(Paper is fully inspired by the book authored by Swami Krishnananda from the Divine Life society; namely “Short History of Religious and Philosophical Thought in India”. I have made some squirrel-buddhi additions here and there to convey the ideas with simple examples).

One of the usual topics that comes up for debate is the historicity of Indian epics – the Ramayana and Mahabharata. These are described as “Myths” in modern times which seem more like artificial stories created to convey spiritual truths. We routinely come across articles that classify these epics as myths and make fun of people who regard the stories of Ramayana as historical truths. History in the way it is understood seeks evidence in the form defined by modern methods. While sacred Hindus grow up to understand the epics as true events that have happened in the distant past, many Hindus do get disturbed when thrown with statements of the epics being mere “myths” and thereby unreal. There have been sincere efforts to identify various places in these epics with real places in modern India. All over India, one will find villages which claim that characters from either Ramayana or Mahabharata have visited the relevant places and temples are erected in their honour. Equally, efforts to date the epics have been made with 3132BC was the date of the Mahabharata war and Ramayana traced much earlier to around 6000 BC. However, none of these claims finds mention in the historical books and remain hidden in obscure books spread around by word of mouth or in various blogs/ videos in the social media. So how does a sacred Hindu view the epics in the light of modern understanding of the world? Many of today’s Hindu parents struggle to provide a sincere explanation to their children and this issue thereby remains an unsolved puzzle for many practicing Hindus.

One should actually agree with the modern view that our epics are not history. While the opponent may become joyful to receive such a response from a devout Hindu, one may immediately add – our epics are Itihasa. A wise person may add – what is the difference? Itihasa also means history, is it not? The objective is this write-up is to convey that Itihasa and history are not one and the same.

There is a feeling that non-historicity means non-existence. This erroneous notion is based on a wrong view of history itself. There is a cosmic significance of events in addition to the historical/ isolated-only meaning which events seem to have in social life. Let us take commonly heard notion that asteroids falling on earth probably destroyed the dinosaurs. There are two ways of making this statement in a crude sense:

1. Asteroids fell on Earth leading to extinction of Dinosaurs.
2. Nature decided that presence of dinosaurs was not sustainable and hence nature created events that led to extinction of dinosaurs while allowing other species to continue.

Both the above statements refer to the same fact about the extinction of dinosaurs; however, one views this from a limited physical impact of the presence of dinosaurs while the latter views this from a cosmic significance perspective. Both are true but to use the Indian prism – the former may be called as History while the latter as Itihasa. Itihasa will have a wider perspective and uses another set of variables to explain its world-view while history uses variables like fossils/ archaeological evidence to formulate its view.

But why does a normal human mind think in terms of history only? The human mind has a habit of looking at events in a straight line and this linear march of events is normally regarded as history. This is what we call as three dimensional perspective or the spatio-temporal vision of the mind – to look at objects as bodies, as existence cut-off from others, in such a way that there cannot be any intrinsic or organic connection with them. A simple example could be a case where a region which does not experience rain may interpret the reason in three (or probably more) ways. Note that with the presence of different underlying variables, the explanation varies from person to person. Three versions could be:

1. There are no rains this time; in fact, even the winter followed by summer was milder this year compared to the previous and probably this is causing limited rains too.
2. In the 21^st century, it is normal for us to see papers explaining that the El Nino effect created pressure on the Bay of Bengal causing rains to get dispersed and consequently not flowing into the land areas (apologies for my bad science…)

Both the above are arguments which are looking at external parameters with a world view that existence is cut off from ourselves and it is always some external factors that cause a certain outcome of experience faced by man. However, in the Balakanda of the Sri Ramayana, there is a reference to King Romapada of the Anga kingdom who experienced famine type conditions in his kingdom. He and wise ministers from his kingdom concluded that it is actually Adharma practiced by the King and his ancestors that may have led to difficult conditions for his people. He therefore took the action of getting a learned and evolved Rishi into his kingdom; the moment the Rishi set his foot on the land, rains poured. A modern educated “El Nino-inspired” person may find such statements distasteful. His view is based on the Dristi that events of day to day reality have no organic connection. There appear to be sudden jumps, in space and time, of characters which cannot be predicted easily. So suddenly, an Ashoka or a Buddha or an Akbar happens. But that this is not the truth of history will be clear a true philosopher of history. When one reads Digvijaya which is a narrative on Adi Shankara, the Indian narrative is different when it says that the conditions during the era created an environment when Adi Shankara descended into Earth. Even before Adi Shankara, Mandana’s Mishra’s Guru came and learnt the way of the Buddhists who were antagonistic to the Vedic world view and debated with them thus clearing the way for Shankara to focus on Samkhyas or Purva Mimamsas and defeat them. Thus the Dristi as per the Indian narrative is significantly different from the way history sees people at the events. The historical view takes account of the causal connection of events while causation is not the whole truth of the universe.

