Saturday, July 08, 2006

The Ramayana...in a moment of clarity

I think I'm a really slow chap...man, I also figure I belong to a sub specie of a kind of moron...I have been breaking my head for weeks now, trying to understand the significance of the Ramayana or why it was ever written or is used as a handbook to Hinduism...
Well initially I figured the epic has been altered to suit the needs of despots. So I went about trying to unravel the truth...I read the English translation of Valmiki's Sanskrit version...(done by a foreigner) I found I was partially right but more wrong.
I have come to a partial conclusion that the ramayana has been altered and misinterpreted in ways....but for some reason, I like to believe the ancients were better than us. Yes there are a lot of things in the Ramayana that need to be debated...his sita chastity test, his slaying of Vali for taking Tara (Sugreeva's wife), who went willingly and wept miserably when he died, Rama's finality in his decisions to end life or punish criminals without fair trial, there is not much mention about what Rama did to improve the society, building roads, law maintenance, transport, hospitals etc. Just because the Ramayana happened years ago does not mean these things had no right being there...We all know the superior social order of the Indus Valley Civilization.
Muppalla Ranganayakamma wrote ‘Ramayana Vishavriksham’ : Ramayana the Poisonous Tree , between November 1973 and October 1974. She says - The Ramayana supports all the features of an exploitative society. It defends the autocratic rule of kings against the people, their imperial expansion by invading other weak kingdoms, exploitation of the poor by the rich, oppression of lower castes, aggression of civilized non-tribal communities against primitive tribal communities, exploitation of women, superstitious beliefs against rational thinking, fathers' domination over sons, elder brother's superiority over younger brothers and so on.
According to me the Ramayana was not written to establish Dharma, the Ramayana is just an account of history. History that was written by the ancients in the only way they knew...Tyranny has eclipsed the human race for too long...except the anarchy of Neanderthal man...The ramayana was probably an account extolling the king at that time to protect the author and placate the King...because writing ill about kings and all powerful men have been known to have disastrous consequences. The ramayana is rife with meta or sub text, and is up to intelligent people to decipher. The ancients could not be seditious, so they wrote between the lines subtlety was used to a great extent.
It is well known that wars have been fought through time to serve man's ego to own women...Helen of Troy for one. And we know Helen was just the excuse that Agamemnon needed to invade Troy. Sita might have been the excuse here. The entire tale of the Ramayana could be a warning, a warning for future generations which described the fallacies of the time, the injustice, the prejudice and the basic social structure.
The Ramayana was written to tell us how not to go about life, how not to oppress, how not to treat women, how not to be a judge and executioner. Because what the Ramayana does is describe what happens when all the above mentioned are practised. It was left to us to read, become aware and avoid such things.
I have found more stuff now The Manu Smriti, mentioned in the Ramayana...will devote time to that, understand better and get back to the Ramayana.
Rama - This land, each hill and woody chase,
Belongs to old Ikshváku's race:
With bird and beast and man,

the wholeIs ours to cherish and control.
Ikshvaku is the first king to implement the Manusmriti, or the religious rules of Hindu living composed through divine inspiration and from the Vedas by his father. He is remembered in Hindu mythology as a righteous and glorious king.
The House of Ikshvaku reigns over Kosala, an ancient kingdom in the northeast river plains of India, in the modern state of UP, along the banks of the Sarayu. The capital is Ayodhya.
If Valmiki or any of the ancients were wrting what i suppose they were writing (sedition). Then the above verse must serve as some evidence to what Im saying.

A quote

"I'll tell you what this war taught us. It taught us that the real enemy is the United States. It is against you that we must fight. Not because your bombs killed our people, but because you have closed your eyes to what is moral and just." Yasser Arafat, killed while fighting %#@$*#@