In preparation for the impending battle with Ravana, Rama, the hero of the epic Ramayana, was building a bridge of stones to the city of the demon situated at the other end of the ocean. For this purpose Hanuman, Rama’s favorite devotee was searching around for mountains. He soon came to the mountain known as Govardhana. The mountain agreed to go with him only on the condition that Lord Rama’s feet should pass over him. Hanuman readily agreed. However, when they reached the seashore, the bridge was already complete and there was no space left for Govardhana. Knowing of Govardhana’s desire, Lord Rama promised that in the future when He would incarnate as Krishna, He would definitely fulfill Govardhana’s wish. He then instructed Hanuman to establish the mountain near the banks of the river Yamuna at Vrindavana, where in His Krishna avatara He would play with his bare feet.

Sri Krishna Lila: The Complete life of Bhagavan Sri Krishna

How the supreme God Krishna came to lift the mountain Govardhana is an instructive incident which sheds much light on how God goes about playfully accomplishing His objectives, known popularly as Lila.

It all happened when Krishna was merely seven years old. He saw His parents along with all the villagers involved in hectic efforts for a sacrificial ritual (yagya) to propitiate and worship the demigod Indra. On asking why they intended to propitiate Indra, His father replied: "Indra is the patron deity of clouds and rain. He is the one who provides us with our cherished life-giving water. The very items which are used in worshipping him are sustained by rain. Whatever remains after we have propitiated him with offerings is used as food by us. It is Indra who makes our efforts at agriculture and cultivation successful. This practice has continued since generations and whosoever wishes to do away with these traditional ritual practices either due to desire, greed, fear or hostility, can never hope for well-being in his life."

To this Krishna replied, "Father, all living beings are born according to their respective karmas, and die because of it. It is according to their karma that they experience pleasure, pain, fear or well-being. God distributes the fruits of actions to those who perform actions. He does not rule over those who don’t perform karma. Whenever everyone here is experiencing the fruit of their own actions only, what possible use can Indra be to us? People are but bound to their nature and follow their own natural disposition and proclivities. The whole world, whether it be humans or demigods (devatas), all are but established in their own nature. It is as the result of past actions that a being acquires various ‘high’ or ‘low’ bodies and leaves them. It is nothing but one’s own karma that assumes the role of an enemy, friend or an indifferent person. What more can I say, karma is guru and karma is God. Therefore father, one should follow one’s natural disposition, as reflected in the caste and stage of life (varna-ashram) granted to us, and performing actions in tune with it, and respect one’s prescribed karma. That by which a man can easily sustain his life through prescribed actions, that is his worshippable deity. Like the woman who leaves her husband and serves a paramour can never hope to gain peace, likewise the one who ignores the deity directly responsible for his livelihood and instead worships another god, he can never hope to get happiness."

"Brahmins maintain their livelihood by studying and teaching the Vedas, Kshatriyas (warrior class) by protecting the earth; Vaishyas (businessmen) by agriculture, trade, protection of cows and by lending money against interest; Shudras (serving class) by serving these three classes. We are Vaishyas, and we have been engaged in the protection of cows since time immemorial. Father, it is the three modes of nature (guna) which are responsible for the creation (rajoguna), maintenance (sattvaguna) and dissolution of this world (tamoguna). This varied world is created through rajoguna by the mutual union of man and woman. It is due to being impelled by rajoguna that clouds shower water all around. By means of this water is obtained food on which everybody lives. What has Indra got to do with it?"

"Father, we have no towns, countries, territories, villages or houses to call our homes. We are forest-dwellers, living in jungles or on mountains. It is the mountain Govardhana that gives us fruits and food. It’s on its slopes that our cattle graze; therefore, why don’t you worship Govardhana instead? Let us now initiate a ritual sacrifice for the propitiation of cows, Brahmins and Mount Govardhana. It can be accomplished with the very materials for Indra’s sacrifice. Let milk collected from all cows be brought together and various sweet dishes, rice, pulses and various puddings be made for the worship. Let the food be offered to Govardhana. Let the sacrificial fires be properly fed with oblations by the Brahmins who are well-versed in the Vedas, and then let these Brahmins be suitably respected with lavish offerings of food and sacrificial fees. Then may food also be distributed to chandalas (the lowest of the lowest) and also dogs. Cows should be supplied with lush green grass. After that, take your own meals and then, adorning yourself with sandal paste, ornaments and putting on beautiful clothes, circumambulate the Mount Govardhana."

Understanding the significance of Krishna’s words, all seniors of Vrindavana happily accepted them and set out to worship the supremely auspicious mountain Govardhana. Brahmins started chanting sacred mantras and the young cowherds, friends of Krishna started to carry water from the river Yamuna to bathe Govardhana. However, given its colossal size, no amount of effort was sufficient enough to transfer the required quantity of water. In exasperation the boys appealed to Krishna: "O Krishna, the Yamuna is too far from here and Govardhana too big for our efforts. How will we be able to bring in the required amount of water for the worship?"

Manasi Ganga

Krishna replied: "Friends, Govardhana is very compassionate. Don’t worry." Krishna then started praying": "Dear Govardhana, my friends are tired. Both Ganga and Yamuna lie in your feet. Please manifest either of them." No sooner had He said so than sprung from the feet of Govardhana, the river Ganga, known as Manasi Ganga (Ganges of the mind – as it sprung from the ‘mental wish’ of Lord Krishna). Devotees can still have darshan of this sacred waterbody at Govardhana today.

Radhey Shyam (Radha and Krishna with Dress)

Then the mountain was anointed with its water and bedecked with ornaments. Finally, a lavish feast was offered to it. Remember, here is an instruction for all of us serving and worshipping deities in our homes. While anointing, bathing, dressing or offering pure food to the deity we have to realize that it is a living entity with consciousness rather than a non-living piece of sculpture. We should love the deity as much as we love our own body, and serve it similarly.

In order to reinforce this Krishna suddenly assumed another form which was huge and situated it on Mount Govardhana. Thus now it was Krishna who was making offerings from the base of the mount and it was Krishna Himself who was also consuming the offerings. In this manner did Krishna also manifest the eternal Vedic dictum on how to perform worship of a deity: ‘Shivo bhootva Shivam yajet,’ meaning become God and then worship God. In the Govardhana-Lila of the Lord, it is Krishna worshipping Himself as Govardhana. Thus after completing the worship in the prescribed manner, all returned to Vrindavana.

However, when people get used to receiving gifts and tokens of respect, they get so habituated to it that they are distressed if it is curtailed. They get angry thinking: "Why wasn’t I given gifts and respect this time?" They do not realize that gifts and respect are a token of the reverence in the hearts of those who give them. The receiver however, has no right to expect either respect, or any gift.

Indra had begun to accept the worship of the people of Vrindavana as his due. Therefore, when he did not receive this worship he got immensely angry. A classic example of how anger blinds one whether it is a human being or a god. Demonic instincts came to the fore in Indra and he commanded the clouds to rain havoc in Vrindavana, creating as much destruction as possible. The clouds began to pour sheets of water over Vrindavana and lightning flashed all around. Large chunks of hail fell from the sky, so much so that elevations and depressions on the ground became invisible, all being submerged under water. The people were terrified and covering their heads, their children and cattle with their bodies, shivering, they surrendered themselves to the lotus feet of the Lord, saying: "O Krishna, You are our only Lord and savior, save us from Indra’s wrath."

Lord Krishna Lifting the Mountain Govardhana

Krishna very well realized that it was all Indra’s doing. Then, wanting to destroy the vain pride of Indra who thought of himself as the absolute lord of the world, did Krishna initiate one of the most fascinating of all His Lilas. He proceeded to uproot with ease the mighty Mount Govardhana, much as a child would pluck a mushroom, and held it aloft playfully on the tip of the small finger of His left hand and called out aloud: "O People of Vrindavana along with your cattle come under Govardhana."

Krishna Lifts Mount Goverdhan

With their minds thus reassured, the residents of Vrindavana entered the cavity under Mount Govardhana. Under their loving gaze did the seven-year old Krishna effortlessly hold aloft the mountain for seven days, not at all budging from His position. On the seventh day, His friends, the young cowherds of Vrindavana said: "Krishna you have not had any rest at all. Your hand must be paining. Shift the mountain to any one of us or if you don’t want to do so, at least shift it to your other hand so that we can in the meanwhile massage your left hand. Shri Krishna replied: "My brothers don’t worry about me. If you want to help just prop up the mountain with your wooden sticks that will be helpful to me."

This is how our beloved Krishna allows us to believe that we are the "doers", while the fact is we are never doing anything which could influence the outcome in any manner. Also, love and affection, like that between Krishna and His friends, does not acknowledge superiority or mastery. Later when Krishna would boast while playing with His friends that it was He who had lifted the mountain His friends would immediately remind Him not to forget that if it weren’t have been for the support of their sticks, Krishna would never have managed to hold on to the mountain single-handedly.

Observing the mighty power he was against, Indra was humbled, and with his design thwarted, he ordered the rain clouds to withdraw. Noticing the clear sky and rising sun, Krishna called out: "O cowherds the stormy winds and showers have stopped. The rising waters too have receded. You can all come out now." When they had all come out with their belongings, Krishna replaced Govardhana at its previous position. Overflowing with emotion, the residents of Vrindavana rushed to Him. Many of them embraced Him while the gopis overwhelmed with affection and joy worshipped Him with curd and unbroken rice (akshat). Much relived and delighted, they all then headed back to their homes, which to their surprise they found dry and totally devoid of the rainwater.

Objection: How is it possible that the houses of the inhabitants of Vrindavana became totally dry?

Resolution: For this you must remember that God’s Lila doesn’t fulfill only a single purpose. He achieves multiple objectives during the course of a single Lila. To understand how the water was removed from Vrindavana, we have to once again go back to the Ramayana.

Goddess Sita, around whom the epic is woven, was very fond of feeding auspicious Brahmins in her kitchen, making food for them with her very own hands. However many fed, she was never satisfied; given the lack of appetite in the Brahmins she cooked food for. She complained of this to her husband Rama, who teased that she had still not seen a ‘true brahmin’. "Show me one then" she replied. Lord Rama then invited sage Agastya, who was famed for once having drunk the entire ocean to flush out the demons hiding in it.

Devi Sita was delighted that she would get a chance to offer food to such an accomplished sage. In the morning, she seated him in the room just next to the kitchen and then started serving him. He started gobbling it all up even without batting an eyelid. Soon it was evening. However, the sage continued unperturbed. Devi Sita then mobilized all the resources at her disposal and continued to ensure a regular supply of food for him. Seventeen days passed away in this way. Finally exasperated, Sita took refuge with Rama and asked him to resolve the matter. Rama then gestured to Agastya to wrap up the game now. The latter suddenly burped and asked for water. However, the couple expressed their inability to supply the requisite amount of water to quench his thirst. Then did Lord Rama promise him: " A long time later in the future I will lift Mt. Govardhana, and during that time there will a deluge of rain in the city of Vrindavana. At that time you can come and drink away all the water accumulated there. Till then, you can withdraw yourself into samadhi." Agastya welcomed this suggestion and did as told.

Agastya

It was this Agastya who drank away all of Vrindavana’s water to quench his thirst.

The Council of the Elders:

Shri Krishna as Vishnu (Narayana)

Witnessing Krishna’s marvelous feat, the residents of Vrindavana became perplexed and called a council of elders. They then addressed Nanda Baba, the father of Krishna: "The exploits of this child are truly extraordinary. How come such an exceptional child has taken birth amongst us ordinary, rustic people? Such a birth truly belittles Him." Nanda Baba, fearing that the elders doubted whether his darling Krishna was truly his son or not, replied: "O cowherds, hear from me what the best of astrologers said at the time of Krishna’s birth. It was prophesized that he would be a delight of all Vrindavana and would ensure that we cross over all difficulties with His help. Those who are extremely fortunate would cherish affection for Him, and would never be defeated by enemies. This boy is similar to the Supreme Lord Narayana in His qualities. Hence, you all should not feel any amazement at His exploits."

