Rāmāyaņa
Is it a picture of the Āryan and Non-Āryan society & culture?
There had already flourished a great civilization on the Indus-Valley by the time the Āryans set their feet on this sacred soil. It is the well-known Dravidian civilization which stretched from the Niles to the Indus. Social condition of the people in this civilisation was no way inferior to that of the Āryans. The finds from Mahenjo-Daro and Harappa lend strong support to this conclusion. But there were distinct differences between the Āryan and the non-Āryan ways of life. The non-Āryans preferred the city dwellings whereas the Āryans opted for peaceful and pleasant cradle of nature. That’s why the Āryans maintained greater power of thought over the non-Āryans. The Āryans kept on meditating for long amidst the enchanting environs of green and flowery forests served by the murmuring streams and rivers. The thoughts that transpired through such meditations are immortal still.
The Āryans first composed the Vedas, the maiden literary and philosophical monument of the mankind. They are not authored by any single person; and are, rather enriched with the noble thoughts of many a seer. There was probably no script available by the time of composition of the Vedas and so they continued as verbal transmission by the Ŗşis through the ages. Later on they were divided into four parts, namely, the Ŗk Veda, Sāma Veda,Yajuh Vedaand Atharva Veda Samahitās. Some researchers are of the view that these great scriptures were composed some five thousand years back. But who knows, how many millennia the mankind might have taken to attain the fit of civilized sense to be capable to compose the Vedas ? The ancients have left no record of that.
The natural and geographical features of India were not exactly as to-day when the Āryans caught sight of this vast landscape. On their very entrance they came first in contact with the non-Āryan civilization and must have fought a colossal combat, which naturally, must have stirred disturbance into the peaceful set-up of the Āryan life style. Further, the great Āryans must have invented the ways to protect themselves from the hands of the Dravidians. More so, they must have taken great pain to preserve their social culture. The Āryans first started settling in the Indus Valley and then spread into the entire northern plain of the Ganges. Some parts of the northern and eastern India, by that time, were packed with unpiercable, dense forest and the process of creation of the landmass was still on. Later on, the Āryans moved to the south after multiplication of their families. This vast piece of land, with all its marvels of nature, must have flashed as a piece of art before the Āryan seers who were devoted to discovering the novelties of nature and in unraveling its mysteries. They must have been lost into thoughts, abysmal, to behold the evergreen forests with their streams, rocks and rivers, the bouncing, blue water of the great ocean and above all, the blue canopy of the clear sky studded with innumerable pearls of stars.
For that, in the early times, they worshipped Nature itself. In the later period,in order to tighten the social bondage and to attract the ignorant mass, they adopted symbols for various natural phenomena and gave them the features of Gods and Goddesses and finally it led to the introduction of idols. This symbolic representation has ultimately attained its peak in the era of epics and has ended in exploiting the blind mass. The fact and phenomena have gradually disappeared from the sight and instead, a long chain of routine prescription for Pujā has taken its place. It is, no doubt, an unnecessary malification of the truth. All others excepting the Brahmins have been debarred from acquiring the real knowledge on some plea or other. The caste system has finally been the dead blow to the Āryan ideas and has kept the truth and knowledge obscure for the common man.
The Vedas sang hymns for a great many varieties of natural phenomena, whereas the same nature was personified in the epic-era. That is how, the form-less nature stood with human flesh and blood in epics. The width and depth of knowledge ended in narrow concern. Since then, thousands of years have passed by; the man- kind has gone through many ups and downs. Imageries have tightened their grips on the society. Therefore, Rāmacandra is no more the beautiful Moon, nor Sītā, the goddess of crops. They stand before us now as prince and princess in human form.
Some scholars are of view that Rāmacandra and Lakşmaņa are the great heroes among the Āryans and Sītā, the heroine. The monkey kings and soldiers of Kişkindhyā are the fore-runners of man in the process of evolution; Rāvana and the other demons in Laňkā are the uncivilized savage tribals. That, a fight between the Āryans and non-Āryans had been pictured in the Rāmāyaņa; the non-Āryans being shown to had been defeated with the help of the human beings gradually evolving from the form of apes.
