Gods and their Assignments.

The Hindu pantheon of gods consists of a vast number of gods and goddesses. The primary concept of God in Hinduism, as spelt out in Vedic scriptures, is that of the One and Only ultimate Truth which is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient, the all-pervading, all-powerful, all-knowing force or energy which governs the entire universe. However as the Vedas say, “Ekam Sath Vipraah Bahudhaa Vadhanti”, meaning that the Absolute Truth is only one, but the learned people call IT by various names. Why?

The main problem seems to be that the human mind, in the case of the general multitude of people, is unable to conceive of such an all-embracing energy which remains invisible in the background but carries out all the activities like creating the entire universe, making everything work in unison according to certain set rules, and periodically causing them to be destroyed and recreated. The human mind can more readily understand and accept the physically formed administrative structure consisting of the King with his council of ministers and numerous other officials, or a corporate structure with a Managing Director assisted by various managers and other officials and workers to make the company perform properly its functions like producing the goods and services and supplying them to the customers. So there has to be some “persons” in charge of creating/generating, operating/preserving/maintaining, and destroying/regenerating the various things in the universe. Some interpretations define the term ‘GOD’ itself to represent Generator, Operator and Destroyer. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva were conceptualised for this purpose.

Well, does the matter end there? No. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva alone, by themselves, cannot be trusted to do everything that we humans as well as the animals, birds and marine creatures need to live on this earth, just like the Chairman and Managing Director cannot act in a vacuum without other managers and executives to carry out the jobs further. They need assistants to do the work. Having been born on this earth, we need something to eat to survive, grow and perform our various activities. The earth has to produce things for us to eat. Bhudevi or Bhoomadevi or Mother Earth was entrusted with that job. But earth by itself cannot produce the vegetables and fruits and so on, without proper heat and synthesizing energy. The Sun God fitted the role. Well, is heat and light alone adequate? Water is also an essential requirement. Varuna Bhaghavan stepped into that role. However, after a hard day’s work, we human beings need something to cool us down. The Moon God came in for that. We need air to breath as well as some nice breeze to make us comfortable. There we have Vayu Bhaghavan. Don’t we need fire for cooking our food? Agni Bhagavan is there for us. Continuing along the same lines, we have Saraswati as Goddess of learning, knowledge and fine arts like song and dance, Lakshmi as Goddess of wealth and Parvathi/Durga/Sakthi as Goddess of power, and many others.

Of course we humans are experts in preparing administrative structures, or Organisation Charts, and assigning tasks to various gods and goddesses. But do they conform to the system designed by us and act out their roles according to that? It does not seem so. It looks like it is much more chaotic in their world than in ours, and they violate the borders and meddle in someone else’s jurisdiction left, right and centre. For a start, even though the preservation/maintenance job assigned to God Vishnu should naturally include the health aspects of the people, for some reason God Shiva has been given the name of Vaidyanatha, the Lord of healing. In addition Dhanvantri, who appeared carrying the pot of nectar out of the churning of the milky ocean, is considered as the physician of the gods, and hence the chief healer of all creation too. But we find other contenders too for this job of healing.

Let us take a detailed look at the royal, or Divine, mess that has been created.

Take the case of Goddess Lakshmi for a start. In her avatar as Ashta Lakshmi she has grabbed eight roles for herself. As Dhana Lakshmi, the bestower of money and gold, she is into her primary task as the giver of wealth. As Dhanya Lakshmi, the goddess of grains, she takes charge of all agricultural produce including vegetables and fruits and so on, which are all primarily the responsibility of Bhudevi or Mother Earth who brings them all out of her bowels. As Gaja Lakshmi, where gaja the elephant stands for the animal world, she is the one who populates the world with all animals, which brings her into direct clash with Brahma who is supposed to be the creator. As Santaana Lakshmi, the bestower of progeny or off-spring, she is again into conflict with Brahma. As Veera Lakshmi, she claims a double role of providing people with good health (for which already Vishnu, Shiva and Dhanvantri are in contention) as a necessary precondition for equiping them with valour and courage, which is essentially the job of Shakthi/Durga/Parvathi. As Vidhya Lakshmi, she spreads knowledge, education in all aspects, arts, sciences, including fine arts like music and dance, all of which belong in the domain of Saraswati. As Vijaya Lakshmi, she is the giver of victory, not just in battles in the war-front but against all sorts of hurdles in one’s life. Isn’t she again in conflict with Shakthi/Durga/Parvathi? Then finally as Adhi Lakshmi, the Primeval Lakshmi, she goes overboard claiming superiority over all the above Lakshmis, and by extension, over all the gods/goddesses with their allotted duties in the Organisation Chart. She is not totally out of justification though, as each and every one of the topics considered above is an aspect of wealth.

