Myth Or Reality

I want to start with saying "IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT MYTHS AND THEIR TRUE VALUE AND WANT TO CRITICALLY EXAMINE THEM DONOT WATCH MEGA SERIALS IN TELEVEISION AND BE CARRIED AWAY BY THE STUPID WAY IN WHICH THEY PORTRAY THESE EPICS/MYTHS"

A lot of us have read about some myth or the other in our lives no matter what our background. If you are from Scandinavia, you would have heard of Thor and Odin and if you are from Africa you would have heard of Ra or Isis and if you are from South America, Quetzlquatl would ring a bell in your ears.

When I was a kid, I used to be told stories of Krishna and Lord Siva (of Indian Origin). Each civilisation has had its own stories about the Gods and their way of life. I have read about a few of these gods and find that there are very fine points where all these civilisations tend to coincide.

These are:
1) They have Gods based on the five elements - Earth , Water, Fire, Sky and Air.
2) They have Gods for Attributes - Wisdom, Courage, Love etc.
3) They all have Gods which define a certain characteristics called - Good and for certain characteristics called - Bad, such as the Angel and the Devil.

The Angels will fall under the - To be emulated category
The Devils will fall under the - Not to be emulated category

Today if someone were to tell me some of these myths I would probably think that they are just a figment of someones imagination. Whether they really happened or did not happen remains a question to be answered.

Sometimes, when we come across some of these mythical characters, one wonders if they were for real. I have given it a lot of thought and I still "Dont know" if they are for real or not. There are many reasons for me to believe they are not real, while I have reasons to believe they are as well, i.e there really was a time when these mythical creatures were there on the face of the planet.

A friend of mine once asked, if Yudhishtra (from the Epic Mahabharata) were such a lousy ass that he would forsake his entire kingdom, brothers and everything he had in a game of dice, then how can he be called "Dharma Raja" and how can the war he conducted for reclaiming his land be called "Dharma Yudh", and how would a sane person want to make him his king.

A very valid question. Even I would ask the same. When he asked this to his grandpa and grandma , they said, "It is in a different divine plane, you will not understand it".
This answer is quite incomprehensible I agree, but the answer is the best you can get to your question.

I will attempt to answer that question here. I am sure my answer will not be fully justifying the question ... but still, it is an attempt.

"When we look at things from our perspective we see them the way we were made to see. Our parents, friends, surroundings, and way of thinking have a lot of bearing on how we see things. We can never digest the fact that someone can marry five men and still be cool about it.
What we cannot digest as well is the fact that Cannibals eat men. If you go to a cannibal and try to explain to him that he is not supposed to eat human flesh he will never understand you (probably he is making a calculation if you will make a good dinner, so get away fast). For you eating another human being is disgusting. For him, it is a tasty way of life :) (pun intended)

This is what our grandmothers and grandparents mean by "Different plane" of understanding.

We are some 5000 or even more years away from when these so called epics happened. In the last 100 years we have seen so much changes, right from the way womens liberalisation has come into picture to our clothing etc. (would you wear a "Dhothi" to your work? , while a few decades ago, not wearing a dhothi was considered horrible)

If a few years can bring about such a change in one's life, imagine what 5000 odd years can do to you."

Hence, before we get judgemental about these epics, we need to first grasp what the setting of the story is. Any story , be it Ayn Rand or Salman Rushdie, is set on a particular "Premise". The story runs under the assumption that the premise is true or atleast that the premise is the one which is "In Vogue" when the story was written.

It might as well be false or become out of fashion a few years down the lane and may seem even funny. Imagine, if we see Aamir Khan Wearing Bell Bottom pants and coming and dancing on the screen and the heroine Preity Zinta, fully clad in a salwar kameez dancing about 300 metres away from the hero so that they dont touch.

It just wont work here!!! Time changes things, and observing a story/myth/epic from a
different frameset or mindset will always be funny.

A true appreciation of any art can only be done when we go to that Premise and look at the story from there on.

A very good example to cite here is "The Lord of the Rings" . A true masterpiece, many of you might agree. But it too is based on the premise that there is a place called middle earth. The creatures that dwell it are governed by certain rules. And we have to take it from that angle.
Perhaps to understand the Mahabharata or Ramayana or for that matter any great epic , we need to clearly understand the premise under which they were written. Believe me, a lot of effort has to be made, before we can even understand the premise in which it was written, which brings me to the topic of understanding the Varnashrama system. We need to have a lot of understanding of the way people led their lives during the above period.

I do agree, it all seems very humorous, but trust me, it will not be so humorous, if you were a 5000 year old man :). It is humorous because u are just from a different planet altogether, given this span of time.

But, leaving apart all that, these stories contain a lot of value education which our children can learn when they are young. It moulds them to understand how to live a better life , what to do , and what not to do. Hence, though we find it funny, a childs mind can easily learn a lot from these myths.

I for one am a true fan of these myths.

In fact, one simple proof of one of these myths (The Ramayana) would be this : In the time the story is set, the journey of Rama to Lanka during the 14 years, is depicted in Temples throughout the vast expanse of India, which is about 3000 KMs from Ayodhya to Lanka. And in those days, with only horses and poor transport equipment, it is tough for all the people from the north of India, to the southernmost tip of India to imagine the Same character of Rama, and tell the same story, and agree with the details of his journey (as can be seen from the inscriptions on all these temples - For a better read, please read the Hindu Dharma by Chandrashekara Saraswati Swamigal, where he illustrates how various temples agree to great minute details about the journey of Rama though they are separated by such vast distances)
This is simply not possible unless something really happened during that period.

Moreover, we used to hear that Dasaratha lived 60000 years. The year which they mention is not the year that we have. They did not follow the Gregorian Calendar. So it is rather funny on our part to ASSUME things which are not said. We need tomake an effort find out how much an year was according to their calendar. It would probably work out to some 120 man years in our calendar. And then we would think that he probably could have lived that long...who knows?

Anwyay, myth or reality is determined by the faith of the person who reads a work. But an intelligent person will take that which is good for him and leave the silt behind.

Quoting Hitler : "To study history means to search for and discover the forces that are the causes of those results which appear before our eyes as historical events. The art of reading and studying consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting what is not essential.

----- Hitler in Mein Kampf"