Hearing these words, the elders of Vrindavana were satisfied and became extremely delighted. They respectfully honored Nanda Baba and ceased to feel any surprise over Krishna’s feats. However, not far from there, Krishna’s mother Yashoda too got wind of the conversation. Consequently, there started blowing in her mind winds of doubt, and not without reason too. She called Krishna and asked Him:

Darling Krishna, people doubt who you belong to?

Krishna: To you of course mother.

Yashoda: But people are saying all sorts of things. They are pointing out that though your father and I both are extremely fair in complexion, you are dark in contrast. Why is it so?

Krishna: Mother it is because of you. When I was born I too was fair like you. However, it was pitch dark at that time. You were sleeping away merrily. I was sleeplessly turning sides the whole night. As a consequence, the darkness of the night stuck to me and I became black.

Krishna’s simple mother could never disbelieve her son. She stretched out her hand and squeezed Him to her chest. The same question was put to Him insultingly by Duryodhyana, the villain of the epic Mahabharata. The following dialogue takes place there:

Duryodhyana: Nobody can say for sure who your parents are. If Nanda Baba and Yashoda are your parents then why are so black?

Krishna: I am black (kaalaa) because I have come as your end (kaal).

However, when Krishna’s beloved Radha asked Him the same question, His reply was markedly different:

Radha: My Dear, Even though you are so beautiful, why are you black?

Radha Krishna

Krishna: Dear Radhe, Actually I was extremely fair. However, I have become dark only to enhance your fair beauty, which is all the more magnified by contrast with my dark complexion.

Some bhaktas speculate that since Krishna always lives in the eyes of the gopis of Vrindavana, it is the black kohl (kaajal) of their eyes that has blackened Him. Or perhaps He is dark because He absorbs all the negativity in the hearts of His worshippers.

Indra asks for Forgiveness and Krishna is Given a New Name:

After Krishna had saved Vrindavana from the torrential rains, there descended from the heavens the sacred cow Kamadhenu (to congratulate Him) and Indra (to ask for forgiveness). The latter said:

"Dear Lord, blinded by rage, I set out to destroy Vrindavana with heavy showers and stormy winds. By ruining my efforts and therefore crushing my pride you have done me a great favor. You are not only my Lord, but also guru, nay my very soul."

Laughingly Krishna replied in a voice deep like the rumbling of clouds:

"O Indra, Highly intoxicated as you were with the pride of the majesty of indra-hood (which is but a post which is refilled by me at the beginning of every creation), I blessed you by interrupting your sacrifice so that you could live in the constant realization of my presence. Blinded by their wealth and power, people forget that I am constantly holding vigil over them carrying the stick of chastisement. However, to prevent such persons from falling into deep hells I often demonstrate to them the ineffectiveness of their position and wealth against my own powers. You may now return O Indra, and rule over the heavens according to my commandments (because I am the Supreme Lord) and execute your assigned duties without being puffed up by pride or haughtiness."

Adoration of Mother Cow

Then Kamadhenu, the mother of all cows, came forward and said: "O’ Krishna, its you who protected my progeny, the cows of Vrindavana. Therefore, rather than Indra it is you who are our protector king. Hence, we cows wish to crown you as our Indra."

Then, Kamadhenu anointed Krishna with her milk and named Him "Govinda," the protector of cows, signifying that it is the Supreme Lord Himself who is the protector of cows, pointing out to the exceptional affection He has for these creatures.

Conclusion:

The divine and beautiful Govardhana Lila of Krishna operates at many levels and achieves many objectives at the same time:

1). Our pride is but food for God. However, even the humbling of our pride is a manifestation of His grace, since it affords us an opportunity to witness and remember His divine presence.

2). Krishna never lets down those who surrender to Him. Indeed, faith moves mountains.

3). He fulfilled the promise made to Govardhana at the time of Rama avatara.

4). He kept the promise made to sage Agastya to quench His thirst.

The Color Guide to Govardhana Hill India's Most Sacred Mountain

5). Mount Govardhana is one of the most potent places associated with Krishna. It is actually a visible form of Krishna. Not only did He play on its slope with His bare feet but also declared that Govardhana should be circumambulated (pradakshinam kurut – Shrimad Bhagavata Purana – 10.24.29). Anybody and everybody should circumambulate this divine mountain at least once in their lifetimes.

6). Krishna demonstrated the authentic Vedic way of worship (Shivo bhootva Shivam Yajet), where everybody, regardless of his caste or creed is offered prasadam.

7). Cows in Sanskrit are called ‘go’. The word ‘go’ also means the sense organs (indriyas). The ruler over these indriyas is Indra. Worship of Indra means worshipping our sense organs, in other words, living according to our desires. When one sets on the path of bhakti, Indra overwhelms us with the deluge of desires. Nobody can hope to win over desires (vaasana) by his or her mere efforts. It is only by surrendering unto Him that we can hope to save ourselves. Hence, the true Lord of our senses, their Indra, is none other than Krishna, or Govinda (Protector of our sense organs).

8). God wants us to worship out of affection and not fear.

Krishna - The Lover of Cows

9). Finally, God’s exceptional love for cows is made amply evident in this Lila. In fact, the very word Govardhana means the sustainer and nourisher (vardhana) of cows (go).

Dalai Lama, an epithet used for the first time in 1578 by the Mongol ruler Altan Khan for Sonam Gyatso, the Third Dalai Lama, or the third in the bodhisattva reincarnation line later identified as the Dalai Lama lineage, is a combination of two terms, ‘Lama’ meaning a Buddhist monk, and ‘Dalai’, ocean-like profound, wide and deep, that is, the monk having ocean-like breadth and depth of knowledge. ‘Dalai’ was actually the Mongolian equivalent of ‘Gyatso’, a Tibetan term that emerged in use as an epithet during the lifetime of the second Dalai Lama, Gendun Gyatso, as the distinction of the Lamas in reincarnation lineage of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. ‘Gyatso’ had the same meaning as ‘Dalai’.

King Altan Khan, a descendant of the known Mongol ruler Kublai Khan, a follower of Tibetan Buddhism in early thirteenth century, was tired of bloodshed and warfare and wished to have peace on his soil. He invited Sonam Gyatso, the best known Buddhist monk of his time, to his court and wished that by his teachings he led his blood-thirsty subjects to the path of peace, love and humanity. Influenced by Sonam Gyatso’s profound knowledge and spiritual energy king Altan Khan honoured him with ‘Dalai Lama’ as his epithet. Then onwards, though the term ‘Gyatso’ was retained as before to comprise the later half of the name in the Dalai Lama lineage but it was the epithet ‘Dalai Lama’ that gave the lineage its unique distinction ever since. The epithet was used not only for Sonam Gyatso and his eleven subsequent reincarnations but also for the two preceding ones – Gendun Drubpa and Gendun Gyatso, posthumously.

CONTINUATION OF LIFE, BODHISATTVA, DALAI LAMA AND TIBETAN PREFERENCES

Not merely that the Dalai Lama is the highest office of the present day Buddhism, it is also one of its three most significant institutions, the other two being the Buddha and the Bodhisattva, that emerged in Buddhism over centuries. Enlightenment is the attribute of them all, even of the Dalai Lama who, possessed of oceanic breadth and depth of knowledge, attains the same state of enlightenment as a bodhisattva. However, while the Buddha defined the state of utter spiritual perfection leading to ‘nirvana’ – final extinction, a bodhisattva, in his role as a teacher seeking accomplishment of his two-fold objective, the worldly and the transcendental, keeps on postponing attainment of this state of utter spiritual perfection and his own liberation in preference to a controlled or chosen birth or rebirth. In Tibetan Buddhism, or rather in entire Tibetan tradition, irrespective of this or that branch or school, rebirth and continuation of one’s deeds or perfection level that one attains in one birth into the next is a universally accepted principle. Obviously with humanitarian, social and political compulsions conditioning its life, Tibet developed a natural preference for bodhisattva cult. Its reason was obvious. A bodhisattva by a will to reincarnate as many times as required and by his ability to postpone his own liberation at his will could better help Tibet in resolving its spiritual as well as social and political problems – political instability, infighting, enmity among others.

This Tibetan preference for the bodhisattva cult had early, perhaps pre-historic, roots. Apart that Tibet was till sixteenth century a land divided into innumerable ruling segments and as many tribes and stood in dire need of some power that brought them under one umbrella, its mythical past too has identical connotations. As popular Tibetan myths have it, Tibet was initially the habitation of unruly beasts. Then Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara emanated in a thousand animal-reincarnations and mixed with various extant animal groups. Through these emanated forms he taught them peace and harmony and when external conditions were suitable, took birth as a monkey. He encountered a horrible looking female ascetic, an emanation of the Goddess Tara. They mated and gave birth to the ever first human beings, all different from each other in body-colours, nature and everything. They were the progenitors of original six tribes of Tibet. Soon their number multiplied and now there were eighteen tribes, which number further expanded and Tibet finally had hundreds of tribes inhabiting it. Soon, out of the will to govern there evolved as numerous ruling seats fragmenting this terrace of the earth into small political entities, each engaged in designs to expand, conquer and defeat.

Thus, while Tibet inherited from history a divided populace and fractured polity, it also perceived in the same source such spiritual energy which would lead it to unity, peace and redemption. Hence a divided and weak Tibet was not really weak but was rather one that ever and instinctively had inherent in it the ability to recoup. Consequently, Tibet always looked for a motivating power that reinvigorated it by shifting the focus from conquests, infightings and enmity to the inner workings of the mind and heart bringing peace and unity to the land. Obviously, instead of placing its preference on one seeking his own liberation, Tibet had a preference for him who chose its postponement in order to lead the land to peace, unity and harmony.

The Tibetan mind was thus naturally inclined to the bodhisattva-cult. However, the Indian vision of an abstract bodhisattva representing one of the Buddhist cardinals could not long inspire Tibetan masses. In its strange political and social circumstances and encroaching religious beliefs from outside Tibet required a bodhisattva who like a national role model had lively interaction with its people and united in peace warring kingdoms and divided tribes, besides leading to the path of personal liberation. Obviously, such wider objectives could be accomplished only by someone who synthesised in him with spiritualism some kind of political authority or vision. It seems that it was such quest of Tibetan mind that concretised first as tulkus – officially recognised reincarnate lamas, and finally in the fifteenth century, when the very existence of the Buddhism was in peril, as the institution of Dalai Lama who as Avalokiteshvara reincarnate inherited all his spiritual energy and being in mortal frame inspired confidence of masses.

AVALOKITESHVARA’S REINCARNATION DISCOVERED IN DALAI LAMA

The First Dalai Lama, Surrounded by previous incarnations of the Dalai Lamas, including King Songt-sen Gampo (lower right), the mystical King Lha Thothori (upper left).

Not a pre-meditated quest, an Avalokiteshvara-reincarnation, who became the fountain head of the Dalai Lama lineage, was intuitively discovered. In the course of his interaction with his disciple Gendun Drubpa, the First Dalai Lama,

Tsongkhapa with his Chief Disciples Gyaltsab Je and Khedrup Je

his teacher Jey Tsongkhapa,

an enlightened monk and a great Buddhist scholar, realised that Gendun Drubpa was close to his liberation but instead of he remained in human birth and worked for uplifting all beings. Hence, Tsongkhapa impulsively acclaimed that Gendun Drubpa was a reincarnation of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara who out of compassion for suffering mankind preferred staying in the human domain for redeeming it from its miseries and kept on postponing his own ‘nirvana’.

The Second Dalai Lama. Bronze, gilded, with inscription on the reverse: “The valuable omniscient Victorious Lord” Tibet, 16th century.

