Gods, Myths, and the Machinery of Society 4
Part 4
"When the Naga (snake/ serpent) closes its mouth, then it becomes dark everywhere… Then its gem (nagamani) comes out. It shines in the sky as the moon."
The snake then wraps the earth. When he takes a long breath, the wind blows. When fire comes out of his mouth, a line is drawn in the sky. What was this... a divine concept. An attempt to understand the unsolved questions and mysteries of nature on its own. Due to this, a group was able to determine its identity as Naga and made its their deity. This is called totem.
It means whenever you find Naga or Naga Dynasty in any religious book, then consider it for the people belonging to the Naga group and not for any particular human or snake.. some of the current descendants are still living in Assam.
"The Naga is darkness...the Garuda god attacks him again and again and he runs away again and again."
In the morning, when the Garuda emerges as the sun, the Naga hides in the bottom of the sea and after the Garuda gets tired and goes to sleep, the Naga comes out and starts eating the eggs of the Garuda shining in the sky. Then the Garuda appears again as the moon and chases away the Naga. Against the first concept, it was the counter concept that established its own separate belief, in which Garuda was the main deity. Its identity was established as Garuda caste.
Similarly, Yaksha, Gandharva, Vanara, Pishacha, Kirat, Nishad etc. all had their own stories and beliefs. During their evolution and expansion if someone got help from a special creature (for example, snake, eagle, monkey, bear, mouse, elephant etc.), then they resorted to them to get answers to inexplicable questions by making them their deity. While if someone got help from the nature (for example, cloud, rain, river, forest, peepal tree, etc.) or if that group became more dependent on them, then they made it their deity.
This also led to the introduction of the mask (as can be seen even today in the dance traditions of the South) in which one's tribal identity used to be determined through the mask that they often wore on occasions such as dances/festivals. Or we can say that there were as many religions as there were castes across India and their identity was based on their caste identity. Over time when populations grew and internalization started either through violence or surrender, many concepts got mixed up.
And this is the reason that later when all the beliefs of this region were incorporated into a single religion then almost everyone's deities and their stories were taken in it and because of this you find so much variety in Hinduism and there is no single belief prevalent everywhere. For example, in North India, they worship Lord Rama but in the east, Durga is the main deity and towards Orissa and south, people have other deities.
For this reason there are thirty three crore gods and goddesses which have been included from the beliefs of all the totem castes and in this amalgamation there is an attempt to adjust different gods with the help of incarnation in which the most powerful and the latest god Buddha was also included but it didn't work. For this reason you may see the same story with multiple versions and the same character in more than one form. From India to Thailand and Malaysia, you will find dozens of versions of Ramayana.
In fact present-day Hinduism is not a single religion but a cocktail of various local religions, including the atheistic philosophy of Charvak. Now focus on the totem again and look for some odd shaped idols to defend them one has to resort to things like plastic surgery. There was a lot of similar totem tribes on the Arab side also whose deities were included in the main Kaaba and efforts were made to unify the whole region, in which economic interests were also involved.
But after the Islam everyone's beliefs were disregarded and everyone was forcibly made to follow one religion whereas in India there was an icusive approach because of its polytheistic structure. However, even after that it did not have any major identity... Hindu identity was given much later from the Persians or Chinese. Before that it was generally known as Vedic/Brahmanic religion.
Now it is worth noting that when the small populations of yagna tribes were established then everyone used to participate in their yagna together and the decision arising out of it was called Brahma. Later on when societies grew larger and there was a need for a separate unit to occupy other places and fight in view of the threats arising from it, some people were separated from this Brahma and given the responsibility of protecting Brahma, they were given the name Kshatriya and the rest of the class was given the responsibility of providing food to Brahma which was called Vaishya. That is, those who were unified once, were divided into three separate classes with the increase of population and jurisdiction and the same thing was created as an allegory of Brahma. The separated parts of a Brahman group were explained to be born like this - the Brahmin from the mouth, the Kshatriya from the arm and the Vaishya from the stomach, symbolically. The Shudras then did not fit into this slot. They were adjusted here much later.
The way Brahma is found as a biological unit in some stories, there is also a possibility that there may have been a person with this name among them. Whether or not Vishnu was a biological unit is open to speculation, but one thing is certain that this character was used in many places to fit different totem deities into incarnation.
While the kind of things that come to light with Shiva, there is a strong possibility of him being a biological unit who was outside the Vedic concept, was non-Aryan and his followers were in conflict with the Vedic customs. In the course of time, there was a long class struggle between them in the form of Shaiva, Vaishnava, Shakta, even after the comprehensive integration with the aim of including everyone.
But before reaching the modern era, that too was sorted and Shiva became a part of the Trinity, otherwise he would have been adjusted as an incarnation like the others. Also, it was not that the Aryans came from any other part of the world, increased their population by breeding with the locals and conquered all the locales and made them slaves, rather they grew as a population along with the locals. Few came to their group after winning a fight and few by compromise.
That means out of two tribes of a Garuda family, one tribe became a slave after being defeated, then the other tribe may have become a part of Brahma by accepting their subordination after seeing their strength and then inter-breeding also continued for thousands of years... In today's date brahmin casts may have their origin with in the locals and Aryan blood can also be found in some Shudras. In the light if this it does not make any sense to fight over native versus outsider with the help of which the Dalits are claimed to be native and the Brahma group (especially Brahmins) are called outsiders.
Only tribals will be found as natives now. Now see again from the beginning... There was a twist in this whole concept that it represented a violent lifestyle in which attacks, looting, war, animal sacrifice, human sacrifice were all in practice, so according to human nature, this was not acceptable to everyone. So it was not to be digested. Don't judge the past by looking at today's non-violent Brahmins. Brahmins of that time also indulged in violence like others and used to eat meat too.
However, a non-violent ideology flourished against it, which was further established as Jainism, but its rules were very strict. Then later a liberal non-violent ideology flourished, which was called Buddhism and was very successful in comparison to Jainism and spread far and wide. Even the entire Indian territory had become Buddhist at one time. Along with the worship of the formless in the main religion in India, the worship of the corporeal was also in practice in many castes, but the temple clulture started after these two religions came into existence.
Now like others, the followers of these new religions, in order to prove their supremacy resort to stories claiming themselves to be ancient, whereas applying common sense one can understand that before the populations became civilised there was no scope for being non-violent. If you did not kill others, others would kill you.
Violence was the first condition of survival. So it is obvious that such an ideology could not have flourished at that time. It flourished only when small populations coalesced into kingdoms and were protected by a central power like a king. Only such patronage could have made Jainism and Buddhism flourish in that era. After Ashoka, when Buddhism had gained its influence on the whole of India, there was also a drawback that it opted for non violence which others took advantage of, because for survival, violence had to be resorted to.
And further during the era of Pushyamitra Shunga an attempt was made to reverse this scenario completely, which was also successful to a large extent. Now what happened at that time, is comparatively recent, so everyone should already know this. Where Jainism and Buddhism flourished in response to the violent lifestyle of the original religion of India, Sikhism came into existence against the faulty social divisions, discrimination, untouchability that was seen in this religion, which is also a part of modern history.
Written by Ashfaq Ahmad
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