It is natural for such section of scholars to commit this error in judgment. The reason is the following. The purāņas have been with our society for pretty longtime. They have sort of established their hold on us. So, now it becomes difficult for anybody to gather strength to go out of way and to think and write against what has already been accepted in the society. That is why the truth remains all veiled. But it is clear that the Ŗşis, who had written the purāņashave digested the gist from the Vedas; then they have simply adopted names and symbols for different natural phenomena. There, they give us the purāņas, in which lie the mystery of the universe, science, geography, history, astronomy, medicine, literature, grammar and many social laws. The truth remains hidden inside. The puranic authors have painted excess of imagery giving everywhere, supernatural tint to the covering story. Might be that writing in such a style was taken in that time to be a great craft-man-ship and sign of scholarship. Of course, a limited few used to realize the underlying truth. Gradually, poetic imaginations throbbed under the encouragements from all around and the truth went down and down. This is the tragedy that kept India in a gloom. At this juncture, the seers
It is natural for such section of scholars to commit this error in judgment. The reason is the following. The purāņas have been with our society for pretty longtime. They have sort of established their hold on us. So, now it becomes difficult for anybody to gather strength to go out of way and to think and write against what has already been accepted in the society. That is why the truth remains all veiled. But it is clear that the Ŗşis, who have written the purāņas have digested the gist from the Vedas; then they have simply adopted names and symbols for different natural phenomena. There, they give us the purāņas, in which lie the mystery of the universe, science, geography, history, astronomy, medicine, literature, grammer and many social laws. The truth remains hidden inside. The puranic authors have painted excess of imagery giving everywhere, supernatural tint to the covering story. Might be that writing in such a style was taken in that time to be a great craft-man-ship and sign of scholarship. Of course, a limited few used to realize the underlying truth. Gradually, poetic imaginations throbbed under the encouragements from all around and the truth went down and down. This is the tragedy that kept India in a gloom. At this juncture, the seers like Māhavīr Jain and Bhagavān Buddha preached against the social taboos inflicted by the purāņas.
For the Āryan ŗşis, the infinite blue sky with all its pearls of stars was the ceiling of their house, the oceans were the entrance halls; the natural objects, as their house-hold furniture; the sky-peaking mountains were the pillars of that house; the horizon was the boundary wall; this good earth beneath was the flowery floor; the natural beauties were the decorative arts and the Sun and Moon were the auspicious lamps. Will it not be a great blunder in our part, if we take the noble thoughts of those benevolent ŗşis in a narrow perspective?
Individual character or social incidents were not of any concern for the ŗşis. They only marveled at the ever changing patterns of nature. The never ending sky and the ever existing mysteries of nature were the prime source of their thoughts. There, while unraveling the covering of the sky and the veil of nature, they noticed many mysterious facts. That is what they placed, one by one, in the Vedas and in the Upanişadas.
On the other hand, in the era of epics, Vālmikī, the great seer, took the stars and planets as characters and knotted the natural phenomena in form of stories. In such an attempt the fact remained subsidiary and imagination stood Principal. Poets and writers, subsequently, went on adding their imagination and social experiences into the body of the text by making it more lively and human. The sculptor’s artists and painters gave life to the epic characters by carving and painting them on stones and canvases.
There are also a section of scholars who hold the view that, the Rāmāyaņa is a philosophical work on the human body (the piņda).There goes on incessant battle in the body between Rāma and Rāvaņa, i.e. God and Demon or between Good and Evil. It seems, these scholars do not have strong reasoning to establish this theory. I would cite the following facts to contradict their belief.