Some subsequent scholars believed that Gendun Drubpa was Lama Drom’s reincarnation, though Lama Drom was a reincarnation of Avalokiteshvara. Thus, too, Gendun Drubpa was in the line of Avalokiteshvara. Gendun Gyatso, the Second Dalai Lama, too, was acclaimed almost identically as another reincarnation of Avalokiteshvara.

The Third Dalai Lama Sonam Gyatso was identified as Gendun Gyatso’s reincarnation, the Fourth, of the Third, and so on and so forth. Thus, the term Dalai Lama defined the reincarnation-lineage of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara; however, while the term bodhisattva, even Avalokiteshvara, stood broadly for any of the abstract qualities or attributes leading to enlightenment enshrining any form, human or otherwise, a Dalai Lama was essentially a reincarnation in human birth. Thus, despite that a Dalai Lama is a bodhisattva reincarnate, he represents an institution different from the bodhisattva.

TRANSFORMATION OF THE DALAI LAMA INSTITUTION

The Fifth Dalai lama and Important Scenes from His Life.

However, for about two hundred years after its emergence, that is, during the life-tenure of the first four Dalai Lamas, this reincarnate lama institution, widely known as the Dalai Lama ‘labrang’, did not have the same status as it has now. It enjoyed great popularity and wielded immense influence but was just one among such ten entities of Tibetan Buddhism. Thus, the first four Dalai Lamas represented only the preparatory stage in the growth of the institution which manifested fully in the Fifth Dalai Lama Gyalwa Lobzang Gyatso popularly called Ngawang Labzang Gyatso or just the ‘Great Fifth’.

In 1642, when the ‘Great Fifth’ was twenty-five years of age, a warring and disquiet Tibet nominated him to the position of the supreme spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan nation and with this the Dalai Lama institution underwent complete transformation. Now Dalai Lama was not one among some influential lamas or the spiritual patron of a state but was above them all, great monks and mighty chieftains occupying seats in the assembly much lower than him.

Not a battle’s decision, or political consensus, a hundred years old prophesy was perhaps more convincing a reason for this unanimous acceptance of the authority of the ‘Great Fifth’ as the Tibetans’ supreme leader. As was widely believed, Gendun Gyatso, the Second Dalai Lama, was unwilling to reincarnate. One day Padma Sambhava, the great eighth century teacher who came to Tibet from India, appeared in his vision. Besides that Padma Sambhava asked him to continue reincarnating for world’s weal he also revealed that after a period of hundred years he would emerge as Tibet’s spiritual and temporal head and in that position he shall bring to the land such benefits that shall sustain for hundreds of years. Exactly after one hundred years Ngawang Labzang Gyatso was awarded the position of Tibet’s supreme spiritual and temporal leader. People recalled the prophesy of Guru Padma Sambhava and linked to it the sudden and strange elevation of Ngawang Labzang Gyatso.

Tibet had not seen such unification of its territories after seventh century when it had emerged as a strong land under the religious king Songtsen Gonpa. The Great Fifth Ngawang Labzang Gyatso led Tibet to unprecedented heights both spiritually and politically. He initiated a unique religious and secular form of the national government on federal model known as the Ganden Pondrang Government, which proved to be a major unifying factor in the life of Tibet. Under the doctrine of reincarnation and continuation of one lifetime’s perfection-level into the next, the responsibility to lead the nation, spiritually and temporally, became the continuous responsibility of Dalai Lamas reincarnating ever after and this they ably accomplished by their reincarnate spiritual strength irrespective of their age. The Ninth Dalai Lama Gyalwa Lungtok Gyatso and his three reincarnate Dalai Lamas died very early, the Ninth dying at the age of just nine, and all four within seventy-five years’ time; however, their deeds, as reveal their biographical writings, were as vast as ocean.

The Thirteenth Dalai Lama at age Fifty Six. 12 Sept. 1933.

The Thirteenth Dalai Lama, a leader greater than the great, faced the ever gravest challenges posed mainly by Russia, China and Britain designing to grab Tibet.

Portrait of a Dalai Lama: The Life and Times of the Great Thirteenth

So far there existed in between Tibet and China a relationship described as the priest-patron relation under which the priest, that is, Tibet represented by Dalai Lama, was state’s nominal head while China controlled its administration part. This diplomatic position had recognition from both major powers, Russia and Britain, present in the region. However, China, under an agreement not to object to British invasion of Burma, won British no objection to having an upper hand in Tibet. Thus, when the Thirteenth Dalai Lama Tubten Gyatso was born, the institution of Dalai Lama was reduced to a subordinate status, and the priest, to the status of an employee of China. However, in about two decades’ time the Thirteenth Dalai Lama organised the nation militarily and in 1913 proclaimed independence expelling the Chinese representatives and troops from his land. This position was not accepted by China, nor diplomatically approved by England and Russia. With this began an era of Tibetan conflict with China. This necessitated a shift in priorities of the Dalai Lama and Tibet. Now, not so much the spiritualism, military and diplomatic infrastructure was a greater need of Dalai Lama and Tibetan nation.

DALAI LAMA : A SPIRITUAL CONTINUUM

Summarily, Dalai Lama, though an individual born with a date and time, manifests the spiritual continuum of the bodhisattvahood, or more so the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, across innumerable births, identified subsequently as Dalai Lama. Not so much for one’s own enlightenment and ‘nirvana’ as for the world’s weal, spiritual as well as temporal, a Dalai Lama is a universal teacher leading lay-followers to worldly well-being on one hand and to Enlightenment and ‘nirvana’ on the other. His own ‘nirvana’ is not the essence of, or consequential to, being a Dalai Lama. Subjecting himself to the cycle of reincarnations he rather perpetuates his being into a chain of births seeking in a mortal frame accomplishment of his efforts to benefit the world – his goal as a Bodhisattva reincarnate. A will or determination, a Dalai Lama seeks his rebirth for the world’s good and for uplifting the mankind and all beings.

Thousand Arms of Compassion

Dalai Lama is a cult of Tibetan Buddhism, though not confining to Tibet or Himalayan region alone Dalai Lama is recognised and venerated now as the highest office of the Buddhist Order in the entire Buddhist world, and individually, Dalai Lama, as the supreme teacher of the Buddhism. Whatever in regard to his status as the political head of the Tibetan people, his status as the supreme spiritual and temporal leader is universally upheld; and, this status he attains not by any worldly means or even by penance and other religious practices but by reincarnation, reincarnating in immediate past a predeceased Dalai Lama, and ultimately the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, the first master in the line. Thus emanating Avalokiteshvara a Dalai Lama is essentially the compassion manifest, the same as is Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

The Dalai Lamas of Tibet

Thus, irrespective of when the term ‘Dalai Lama’ emerged in use for denoting and formally acknowledging this institution of Buddhism, Dalai Lama represents the continuous flow of the being that the Buddhist tradition identifies as Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. Conceding to scholastic opposition to the word ‘rebirth’ the tradition defines such incidence as a mind-stream – a moment-to-moment flow or continuity of consciousness emanating from Avalokiteshvara. Tibetan people’s popular belief in reincarnation and life’s continuity across thousands of births apart, this mind-stream concept is based on the belief that exemplary figures, such as a bodhisattva, might remain at will within the human world as institutional teachers postponing their ‘nirvana’ for others’ good till whatever period they found necessary and across any number of lifetimes as they chose to pass through. A determination to redeem suffering mankind and a world rent by violence require these wisdom holders to postpone their own ‘nirvana’ and perhaps attainment of enlightenment.

DOCTRINAL BASIS OF SUCH SPIRITUAL CONTINUUM

Cult of reincarnation or continuous flow of life birth after birth is the nucleus of the Buddhism, whatever its branch or school, Hinayana – Compact Vehicle, Mahayana – Great Vehicle, or Vajrayana – Diamond Vehicle. Hinayana or Theravada, a relatively linear and conventional branch of the Buddhism, sees reincarnation in context to cause and effect, laying emphasis on self responsibility and on gaining control over all actions of body, speech and mind in order to attain personal liberation. Mahayana, a semi-linear and semi-esoteric branch, shifts the emphasis from self liberation to universal responsibility aiming at all beings’ benefit. Mahayana imparts to personal liberation due importance but only as something that helps universal goodness which is the essence of a bodhisattva. Vajrayana, the exclusively esoteric branch of Buddhism, came out with the idea of controlled rebirth, that is, at the time of death one could direct one’s spirit to a rebirth that would be of the maximum benefit to the world.

Obviously it is out of the Vajrayana’s idea of controlled rebirth that Tibet developed its cult of reincarnation lineage leading finally to the evolution of Dalai Lama doctrine. Mahayana, which mandated universal responsibility in preference to personal liberation, provided to the reincarnation cult its broad aim. Mahayana’s doctrine of the Buddha’s three ‘kayas’ – celestial bodies : ‘dharma-kaya’ – the truth body, ‘sambhogakaya’ – the beatific body, and ‘nirvanakaya’ – the emanated body, the last one in special, further strengthened the Tibetan doctrine of reincarnation or continuation of life. In India ‘nirvanakaya’, the third celestial body of the Buddha, was merely an abstract theological concept defining an enlightened being. The Tibetan Buddhism, in which ‘nirvanakaya’ stood for one who is in the process of enlightenment, not the enlightened one, saw ‘nirvanakaya’ as Buddha’s multiplication into innumerable emanated forms heading towards enlightenment. It was out of this shift that the Tibetan tradition of ‘yangsi’ or officially recognised reincarnate lamas, also known as tulkus, evolved. This cult of reincarnate lamas helped Tibet to concentrate its energy on spiritual lines and pride more on the increasing number of its saints rather than on expanding military forces or market resources.

As a matter of fact, the Dalai Lama concept seems to have grown gradually and in the basic body of the Buddhism. In Hinayana a Bodhisattva who subsequently attains Buddhahood is born once in an auspicious eon. He is one among a thousand universal teachers. Others are mere ‘arhats’ attaining ‘nirvana’. In Mahayana, all beings attempt at acquiring by spiritual practice six perfections, generosity, self-discipline, patience, joyous effort, meditation and wisdom, that lead to enlightenment, and thus they one day become bodhisattvas and attain Buddhahood. Thus, there are in simultaneity numerous Bodhisattvas striving to attain Buddhahood. The Vajrayana moves farther. It acclaims that all can achieve bodhisattvahood in one short lifetime and then use the death as a means of taking this bodhisattvahood on a quantum leap forward.

OTHER INFLUENCES : TEACHERS’ SPIRITUAL LINEAGE, ARHATS AND TULKUS

The Dalai Lamas: The Institution and Its History

Tibet had inherited from India the idea of teachers’ spiritual lineage. In India the idea faded away but in Tibet it developed exceptionally well. This spiritual lineage was in the form of continuous transmission of the teachings from one generation to the next. As is popularly believed, the eighth century teacher Padma Sambhava had hid a part of what he had written for the teachers of next generations. The concept of such material legacy left by a teacher of one generation for the next underwent complete change after the reincarnation cult grew stronger. Now it was the transference of the essence of their teachers – their knowledge and all that they acquired in any lifetime, from one birth to the other. This doctrine of the transference of teachers’ essence might have effectively influenced the cult of Dalai Lama lineage that not only defined emanation of a previous birth into a new but also the spiritual continuity from the past to the present.

In early Buddhism ‘arhats’ – Buddha’s disciples, more often and more correctly identified as Theravadins, had a long and strong tradition of the past. "Arhats’, the living beings, were bardic couriers of Buddha’s message to lands far and wide. In India, the concept of ‘arhats’ had faded away long back. However, the charismatic institution of Tibetan Lamas, of which Dalai Lama emerged as the head, seems to have reflections of this ancient Buddhist cult of the legendary ‘arhats’. It might have had some role in expansion and magnification of this subsequent Tibetan cult.

