#Ancient Culture ( Samskaram ) of India ( Bharatham ) - 6.5 : Swami Krishnananda.

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1.#Opinion : Sunday, March 13, 2022. 06:00. 2665.

#Chapter 6: Quandaries in the Ramayana and Mahabharata -5.

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So the marriage takes place, the wedding of Sita with Rama, all on a grand scale, only to be faced with a tremendous consequence which was very unexpected, which is the exile of Rama from the palace and the going to the wilderness of the Pandavas in the Mahabharata context. How happy the Pandavas were with their princely costumes and royal comforts! They were about to ascend the throne, and really Yudhisthira did ascend the throne, in a way, after he performed the great rajasuya sacrifice, but it was only an apparent joy.

Rama was to be installed on the throne. Glory was before him; everywhere was music and dance, everywhere deities, everywhere glorious preparation for the coming of the new king, and a little hunchback put down all the glory and the joy and the royal preparation and the power of Dasharatha and the expectations of Rama himself. A little thing like a small grain of sand sitting on the retina of our eye can disturb our entire perception, obstructing the vision of the whole sun itself. Earthly glory is very attractive. It is all milk and honey. There is nothing wrong with this world. We are going to be princes and emperors, rulers, ministers and presidents, and so on. Gold and silver, milk and honey, these are the stuff of life. This is what we are told earlier. But there is a thorn at the back of every beautiful rose flower, and when we touch it, it will prick us. From a distance it is beautiful; when we touch it, it has its own sting.

Both in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata we find an initial picture of the glory of human life, only to be contaminated by the vision of a poisonous sting that also is a part of human existence. Life is not always smooth going. It is not walking on a tarred road where we can drive blindly, as it were. There are zigzag movements, ups and downs, and everywhere we have to be conscious of what will be ahead of us. Every step is to be taken with great caution, and we cannot walk in this world with closed eyes.

So Rama, the great would-be emperor, and Yudhisthira, the would-be king, were both thrown out of their gears, and it appeared as if they had nothing to say in this matter, one for one reason, the other for another reason altogether. And both worked for dharma. The dharma of obedience to the word of the father was the cause of exile in one case; the dharma of sticking to the principle of royal justice was the cause of the other, in the case of the Mahabharata.

You will be surprised, actually, if you read the original Ramayana, that Dasharatha did not openly say, “Please go.” It was Kaikeyi who said, “He cannot speak until you leave this place. He is disturbed. You leave this place. He wants to say that you should leave this place and go to the forest. I am telling you his word.” She went on dinning this into the ears of Rama, but mum sat Dasharatha, wailing. Dasharatha did not open his mouth and say, “Go!” Kaikeyi took this task upon herself and said, “I am telling his royal word. Go! And as long as you are standing here, he will not wake up from this. He will die.”

What a shock! It is told us that Rama did not take it as a shock, but he did take it as a shock also, if you read Valmiki himself. It was a mix-up of honey and poison poured into his mouth at the same time, and he did not know what to say, what to feel. His feeling for his father and his feeling towards his queen Kaikeyi were a mix-up of earth and heaven put together, and this peculiar human tragic situation is exquisitely portrayed in the beautiful poetry of Valmiki. You should read Valmiki only, not the prose or the abridgement of the Ramayana, in order to know what actually was the feeling of people at that moment.

To be continued ....

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JAI HIND

JAI BHARATHAM

VANDHE MADHARAM

BHARAT MATHA KI JAI.

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