No Disrespect Meant #03 – Let’s Go Crazy

So till last time, we had found a possible reason behind the blue dermal pigmentation mystery. But did we follow through and get the story behind the whole mystery.

I believe, we missed a step or two in between. And I also believe that now that we have come so far, we can drop the pretense and use a few real world names.

Talking of unfounded beliefs, I also believe in the Ultimate-Victory-of-Good-over-Evil and in Inverted-Undergarment-Super-Heroes 😀

OK, now back to the current stream of consciousness blathering, seriously.

The latecomers we have been talking of considered themselves the truly civilized one’s or the “aryas”.

They already had a pantheon with a pick-and-choose-scheme in place, with an underlying and philosophical monotheistic undercurrent. The monotheistic godhead was called the-eminent-one or the-evolved-one or “brahma”. In the pantheon consisting of personification of natural phenomena, the-eminent-one is the personification of the Supreme Reality (go figure!).

The king of the deities in the popular polytheistic supermarket was simply the king or “Indra”. He is the personification of rain, thunder and (hence?) martial prowess. So do we imagine him as the second Hemsworth brother?

The first effort in the amalgamation of the two new and highly attractive deities was to give them important but subservient roles in the deistic scenario.

The youngest brother of Indra was quite amorphous in the existing songs of worship and adoration in the existing pantheon, and called the The-All-Pervading-One or “Vishnu”. So the “Son-Of-Man” was equated with “The-All-Pervading-One”. He was given all respect due but still was seen as the youngest brother of the King of Gods, hence denoting that the amalgamated aboriginal culture was included in, yet subservient to, the civilized-one’s culture. Interestingly as part of the older (earlier?) pantheon, which was populated by personifications of natural phenomena concepts, Vishnu was the representation of the brilliance of sun-light as it moves through morning, noon and sunset modes as well as the earth, sky and the beyond modes, hence was known for his three steps that are later mentioned in another interesting story of one of the most confusing (for me!) avatars, the Midget.

Similarly the existing pantheon had a deity who, with his sons the wind-gods or “maruts”, was known to be the Terrible-One or “rudra”, yet known as the helping hands (if not minions) to the main hero, The-King.  So the “Red-Skinned-One” was equated with the “Terrible-One”. Hence, Copy… Paste…. And similarly repeat as above. If you were wondering of the specificity of the role he played, the Terrible-One may have been the personification of the destructive form of nature. There have been some mention of him being the representation of the 11 senses, but I am not so sure what are the additional 6 senses. Any Gyaan in Comments quite welcome. Please!

Interestingly, one of the major characters in the history turned to epic poems, Hanuman, was not just a member of the tribe of non-men or “Va-nara”, but by the virtue of being a destroyer level war-lord in his own rights as well as being red-skinned, he was sometimes considered as a partial incarnation of The-Terrible-One (The-Red-Skinned-One), and also a son of the “Wind-God” and hence called “maruti-nandan”. Oh, and by the way the Wind-Gods (note plural) were supposed to be the progeny of The-Terrible-One. So… he may have been his own grandfather? Zaphod? And he coloured himself red with “sindoor” to make himself more likable to the accepted incarnation of The-All-Pervading-One (The-Son-Of-Man) of the era. Phew! Now that’s covering all bases.

Now, that’s what was planned, i.e. the original pantheon remains the ascendant, and the new deities are subsumed and kept subservient.

What actually happened is that the two new deities became so popular among the newly-converted-to-the-civilized-culture and the original civilized-one (at least the commoners amongst them); that instead of the pantheon led by The-King; there started a strong emphasis on a new trinity, consisting of The-Eminent-One; The-All-Pervading-One (The-Son-Of-Man) and The-Terrible-One (The-Red-Skinned-One). The other deities of the pantheon in spite of all their history of being the receivers of supreme adulation became second-tier also-ran’s. The-King was seen as a lecherous character, who was so weak that he was always defeated by the evil forces and saved at the nick of time by the trinity. He was even given a case of pimples/pox/syphilis (long story… some other time). Other deities were named, worshipped now and then with all fervor…but not considered exactly superstar material.

Then came a time that The-Eminent-One was brought down a notch and made a devotee of the other two. Though kept in the trinity for namesake, he was no more worshipped save one temple. A back-story created about the same, which came to the fact that the other two were monogamist householders and the Eminent-One saw the spouse as interchangeable in a time of need with any lass he saw grazing cows, and hence was cursed by the spurned original spouse to be no more worshipped. Interesting story though, as monogamy is a later social norm. Proof lies within the fact of repeated and undue emphasis hence the probable strangeness of the monogamy of the incarnation of The-All-Pervading-One (The-Son-Of-Man) in the era of the Va-nara Hero we discussed earlier. A good subject for future close inspection, eh!

Interestingly, the fourth race of people we talked of, the-hooded-snakes, were in numerous occasions the able supporters of the hero of the day. They did not have any territorial ambitions that overlapped with the mainland, hence were considered good enough to be given grudging respect due to strong allies. Most of the kings/chieftains with major achievements in their name, who were later denoted as the incarnations of The-All-Pervading-One, were some way or the other supported by a member of the race of the snake people. In fact the half-brothers/name-brothers of two of those incarnations, were actually members of the race of Hooded-snakes. But the aforementioned race is considered sub-human, not even distantly human like the va-naras. In fact they are considered as snakes themselves, with the associated fear mingled with distaste. So, the smart-aleck bards and their smarter patrons decided, they must have been corresponding incarnations of the Great Snake, the start (“Adi”), the infinite (“Anant”) and one who remains when all are gone (“Sesha”).

I believe we have come to some high-res calendar-art level imagery. So why don’t we take one more unasked-for iteration of this unnecessary series and see this to an end.