Tulku, a term borrowed from Mahayana Buddhism, or rinpoche, as tulku is sometimes known, the earliest Tibetan institution of officially recognised reincarnate lamas, is broadly the basis of the Dalai Lama cult. It is believed that a tulku is a rebirth of a specific historical figure or a Buddhist master who has vowed to take rebirth to help all living beings attain enlightenment. Among lamas a tulku, being a reincarnate lama, had a somewhat special position, though at any given there were hundreds of tulkus or tulku lineages. Around the twelfth century legal implications in regard to the legacy of the deceased – his belongings etc. began erupting. It pressed elders to determine each tulku’s lineage. In due course, around the beginning of the fifteenth century, the lineage of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara was discovered in Gendun Drubpa and with this the institution of Dalai Lama came into being.

MODUS OF IDENTIFYING A DALAI LAMA REINCARNATION AND HIS ENTHRONEMENT

Though not from beginning, the process of searching the reincarnation of a Dalai Lama is now well settled. It begins soon after a Dalai Lama passes away. Simultaneous to the last rites of the dead a divination is conducted to determine whether or not it would be useful to search for and formally recognise a reincarnation. If yes, a committee of elders was formed to find the child. The committee closely examines the body of the deceased Dalai Lama before it is disposed of for any likely signs that would indicate or help in determining the direction that the committee should take when searching the reincarnation of the deceased. Such signs apart, the committee closely observes weather patterns, natural phenomena and omens for finding their identical re-occurrences around the person who might be his likely reincarnation. Celestial powers, especially the State Oracle, were prayed to guide to the right course of action. Sometimes the committee or the Regent appointed after the death of a Dalai Lama, as was appointed after the death of the Thirteenth, would make a trip to Lhamo Latso, the acknowledged Oracle Lake, and search the waters for indications as to where his reincarnation might be found. The committee would consult high lamas and take stock of dreams of prominent members of the mystical community and analyse them for their hidden meanings. Firmly believing that the dead would reincarnate the committee shall pay visits to all born around the time of the death of the former Dalai Lama and an on-the-spot assessment shall be made as to who among them was a reincarnation of the deceased Dalai Lama.

The process was followed in its exactness when in 1933 the Thirteenth Dalai Lama passed away for discovering the present one, the Fourteenth. During his trip to the Oracle Lake the Regent, appointed after the death of the Thirteenth, witnessed signs that clearly indicated that one he was looking for was born many hundred miles away to the east in the vicinity of Kumbum Monastery in Amdo slightly inside the Chinese territory in a humble Tibetan farmers’ house. With a team of elders the Regent visited the house. Not only that the child had a number of signs of the deceased Dalai Lama, the four-year-old took hardly any time in recognizing one of the members of the visiting team who had been his disciple in his Thirteenth reincarnation. He was shown a number of objects assorted together but from amongst them he picked only those that had belonged to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. Just four years of age, the child convinced all that he was the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s true reincarnation. With no hesitation in anyone’s mind the child was acclaimed the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. In 1939, when the world was heading towards the second World War to involve unprecedented cruelties and loss of lives a vast majority of Tibet’s spiritual elders had gathered at Reteng Monastery, to the northeast of Lhasa, awaiting the four year old boy expected to reach there in caravan from Amdo to be enthroned as the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.

FOURTEENTH, NOT EXACTLY THE FOURTEENTH

His Holiness The Dalai Lama

The proper hierarchical order acclaims to have so far fourteen Dalai Lamas, the present one being the Fourteenth. However, the tradition acclaims a far larger number. As acclaimed, even the First was not really the first. The Tibetan tradition relates a succession of sixty re-births previous to the Fourteenth. The First Dalai Lama Gendun Drubpa had forty-six reincarnations before him, thirty-six as those of Lama Drom Tonpa, who he reincarnated, and ten, his own as various kings, though these reincarnations are not recognised as those of the Dalai Lama but of the being who became the Dalai Lama. Thus, the First Dalai Lama had forty-six prior reincarnations, and the present Dalai Lama being sixtieth.

DALAI LAMA AND SECTARIAN UNITY

The Buddhism reached Tibet in mid-seventh century during the reign of king Songtsen Gonpa who built several Buddhist temples and shrines including the sacred Jokhang temple of Lhasa, and with this Tibet transformed into a Buddhist region. When during the period from mid-seventh to mid-eleventh centuries in India Buddhism had begun shrinking, in Tibet it underwent a complete renaissance. Though Tibet borrowed from India not only the basics of Buddhism, myths, literature and doctrines, but also India’s renowned teachers like Asit and Padma Sambhava among others, over the period of time it developed a body of its own doctrines, myths, teachers and its own vision of Buddhism.

Gelugpa Refuge Tree

In the course of time there evolved four major branches of Tibetan Buddhism, the ancient one of these founded in eighth century by Padma Sambhava, a great teacher of Tantrika Buddhism from India, being Nyingma or the Ancient Ones, while the new ones founded in eleventh century and after, being ‘Sakya’ or the ‘Grey Earth lineage’, ‘Kagyu’ or ‘Instruction lineage’, and the ‘Kadam’ or ‘Supreme Instruction Lineage’. In late fourteenth century Jey Tsongkhapa, the teacher of first Dalai Lama, founded yet another branch of Tibetan Buddhism named Geluk.

SECTS IN TIBETAN BUDDHISM Comparison of Practices Between Gelugpa and Nyingmapa Sects

The First Dalai Lama was believed to be the reincarnation of Lama Drom Tonpa, a Kadampa or an early lama of Kadam branch. Consequentially, in the course of time Kadam branch merged with Geluk.

Despite that Jey Tsongkhapa propounded his own doctrine, in his life and literature that he composed he held all sects in equal reverence and studied them with equal devotion. In this regard his own life was the ecumenical model for the First Dalai Lama and all his reincarnations. As he was a direct disciple of Jey Tsongkhapa the First Dalai Lama Gendun Drubpa was a staunch follower of Geluk sect that his teacher had propounded but like his master he held all other sects in equal reverence and made them the theme of his studies. This was actually the model religious code for all subsequent Dalai Lamas who were staunch Geluk followers but held all doctrines in equal reverence; and this effectively worked in the unification of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan nation, and in the course of time Dalai Lama emerged as the institution of Tibetan Buddhism, or rather the Buddhism world-over, not of this or that doctrine or sect. This aptly reflects in the words of the Fifth Dalai Lama when he said ‘to be the overall spiritual head of all schools of Tibetan Buddhism, I regard it as my sacred duty to understand, uphold and propagate each of them on an equal footing.’

NOTE :

In the scheme of this essay a brief account of the historic deeds and the life of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, the One who benefits the world today with his divine presence, had to be its part. However, even a brief survey of only a few of the aspects of the Great Dalai Lama Tradition overwhelmed it in its entirety and now the authors, with heads bowed in reverence, are left with no other option than to look for another opportunity to do an independent essay on the life of the Great Divine Master

Ten Mahavidyas, the charismatic goddesses of Hindu pantheon looked at with great curiosity world over, more than any other group of divinities, are rather the late entrants into ritual-religio-cultural stream of Indian thought and theology. Identically conceived in many things, as a group of divinities having bizarre forms and exotic character, and pregnant with strange magical powers, these goddesses, invariably numbering ten, make a debut at their earliest in around eleventh-twelfth centuries, though it is rather in fourteenth century Shakta texts that their emergence is more decisive and it is here that they are identified as Mahavidyas in unambiguous terms.

These Shakta texts, 'upa' or subordinate 'puranas' as they are called in the scriptural tradition, are largely the collections of hymns – 'nama-strotas', dedicated to each of these goddesses and recited to invoke them for accomplishing a desired objective. These early 'nama-strota' texts reveal iconographic form and basic nature of each of the ten Mahavidyas, and sometimes each one's power to fulfill a prayer. However, in these texts or rather in the entire body of the Mahavidyas-related literature, barring a few narratives in regard to their origin or allusions to their exploits in various fields appearing here and there, an effort at exploring their conceptual aspect, metaphysical meaning, symbolic dimensions or even theological status, hardly ever reveals.

SOME EARLY GODDESSES IN THEIR ROLE AS MAHAVIDYAS

Mahavidya Goddess Tara with a Pair of Scissors in Her Hand Miniature Painting on Paper Artist - Kailash Raj

Not that all goddesses of the group had late emergence, the black goddess Kali, lotus goddess Kamala, or even Tara, had very early presence in religious streams of India and were widely worshipped. Kamala is rather a Rig-Vedic deity and as Shri a full Rig-Vedic Sukta has been devoted to her. However, in their role as Mahavidyas, individually and as a group, they make their presence felt from around fourteenth century, or a little early. With a different role and form, something like a post-puranic proliferation of the cult, even Kali, Kamala or Tara emerge as their own anti-models. As a matter of fact, at least in their visual representations the post-Mahavidya iconographic forms of Kali and Tara – horror-striking naked figures standing on Shiva's supine body, so overwhelmed the scenario that their pre-Mahavidya forms were only rarely seen.

In their Puranic models maintaining cosmic order was the primary role of Kali, Kamala, or even Tara; in their forms as Mahavidyas such role in regard to them becomes subsidiary or rather insignificant. In her Mahavidya form Kamala, Vishnu's consort in Puranic tradition, is rarely invoked or visually represented with Vishnu, her spouse. In her Mahavidya-transform this Vaishnavite goddess of the Vedas, and Puranas in the Vedic line, seems to tilt, at least in her bearing, to Shaivite side. In their related hymns other Mahavidyas are also lauded as spouses of male gods; however, this spousal aspect in case of them all is weak and insignificant. Too independent to be in a wife's frame, besides gender they have in them little which is consort-like; they all are rather stubborn and over-dominating possessed of, or rather obsessed by, a desire to bend their male partners to their will and to have a final say in everything.

MAHAVIDYAS : APPEARANCE, NATURE AND METAPHYSICAL MEANING

Shodashi as Tripurasundari Miniature Painting on Paper

The goddesses of unusual type, all of them are conceived with fearful demeanour and agitating mind, and as destruction-loving, though at times they are also amorous and benevolent, and peacefully poised. In some of them, as in Tripura-Sundari who has been conceived triply, as Tripura-bala – the virgin, as Tripura-Sundari – the beauteous, and as Tripura-Bhairavi – the terrible, such diversity better manifests.

Parvati with Ganesha in her Lap Miniature Painting on Paper

Collectively they seem to represent stages in a woman's life cycle except her motherhood. They are hardly ever lauded or visually represented as mothers or with motherly attributes – a child in arms as have Matrikas, or with breasts filled with milk as has Ambika, Annapurna or Mother-goddess.

The Ten Mahavidyas with Yantras Madhubani Painting on Hand Made Paper treated with Cow Dung Artist Vidya Devi and Dhirendra Jha

Metaphysically interpreted, Mahavidyas represent cosmic reality, both its dynamic and static forms prevailing over all seen and unseen spaces, all directions, as also all elemental regions, summed up as ten. Mahavidyas, ten manifestations of the Divine Female, preside over ten elemental regions of this cosmic reality, as also its absolute nature – dynamic as well as static. In metaphysical terms, Kali, Tara, Bagala, Bhairavi, Tripura-Sundari, and sometimes Chinnamasta represent its dynamics while Dhumavati, Matangi, Kamala and Bhuwaneshvari, its statics.

SHAIVITE AND TANTRIKA LINKS OF MAHAVIDYAS

One Who Ill Treats His Wife is Punished by the Great Goddess Madhubani Painting on Hand Made Paper Artist: Lalita Devi

Mahavidyas, the product of Shaktism, more especially of Tantrika Shaktism, with their strong links with Sati, Parvati and Kali – all Shiva's spouses, are Shaivite in nature, though contrarily, in myths, as well as conceptually, tradition subordinates Shiva to them, not them to Shiva. As a rule they are represented as Shiva's superior. The cult of Shiva's subordination to them has its roots in various myths related to Mahavidyas' origin. In Sati-related myth Sati's will prevails over Shiva, while in Kali-related myth Shiva, fed up with Kali's untidy habits, tries to flee from her but with all exits blocked by her he helplessly submits to her will. Mahavidyas have fierce forms, untidy habits, destructive nature, mystic dimensions and strange magical, meditative and Yogik powers. In most Tantras they are the presiding deities of the Tantrika rituals. Though Mahavidyas are endowed with masculine build too rough and tough for a woman, they often manifest a feminine mind agitating against every type of masculine arrogance, particularly when a male, whether a father or husband, abuses, ignores, slights, or even tries to dominate them. This agitation often transforms into dreadful wrath, which truly defines all Mahavidyas.

