But the lord had to open his eyes
India Post Buddha
Post-Buddha, India saw a sudden change in the way spirituality was perceived. People started believing they themselves would have to find the way to liberation to end sufferings, which made the tradition of Bairagya or renouncement boom. The dispassion for worldly affairs became so heroic at least at the psychological level, it almost went to the extent of hampering social balance.
The power of Buddha and his philosophy was so strong, it made kings abandon their kingdom, it made husbands abandon their wives, and fathers abandon their children in the search of liberation. This may have enabled some people to attain liberation, however keeping the societal wheel moving also was as important, because the very existence of renouncement depends on having something to renounce.
The centroid of human activities also moved further eastward and the lower Gangetic planes started gaining importance. This is the time when for the first time the concept of India as a nation was slowly coming into play, which earlier was a collection of small states which did not have much in common apart from a collected landmass. Purana’s written around this time for the first time calls out the historical boundaries of the holy land of Shapt-Sindhu, the current day India. It defines a land which is north of the sea and south of the Himalayas – which only can be linked by the philosophy, possibly. The advent of Buddha had made this connectivity through philosophy a bit more possible.
Post-Buddha, as the mass was more and more getting inclined towards the path of renouncements, the Sanatana Dharma started looking for the antidote. The antidote was the need of the hour at that time, as the civilization keeps on only if people engage with the world. The civilization progressed every time humankind succeeded to achieve something in towards this like using the power of wind in sailing, storing rainwater in reservoirs, etc. Had they not been engaged with these forces, civilization would not even have kick-started.
The antidote arrived in form of Puranas
This was the reason why about after 5 to 7 centuries after Lord Buddha’s death the Puranas were started being written. These pieces of literature were ones through which the complicated philosophies of Upanishads were attempted to take to the masses in form of stories. While some of the Puranas came up with novel plots and concepts keeping the base idea the same – others just retold the old stories in a new way. The most accepted school of thought argues strongly and presents the most accepted arguments in favor of Puranas being the continuation of the original texts of Hinduism the Vedas, only the context is different as the social context had changed in the previous 15 to 20 centuries.
Puranas gave their fair share to the lord out of 18 major Puranas, 6 are dedicated to Lord Shiva. Out of which Shiva Purana, Linga Purana are the major ones.
The Idea in the Antidote
When the idea which succeeded talked about the conversion of an unhappy householder to a happy mystic, as per the stories of Buddha and Mahavira, they indeed happily gave up their kingdoms to become sages, in the counter-story a sage had to give up his Sagehood to become a householder. This is how in Shiva Purana, Shiva is brought down from Kailasha, the symbol of ultimate renouncement to the most happening city of that time Varanasi.
Kailasha is the place where there is no life it’s the inner heat of the sage Shiva that kept him going, Varanasi on the contrary was full of life in form of indulging things, here everything that is material was present in abundance. And there was no other better method that could be introduced than a marriage of the sage to make him indulge with life again – in fact in all the Puranas dedicated directly to Lord Shiva, it is equivocally called out that Devi Sati, whom Shiva was married to, had to penance hard to make the lord agree to marry her, a mission she finally succeeded in.
This is the tussle between life and renouncement in a period when almost all nihilist philosophies did their part to take the householder away from the normal course of the material world, in search of liberation. Here Shiva symbolized that Arhat or Jinna forcefully shut their eye and kept themselves away from the indulging material world. Devi Sati’s austerities are the symbol of persuasion, constantly thrown towards the seeker of the inner world to indulge with the outer world.
And when finally the Sage agreed to come back to normal course, there was a problem of acceptance. This comes in the story of Daksa Yagna associated with the Lord’s marriage, which mentioned Shiva’s marriage. In the story, Daksha was a king whose daughter Devi Sati was convinced to marry Shiva through her devotion but could not convince her father about her marriage with the ascetic, with minimum interest in the material world. In the pursuit to be the most powerful king in the world, Daksha organized a grand fire sacrifice, to which he did not invite the Lord and Devi Sati.
Devi instead of not being invited went there and got badly insulted by her father. Which were aimed at Shiva’s humble lifestyle and mixing with the downtrodden, as Shiva’s followers include all ghosts, demons, ghouls, etc. Not being able to accept the insulting words from her father, she jumped into the sacrificial fire prepared for the occasion, which led her to death.