Healing

Let us take the case of healing. Generally when we, Hindus, take our medicines, we are supposed to recite a sloka which ends with “Vaidhyo Narayano Hari”, which means Hari, Narayana, Vishnu is our physician. But as we have already seen, two more contenders have come into the picture, namely Shiva and Dhanvantri, apart from Lakshmi as we saw above. Are there any more gods in the fray? In comes Lord Subrahmanya or Kartikeya or Swaminatha, to mention only three of his names. The sloka in praise of Subrahmanya which starts as “Hey Swaminathartha bandho” carries plenty of passages with this theme. “Roudra rogam harathwam” means one who kills even severe diseases. “Maam paahi rogaath agorath” – please protect me from severe illnesses. “Sadhu sangasya rogaan sadha samharantham” – one who is busy all the time destroying the illnesses of pious disciples. Of course Dakshinamurthy being one aspect of Shiva must be expected to be proficient in healing as Shiva is Vaidyanatha. It is confirmed by the following hymn in praise of Dakshinamurthy which says:

Guravae sarvalokaanaam,

Bishajae bhavaroginaam,

Nidhayae sarvavidhyaanaam,

Dakshinamurthaye namah.

It means salutations to Lord Dakshinamurthy who is the Guru or preceptor for all people of the earth, physician for all diseased persons and is the treasure-house of all knowledge. Well, well, his being the physician for all ill persons is quite fine. But is he not crossing the borders, and trespassing on someone else’s territory when described as teacher of all people, and depository of all knowledge? Brahma whose four faces are said to represent the four Vedas, the sources of all knowledge which He Himself created, should be the logical repository of all knowledge. Similarly Saraswati, Brahma’s consort, is said to be in charge of all learning, wisdom, knowledge. How come Dakshinamurthy is described as the storehouse of all learning, as well as the Guru of all people? This gives rise to the question of how many gods are involved in this field of knowledge, education, learning and fine arts like music and dancing.

Education

Of course for a start we have Goddess Saraswati to whom everybody prays for proficiency in any field of knowledge like literature, science and technology, secular as well as spiritual knowledge and also fine arts like music and dancing. But even Saraswati cannot succeed in filling one with knowledge and wisdom unless one has initially propitiated the elephant-faced god Ganapathi or Ganesa in the form of Vidya Ganapathi. Of course no enterprise of any kind can succeed without invoking the Grace of Ganapathi or Vigna Vinayaka. Then in comes a familiar face, Subrahmanya, who has already poked his nose in the healing field. The same sloka cited earlier has some passages like “Brahmaadayo asya sishyaah” (Brahma and other gods are your disciples) and “Omkara tatwam vadantham Sambhu karne” (who taught the essential principle and significance of the primordial sound ‘OM’ in the ears of His father Shiva). Not to be outdone, Shiva himself as Dakshinamurthy is said to be “Guravae Sarva Lokaanaam” meaning the preceptor for all the people of this world. Hayagriva is an important deity in the Vaishnava tradition and is considered as an aspect of Vishnu. Depicted with a human body and horse’e head, he is also worshipped as the God of knowledge and wisdom. He is generally depicted as Lakshmi-Hayagriva with Lakshmi as his consort. However, to my knowledge, in at least one temple in South India he is paired with Saraswati as His consort. What a logical representation, both standing for knowledge and wisdom! Then of course Bhagavan Vishnu’s credentials as a great dispenser of knowledge is beyond question as it was He, in His avatar as Krishna, who taught the Art of Living to everyone in the form of Bhagavad Gita.

Of course learning is not restricted to the literary field alone but embraces music and dance as well. Saraswati is always shown as playing the veena. But as far as I know, She is never shown in a dancing pose. That is reserved for Shiva as Nataraja, the king of dance. Ganesa too is depicted as Narthana Ganapathi in many temples in South India. Can we ever think of the flute without immediately thinking of Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu?

Destruction

Shiva is said to be the God of Destruction. By destruction it is not meant to be the final annihilation and total devastation after which nothing exists any more. Destruction is followed by reconstruction and rejuvenation. This is not a difficult concept to understand. Our own physical body consists of millions and billions of cells. The cells one has today are not the same as what one had at birth, and will not be the same at the time one comes to the end of life. Every day thousands and thousands of cells in our body die and new cells are created. In a sense we die to some extent everyday and are regenerated. The same thing happens with towns and cities all over the world over a period of time as archaeology tells us. In World War II London, Berlin, Hamburg and many more cities in Europe were destroyed and then were rebuilt with much superior town-planning with much better facilities. The ultimate destruction took place in Hiroshima and Nagasaki which were devastated by two atom bombs thrown at them by the Americans. Today they are totally new, very vibrant communities. The same thing seems to happen in a much greater scale to the entire world, and the universe. But Shiva does not seem to have any monopoly in this destruction business.

