Alain Daniélou - The Myths and Gods of India: The Classic Work on Hindu Polytheism

Viu sleeping on the serpent ea
Davatra temple, Deogah (Central India), 7th century

I WISH TO EXPRESS MY
GRATITUDE TO

Pandit N. Ramachandra Bhatt

FOR HIS CONSTANT AND UNTIRING HELP IN THE LATER STAGES OF THE PREPARATION OF THIS WORK AND FOR HIS MOST VALUABLE CRITICISMS AND SUGGESTIONS

'The One without color appears

by the manifold application of his power

with many colors in his hidden purpose.

May the Being of Splendor in whom the world dissolves

and from whom it rises

grant us a clear understanding.

He is Agni, the lord-of-fire,

and he is the Sun, and the Wind, and Moon.

He is the Seed, the Immense-Being,

He is the Lord-of-Progeny.

You are woman, and you are man,

You are the youth andthe maiden,

and the old man tottering with a staff.

You are born again facing all directions.

You are the bluely and the red-eyed parrot,

the cloud pregnant with lightning.

You are the seasons and the seas,

the Beginningless, the AbidingLord

from whom the spheres are born.

vetvatara Upaniad 4.14. [1]

FOREWORD

This study of Hindu mythology is not an exhaustive one. It is a mere attempt at explaining the significance of the most prominent Hindu deities in the way in which they are envisaged by the Hindus themselves.

The mystery of creation and the destiny of man can be approached from various points of view. All religions are based on cosmological and metaphysical theories attempting to offer some explanation of the riddle of the universe. The complexity of Hindu polytheism is mainly due to the number of attempts at explaining in different ways the universal laws and the nature of the all-pervading principles from which the universe may appear to have arisen.

The names of the deities and the forms of the symbols used to represent universal principles have changed whenever this could help to make these principles more easily grasped. Historical iconography can, therefore, in no way be taken to represent the development of Hindu religious ideas. The apparent origins of the various gods and the histories of their names should not be taken as indisputable evidence of an evolution in religious ideas.

The outlook of modern people is, in the main, analytical. It tends to differentiate and isolate the various elements, religious, social, philosophical, which have combined to give its present form to the Hindu pantheon. The Hindu approach, on the other hand, being basically cosmological, tries to find an equivalent, a sort of legal precedent in its own tradition, for any new idea or system which it wants to understand or assimilate. Thus the Western approach tends to present us with a clear picture of original systems which become confused and mixed in the mass of Hindu thought, while the Hindu approach wants us to see a coherent, all-inclusive, ever-evolving knowledge with its roots in ancient systems which tried to express, more or less successfully, the complex structure of the cosmos, a structure which came to be better and better analyzed in the elaborate mythology of the later ages.

The word "Hindu," used for convenience, can be misleading, for it may convey the idea that Hinduism belongs to a country, to a particular human group, to a particular time. Hinduism, according to Hindu tradition and belief, is the remnant of a universal store of knowledge which, at one time, was accessible to the whole of mankind. It claims to represent the sum of all that has come to be known to man through his own effort or through revelation from the earliest age of his existence.

The development of the mutually exclusive creeds which now claim membership of the greater number of human beings seems to be, in the Hindu view, a comparatively recent phenomenon, which appeared only during the Kl Yuga, the "Age of Conflicts." Whatever value we attribute to more recent religions, we should not attempt to equate Hinduism with them. Hinduism cannot be opposed to any creed, to any prophet, to any incarnation, to any way of realization, since one of its fundamental principles is to acknowledge them all and many more to come.

Hinduism, or rather the "eternal religion" (santana dharma), as it calls itself, recognizes for each age and each country a new form of revelation and for each man, according to his stage of development, a different path of realization, a different mode of worship, a different morality, different rituals, different gods.

The duty of the man of knowledge, of the realized being, is to teach to a worthy student what he has himself experienced and nothing more. He cannot claim that his is the only truth, because he cannot know what may be true to others. He cannot claim his way to be the only way, for the number of ways leading from the relative to the absolute is infinite. The teacher expounds what he knows and must leave the seeker to make his own discoveries, to find the path of his own development, for which each individual can be responsible finally only to himself.

There is therefore little room in Hinduism for dogmas, for proselytism, for set rules of behavior. Although the practice of certain virtues or restrictions may be, in many cases, a useful instrument of self-development, none can set a norm for others to follow. The rules of morality are a matter of social convenience, but have little to do with spiritual development. They can be mixed up with spiritual values only in religious creeds the main purpose of which is to codify the rules of conduct of a particular group, or race, or culture, whose "god" is a tribal chief enforcing a human code of behavior with superhuman threats. The multiplicity of such "gods" in a polytheistic system, which ever opposes one divinity to another, has been a useful instrument in preventing the social code of human action from taking the place of the search for a higher truth. In this respect many of the civilized nations of today are just as primitive in their beliefs and in the picture of the "god" who guides their wars and approves of their social habits and prejudices as are the most primitive tribes of India. To them the message of Hindu polytheism can be one of tolerance and understanding.

THERE ARE some Hindu deities whose symbolism is not clear to me. I could not trace with certainty the tradition of their significance; available ancient texts and modem studies only mention their myths.

In such cases, and so as not to leave out entirely some important divinities, I have merely given a description of the form of the deity and a brief summary of the myth. This, however, creates an incomplete and eventually misleading picture. More contacts with the living pandits in the different parts of India may allow us one day to find the key to their significance.

I have written a French version of this book which differs from the English version in minor points. It is also less complete, containing only a few photographs and no index. It was published in Paris in 1960 by Buchet/Chastel under the title Le Polythisme Hindou.

Throughout the text, numbers in brackets [ ] following the quotations translated from the Sanskrit refer to the Devanagari transcripts given in the appendix.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

All the plates are reproduced from photographs by Raymond Burnier. References are given to the pages on which the subjects represented are mentioned Or discussed. Plates 132 follow p. 192.