So what is the way one should view history? What will make history narrative turn into Itihasa? Arthur Eddington introduces a distinction between “causation” which is the common sense meaning of the relation of cause and effect in which there is a notion of the temporal antecedence of the cause to the effect, AND what he calls causality which is the symmetrical relation of the totality of events in the universe which is a complete system of reciprocally connected events. I know this was a difficult sentence but please read this again. Any event in the universe must be seen as a part of a symmetrical relation of the totality of the events in the universe. A Ravana comes first and a Rama has to take birth to redeem the earth and restore a Rama Rajya. Because some Rishis have stated that they wanted to experience the joy of being with the Bhagavan as a friend or a lover, these Rishis took birth as Gopis and Krishna came to engage with them. If Krishna therefore says that whenever Dharma declines, He will come to re-establish Dharma, only with this Dristi one needs to see the role played by Vishnu in our Puranas as a sustainer (or should we say balancer). The “variables” that need to be used to read our Itihasa or the Puranas are specific Vedic variables – the TriGuna, the Purusha – Prakriti interplay, the Karmendriyas, five Pranas, etc. Reading our Puranas with a Dristi that they are pop stories without a basic background of the Adhyatmic terminolgy is what makes one view Ramayana as a historical story or “mythology”; if however, read with a background of Adhyatmic terminology, these become Itihasa. There is a universal Absolute state; that is a Brahman state where Narayana is established in Vaikuntha or Devi in Manidweepa or Shiva in Kailasa – the Vedas or Sruti express their utterances or truths at this Absolute level. This is why Vedic students regard Sruti as eternal and unchangeable since they refer to events in the absolute realm. However, Smriti changes from time to time, place to place and person to person – Smriti is not eternal; it is temporal. To give a crude example, if one says that Sun shines, we may get arguments:

1. The Sun does not shine in the night time
2. The Sun does not appear on a cloudy day
3. The Sun shines only in the day time.

The above three states are also true; should we say “historical truths”. However, any student of science knows that the Sun always shines (and it is the earth movement that takes the sunshine away from us or towards us). In a crude way, we can thus say that the statement “Sun always shines” is the Sruti while the above three statements are historical truths that may be relevant at some time or place but are not eternal. To use complex English by Whithead to state how history becomes Itihasa – in the state of Itihasa, the three dimensional or spatio-temporal view of history gives way to truth of a UNIVERSAL situation which though it may appear as outside to individual observing centres, is involved in the very constitution of the observers, and hence incapable of observation at all.

Ramayana or Mahabharata (and many others) are often referred to as the fifth Veda. One wonders which one is the REAL 5^th Veda. If one is a student is history, one may choose one against the other based on a personal opinion and argue needlessly with the other. This line of argumentation misses the issue altogether. However, if one digs deeper, one knows that Sruti or the Vedas are eternal since they are established at a Universal Absolute level and not a lower “relative” level. A Rishi is always established at an Absolute level and hence their epics or Kavya or any other works are to be seen from the eye of the Absolute. Ramayana or Mahabharata must therefore be seen with these eyes and one must therefore see these epics as expression of the truths from the Absolute eye. As is commonly said, till the time Ramayana exists, the world will remain but once Ramayana is forgotten, there is no universe. This needs to be understood with the meaning that Ramayana conveying the vision of the Absolute always exists or operates within the universe. One can therefore gain the vision of the Vedic wisdom even if one approaches Ramayana with the same eye. Viewing Ramayana as a work of history may be compared to giving a book of science to a donkey – the problem is not with the book; the problem is with the donkey reading it. This is precisely the reason why the work of Adhyatma Ramayana came about – which expresses Ramayana from an Adhyatmic or Absolute perspective thus taking us deeper into the core of the text as a Sadhaka instead of someone wearing a lower “historical” lens. Any book thus written (even the works of a non-Indian seer like Rumi, for example) may thus be taken as the fifth Veda if the Vedic Dristi is adopted by the seer. Even today, if one hears Ramayana or Mahabharata from a learned Guru (not an academic professor of a University), every story is conveyed from three states of being – Adhibhautika, Adhidaivika or Adhyatmika. One needs to learn about Ramayana from such people and not people who are untrained or unfamiliar with this multiple realms.

