Friday, October 28, 2005
Myths and beliefs
Lot of interesting thoughts that sprang out of the last few posts. one interesting one was the comments of Zero, who raised a point on the previous post on how gandhi will be mythologized and how krishna could have lived but he might not have been the man the stories talk about.
This reminded me of a story in "Freedom at Midnight".Freedom at midnight was based on well researched materials and the diaries of lord mountbatten. The british govt which had so many articles on the lifestyle of the prince and kings of india, had to burn all those articles when the kings demanded it, before the british declare independence to india.So much of the information regarding the lifestyle of the kings were lost.But there were some of them that escaped the fire and lord mountbatten also had written many of the interesting things in his diaries. Here are some of the incidents from them, Iam quoting them not to offend anybody, it is just to drive home the point on mythology.
One king of south india used to assemble all his subjects in a stadium on the full moon day.The king will come in a black horse all dressed in black and will go around the stadium and his subjects have to worship him. The prince truly believed that he was the son of god and he made his people compulsorily worship him.
One other king of punjab or some other province used to give audience to his subjects in his darbar on his b'day .The Birthday darshan is special cause, he will come with a golden breast plate and just the golden breast plate. The subjects where made to worship his manhood as the ultimate shiva lingam.
Well we won’t hear about these kinds of incidents of our kings and queens from our own writers, we need a foreigner to write about it. The point here is when ruled by king you don’t have a choice, you have to do things how ever degrading they are, otherwise it is your head will roll.
What if a king who thought he was god and made his people worship him and made his poets write stories about him.If he is successful in brainwashing a whole generation of children’s to believe in that, then you got a whole set of beliefs and these beliefs, mythologies will be passed down to the later generations. Unquestioned the stories will be believed, improvised and made more divine. Later riots and wars might take place to save the sacredness of that lunatic king. Rama the king of ayodhya or krishna the king of dwaraka could also be an example of this... maybe, who knows.
This reminded me of a story in "Freedom at Midnight".Freedom at midnight was based on well researched materials and the diaries of lord mountbatten. The british govt which had so many articles on the lifestyle of the prince and kings of india, had to burn all those articles when the kings demanded it, before the british declare independence to india.So much of the information regarding the lifestyle of the kings were lost.But there were some of them that escaped the fire and lord mountbatten also had written many of the interesting things in his diaries. Here are some of the incidents from them, Iam quoting them not to offend anybody, it is just to drive home the point on mythology.
One king of south india used to assemble all his subjects in a stadium on the full moon day.The king will come in a black horse all dressed in black and will go around the stadium and his subjects have to worship him. The prince truly believed that he was the son of god and he made his people compulsorily worship him.
One other king of punjab or some other province used to give audience to his subjects in his darbar on his b'day .The Birthday darshan is special cause, he will come with a golden breast plate and just the golden breast plate. The subjects where made to worship his manhood as the ultimate shiva lingam.
Well we won’t hear about these kinds of incidents of our kings and queens from our own writers, we need a foreigner to write about it. The point here is when ruled by king you don’t have a choice, you have to do things how ever degrading they are, otherwise it is your head will roll.
What if a king who thought he was god and made his people worship him and made his poets write stories about him.If he is successful in brainwashing a whole generation of children’s to believe in that, then you got a whole set of beliefs and these beliefs, mythologies will be passed down to the later generations. Unquestioned the stories will be believed, improvised and made more divine. Later riots and wars might take place to save the sacredness of that lunatic king. Rama the king of ayodhya or krishna the king of dwaraka could also be an example of this... maybe, who knows.
Labels: blind belief, god, history, india, mythology
