WERE ALL OUR SAGES REALLY GREAT?
(Gujarati version at ઋષિ મુનિઓની મહાનતા?)
Suppose one wants to spread a good or bad opinion among the public about someone, what is an easy effective way? If a target Ms. X is to be favored, keep using very good adjectives about her whenever mentioning her. If a Mr. Y is to be denounced, use many bad adjectives before his name. No proof for the adjectives is required. Avoid making any statement about his actions because a proof may be required. For verifying the validity of the adjectives about a person, one should look at his or her deeds. This is an attempt to do so.
The above observation applies to our sages too. Their ‘greatness’ is invariably mentioned whenever there is a reference to them. Not all of them were great. Many gave us the excellent philosophy that does not exist in most other religions. Some were so great that they did not mention their names. For example, the author of Ishavasya Upanishad, which is like the foundation stone of Hinduism, was so modest and detached that his (or her) name is not known. However, some others craved to become famous and called great. They did use the above tactic. Emulating the saying अहो रूपं अहो ध्वनि: (two donkeys praising each other’s beauty and voice!) they kept praising each other thereby misleading the populace into believing that they were all very great. Let us examine their ‘greatness’ without getting awestruck by the propaganda in their favor.
How did all these sages become great? Some of them did ‘tapasya’ by pursuing very ridiculous methods. One very great rishi even hanged himself upside down from a tree for many years. Lord Shiva was pleased and asked him his wish. He did not ask, “Dear rishi, had Brahma intended you to hang upside down, would not he have made you a bat? In what way did your hanging benefit anyone to deserve my granting you a wish?”. But as a people we are so naive and childish that we accept such stories as true and keep singing laurels of the rishis’ greatness.
The worst disservice by the entire rishi group to Hindu society is through astrology. The very idea that inanimate lifeless planets can determine the fate of live humans is ridiculous. But our ‘great’ sages made all of us the slaves to the astrologists. They made us seek astrologists’ advice before starting any task providing a good source of income for them. Two of the nine planets of Hindu astrology, Rahu and Ketu, do not exist. They only represent the location of the umbra where the shadows of the earth and the Moon converge. How can they hurt us? But the rishis made us fear them so that we pay the priests to perform rituals to avoid the hurt. Moreover, there is no mention of three really existing planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Sun and Moon are not even planets but they are considered so in Hindu astrology!
Another fraud started by the rishis and perpetuated by the astrologists is the matching of the horoscopes of proposed bride and groom. How can someone believe that total strangers can be happily wed if their horoscopes match but youngsters familiar with each other for years would be unhappy if their horoscopes do not match? More perturbing is their belief that if the planet Mars is in a certain house in the horoscope of a person, he or she can marry only one with similar ‘shortcoming’. Is there any count of how many lives have been ruined by such belief of the astrologists?
The most ridiculous ritual is ‘grah-shanti’ (the ritual to avoid any possible ill-effects of some graha i.e. planets). How can one accept that a ‘harmful’ planet can be made to stop hurting the host family just by chanting of a few Sanskrit verses (mantra) by a priest doing so only to receive his fee? And yet, that ritual is required to be performed before all events thereby generating fees for the priests. If at all such puja is effective, why can it not remedy the ill effects of Mars so that a person with hurtful Mars can marry one without it? Astrological predictions may occasionally turn out correct but the steps to prevent possible ill effects on unfavorable planets can only be fraudulent.
The rishi group started many bad rituals and pujas. Satyanarayana puja is nothing but deal-making. The person promises God to perform that puja if He fulfills the request asked for. God, in turn, punishes that person if he or she does not perform the puja by sending him to prison, making the husband invisible etc. How childish!
It is said that जन्मना जायते शूद्र: संस्कारात् द्विज उच्यते meaning everyone is borne a Shudra i.e. the lowest caste but becomes a Brahmin by ‘sanskar’. The word ‘sanskar’ normally means character. One would therefore expect the youngster to have high character to be considered a Brahmin. No. Here, the rishis changed the meaning of that word to mean rituals. They prescribed sixteen rituals from birth to death. Some of them for trivial events like feeding the child solid food for the first time. Even cutting the child’s hair for the first time requires a ritual! And the ritual of yagnopavit was considered enough for the teenager to be considered a Brahmin even if he turns out a miscreant, like Ashvatthama, in his later life.
Not only there are the sixteen rituals, but also their procedures are very lengthy. Particularly, the wedding procedure has so many steps from the beginning to the end that one would get tired. Starting from the erection of the pandal (open tent called mandap) to its dismantling, one has to perform them at the auspicious moment only and keep paying the fees to the priests. The hosts end up spending a lot. One of the reasons of the lesser incidence of divorce among Hindus may be that the parties want to avoid all this headache and expenses.
Rishis have hurt the population in another way. They created so many festivals that each week there is at least one festival if not two or three. Each one requires special puja procedure. The priests get continuous sources of income and meals without concern about the hosts’ finances. These festivals cause holidays from work adding to peoples’ idleness. There are different holidays for birth dates of Ram, Krishna, Parshuram, Buddha etc. even though they are only incarnations of the same Lord Vishnu. Cannot all of them be celebrated on one common day?
Thirdly, the rishis strengthened our fondness for miracles. It is natural for common people to get impressed by miracles. But leaders like the rishis who professed to be looking after the well-being of the public should have abstained from them and also guarded the public against the claims of miracles. On the contrary, these ‘great’ rishis claimed to perform miracles and showered other miracle workers with abundant praises. Other religions also pay importance to miracles but do we have to be as naïve as them?