When the lord got to know the whole incident, he was so angry that and from the heat of his anger was born Veerabhadra and Bhadrakali, who was ordered to kill Daksha and destroy the place where the sacrificial ritual was to take place. The two fearsome beings entered the ritual place and destroyed whatever could be. The main priest of the sacrifice, Sage Bhrigu created a fearsome army of Ribhus, a class of celestial beings to fight against Veerabhadra and Bhadrakali, but they were of no match with the power of the two.
Finally, the place was destroyed and King Daksha was decapitated as mentioned in Vayu Purana a later Purana. While Daksha’s decapitation may be seen as the end of ritualistic religion following the Vedic traditions to a more devotion-based one, inclined towards worshipping, the gap between the two worlds i.e. world of sacrifice and the worldly involvements was yet to be bridged though.
The next part of the story firmly establishes the victory of celebration of life over the monastic orders. After the death of the first wife the lord naturally went back to the world he belonged to – the one that is of the renouncers, refusing to participate in the world. It is said that taking the advantage of the same, a demon named Tarakasur, threatened to uproot Indra – the celestial king.
The uprooting of Indra in Indian mythology has come again and again – as Indra symbolized rain, we can loosely assume uprooting Indra is hampering the cycle of life, supported by the food generated out of harvest, heavily dependent upon rains. However, there are different contexts, here a more apt explanation could be the hampering the order of society as the ones filled up with the Satwa Gunas (Pious Qualities) were heading towards the monastic living, leaving the society in the hands of those with Rajas and Tamas Gunas (less pious and bad qualities). This is why the renouncers had to bring to the mainstream, the expected harmony between the two is symbolized in Puranas as Skandha, the future son of the lord from Parvati. It was said that it was Skandha who could kill Tarakasura – in other words, a harmony between the hermit and the world could cast the evil away resulting in a better society.
The Place in the Antidote
This was the time when India as a country was seeing its golden days in terms of prosperity under two great dynasties. The Mauryans followed by the Guptas – the centroid of the population had even shifted eastwards by then, evident from the increased importance of the city of Pataliputra, current-day Patna, which was the capital of both the dynasties.
Economic stability also enabled a boom in trading activity in this resourceful land, by this time the people in the Gangetic plane has already adjusted the trade routes with its geological limitations of being landlocked. Thus arrived the two most important roads called Uttarapath connecting and Dakshinapath, much like the North-South and East-West corridor of today. These two historical roads intersected near Varanasi, on top of a fairly busy river port made the city the most important trade and exchange hub of that time, even more, important than the capital.
Understanding of this made the Lord Buddha organize its first sermon in Sarnath, just outside Varanasi. Not only Buddha, but Jain Tirthankaras also utilized the geographic location of Sarnath to spread the Jain philosophy. It was the time for Sanatana dharma to reinforce the importance of this place as from this point ideas used to spread fastest at that time.
So Parvati manifested as the Annapurna of Kashi (Varanasi), who feeds the whole world instead of being the wife of a hermit. She is the affectionate mother who cannot ignore the hunger of her children, whose care goes far beyond the individualistic motive of getting liberated. She is the one whose heart goes for others, she is the one who instead of being a Goddess – remains on this earth to feed mankind. This aspect is the aspect of compassion that completes Shiva, the hermit who till this time was inspiring people to go for something which was outside the society – now slowly develops empathy for the society and its people.
This empathy remained the central theme of religion in the next 1000 years and continues, this empathy makes the ultimate truth of religion a kind, wish-fulfilling entity, that is aware of the suffering of its devotees. Who sees everything from his celestial abode, who is there sometimes to test the devotes in form of suffering but at the end, it's him who does only well to mankind.
For such a deity, who for the next 1000 years was supposed to be worshiped for his compassion only had to open his eyes – the serene meditating idols of Shiva by this time started getting replaced by the images of Shiva-Parvati or Shankara, with Parvati on his side the supreme lord is not meditating, rather he is seeing his devotes with wide-open eyes, with one hand raised in Varada Mudra – the wish-fulfilling posture.
Not only Shiva, but around this time Buddhism also changed its course accordingly – the concept of individual Arhat, got replaced by BodhiSattwas – people who could enlighten themselves but residing among the unenlightened to help them attain Nirvana. Like Parvati, in Buddhism, it was Tara the goddess of compassion who gave completeness to the concept of Buddha. Today in different parts of the country Goddess Tara got adopted as one of the manifestations of the supreme of the same supreme goddess, who is the source for Sati, Annapurna, or Parvati.
to be contd.
~Avirup Chakraborty
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