MAHAVIDYAS : THEIR OWN CONTRADICTIONS

Mahavidya Bagalamukhi Brass Sculpture Artist: Kishore

Mahavidyas have strange contradictions. They are individualistic in nature, yet their identity better reveals as a group. Many forms with diverse nature as the Mahavidyas are, they are essentially the manifestations of one Divine Being. They are truly the concrete expression of the idea of many forms of the One. Some of the Mahavidyas with their association with cremation ground, corpses and destruction represent death on one hand, and with their naked figures sometimes engaged in copulation with an inert body lying under them represent sex and fertility on the other, and thus a strange synthesis of opposites, the death and the sex – cessation and creation. In an ambience where death and destruction reigns, Mahavidyas represent what defines the life, the timeless youth, the body's kinetic energy and the desire to produce, of which sex is the incessant source, and the creation. The benevolent ones, Mahavidyas bless an adept but often by destroying or harming someone, one of their adept's enemies or opponents, thus destruction being often Mahavidyas' mode of blessing.

MAHAVIDYAS : THE MEANING OF THE TERM

Mystical Formulae (Part 1-Mantras) Book

The broad meaning of the term 'Mahavidya' is 'great knowledge'. In its wider sense the term might be taken to mean complete, supreme, absolute, or ultimate knowledge. Tantrikas claim that ten Mahavidyas stand for 'ten great mantras', for a 'mantra' and 'vidya' are the same. They assert that a mantra is the deity manifest as the deity, at least in Tantrika way, does not emerge unless invoked through a mantra. They claim that the deity emerges from the mantra if it is correctly pronounced. Not merely the deity's vehicle, mantra is her body, being and essence. Thus, even if the deity exists beyond it, it is in the mantra dedicated to her, defining her form, attributes and powers, that she becomes manifest and is realised.

Hence, ten mantras are ten manifestations of the deity – the Divine Female. Such Tantrika thesis is just the extension of the ancient Indian cult of the 'shabda-brahma' which claims 'shabda' – sound, to be the essence of the total reality – the Ultimate that the term 'Brahma' defines. The mantra – the sound condensed into sacred syllabic utterance, manifests thus an aspect of the Ultimate, and ten mantras, Ultimate's all ten dimensions. Under another sound-based Indian theory of Sphota – explosion of sound, which claims sound to be the manifestation of cosmic power, this Tantrika assumption is interpreted in a slightly different way. If a Mahavidya is a mantra, the most intense condensation of sound, and as mantra she manifests one aspect of cosmic power, ten Mahavidyas – the ten mantras, manifest cosmic power in aggregate. Under yet another theory, Mahavidyas are sometimes seen as the source of ultimate knowledge – all that is to be known. It views Mahavidyas as representing transcendental knowledge, summed up into ten stages or objects, each of which one Mahavidya represents.

ORIGIN OF MAHAVIDYAS

As regards the origin of Mahavidyas, the tradition has five myths in prevalence; however, among them the one that relates to Sati, Shiva's consort and the daughter of Daksha Prajapati, one of the Brahma's sons, is the main and more widely known. Other four relate to Parvati, Kali, Durga and Sharakshi, identified also as Shakambhari. The Sati-related myth emerges with pre-eminence in Brahaddharma Purana and Mahabhagavata Purana. Myth's versions appearing in later texts are almost identical to them.

Sati, the daughter of Daksha Prajapati, had married Shiva against the will of her father who had great dislike for Shiva. For such act of Sati Daksha was as much annoyed with his daughter and had split all ties with her. Once, Daksha Prajapati organised a great yajna – sacrifice. He invited people from far and wide but to slight Shiva and Sati did not invite them. Shiva felt insulted but was indifferent to it. However, Sati, not in a mood to forgive her father for the insult, decided to go to her father's house and disrupt the yajna. Her anguish was so deep that when Shiva forbade her from doing it, her wrath turned from her father to him. Besides accusing him of neglecting her and thrusting his decisions upon her, in fury her limbs began trembling and eyes – turned red and bright as if emitting fire.

Frightened Shiva closed his eyes but when he opened them, he was dismayed to see standing before him a woman with a fierce form. The moment he looked at her, she began growing old. Her feminine charms began disappearing, and her arms, branching into four. She had disheveled hair, fiery complexion and a lolling tongue moving from one side to other over sweat-smeared lips. She wore a crescent as her crown. Except what a garland of severed hands covered her figure was naked. Her form blazed and from it emitted brilliance of a million rising suns. With her laughter she shattered the earth and filled with awe the world from one end to other. Frightened Shiva tried to flee from one direction to other but a burst of laughter obstructed him on every side, and dismayed and frightened he submitted. To further ensure that he did not slip the woman, obviously Sati's transform, filled all directions around him with ten different forms. These ten forms of Sati were ten Mahavidyas. On his query Shiva was revealed their names and also their identity by Sati herself in some versions of the myth as Sati's friends, and in other, as her own forms. A frightened Shiva allowed her to join her father's yajna and do as she chose. The rest of the myth is the same as in other contexts. In annoyance an insulted and disgraced Sati jumped into Daksha's yajna and destroyed herself as well as the yajna.

The Birth of Ten Mahavidyas with Shiva Parvati and Serpent Coiled Shri Chakra Madhubani Painting on Hand Made Paper Treated with Cow Dung Artists: Shri Dhirendra Jha and Shrimati Vidya Devi

Parvati-related myth is largely the creation of oral tradition prevalent in Tantrika world. Parvati was Sati in her re-birth after she had killed herself in the course of the yajna that her father Daksha Prajapati had organised. Broken by Sati's death Shiva had decided not to marry again. However, Parvati, by her great penance, subdued him to marry her. She was thus his second wife. One day Shiva decided to leave Parvati. Parvati prayed him not to go away from her but he did not concede. Finally, Parvati transformed herself into ten forms and with them blocked all the ten doors of the house and foiled his attempt to leave. Interpreted in Tantrika way the allegory suggests that the body is the house, Shiva, the self, ten doors, body's ten openings – two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, mouth, anus, penis or vagina, and 'brahmarandhra' – an aperture at the top of the head, and Parvati's ten forms with which these ten doors were blocked, the ten Mahavidyas. Allegorically, with the help of Mahavidyas the adept can lock self into the body ensuring long life.

Kali-related myth is a more recent tradition appearing in a section of contemporary vernacular Tantrika literature. As the myth goes, in Sata or Satya-yuga, Shiva lived with Kali. One day Shiva declared that he was tired of Kali's untidy habits and would not live with her anymore. Kali did not react nor stopped him from doing so. Shiva went away and roamed from one place to other; however, wherever he went he found a form of Kali facing him. Not Kali alone, nine other forms, many of them identical to Kali, encountered him. The Shakta tradition acclaims that from his encounter with these forms Shiva attained ultimate knowledge – 'maha vidya' in its ten forms. He realised that in one form or the other the Great Goddess was present everywhere and at all times. These forms thus became known as Mahavidyas.

Some iconographic representations, in many of which the centrally located Devi, usually Mahishasuramardini Durga, has Mahavidyas surrounding her, link the origin of Mahavidyas with Mahadevi's battle against demons. In one set of illustrations such demon is Mahisha, and in other, these are Shumbha and Nishumbha. As various myths contained in the Devi-Mahatmya and other early Puranas have it, once the mighty demon Mahisha, or identically the demons Shumbha and Nishumbha, defeated gods and ousted them from their land. Unable to confront them gods approached Brahma who disclosed that no male shall ever be able to kill these demons. Thereupon gods approached Mahadevi and prayed her for rescuing them and their land from the notorious demons. Mahadevi promised them to help and waged a war against demons. As the third Canto of the Devi-Mahatmya has it, too formidable to defeat, Mahadevi created her own different forms, mainly Sapta-Matrikas and Nava Durgas for confronting them. Shumbha challenged Mahadevi to combat him singly which she accepted adding that her battle companions were just her different forms. The third Canto also mentions creation of a group of goddesses having resemblance with Mahavidyas, though the text does not name them as such. However, the tradition developed from various iconographic representations of Mahavidyas contends that it is either from Nava (nine) Durgas, that is, nine plus one, or from the group of goddesses mentioned in the third Canto that the concept of Mahavidyas evolved.

Shatakshi Devi - The Goddess with Innumerable Eyes (Shrimad Devi Bhagavatam, Book Seven, Chapter 28) Water Color Painting On Cotton Fabric

In yet another myth the origin of Mahavidyas is linked with Shatakshi, the goddess having one hundred eyes. Shatakshi and demon Durgama related myth occurs in the Devi-Bhagavata Purana. Once upon a time, demon Durgama gained control over the universe and forced gods into subservience. They appealed to Mahadevi to redeem them from Durgama's clutches. On their prayer Mahadevi appeared in a female form having one hundred eyes. The pitiable plight of gods, human beings and the earth moved her to tears. She produced from her body fruits and vegetables and distributed them among the starving beings suffering from drought. This gave her Shakambhari name. After so relieving the mankind, gods and all beings she resorted to arms against demons and a fierce battle ensued. In its course the goddess created several groups of subsidiary goddesses, Mahavidyas being among them. Around its concluding part the text alludes to Mahadevi as Durga, obviously for defeating demon Durgama.

NUMBER, NAMES AND NATURE OF MAHAVIDYAS

Srimad Devibhagavatam (Sanskrit Text with English Translation) (In Two Volumes) Book

The number and names of Mahavidyas appearing in the Brahaddharma Purana and Maha Bhagavata Purana are almost unanimously accepted. Accordingly, Mahavidyas are ten in number and their names, as appear in these texts, are Kali, Tara, Chinnamasta, Bhuwaneshvari, Bagala, Dhumavati, Kamala, Matangi, Sodashi and Bhairavi. The tradition also has some variants. Niruttara Tantra talks of eighteen Mahavidyas, and Narada Pancharatna speaks of their innumerable forms, at least seventy lacs. Devi Bhagavata also deviates from Maha Bhagavata Purana and Brahaddharma Purana. Devi Bhagavata contends their number to be thirteen and their names as Kalika, Tarini, Tripura, Bhairavi, Kamala, Bagala, Matangi, Tripura-Sundari, Kamaksha, Tuleja-devi, Jambhini, Mohini, and Chinnamasta.

KALI

The Ten Mahavidyas - Kali Water Color Painting On Cotton Fabric

Kali, the foremost of Mahavidyas, is not merely the first of them but also the prototype of the group. Other Mahavidyas are sometimes considered as only Kali's forms. In general, Kali is perceived as having awful appearance with a figure jet black in complexion, gaunt, wrinkled and ugly-looking. She has repulsive fangs, shakes the world with her laughter, dances madly, wears garlands of corpses, sits or stands on a dead body, usually Shiva's supine figure, feeds herself on fresh human blood and lives in cremation ground. She takes delight in imparting destruction and working for instability.

Bhavabhuti's Malatimadhava With the Commentary of Jagaddhara (Edited with a literal English Translation, Notes and Introduction) Book

However, despite her ugly appearance Kali has not been for centuries the favorite deity merely of violence-edict warriors, thieves, plunderers, insensitive tribes and charmers but also of poets, dramatists, sculptors and others all over the land. By one name or other she features in Kadambari, a play by the seventh century dramatist Banabhatta, in another seventh century work Gaudavaho by Vakpati, and in Malati-Madhava, a Sanskrit classic by the eighth century poet Bhavabhuti.

