The yellow robed god

Vishnu is the yellow robed god or Pitambari. But how he became one is an interesting aside in the larger mythic play.

To begin at the very beginning, Prajapati the creator god had just finished creating and was sitting back, satiated, on a lotus leaf. The myths (in the Vedic hymns) tell us that he made all beings that inhabit this universe from the heat generated from his own body or his 'tapas'. The heat led him to perspire and from his perspiration, came the world.  This is a motif that many creation myths follow where the creation process is usually faciliated by a liquid -- it could be spit, sweat, rain, the foam on the waves in the sea and even sweetened milk. But that's not the point of this story.

As Prajapati watched his world go past, he called out to the tortoise. "You have been created from my body," he told him. But the tortoise was disdainful and perhaps, a tad dismissive.  "I have been here long before you", it said. The myths leave it there, capturing our society's collective inability, at that time, to verify the truth of who came first. That too is not the point of the story but, the tortoise is.

From being identified as a timeless creature, it moves on to becoming a symbol of the sun in later myths. According to folklore, once upon a time, very long ago, the sun grew afraid of his own lustre. He ran away from himself and sought refuge in the tortoise. He did go back as the world had stopped without him but, he left behind his heart in the tortoise. Thus an entire tribe of sun worshippers also became tortoise worshippers. The tortoise and the sun were now looped in a link and preserved as collective memory. Interestingly the tortoise family is among those animals that aestivate -- or monitor their metabolic levels by going dormant during dry periods where they conserve their energies by staying out of the sun.  






Vishnu on a tortoise, Thrissur Pooram procession

 Vishnu, the preserver god of the trinity, rests on water, lies on a snake and flies on an eagle. He is closely associated with the tortoise which is one of his avatars and a permanent fixture in all his temples. Given the association between tortoise and the sun, Vishnu also became a solar god. The disc in his hand and his yellow robes, the direct symbols of an indirect relationship with the Sun God.

(Photograph: Rajrishi Singhal)

Eternal mysteries

Myths were born when we tried to resolve some universal mysteries. Where do we come from? How did the universe come to be and why is the sky above and the ground below our feet? Frankly, some of these questions still have no answers but science has taken us close to the truth or, to put it more accurately, the facts of the case.

Still, the joy of some of old myths persists. A Maori myth,which is common to many civilisations, is one such. It explores the relationship between the sky and earth and their children.

The two, the story goes, were caught in a tight embrace. Darkness found itself trapped between the two. It wanted a way out as did the children of sky and earth who were the gods and human beings. They all pleaded with their parents for some air and some light but, sky and earth were unmoved. Finally the great big god (not sure if it was one or many) decided to stand upside down and push the two apart. The head pushed earth down while the feet shoved sky up and the two were separated and are kept that way till date. The two did not take this too well but had to give in to their children and even today, sky and earth pine for each other. Every monsoon, the sky sheds tears of sorrow for his wife, earth while she weeps all summer.

The separation of the earth and sky is said to be the genesis of the eternal separation motif which has found its way into all our stories -- myths, fairy tales and even contemporary fiction. So what if we now know that this is not how things came to be or that the seasons are explained by a water cycle; the story enthralls, perhaps even more today than when it was first told.

Sons and society

A son is a son is a son in English but in Sanskrit, he is known by many names. Each name symbolises an aspect or tells the story of his birth. Some examples are: Aurus which is the name given to a biological son or an adopted one; Pratram is not formally adopted but regarded as one's own son; Sahod Putra is a son who comes with marriage (he is a biological son but was conceived before the formal marriage); Gudo is a son born when the husband is traveling, but from one of the members of the family; Kaanani is born before marriage and is brought up by the maternal grandfather; Putrika is a daughter who is like a son and Putrika Putra is the daughter's son who may belong to the maternal grandfather or inherit his maternal grandfather's kingdom.

The names not only tell us how important a son has always been to Indian society and the cultural importance attached to bearing one but in some manner, they also indicate that we did not always apply a strict moral code to marriage. A woman could have a relationship before marriage and bear a child; the son was not called a bastard as he would be today but was given a name, a place in the family and a purpose within the broad societal framework. Of course, such a courtesy was unlikely to have been extended to the girl child. If it had been, we would have been a completely different country.