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Ramayana: The Shiva Perspective

A tale from the twilight of humanity

By Mukesh PrasadPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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Ramayana: The Shiva Perspective
Photo by Vivek Sharma on Unsplash

Ramayana is a very interesting story, not the least because it gives us a glimpse into the times when humanity was just getting started.

The Background

The land that is now known as India, was covered in forests. There were several land areas that had been cleared by and occupied by humans. But living still involved and was close to uncleared forests.

The decimal system had been recently invented and was on everybody's minds, therefore the number ten had high presence. (Not related to the philosophy of zero itself, this was just the numbering system.)

People lived in kingdoms, but many also lived in communes which were led by scholars. These communes were known as ashramas. One of these communes was led by the scholar Valmiki.

The Story begins at Valmiki's Ashram

A pregnant woman was brought to and left to join Valmiki's Ashram. Apparently there was some kind of a scandal. The woman was given shelter at Valmiki's Ashram, and gave birth to twin sons.

Valmiki talked to and found out the story of this pregnant woman, and found the story was totally fascinating. So he wrote it up. The woman's story wasn't necessarily true in all aspects, there seemed to be supernatural components to it. But he wrote it all down, including the impossible bits.

The woman was a queen. But there was some scandal, therefore she had been banished from the kingdom, and brought to Valmiki's Ashram.

At Valmiki's place, her sons grew up well and strong.

They might never have met the king again, except the king was very powerful. He had a powerful, victorious and experienced army. Once his kingdom was settled, he started using his army to land grab, in the then accepted fashion. His forces, led by the random walk of an unsaddled free horse, would ask all those they came across, either to accept their king's sovereignty or to challenge the said forces in a battle. This way, his territory would grow, specially because nobody would want to challenge his famous victorious army.

Except the random walk of the horse ended up arriving at Valmiki's Ashram. There was already some territorial confusion between warrior kings and scholars who led Ashrams. As it happened, the queen's two sons, now grown up, defied the king's forces and challenged them. And then, it was realized who they were. And once again, the queen was in limelight. She had to vanish once again from public view (possibly by jumping in a public display into a secret trench, to be rescued later.)

The Kingdoms vs. the Communes

There was some tension between the kingdoms and communes.

Kings ruled by the might of their army. Communes ruled by the wisdom of their scholars. Kings generally respected the communes, but being kings and being territorial, this was a source of strain on them. The communes did not even have armed defenders!

The king of Ayodhya - the king in this story and the husband of the queen left at Valmiki's Ashram - was apparently disturbed by this state of affairs, and wanted dominion over the communes. He was an extremely able king, and a very strategic warrior. He chose to invade a commune and show off his power, when he had calculated that that particular commune was in bad odor, and therefore weak.

There was a scholar at that commune who had theorized about and was researching the yoga position of Headstand. This was very controversial. Some scholars felt this might be useful, but others felt a Headstand was totally unnatural and should not be done.

The king of Ayodhya felt this was a good time to take advantage of the situation. The Headstand originator was in controversy, and the king knew that the best time to strike another king was when the other king was controversial and weak.

So he went to that Ashram and killed the Headstander.

This brought more controversy than he had anticipated. Apparently among scholars, somebody being wrong wasn't a good reason to hate and kill the person.

Many scholars tried to explain to him the error of his ways, the advantages to all of scholarly research, the advantages of these communes, where he himself had been able to leave his wife and sons to be brought up well. He understood the error of what he had done, and - legend goes - committed suicide by jumping in the river and drowning.

However, just like he was a great warrior, he had also been a great king, and was always looking out for his people. He did such a great job that he became a legend among kings, and his rule was remembered as being the best kind of rule to live under.

This, combined with Valmiki's story, led his legend to last so long that there are religious institutions built around it even today.

fact or fiction
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