Gods of War

It is the season for festivals. A week ago, the festival of nine nights or Navaratri wound down to a close and the festival of lights, Diwali, will soon be upon us. Within these larger circles of celebration, numerous small ones too will make their place as different communities welcome different gods and goddesses. In a country with proverbially 13 festivals in 12 months, the September-December period is more crowded than usual. And, interestingly, most of these festivals are in honour of great warriors.

Durga slays the powerful Asura king, Mahisha, who had begun to wreak destruction on the three worlds. Backed by a formidable army and a power to change form at will, he remained unvanquished. Helpless, the gods turned to the divine trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Durga, according to common lore, was born out of their collective anger. She sprang into being, fully clad in armour and battle-ready, like Athene of the Greek pantheon.

(Image: Rajrishi Singhal)

Durga was created to kill Mahishasura and hence her name, Mahishasurmardini. Although her male counterparts assist her with weapons and protective gear, she was a one-woman army and led the battle into the Asura kingdom. Many scholars believe that she was worshipped as a powerful and mighty warrior in a timeless time. But with the emergence of a paternalistic social structure, the Durga-Mahishasur myth had to be incorporated within the Vedic framework where the divine trinity was supreme and goddesses were defined by their relationship to the three gods. According to E W Hopkins (Epic Mythology), "Durga is a late adoption of Visnuism; originally a goddess worshipped by savages (Savaras, Barbaras, Pulindas)." Whatever the story of her origin and her position in the pantheon, there is no dispute that Durga is a fierce goddess and was feared by her male counterparts. "Durga is a warrior goddess, unapproachable by suitors and invincible in battle." (World Mythology, edited by Roy Willis, Simon & Schuster, UK) And just as Athene became daughter of Zeus when the male gods became dominant in all societies, Durga became Shiva's wife.

Sekhmet and Anat are similar warrior goddesses in Egyptian mythology. Anat - imported into the Egyptian pantheon from Syria and Palestine - is shown carrying a shield, a spear and an axe. Sekhmet is a terrifying lioness goddess and is often depicted with a lion's head in sculptures. She was deputed by sun god Ra to quell his rebellious human subjects. The lion is Durga's vahana too. Another Egyptian war goddess, Qudshu, is depicted in paintings and sculptures as a naked woman standing on a lion's back. The lion is a common symbol among war deities and is believed to stand in for the sun. (The Dictionary of Symbols, J E Cirlot, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London)

Warrior goddesses were common to many ancient civilisations and their worship perhaps predates that of male warriors. These goddesses were ferocious, a far cry from the fecund profile of a mother goddess, also a powerful mythical-religious figure. According to scholar Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, these goddesses are not compassionate; "they are generally a pretty bloodthirsty lot." (http://goo.gl/DEMMBY). When goddesses took to battle, the lines between good and bad were blurred and often had to be reined in (Kali, Sekhmet are examples) to save humanity from complete annihilation.

The narrative changes when it comes to the male warrior gods. Indra, for instance, fights Vritra the demon for the good of man. Vritra assumed control over water and refused to release it for the gods and humans; Indra slays him with his thunderbolt and cuts a channel for the rivers to flow.

Another thing about recent male warrior gods - they are presaged to deliver mankind from evil. Rama, who will be worshipped during the upcoming Diwali celebrations, fights a moral battle and is worshipped as an ideal man rather than an inspiring warrior. He goes into battle, not because he seeks the blood of his enemy but because his hand is forced when Ravana kidnaps his wife. Ravana's death has been destined at Rama's hands. When the gods had approached Brahma for deliverance from Ravana, he tells them that Rama will be born to vanquish Ravana.

The era of male warrior gods is far from over. The last of Vishnu's ten incarnations is Kalki, the horse-warrior who is yet to grace this world with his presence and is preordained to restore order to a chaotic modern world. 