The Dasavathara stories tell us that Vishnu periodically appears in the earth whenever demons proliferate and threaten the entire creation. He destroys the demons and protects the poor suffering mankind and reestablishes the just rule of law. This is what Krishna specifically says in the Bhagawad Gita. But are Shiva and Vishnu alone in this activity? We have Krishna’s consort Satyabhama destroying Narakaasura, Parvathi as Kali or Durga destroying Mahishaasura and so on. In any picture or idol of Kali/Durga/Shakthi, the Goddess is shown standing on the head of Mahishaasura or buffalo-headed demon. Similarly the idol of the dancing Shiva as well as Dakshinamurthy show the right foot of the God trampling a demon called Apasmara. These representations take us back to the topic of education.

The buffalo is eminently noted for its brute force coupled with brainlessness and thoughtlessness. Apasmara represents ignorance or non-learning or negative learning, which translates to qualities like lust, hatred, miserliness, greed, arrogance and so on (kama, kroda, lobha, moha, madha, matsarya) which leads people to behave like demons and cause great havoc to society. Demons are not a separate species with horns and other appendages as depicted in pictures. We see them daily in our own lives in the form of corruption-ridden politicians, profiteers, drug and hooch peddlers, arms dealers and all such anti-social characters. The destructive aspect of God is seen when casualties on a mass scale take place in events like wars in which a big bunch of such ‘demons’ get eliminated along with a large chunk of apparently innocent folks too, which leaves a sobering effect on the rest of the people so that they tend to go straight for a while before the cycle starts again.

Wearing different hats.

The concept of wearing different hats is quite familiar in the corporate sector now-a-days. The Chairman-cum-Managing Director of a company has to wear different hats when he interacts with different departments of his company, like the research scientists, design/development engineers, production personnel, marketing and sales folks, purchase department, finance and accounts staff, customer care and so on. He has to deal with the different set of concerns and problems each one of these activities has, and strike a balance between all of them to ensure cohesive functioning of the enterprise. He is said to wear a different hat when dealing with each one of them.

How an ordinary working woman is involved in such a situation is brought out very well in the blog reproduced below.

Blog on Relationships and the Different Hats We Wear

12 May 2008

By Dr. KC Kelly, Ph.D., LMHC

http://DOCintheBiz.com (http://docinthebiz.com/blog/relationships-and-the-different-hats-we-wear/)

“We all have many different relationships in our lives. Each one is unique and all of them are ones in which we “wear different hats”.

“Let’s say a woman is a mother, daughter, sister, wife, friend, co-worker, and teacher. That’s an awful lot of hats to wear!

“As we know from our wonderful William Shakespeare, “All the world’s a stage” and this woman mentioned above certainly takes on WELL more than five completely distinct roles. Even within her classroom and with her co-workers, she maintains different rapports with each and every person. She will certainly act differently with the principal of the school than she will with any of her students. Even each student sees a varied side of her personality as she shares connections with each one differently.

“So, let’s quickly follow her day. When she leaves work (her 25 or so students and all her co-workers from other teachers to administrators), she may stop at the small convenience store and converse with the same lady who checks her out each time she’s there. She then goes home and calls and relates to her mother, sister, and perhaps a friend or two. Her three children enter the home from their day at school and she spends time with them. Then when her husband arrives home from work, she will spend her time with him as well. I felt amazed when I actually began to think about how much of ourselves we exert and give to others in a single day!

“Doesn’t it almost seem as though we have to maintain MANY separate and distinct personalities to have all the different relationships we have in our lives? But somehow, we remain ourselves and all the different facets of what make us who we are shine through and make us the person we need to be for all these important people in our life.

“Each relationship we have demands and necessitates different requirements from us. Many times we find ourselves juggling our emotions and our time. The key to staying fulfilled and whole ourselves is to learn how to maintain balance in trying to make time for everyone in our lives and make them happy. All the while, we must learn our limitations, when to say no, and take care of our own needs. We need this inner strength and fortitude to be able to keep giving to the countless people with whom we are in relationships. This does not make us selfish; it makes us emotionally healthy!”

This is the situation of an ordinary woman who may have to deal with a 50 or 100 or so people on a day-to-day basis. The CMD has to wear a dozen or two or more hats to manage his limited enterprise. Then how many more hats should God wear to deal with 6 billion people, 190+ countries and country heads and their innumerable assistants, a 1000 religious and political parties and so on in this planet alone, leave alone the entire universe which is His Empire.

These 3 crore or 30 crore Gods of the Hindu pantheon are just the numerous hats that the One and Only GOD wears to handle His Empire.

Ekam Sath Vipraah Bahudha Vadanthi.

Jai Gurudev