The eleventh century temple at Padaoli in Morena district of Madhya Pradesh has a large size sculptural panel devoted to her, and the Sikhs' tenth guru Guru Gobind Singh dedicated to her a long narrative poem. The Kali-cult emerged so powerfully in Bengal that it completely transformed its art, textile designing and the character of rituals.

The Dance of Shiva and Kali Miniature Painting on Paper Artist: Kailash Raj

The tradition perceives black goddess Kali as the power of time for it is her who releases and withdraws it. She signifies abyssal darkness which contains all unknown, all known and all that can be known, and thus she is the ultimate knowledge; it is from this abyssal darkness that all forms rise and into which they disappear and thus she is the ultimate reality. She manifests the truth of contrasts, the death and the sex, the ugly and the beauteous, the timed and the timeless. Kali is personified wrath, whether Sati's or that of Durga, Parvati or of other goddesses. Wrath is not merely her instrument for undoing a wrong. She herself is the wrath, the cosmic rage against a wrong, and this is truly Kali's essence. She does not attempt at winning over the male, his ego, arrogance or wrong, by any bewitching female charms or grace but by obstructing, terrifying and undoing him.

The unpredictable Kali stands on a point ahead of which on one side is the accepted, and on the other, 'not acceptable', loathsome, polluting, feared or forbidden. While she challenges and shatters the accepted, she embodies into her being the polluted, loathed and feared and thus, when meditated on, releases the adept from clutches of conventionality, all that is worn out, has rotted or is rotting, and prepares his mind to accept the reality as a whole, ugly and fierce in special. When invoked and pleased, she endows the Tantrika with such powers as undo every kind of wrong, whether affected by man or by nature in any form whatever.

TARA

Tara in Hinduism: Study with Textual and Iconographical Documentation Book

Tara, who as a rule is listed as number two among Mahavidyas, is second to none among them except Kali. Not so much in Hindu or Brahmanical pantheon as in the Buddhist, Tara has a much wider presence outside the Mahavidya-periphery. Alike she has an early presence datable to around the fourth-fifth centuries of the Common Era and emerges thus much before the Mahavidya-cult evolved. With an appearance identical to Kali she has always enjoyed considerable popularity and importance in Hindu pantheon, especially among Tantrika deities. In iconographic manifestations, like Kali, the naked bodied Tara is also associated with Shiva and is often represented as standing on his supine body, and sometimes as copulating. Of the Tantra Tara is as potential a deity as Kali. Besides her place in Hindu tradition she is the central deity of the Buddhism, especially the Tibetan, where she is worshipped almost like a national deity. Tara also occupies a significant position and wields considerable influence in Jainism. She has strong Vaishnava links and is claimed to have been created to defeat the thousand headed Ravana.

Not merely in the Buddhist myths that portray Tara as the goddess of tempestuous seas helping the masses wade their path to safety and redemption, even in Hindu and Jain traditions she is revered as the goddess who guides out of troubles and all kinds of turmoil. Almost all theologies equate sea with life, miseries, misfortunes and trials with sea's uncertainties and upheavals, and a being, with the sailor paddling a boat across it. Thus, allegorically Tara, the goddess of tempestuous oceans, is also the goddess who helps the being wade across all difficulties and misfortunes occurring in life and attain salvation. In some texts, Tara is also seen as the potential of re-creation, which equates her with Saraswati possessing such potential in Hindu tradition. In Jain tradition Tara and Saraswati merge into each other. Here Tara has highly diversified role and form. Brahaddharma purana perceives Tara as representing time, the same as does Kali.

The Savior Goddess Green Tara Tibetan Thangka Painting

Apart such similarities, the Buddhist Tara is somewhat different from the Tara in Hindu tradition, particularly the Tantrika. Except rarely, in Buddhism, Tara has been conceived as a benevolent, compassionate, gentle and spirited young woman eager to help her devotees and to protect them from every harm.

On the contrary, as one of the Mahavidyas, which is essentially a Hindu context, Tara is always fierce, often having a form which strikes with horror, and as exceptionally moody and harmful. Wrath is not unknown to Buddhist Tara. She sometimes gets angry and plunders harm. In the like way, though rarely, Hindu Tara is benevolent and compassionate.

CHINNAMASTA

The Tantrik Sadhana of Mahavidya Chinnamasta Miniature Painting on Paper Artist: Kailash Raj

Chinnamasta, one of the three most popular deities of Tantrism, other two being Kali and Tara, seems to have developed out of Vajrayogini cult of Tibetan Buddhism. Vajrayogini, an early Tantrika deity of the Tibetan Buddhism, has a form exactly identical to Chinnamasta. Chinnamasta is a creation of shocking imagery – gruesome decapitation of her own being representing life's cessation for feeding further life, copulating couple under her feet perceived as feeding the goddess with life's energy, blood-consuming nude females and cremation ground all around. In her form she combines life, sex and death, and all in a dramatic and stunning manner manifesting the ages-old idea that they – life, sex and death, are inseparably entwined and are parts of a unified system. Chinnamasta manifests the truth that it is in destruction of life that the life is nourished, that life necessitates death, and that sex is the ultimate instrument of perpetuating more life; and further, that this life would decay and pave the way for death, and then again from death to life. Chinnamasta is thus the symbol of the process of recycle from life to death and back and all in unceasing continuity.

Various Tantrika hymns invoke Chinnamasta as Digambari – nude, symbolically the one with no coverings of illusion, and as full-breasted, suggestive of the motherhood being ceaseless in her and of her role as the eternal preserver. She wears a garland of severed human heads symbolising wisdom and power and sometimes a pair of shears or a sword. Texts have prescribed for her blood red complexion with which she symbolises life in its incessant flow. In her usual iconography she holds her severed head in her left hand. One of the three jets of blood that spurt from her neck streams back into the mouth of her own severed head, and other two, into those of the yoginis – Dakini and Varnini, all suggesting that death nourishes life and thus the process of recycle continues. The copulating couple under the feet of the goddess is usually Kamadeva, the personified sexual desire, and his wife Rati. Chinnamasta, standing on their backs draws from the couple, as also from the lotus on which the couple lies, life's energy and channels it for perpetuating more life.

Amongst all Devi forms, even Durga and Kali who sustain and promote life from the sacrifice offered to them by their devotees, Chinnamasta destroys her own life to sustain and promote it beyond her in forms other than her. More than Annapurna or Shatakshi who only gives, Chinnamasta is one who receives life from the copulating couple and with far greater vigour passes it on to others and is thus a greater giver and more accomplished model of cosmic unity – the life that the lovemaking couple represents, the death which reveals in decapitating herself and the nourishment which manifests in feeding the flanking yoginis.

OTHER MAHAVIDYAS

Other seven Mahavidyas, namely, Sodashi or Tripura-Sundari, Bhuwaneshvari, Bhairavi, Dhumavati, Bagala, Matangi and Kamala, have relatively limited role and significance both in Tantrika practices as well as worship traditions.

Tripura Sundari Miniature Painting on Paper Artist: Kailash Raj

Sodashi, also alluded to in some texts as Tripura Sundari, the most beauteous in three worlds, and as such having three forms defining three stages – Tripura-bala, the virgin, Tripura-Sundari, the beauteous, and Tripura Bhairavi, the terrible, is perceived as one with timeless youth and beauty, though not without frowns or angry looks. She is sometimes seen as the embodiment of sixteen modifications of desire and at other time as one created to arouse Shiva to sexual activity so that his creative powers could stimulate the world. In Hindu pantheon she seems to have emerged in around eleventh-twelfth centuries and had perhaps a few temples too, with one at Tehara near Bheraghat, Jabalpur, in Madhya Pradesh, devoted to her. Like Kali and Tara, Tripura-Sundari is also perceived as swaying all gods, though perhaps with her paramount beauty, not by Kali-like superior power. This superior position of Sodashi reflects in her iconography in which Brahma, Vishnu, Rudra and Indra or Yama are represented as supporting on them the throne on which she sits as its four legs.

Mahalakshmi (Kamala) the Last but Not the Least (Ten Mahavidya Series) Water color Painting on Patti Paper Artist: Rabi Behera

The lotus goddess Kamala as Shri makes a debut in the Shri Sukta in the Rig-Veda; as Lakshmi she has considerable presence in Buddhist sculptures datable to third-second century B. C. to second century A. D. and in Hindu pantheon and Puranas all through from fifth-sixth century onwards. The Devi-Mahatmya part of the Markandeya Purana has devoted to her a full Canto by the name Mahalakshmi. As Mahavidya she does not enjoy the same prestige as she enjoys as Lakshmi in worship tradition. As in Vaishnava tradition, Kamala is invoked in Tantrika rituals for riches, especially the hidden treasures of bygone days.

Dhumawati the Goddess who widows Herself (Ten Mahavidya Series) Water color Painting on Patti Paper Artist: Rabi Behera

Like Chinnamasta Bagalamukhi, Dhumavati and Matangi are rarely mentioned except as Mahavidyas. They are broadly Tantrika deities and are seen mostly in Tantrika contexts. Except that in some of the Tantrika pithas – seats, such as at the Pitambara Pitha, Datia, in Madhya Pradesh, where Dhumavati has her independent shrine, an individual structure devoted to any of them, or even a smaller one of the status of a sub-shrine, is a rarity. At some Tantrika pithas these goddesses along with other Mahavidyas are carved or painted, inside or outside, on the sanctum walls of the main deity shrine. In Himalayan regions such representations are more common. Bagala, the goddess with a crane-like face, gold-complexioned and elegantly attired and bejewelled, is a powerful Tantrika deity who paralyses and thus destroys all negative forces that obstructs adept's progress or well being. Toothless Dhumavati with long pendulous breasts, having pale complexion, wearing white but mudded attire, and riding a crow-driven cart, manifests unsatisfied desires and hence has been conceived as a widow. She has a large crooked nose and quarrelsome nature and uses diseases as her weapon to punish the wicked.

Matangi - The Outcaste Goddess (Ten Mahavidya Series) Water color Painting on Patti Paper Artist: Rabi Behera

Matangi, usually a beautiful young woman with dark or black complexion, spreads music and education enabling human beings to acquire liberating wisdom. She manifested the power of domination.

The tradition considers her as an outcaste goddess.

Goddess Shri Bhairavi Devi Miniature Painting on Paper Artist: Kailash Raj

Bhairavi, capable of multiplying herself into infinity of beings and forms and broadly a fierce goddess, the consort of Bhairava, has been conceived identically to Bhairava, both in form as well as mental frame. She has complexion as bright as a thousand rising suns. She wears garland of skulls and garments made from skins of demons she killed and she has her feet and breasts covered with blood.

Mahavidya Goddess Bhuwaneshvari Miniature Painting on Paper Artist: Kailash Raj

Though better known as the goddess of the Mahavidya group, Bhuwaneshvari is also known in context to Vishnu's boar incarnation and a few other myths. Broadly, the large breasted and pleasantly smiling Bhuwaneshvari represents substantial forces of the material world and is revered as one the world is whose extension.

WORSHIP OF MAHAVIDYAS

Except Kali, Tara and Tripura-Sundari, as also Kamakhya, a Mahavidya in some texts, who are in worship from early times the tradition of Mahavidyas' temple worship has never been not in prevalence. The Mahavidyas are usually the objects of Tantrika worship of which there are many methods, the more popular among them being Vamachara path characterised primarily by the Pancha tattva, or pancha makara – the ritual performed by five forbidden or highly polluting things, namely, meat, fish, wine, 'mudra', a type of grain that has hallucinogenic properties, and intercourse with a woman.