(This was published in Business Standard Weekend, 25 October 2013)

Speaking in many tongues

(My article in Business Standard on 17 August 2013)

Language is a deposit of thought, said Max Muller, without which the human species would be incapacitated in its quest for survival and modern-day nation states in their hunt for supremacy. By that rationale India is perhaps one of the richest countries in the world. According to the recently conducted linguistic survey of India, the country speaks in 780 languages and writes with 60 scripts. Few other nations and, perhaps even continents, have such a large basket of languages at their disposal.

The survey, which has taken 18 years and 3,000 people, is the first attempt in 100 years to map the country's linguistic diversity. Ganesh Devy, the force behind the 68-volume set of The People's Linguistic Survey of India (English publisher: Orient Black Swan) said at the launch of the Maharashtra survey, "The aim was to reveal the treasure we have. We have a forest of languages."

Creating a language takes centuries and it is the hallmark of great civilisations. Its characteristics cannot be described in a single statement and, in a way, it defies being defined. David Crystal, accomplished linguist and author, says even when we use short and functional sentences, there is a lot that is going on. (How Language Works, David Crystal; Penguin Books, UK) We use vocabulary, grammar, phonology, semantics and several other things to convey sense and relevance to what we speak and write.

Language is a complex machine. It is also one of the most distinctive features of the human race and has been used by civilisations to capture their myths and philosophies and weave them into literature, art and science. Scholars who have studied language and mythology have pointed out that myths were used to amplify the meaning of a word and to transform concepts into stories. Max Muller believed that mythology was the disease of language implying in a way that neither can do without the other.

Myths help layer words with multiple meanings. For instance, take the word zero. In India there are different kinds of zeroes. Ganesh Devy says, "We have the word 'kha' which is a zero that includes everything and which diminishes and grows with the things within it, we have 'shunya' in which there is nothing and we have 'purna' which has everything but it neither diminishes nor grows." The nuances that transform a complex mathematical construct into an equally complicated unit of language are unique to the culture that created the concept. If we lose the language, we lose the layers and the unique worldview of a civilisation.

Similarly language helps create myths that are rooted in the cultural context of a people. For instance, 'Uloopi', the water princess in Mahabharata who marries Arjuna, derives her name from the word uloopin which means dolphin. (E W Hopkins, Epic Mythology, Indological Book House, Varanasi 1968) The word is hardly used but as a character of a popular epic, it lives on. Another word with a forgotten past is Welsh. About 1,500 years ago, Germanic tribes invading Britain coined the term "welus", which meant slaves and outsiders, for the resident Celts of the region - the term lives on as "Welsh".

While losing a language may be in the natural order of things, it often means losing a bit of our past and for India, a wealth of literary compositions. The Bhils have four mahakavyas (epics), and the Sawra tribe, whose language is spoken by a small group of people, has plays, stories and songs. Given the utilitarian times we live in, the death of a language may not seem such a great tragedy. The logic is, if a language had any use, it would be used. But languages are not meant only to communicate (though that is a vital function), it has helped understand the world and create new languages. The binary system that our computers run on was derived from the metric compositions used by ancient poets and singers.

The word is more powerful than we can imagine. That is why most civilisations gave it a divine status. In India, Vac is the goddess of speech and the mother of the Vedas. The Irish god Ogma is said to have invented the Ogham alphabet. Hermes was regarded as the god of language, alongside Mnemosyne (the goddess of memory) by the Greeks. According to mythologist and linguist Ernst Cassirer, "Word in fact becomes a sort of a primary force in which all being and doing originate. In all mythical cosmogonies, as far back as they can be traced, this supreme position of the word is found." (Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth, Translated by Susanne K Langer, Dover Publications, 1946) He finds a direct parallel between what the Uitoto Indians believed - that in the beginning the word gave the Father his origin - and the opening passage of John's gospel: "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." (Bible, John 1:1; King James version). Perhaps, all those who count themselves as masters of the word, may want to take another call on who really serves whom.