel. So there’s one challenge is that nowadays there is a lot of emphasis on using the epics to teach moral values and also to take the tradition and teach some shlokas, teach some songs, do some dramas that’s important but often the rational could say the rational defense of one’s faith the apologetics of one’s tradition they are not communicated and then many many young people who are born in a religious family they grow up when they come into their teenage years and their skepticism starts rising it is a problem for them so that means I would say that in the next session we will discuss two three different aspects one could be that how can the so the if the myths have some some aspects that seem to be either non-historical or historically not demonstrable or something is supernatural so how can they be rationally explained then another aspect could be that do the I think this is the major aspect that when the moral teachings are given at that time there is often a lot of things are taken metaphorically that this is what this signifies so how valid would be the metaphorical explanations of the epics that could also be a major subject of discussion is that okay maybe we can we can take these two in our second part of this it’s a very yeah definitely I think we’ll need to so I’ll just summarize what we discussed about the topic of examining mythology today we started by talking about how there is a revived interest in in mythical literature today even there are mythologists who professionally try to teach values to people and there are also um this word has a negative connotation within the tradition but in the mainstream it is just an objective word that is used to describe ancient and it doesn’t necessarily mean imaginary so what does mythology mean what it does not mean we decided to discuss that and then you raised several points from the mainstream body of knowledge of how it is a it is a dominant defining or foundational narrative foundational value it is it has some special character that extraordinary attributes or extraordinary abilities then it has it is connected with a religious it has religious significance then it has some things which may not be objectively many as some aspects are not objectively true and what was one more thing that something is uh that now people are taking the uh kind of the heart of the matter from all mythologies and saying that all of them are simply myths yeah all the myths and there’s no there’s no hierarchy or anything they’re all equal yeah yeah okay so that that is also an aspect we didn’t discuss and then while discussing on myths then the topic came up about their historicity and uh then discussed how some evidence we have to evaluate each evidence on on merit and then i talked about three aspects of the myths one is the historic historical aspect the second is the moral value and the third is the sanctity the supernatural the spiritual the devotional so with respect to the historical the when something is said to be non-objective that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s imaginary there is subjective also is important so the fact-based approach to history the data math based date based approach to history the post-newtonian approach and pre-newtonian approach was history studied more for moral edification so in that sense the historic establishing the historicity may not be very important for everyone so we can say that something may not be entirely objective but that doesn’t make it imaginary then there we discussed if somebody approaches for moral lessons and then how valid it is so people who never think about these can start thinking about them because they find something interesting of value for them in that sense it is good but if these are considered only as fictional narratives then the problem will be that people might miss a pro people might retell the stories in distorted way but their sanctity is lost and it’s better that rather than tampering with sacred narratives it’s better than that people write their own their own stories for entertainment like say tolkien or c.s lewis did and then lastly we discussed about how when i also talked in that connection with jain ramayana how that’s complete misappropriation so when the moral lessons are being learned at that time there is a deep you you quoted a that how the ramcharitmanas you know it’s become a model how one should honor one’s word so depending on the particular audience how they are approaching the myth then the then the we can see how to draw them further and that would be the expertise of the person doing outreach and in the next session we’ll discuss about the the rational how to explain how to rationally justify or explain some aspects of the mythological story that are problematic and then how to address the aspects of metaphorical readings within the myths that okay okay thank you