Ancient traditions world over, not merely those from the realm of religion but also history, metaphysics, cosmology, medicines and sciences, are largely myths, sometimes quite strange and unbelievable, events with no apparent cause-and-effect reciprocity, and beings beyond human conception. Opinions differ as to what exactly the term ‘myth’ means. It is sometimes defined as something false or untrue, the same as means the Hindi term ‘mithya’ – two structural co-relates having identical sound. This is an obviously wrong notion. A myth is a broad truth in regard to an event or a set of beings, men, animals or others, the factual dimensions of which have either blurred or weeded out by time as irrelevant, and what survives in people’s minds, texts, memory or traditions, is its essence, a truth’s timeless pith, a mystique or philosophy, and the fiction amassing around, its mere body. A strange dilemma, a myth is a truth but the term ‘myth’, not ‘truth’, better defines what it portrays, perhaps being a truth of higher grade, or fiction being its body.

Many mythical traditions, Hindu, Christian, Islamic or any, like the myth in regard to the Great Deluge submerging the earth and enveloping the entire cosmos under impenetrable darkness, a single human couple – progenitors of the race of man, and a Great Fish along with a boat alone surviving – the myth that explores evolution of the earth and human race in many early civilizations, have many parallels and a strange unity in their themes. They all have similar interwoven events, mystic dimensions and a bizarre look. Not mere fiction or creation of fancy, such world-wide unanimity of these traditions suggests that the event which a myth portrays, or at least its core context – central part, might have been once a reality, which being strange and rare, gathered around it a certain amount of divinity and mysticism, and was thus mythicised and re-defined or rather re-cycled in terms of a prevalent theology for promoting its dogmatic ends, or a human value.

BREADTH OF INDIAN MYTHS

Myths from India, with a large body of literature emerging over millenniums giving them authenticity, versatility and vividness, explore with greater enormity and unique breadth multifarious cosmic activity, whether taking place in the man’s mind or beyond it in the phenomenal world. Whatever exists materially, the earth, the sun, the moon, a river, ocean, sky, a mountain, an animal, a medicinal herb, nectar or poison, or whatever takes place in finer regions of existence, a weakness of mind, inherent spiritual strength, pain or pleasure, or a desire to own and rule, an Indian myth has made it its theme, sometimes exploring its origin or emergence and at other times, its role, sometimes a river’s descent on the earth, or the earth’s rise from under the deep seas, and at other times, sublimation of a weakness, or aggregation of divine energies into a single being for undoing the evil or a wrong.

Gajendra Moksha Oil Painting on Canvas with 24 Karat Gold

In this world of Indian myths a boon of immortality, when defiled turning atrocious and wrong, instruments death and defeat, not timeless life, and on the contrary, the doomed is seen defeating the death when virtue stands his guard. This world does not accept dividers, those dividing man from woman, man from animal, or live from dead, nor accepts the scale of time fragmented into past, present and future. Here the present summons the past to come live to it, and future, to become a present-day reality; here a mountain or a stone piece, a tree or a river talks to a human being, an animal summons the Supreme for rescuing it,

Goddess Mahakali Tibetan Thangka Painting

an evil one transforms into a beast, and vice-versa a well-meaning beast, into a divinity. Here wrath – an apparent weakness, when enshrining a holy figure, sublimates into the instrument of good, and high wisdom and great austerities, when placed into an evil frame, generate evil, and finally, destruction and ruin.

Sage Agastya swallows the Sea

Here in this strange world a human being swallows the sea, and a vast and massive hill-range, such as Vindhyachala, sheds its height for giving passage to a mortal, and thus, in a sage becoming taller than a mountain, the meaning of the height gets redefined.

Here are four more prevalent myths representing four great events overlapping divine, human, animal and material spheres : one, related to Vaivashvata Manu, progenitor of human race, Great Deluge and the emergence of the earth from under its tempestuous waters; two, recovery of nectar and other jewels from the depths of ocean when it was churned, as also demons’ greed, and gods’ designs to defeat their intentions; three, sublimation of wrath – a weakness, when it is to destroy a false ego, and destruction of the ‘sacred’ – an yajna, when it was designed to disgrace and insult someone, specially one’s own kin; and four, fusion or assimilation of various divine energies into one being for defeating evil and restoring order and cosmic balance.

VAIVASHVATA MANU AND THE GREAT DELUGE

Occurrence of a Great Deluge, which swallowed the earth, its inhabitants and the entire Creation except a human couple, a Great Fish and a boat, and enshrouded the entire cosmos into abyssal darkness, occurring crores of years ago – over thirty crores as per calculation under Indian astronomical tradition, is a myth prevalent in almost all ancient civilizations, especially, Hindu, Christian and Islamic. In Hindu tradition it took place when the holy king Vaivashvata Manu ruled the earth. Many observations of modern scientific studies to also include the evolution theory suggest that initially there prevailed some kind of abyssal darkness and all around was dead mass out of which shaped the cosmos, something as brings to mind the myth of the emergence of a massive all-engulfing flood, waters receding over a period of crores of years and the earth surfacing out of them. However rare and remote, the event of the Great Flood appears to have once taken place – a factual thing, though not part of the known past or history; obviously a natural event of cosmic disturbance, though subsequently re-cast by various world traditions, mostly theological, in their own terms and according to the objective each sought to serve, and now the Great Deluge is a myth.

In some form or the other, the legend of the Great Fish rescuing Vaivashvata Manu from the Great Flood occurs in both, Vedic and post-Vedic literature. Even during the period of Atharva-Veda the legend seems to have been a common knowledge. In the Shatpatha Brahmin it has been elaborated in greater details. After the Flood subsided and Manu was again engaged in yajna and the life of austerities, from oblation made in the course of a yajna there appeared a maiden. Born of the yajna that he performed the maiden was his daughter known in the tradition by the name of Ila. The Shatpatha Brahmin contends that it was by Ila that Manu created human race.

Though not without some contradictions erupting over the period of time, subsequent Hindu scriptures give to the legend a more definitive form determining its period, Manu’s lineage and other things. They link the occurrence of the Great Deluge with the life span of Brahma, the period from his birth to his death, and with Vaivashvata Manu, one of Brahma’s descendants, being fifth in his line. Texts define Brahma’s lifespan as the Mahakalpa. The Great Flood that destroyed the universe – Prapancha, as texts call it, is claimed to take place after Brahma perishes. Brahma’s life-span extends over thirty crores, nine lacs, seventeen thousands and three hundred and seventy-six hundred human years, which come to one hundred twenty Brahma years which some texts call Divine years. Each Brahma year consists of three hundred sixty Brahma days. A Brahma day, known in the tradition as Kalpa Kala, comprises fourteen Manavantaras, each ruled by a Manu. Thus, each Brahma day has fourteen Manavantaras and fourteen Manus. A Manavantara, the life-span of one Manu, comprises seventy-one Chaturyugas each of which consists of four yugas – Krita or Satayuga, Tretayuga, Dvaparayuga and Kaliyuga. Thus, it is after some twelve crores and twenty-four lacs Chaturyugas that a Brahma’s life terminates. Termination of Brahma’s life reveals in the form of the Mahapralaya – Great Deluge.

Matsya, the Fish Avatara (The Ten Incarnations of Lord Vishnu) Water Color Painting on Patti Paper Artist: Rabi Behera

As the Hindu tradition has it, the last Great Deluge took place during the tenure of Vaivashvata Manu, the seventh in the line of fourteen Manus who presided over the last Kalpa Kala. Though an aggregation of solar energy present in the cosmos, Manu was born of Sangya by Vivasvana, a descendant of Brahma, fourth in his line. It is thus that Vivasvana’s son Manu gets Vaivashvata Manu as his name in Hindu tradition. In divine genealogy Manu was the grandson of Kashyapa, and Kashyapa, son of the Brahma’s son Marichi, was Brahma’s grandson. Almost in all Hindu texts the myth has been alluded to in context to Vishnu’s Matsyavatara – his emergence as Fish, the first of his ten principal incarnations.

The Birth of Brahma Water Color Painting on Paper Artist: Navneet Parikh

In incarnation theory, as Fish Vishnu rescues Vedas, not Manu, though symbolically the two events are hardly different. Both Vedas and Manu not only descend direct from Brahma but are rather Brahma’s spiritual offspring, his spiritual manifestations. Vishnu, with double of Brahma’s lifespan, summons Brahma into his next tenure, something which the myth of Matsyavatara suggests symbolically. Whether the Matsyavatara myth represents Vishnu as Fish restoring to the earth the Vedas or Manu, both, manifesting Brahma spiritually, suggest Brahma’s re-emergence or re-birth for effecting re-Creation.

The narrative part of the myth is rather simple. Vaivashvata Manu, a holy god-fearing king, was once engaged in penance at Badari on the bank of river Kritimala. In due course he descended into the river for taking a holy dip. With the water that he collected for oblation a tiny fish mounted his palm. Before he could decide what to do of it, the fish prayed him not to forsake it for it feared that the large fishes would swallow it. Hearing this Manu brought the fish to his palace and put it into an earthen pot. Fish grew to a size larger than the pot. It was the same when the fish was put into a larger pot. Manu then put it into a pond and, when it grew larger than the pond, he shifted it to the river Ganga, though within days the river too fell short to the size of the fish. Finally, the fish disclosed to Manu that within seven days a great flood shall swallow the earth and everything, and advised him to make a large boat and taking seven sages into it he should escape. The fish assured him its help.

As advised, Manu got a large boat prepared, boarded it along with seven sages, namely, Vashishtha, Kashyapa, Atri, Jamadagni, Gautam, Vishvamitra and Bharadwaj, and stood ready for escaping the flood. As foretold within seven days torrential rains began swelling the ocean and the earth and everything, living beings, trees and mountains, submerging under the swelling waters. There grew horns on the head of the fish, to which Manu tied his boat and then the fish began dragging it and reached the highest peak of Himalaya and landed the boat’s inmates safe on it. Thus while all beings and all things were destroyed by the flood, Manu, seven sages and some germs contained in the boat survived to father various species when the earth re-emerged. The mountain peak to which the boat was tied is still known as Naobandhana, or as one to which the boat was tied. The Matsya puranas identifies the mountain peak where the Manu’s boat harboured as Malaya Mountain. The Kamayani, an epic by the early twentieth century Hindi poet Jai Shankara Prasad, has elaborated the theme of the myth into a timeless work of literature.

THE GREAT FLOOD IN BIBLICAL AND OTHER WORLD TRADITIONS

In Biblical tradition the incidence of the Great Flood occurs with a few variations. As Manu in the Hindu tradition, the Biblical tradition has Adam as the first creation of God and the progenitor of human race. To him were born nine sons, namely, Seth, Enos, Kainan, Mahalil, Jared. Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech and Noah. To Noah, when he was five hundred years old, were born three sons, Shem, Ham and Jopheth. It was during the period of Noah that the Great Flood occurred.

As the tradition has it, one day God made his appearance and said to Noah, "The end of all flesh is come before one; for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopar wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark and shalt paint it within and without with pitch. …… I, do bring a flood of water up on the earth, to destroy all flesh wherein is the breadth of life from under heaven and everything that is in the earth shall die. But ….. thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy sons and thy wives and thy sons’ wives with thee, and of every living thing of all flesh two of every sort….; they shall be male and female. ….. For yet seven days and I will cause it to rain up on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living substance that I have made I shall destroy from off the earth." Noah did as the Lord had commanded him – made an ark and collected all beings and things as specified by God and boarded them all in it.

When Noah was six hundred years old, the Great Flood occurred. It began raining and waters began flooding the earth. It rained for forty days and forty nights and the waters swelled and covered the earth, mountains and everything, though the ark that carried Noah and those with him was lifted above these waters, and every time when these waters swelled the ark rose above them. Every living substance died and all things perished. After hundred fifty days, after the rains stopped, God sent a wave of wind and with this tempestuous waves cooled down and then Noah got down the ark, and then his sons, wives, sons’ wives and all species in groups of two each, the male and female, and the world began reviving. Then Noah made an altar unto the Lord and took every clean heart and clean fowl to make offerings at the altar.