The ŗşis of the Vedic period were the believers in the Universe (out side their own human bodies). They worshipped the Nature. Of-course, idol worship was introduced due to their contact with the Dravidians. But they did not completely delete the nature from their worship. Various natural phenomena were given the form of images. It is the Buddhist philosophers who did not believe in any god or idol, and introduced the idea of piņda. They proposed that a life, devoid of ambitions, pure and free, leads finally to salvation. Buddha, the Holiest, preached the ten golden habits and the eight-fold-way. Thereafter, processes like Āsana, Prānāyāma and Mudrā etc. were introduced for protection of the body. Gods and Goddesses were imagined to be seated in various locations of the body. The yogic practices leading to sound and sustained physique like raising the Kuņdalini etc. were extended out to the society. As a result, during the Buddhist period, attention was distracted from the Nature to the human physique. Religions like Śaivaism and Vaişņavism thrived in the post-Buddhist period. They, in general and the Vaişņavism in particular, tried to combine the former two schools, namely the idea of the Universe and the body and preached the new » way, called the Sahaja. Only recitation of the name of God leads to salvation: this is what the Sahajas emphatically expounded.
On the other hand, the Āryan ŗşis sought to hermitage, away from the maddening crowd. For them there was no worldly attachment and so the need for maintaining a good physique had no meaning for them. Whatever Āyurvedas (Medical Science) was developed, was in experimental stage. In the first century A.D. and thereafter only, the experts like Caraka, Śuśruta,Nāgārjuna and Mādhavakara wrote the systematic treatise and invented new methods of medicine. That is exactly the time when the idea of protection of body in full strength was spread in the society under the banners of Buddhism. But long before that in the Vedic and post-Vedic period, the Āryans held the view that, the attainment of goal in the penance (of any kind) is preferred to preservation of the body.
Some other researchers hold that several religion and numerous ways of worship have evolved in this country. Rāmāyaņa; they say, is a record of events of defection and unions among them. It is not at all a view to be agreed upon. This might have happened in the post- Puranic era, but the weaving of the original plot in Rāmāyaņa is never founded on such trivial a base.
These researchers give the view that Rāmacandra , Sītā, Rāvana and Hanumāna, all were people subscribing to various religious cults, and there were their followers too. That’s why there are as many as eighteen purāņas. This at a first sight seems reasonable. But what is the origin of imagination of Gods and Goddesses? The first great man who so ever had imagined of them is the Vedic ŗşis. For a better realization of the fact, let me give an example here. There goes the legend in purāņas that Hanumāna, after his birth, took a leap into the sky to swallow the rising sun. The scholars, we are discussing of, hold the view that the people of the Hanumāna-cult defeated the followers of the Sūrya cult and that essentially is the truth behind the legend. Similarly they hold that the good elements in the society suppressed the antisocial hooligans, which is the underlying truth behind the story of Rāvana being slain by Srī Rāma. I don’t feel like saying any thing further. Let the judgment be open to the scholars.
Lastly, one question may arise as to whether there is any social relevance of all the lofty imaginations that have enriched the purāņas. Definitely, there are. The sort of noble characters portrayed in the purāņas, the stories of great sacrifices told, and the deserving punishments decreed against the evil and oppressive, had very great impact on the Hindu society in way of holding it in tact with order and peace. The ŗşis tried to establish the human virtues in the society through the purāņas, but the result was that, the blunt brains of the common mass as could hardly scratch through the surfaces of lofty imagination to realize the real essence of truth. Henceforth, the Nature appeared to the mass idolized gods with human flesh and blood. People started to worship them; wanted the worldly wishes to be granted by their, grace and boon. Also there surfaced many narrow beliefs, which ultimately resulted in the conflicts among different religions and even sometimes led to violent clash. The society accepted bloodshed as a norm in the name of religion. The idea of the world- family 
Rāma + Ayana = Rāmāyaņa.
It is a description of the natural changes that took place around the Earth due to evolution of the beautiful Moon. The inner meaning of the epic has remained obscure and unintelligible for the society. Alas! Gone are those Vedic seers. However their immortal thoughts still survive. No more.
Rashmirekha Moharana
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