Another misconception prevalent among us is that miracles that are not possible at present times were possible in the old ages, particularly in ‘satyug’. Can it be accepted that not only the scientific laws get altered with time but also the norms of humanitarian behavior too? For example, slavery has now been abolished. Whereas our ancient predecessors used to own slaves and treated them inhumanely in the name of religion. Our religious lecturers do not get tired of praising King Harishchandra, known as ‘satyavadi’ i.e. upholder of truth, for his misdeed of selling his queen as a slave. Draupadi was safe until she was a queen. Once she was dethroned to become a maid, attempt to disrobe her openly in the court of King Dhritrashtra was considered permissible under religious dictates. There are many cases in our Puranas of inhuman treatment of slaves. Haven’t we reformed a lot by now?
There appear a few verses in Agatsya Samhita describing how someone had generated electricity and used it to separate Hydrogen and Oxygen from water. This invention stopped there because our predecessors back then were preoccupied with achieving salvation only. No one encouraged the experimenter to pursue it for the benefit of the society. How much good would it have brought to the people! But our rishis kept using only their imagination to impress the listeners. Those who could not even make a bicycle spread stories of air planes; those who did not know spectacles kept claiming to have performed microsurgery!
The rishis created the epics and the Puranas. They spread these stories full of useless unbelievable miracles and many internal contradictions in the name of religion. Whether the characters of these stories were real or imaginary is debatable. It is not necessary to prove or disprove them. The question should be, ‘Were the actions of the heroes like Ram, Krishna and leaders like Bhishma and Yudhishthira worth praising or emulating?’. Certainly not. Even if they did really exist, weren’t the Rishis their advisers and guides? Why did not they provide good advice? On the other hand, if they were imaginary, why could not the authors write/create better stories? No, they could not have done so because their mindset was such that Shudras and women deserved to be ill-treated with insults, hate and injustices. Women were treated like things. Let alone stories, even a serious discourse such as Manusmriti clearly depicts the low mentality of the rishis. For example, there was a question as to whether the husband or the lover of a married woman should be considered the father of a child borne by her to her lover. The book answers the question by comparing her to a plot of land. “Just as the crop of a field belongs to the owner and not to the person who sows seeds there, the husband is the father of the out of wedlock child.” So, the wife is to be treated like a lifeless thing like land. This is why when Shantanu’s sons died childless, their sons were borne by niyoga. Manusmriti prescribed different punishments for rape; a Shudra raping a Brahmin woman would be killed, a Brahmin raping a Shudra woman got ‘slap on the wrist’ type mild punishment.
Let us now see the deeds of some rishis.
The story of the birth of Vasishtha is like this. The Sungod was having a yagya. Why would someone who is himself burning need to perform any yagya? Who went there to attend it? Agni and Varuna; one ignites the other extinguishes! There they saw the very beautiful apsara Rambha, lost self-control and had involuntary ejaculations. The semen fell on the earth, not in any woman’s vagina but in an earthen pot. The child that was so born was Vasishtha. Did not the two gods wear any clothes? If not, why not? If they did, how could semen fall to the earth? Such ridiculous stories appear in Vedas. Is that why they are called the words of God?
This rishi Vasishtha was so ‘great’ that another one sage Vishvamitra wanted to be called a Brahmarshi by him. He was not doing so. Enraged, Vishvamitra killed a hundred sons (or disciples) of Vasishtha, and also tried to drown him by tricking him. Yet, Vasishtha pardoned him. One moonlit night, Vishvamitra went to the hut of Vasishtha with a sword, to kill the latter. Vasishtha saw him. Cleverly, he told his wife Arundhati loudly for Vishvamitra to hear that the moonlight was due to the spiritual light emanating from Vishvamitra but he did not call Vishvamitra a Brahmarshi because the latter had not given up his ego. On overhearing this, Vishvamitra touched the feet of Vasishtha and apologized. Then only did Vasishtha call him a Brahmarshi. Vishvamitra had not done anything that would earn him that title except that he just satisfied the ego of Vasishtha. Was not the ego of Vasishtha, who preached others to give up their ego, was so large?
This was the same Vishvamitra who was so inhuman and irresponsible as to abandon a newborn baby (later known as Shakuntala) in a forest without protection. He harrassed King Harishchandra over and over for no reason. He had the audacity to send Trishanku to heaven but failed and then left him hanging between the earth and heaven. He tried to develop a different species of humans with three eyes but had to give up after making the coconut. He failed in all his endeavors.
The sage Gautam punished his wife Ahalya for the fault to Indra. Durvasa went on cursing others wherever he went.
There are many such examples. It is not the intent here to make a comprehensive list of all the misdeeds of all the rishis. Suffice it to say that not all the rishis were great and praiseworthy. Not all the traditions started by them are beneficial to the society. We should discontinue those that are hurtful and save only those that are useful.
Correction:
I have been criticizing sage Vishwamitra for having abandoned his just born infant daughter, later named Shakuntala, born to Menaka. It is based on the famous painting by Ravi Varma showing him in such an act. www.findmessages.com/did-you-know-why-rishi-vishwamitra-was-rejected-his-daughter-shakuntala I tried to verify that from reliable sources. I found that Valmiki Ramayana mentions his spending ten years with Menaka out of wedlock. But there is no mention of a child. The Mahabharata covers their staying together unwed and Menaka having a daughter by him before returning to heaven having fulfilled the instruction of Indra. But it was she who left the baby in a dense forest without entrusting her to any human. Whether the sage knew it or not is not mentioned.
In view of the foregoing, I withdraw my criticism of the sage regarding ignoring Shakuntala's safety.