The legend of the Great Flood is a part of many other traditions of the ancient world. The legend, as appears in the Islamic tradition, is identical to that in the Holy Bible except the name of the mountain peak where Hazrat Noah’s boat harbours. In Holy Qur’an the name of the mountain peak is Judi. In Greek literature the legend has been woven around Duculius and his wife Peria. In all other details the myth is almost like that in the Indian tradition. Babylonian literature also has the legend of the Great Flood. After the flood has subsided, Jihsathrus, the son of Ardentus, appeases gods by offering sacrifice and then builds the city of Babylonia. The event of Great Flood figures in Persians’ religious literature as also in the traditions of China, Indo-china, Malaya, Australia, Malaysia, North-south America among many other countries.

SAMUDRA-MANTHANA

'Samudra-manthana' or churning of ocean for obtaining nectar and Shri, one of a few occasions on which gods and demons joined hands for accomplishing something, is another quite widely known episode of Indian mythology. Exploration of ocean, sometimes for the treasures of a ship drowned and buried under it and at other times for its own riches, is known to have always been man’s ambition and it has been carried out time and again by people possessed of a desire to obtain it – a massive act requiring many hands and multiple means to accomplish it. In recent times, not merely for the riches that the ocean stores under its waters but it is being churned, or dug, also for things, crude in particular, that it contains below its bottom.

In Indian tradition, the event of ocean churning has been alluded to, almost unanimously, in context to Vishnu’s Kurmavtaras – his incarnation as Tortoise or Turtle, the second of his ten principal ones, and to the emergence of Shri or Lakshmi from the womb of the ocean, and other precious jewels, and nectar and arson. Several ancient Indian texts have allusions to the legend, but the Vishnu Purana, Harivansha Purana and Dasavatara Purana are more elaborate in their details. 'Puranas' have a number of legends related to Samudra-manthana; however, while some of them maintain that the ocean was churned for recovering the precious jewels lost in the Great Deluge, others contend that the aged gods, who had grown weak and decrepit and for reviving their youth and vigour stood in dire need of nectar which lied buried deep into the womb of ocean, had no other option but to churn it for obtaining it. However, weak as they were, they could not churn it by themselves, and the helpless ones, on the advice of Lord Vishnu, they conciliated with demons and persuaded them to jointly churn it.

However, the myth related to Durvasa, the sage known in the tradition for his short temper and wrathful nature, prevails over them all. It is said sage Durvasa once visited Baikuntha, the abode of Lord Vishnu. Out of reverence to the great sage, Vishnu, when seeing him off, honoured him with a garland of Parijata, the celestial flowers pregnant with inexhaustible sweet honey and unfading freshness. On way back Durvasa met Indra riding his Airavata. Durvasa thought that a garland of Parijata – a thing of royalty, was hardly of any use to a recluse like him and better that he gave it to Indra who in his position as the king of gods truly deserved it. He hence placed the garland on Indra's neck, but Indra, conceited as he was, neglectfully hurled the saint’s sacred gift on his elephant's head. The sweet fragrance of Parijata flowers invited bees that swarmed around the elephant’s head, and irritated as the animal was, it tore the garland, threw it down and crushed it under its feet.

A blatant insult, Durvasa cursed Indra to become devoid of all splendour and riches. Instantly Shri, the presiding deity of riches, splendour and fertility, deserted Indra and all three worlds that he ruled. She disappeared into Kshirasagara, the ocean of milk. Bereft of all grandeur and prowess Indra and other gods approached Brahma who after hearing their plight invoked Vishnu. Vishnu appeared and said that churning of Kshirasagara was the only way for recovering 'Shri' from it, and also that they could not do it alone, hence they should conciliate with 'asuras' and persuade them to participate in the act. Vishnu suggested that Mount Mandara could be used as the churning rod and the Great Serpent Vasuki as the rope.

The Demons Churn from the Head End

As advised by Lord Vishnu gods approached 'asuras'. They persuaded them to conjointly churn the ocean and discover out of it nectar, the elixir of timeless youth and life, and other precious jewels, and thus defeat death, old age and decay for ever. The greedy ‘asuras’ instantly agreed and the two ever warring factions reconciled. They then uprooted the Mount Mandara and laid it vertically like a churning rod into the ocean and the great serpent Vasuki was laid coiling round it like the churning rope. To evade the adverse effect of the poison that the great serpent emitted from its mouth Vishnu wished that the gods held its tail part, and 'asuras', its mouth. He knew that suspicious 'asuras' would opt for contrary to what gods proposed to them. He hence asked them to hold the serpent’s tail-part. As expected, the vain and conceited ‘asuras’ declined taking it as an insult to hold the tail instead of the head of the animal. They declared that they would hold the serpent’s head, not tail, something that the gods wished.

Neelkanth Shiva Brass Sculpture

The churning was begun but before long the ocean yielded deadly ‘halahala’ – arsenic, which began suffocating all alike, gods, demons, human beings and animals, and destroying entire vegetation and nature, rivers and all water sources and air. Amidst great hue and cry both gods and demons looked for help. Finally, Shiva came forward and swallowed the arsenic and stored it up in his throat, which turned his neck blue earning him Neelakantha name – one with blue neck.

Lord Shiva with His Lingam Batik Painting On Cotton Fabric

However the arsenic could not be rendered completely ineffective. With its heat Shiva’s body burnt like an oven; hence, when churning re-commenced and from it revealed moon, for its soothing cool effect Shiva bore it on his head and this gave him Chandrasekhar as his yet another name.

Dhanvantari - The Physician of the Gods (Holding the Vase of Immortality) Brass Sculpture

Obstacles yet awaited. When the ocean began giving forth its treasure, one after the other – Surabhi, the celestial cow, Uchchishrava, the divine horse, Airavata, the multi-trunked white elephant, Kaustubha-mani, Parijat etc., they realised that Mount Mandara was sinking into the ocean’s basin and neither gods or demons nor the Great Serpent Vasuki were able to hold it. The feat could not be suspended or left unfinished for the more desired objects, more so the nectar and Shri, were yet to surface. It disappointed both gods and demons alike. When yet in the gust of disappointment they felt that the fast sinking mountain was suddenly contained into its position. Vishnu, with no option left, had incarnated as Kurma – tortoise, with an earth-like large diameter, and slipped unnoticed under the mount Mandara and held it on its back. Churning was re-commenced and the ocean yielded further pots of wine and nectar, Dhanwantari, the legendary physician, Shri or Lakshmi, the divine conch among others.

VIRABHADRA : SUBLIMATION OF SHIVA’S WRATH

Virabhadra, Lord Shiva’s son born of his sublime wrath, and one of his guards and generals, is a rare character from Indian mythology in which a weakness, such as anger, sublimates into a divine form and terminates a wrongful vain act designed to insult and derogate others. He was created by Lord Shiva for destroying the 'yajna', the sacrificial rites, of Daksha, Shiva's father-in-law and the father of Sati, his consort. Daksha was the Brahma’s son and ruled of the earth.

By a hundred year long penance, Daksha appeased Mahamaya and as he wished she was born to him as his daughter by the name of Sati. The most beautiful maiden on the earth Sati married Shiva against the wishes of her father who was annoyed with him for decapitating one of the five heads of his father Brahma in a dispute and carried the severed head all along in the style of a trophy. Hence, for insulting Shiva as also Sati Daksha organised a great 'yajna' but did not invite them. With great agitation in mind Sati wished to go to the yajna and destroy it. Indifferent Shiva dissuaded her but she went. Daksha, her father, not only neglected but also insulted her and abused Shiva. Desperate as Sati was, she jumped into sacrificial fire and immolated herself.

Virabhadra, Shiva's Most Trusted Guard Water Color Painitng on Paper Mysore Art

Shiva loved Sati madly. The news of her death maddened him with rage and grief. His matted hair waved in air and moved from the sky to the earth and from its stroke emerged Virabhadra

Goddess Bhadrakali Water Color Painting on Patti Paper Artist: Rabi Behera

and Bhadrakali.

He commanded them to destroy the 'yajna' of Daksha. Varying slightly from this version of the Devi Bhagavata, the Mahabharata acclaims their emergence from his mouth. There rose from each hair-pore of Virabhadra a fearful monster, known as 'Raumya' in scriptural tradition, and they attacked the sacrificial fire of Daksha and extinguished it. Virabhadra’s fury went on inflicting further destruction targeting Brahma’s entire creation but Shiva appeared and pacified him and attributed to him the status of a planet by the name of Angarakshaka, a guard to Mangala, the benevolent, which in Indian Trinity Shiva represented. Thus, Virabhadra is revered as both, a planet of auspices and as Lord Shiva’s guard. As such, the tradition has woven around him a number of myths representing him sometimes as protecting Kashyapa and other sages from a monstrous fire, and sometimes gods, from a serpent-monster, or from the mouth of Panchamedha, a demon.

CREATION OF DEVI

Among traditions related to emergence of Devi a more popular one, perhaps as popular as the one that contends that Devi is beyond time and beyond form : 'Sarvam khalvidamevaham nanyadasty sanatanam', that is, 'all that is, it is me (Devi); there is nothing lasting but me (Devi)', relates to her creation from assimilation of divine energies, as also, powers and attributes of all gods, for the elimination of demon Mahisha who once ruled the earth. As the Devi Mahatmya section in the Markandeya Purana and a number of other texts have it, after he had conquered the entire earth Mahisha’s ambitions soared higher. He sent words to Indra, heaven's ruler, to either accept his suzerainty or face him in battle. Indra preferred war but he and his army of gods could not face Mahisha and fled, and Mahisha occupied Indra’s abode too.

Gods, led by Indra, rushed to Brahma who revealed on them that by his own boon Mahishasura was invincible against all males – men, demons or beasts. Helpless himself, Brahma took them first to Shiva and then to Vishnu. After he heard of Mahisha's misdeeds, from Vishnu's countenance burst a divine lustre with which radiated the entire ambience. He turned towards Shiva, and then Brahma, Agni, Surya, Indra and all other gods. A similar lustre began bursting from the faces of them all. This divine brilliance, amassing into a huge mount of radiance, covered the entire creation from the sky to the earth. Out of it revealed gradually a female figure, first, her head, then breasts, waist, thighs and legs. From Shiva's lustre was formed her head; from Yama's, her hair; and from that of Vishnu, Moon, Indra, Brahma, Sun, Vasu, Kuber, Prajapati, Agni, Twilight, and Vayu, her arms, breasts, waist, feet, toe-nails, finger-nails, nose, teeth, eyes, brows, and ears. She had eighteen arms and a three-eyed face. The celestial creation had unique lustre not known or possessed by any divinity ever before. Filled with gratitude, all gods prostrated and worshipped the divine creation, Devi, the Great Goddess.

The Creation Of Devi Water Color Painting On Paper Artist: Kailash Raj

Out of his trident Shiva created another and presented it to the celestial creation. So did Vishnu, Varuna, Agni, Yama, Vayu, Surya, Indra, Kuber, Brahma, Kala, and Vishvakarma. They offered to her their disc, conch, dart, iron rod, bow, quiver full of arrows, thunderbolt, mace and drinking pot, rosary and water pot, sword and shield, battle-axe and a number of amulets respectively.

Mahishasura Mardini Durga Batik Painting On Cotton Fabric

Besides, Ocean brought for her glittering jewels, Shesh, a necklace inlaid with celestial gems, and Himavana, his lion for her vehicle. Sage Narada narrated to the Devi all about gods' miserable plight and Mahisha's atrocities and misdeeds and prayed her to rescue gods and mankind from him. In a fierce battle she killed the demon and freed the world from his clutches. For the divine creation the usual term that sage Markandeya has used is 'Devi' but after she killed demon Mahisha the term ‘Mahishasura-Mardini – one who killed demon Mahisha, emerged as her more popular epithet.