Universe is to be seen as a connected process and not a collocation of isolated objects hanging in space. No one thing or event can be said to be the cause of another thing or event, for, in an unbroken process, every part has to pervade and penetrate every other part, so that everything in it becomes a cause as well as an effect. We may say that it is the Sun which shines that enables the Sunrays to touch the surface of the earth as well as our lives. Question that comes up is – Is the Sun a cause and Sunrays an effect? At what precise stage does the “Sun” end and “Sunrays” begin? One may say that the core upto a certain concentration is the Sun and beyond it is the Sunrays. A quick deep relook at this statement makes this artificial distinction or categorization ridiculous. There is no place the sun is not there; we can actually state that the Earth itself is fully within the Sun. There are no Sunrays – there is only Sun everywhere. Similarly, our Vedas say, Brahman is everywhere. As Krishna says in the Gita:

“Whatever being (and objects) that are pure, active and inert, know them to proceed from Me; yet, I am not in them, they are in Me. I am the Father of this World, the Mother, the supporter and grandsire; the one Thing to be known, the Purifier..” “I am the Goal, the Supporter, the Lord, the Witness, the Abode, the Shelter, the Friend, the Origin, the Dissolution, the Foundation, the Treasure House and the Seed Imperishable”.

“He who sees Me everywhere and sees everything in Me; he never gets separated from Me, nor do I get separated from him”.

The statement – “The Sun Shines” is not a statement of history though the Sun indeed shone in the past too. It is true or eternal in the past, present as well as the future. Ramayana is also be viewed as eternal in this sense. In the Ramayana or the Mahabharata, Narayana is regarded in the same way as Brahman in the Vedanta or Parama Shiva in the Puranas. If one regards Narayana as separate from Shiva, one is naïve and fully mistaken but instead one goes into the meaning of these names and sees these as one Absolute state, there is no difference. One must therefore necessarily have an Adhyatmic eye when one reads the Ramayana rather than the historical eye. The name SHIVA appears in the VISHNU SAHASRANAMA and VISHNU appears in the SHATARUDRIYAM. When thus one reads the Srimad Bhagatwad Purana on the story of Kamsa, one hears Adhyatmic Gurus explaining the same event from (at least) three perspectives:

1. Kamsa kept on ill-treating his subjects as well as making continuous efforts to find Krishna and kill him. When the right age came, Krishna Himself came to Mathura and killed Kamsa to help the world rid of the evil king.
2. While fear was the motive, there was no night when Kamsa was not thinking about Krishna. Thus, Kamsa indulged in Krishna Bhakti and even though this was done since he was overcome with fear, Krishna graced Kamsa and liberated him by killing him.
3. Kamsa and Shishupala are no one else but the doorkeepers of Nayarana in the Vaikunta – Jaya and Vijaya. These doorkeepers were cursed by Sanatkumara to be born on Earth but were given two options – one to lead countless lives on Earth and then return to Vaikunta after a long time or to take short three births as enemies of Narayana but return to Vaikunta quickly. Krishna therefore killed Kamsa to liberate him from the Upadhi of Kamsa and pave way for his return back to Vaikuntha.

When one reads the original Valmiki Ramayana, one is struck by the numerous occasions Ravana encounters Sri Mahavishnu – these episodes come in the Uttarakanda. It becomes evident that not only was Ravana creating enmity to the world to ensure that Narayana comes quickly to him, even Narayana is equally keen that Ravana comes unto HIM. As people may know, in the Tretaguga, Jaya and Vijaya were born as Ravana and Kumbhakarana.

One can go on and on. Our normal senses cannot observe the deeper purpose in the Universe. However, all of evolution is directed towards the WILL of the Absolute; this is the vision with which our Sanskrit sacred texts were written. Every event is a universal event and is valid to the whole cosmos. The past, present and future have no absolute determinations of their own. An event may have a different significance altogether with a different space-time meaning in some other framework of reference. What is past need not be necessarily past for everyone, and this law applies to the present and future, also. Any event taken by itself and at a given moment of time may belong either to the past, present or future according to the space-time coordinate from which it is viewed. From the point of view of the Reality behind the Universe, an event is a universal process inseparable from the consciousness in which it occurs. Space-time is a relation and not existence. This world of space-time in which we live is not the only possible one, for there can be as many worlds, with as many space-times, as there are frames of reference or modes of consciousness. Our world-history, therefore, need not be an ultimate reality. When subjected to critical analysis, the reality of the historical existence of things, as we conceive it, vanishes like mist before the sun.

Often, a silly controversy keeps erupting – whether Valmiki Ramayana alone is true or whether all the Ramayanas are true. I can come up with a counter-question –  Is the view of Ramachandra Guru on Nerhu true or is the version by Arun Shourie true or a book on Nehru by some communist person true? How do we choose one over the other? It becomes obvious that each person looks at Nehru from a different Dristi. Most of the authors are themselves subsumed within these lens and are therefore unable to understand the impact of these lens as they formulate their Dristi. We are therefore forced to conclude that all the versions are true IF SEEN FROM THE SPECIFIC DRISTI OR LENS ADOPTED BY THE RELEVANT AUTHORS. Therefore similarly, such a Ramayana is to be deemed as true if it is written by a duly inspired Rishi who is authoring the Kavya from an ABSOLUTE lens. Therefore, while Valmiki Ramayana is the original Adikava where Brahma had expressly stated that whatever Valmiki writes is indeed true and authentic, one may resort to Tulsidas or Kamban also as true if seen from the Absolute lens. However, if someone like me or Sheldon Pollock or Ramachandra Guha writes on Ramayana, if my lens is not that of the absolute, I cannot claim that my Ramayana is true though I can probably say that my Ramayana is true from a secular Dristi or a feminist Dristi or communist Dristi. However, a Ramayana from a communist lens is useless to an Adhyatma oriented person; such books will therefore not last as long as that of Valmiki or Tulsidas or Kamban because what lasts is Sruti and not history. So a natural question will be – how does one distinguish between the author who adopts the Sruti style versus a lower lens? One will be forced to concede – one should listen about Ramayana or read about Ramayana only from an author who is himself well versed with the Vedic truths or at least has sympathy for the Vedic truths (even though he may not be blessed with such a vision). One may respond – this is unfair. Why should one know the Vedas to learn about Ramayana? One may have to give a counter-response – why should one learn about Marxism to understand the mind of Ramachandra Guha or some other “ism” to learn about Ramayana written by people who write with such “ism” in mind? One is thus forced to concede that if we are fine with Ramayana by Valmiki or Kalidasa or Kamban but not Ramayana by Hitler (sic), it is because our interest in Ramayana is to expand ourselves to the realm of the Absolute and not from a lower political lens. The answer to the question as to which Ramayana is true needs to factor the Dristi perspective rather than the binary vision that one sees being played out in Television channels or news articles on this point.

Is God a historical person? Perhaps the reason why His existence is being denied is because His being cannot be subjected to test of empirical history. Is the world or the universe to be regarded as a historical entity? The perception of Valmiki and Vyasa ranged beyond the empirical view of history and looked at the universe from the point of view of being qua being. The Sages sang the history of the cosmos, which an uninitiated mind cannot comprehend. Any attempt by the layman to probe into their implications would be like a science student of a secondary school trying to read the discoveries of Einstein for himself and understand them. No one who is incapable of a universal perspective of things can appreciate the truths presented in these Epics, which proclaim to the world the outer meaning of the inner reality revealed in the Upanishads.  The history of a thing is not what happens to that thing in a particular country or village, but what it is in creation as a totality. We do not exist merely in a country; we exist in the cosmos. That some of us  are  visitors,  some  are pilgrims, some have arrived from foreign countries, and some have this or that character, quality or duty, is a description of our personalities; but we are all more than this descriptive form. Our status in the cosmos is our true history, and no study of a person can be complete or be free from doubt unless it is studied from the cosmical standpoint. Taking things bit by bit, in isolation, is not the method of a true historical study. The biography of a person, at least according to the viewpoint of seers like Vyasa, should include the story of body, mind and spirit together, and not merely of the sociological existence of the body. As our social relations today touch all nations, our spirits touch all the planes of being. This is the wider view of history, in which questions like “Did Krishna exist?” cannot arise. When creation is taken in its total perspective, everything in it becomes a historical reality.

To study universal history we require a different apparatus of understanding from that we need when we read European and Indian history. If, as the poet said, we cannot touch a flower in our garden without disturbing a star in the heavens, no one’s reality can be evaluated without reference to his wider meaning in the cosmos. This is true not only of human beings but also of the smallest atom in the world or the gods in Paradise.   Apart from this inner truth of history and the reality of a person from this standpoint, there is nothing to disprove the historical existence of the important personalities of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata even from the point of view of our own physical view of earthly history. That we have no means to adduce as proof of their existence need not imply that they did not walk on this earth at some distant date.

 

OM TAT SAT!!!!!