Devdutt Pattanaik Works with gods and demons who churn nectar from the ocean of Indian, Chinese, Islamic, Christian, even secular mythologies
As per Hindu lore, to make the Veda accessible to women and ‘lower’ castes, the sages told stories – the Fifth Veda. The Fifth Veda includes Mahabharata, Ramayana, and the vast corpus of Puranas.
In Ramayana, there are two Vedic scholars, experts in Sanskrit. The first is Ravana, son of a Brahmin migrant, leader of forest-guardians (raksha-sa), king of the island-kingdom of Lanka, who separates Sita from Rama. The second is Hanuman, forest-dweller (vana-nara), who serves the monkey-king, and helps unite Sita and Rama. The poet-sage Valmiki carefully presented these characters to communicate a point. Knowledge of Sanskrit, or Veda, is not enough to make you wise. Having a Brahmin father does not make you wise.
Stories use metaphors. Concepts become plots. Ideas become characters, even landscapes. Forest is the world where no one cares for anyone: you eat and get eaten. Fields are cultivated to create spaces where we feed and get fed. Sita, ploughed out of the field, embodies the best harvest of material reality (prakriti). Rama, gift from the sky, embodies the best of psychological reality (purusha).
Sita is ‘food’ that we all crave; Rama is ‘wisdom’ that makes us content. When the two are separated, we are consumed by our own hunger. When the two are united, we experience empathy for other people’s hunger. Ravana, who separates Sita from Rama, has wealth, power and knowledge, but is not content. Hanuman, who unites Sita and Rama, is so content that he has no craving for wealth, power and knowledge.
Here is another story about Hanuman and Ravana that comes from later Puranic literature: Every day, Ravana would travel from his island Lanka, located in the middle of the southern ocean, to Kailash, the mountain in the north, to hear Shiva explain the Veda to Shakti. One day, Ravana made music to accompany the chanting of Vedic poetry. This impressed Shiva, who immediately decided to repay this debt by offering Ravana a boon. Ravana replied, “May I take you to Lanka? Then I would not have to travel north each day”. Shiva agreed. Ravana then used his brute strength to uproot Mount Kailash and carry it south. Everyone was alarmed watching Ravana carry the massive mountain southwards. Shiva chuckled. Shakti was furious. “He does not get the spirit of Veda,” she said. “Do something to enable his understanding.”
So Shiva stubbed his big toe on the slope of the mountain. Such was the force that Ravana buckled under the pressure and was crushed under the mountain. Ravana apologised for his audacity, and begged to be released. This image of Ravana being crushed under Mount Kailash, atop which Shiva sits with Shakti, is amongst the earliest images of Shiva Purana, dated to 7th century, found in Odisha, Maharashtra and Karnataka. These images were sponsored by kings who patronised the Pashupata cult.
Ravana was confused as to why Shiva was angry with him. As per folk legend, Shiva said, “Go back to Lanka. I myself will visit you. Hope you will recognise me then”. Years later, Shiva visited Ravana as Hanuman. Ravana did not recognise him. All he saw was a monkey who stole fruits from his garden, who seemed to know Sanskrit, spoke to him looking directly into his eyes, and had the power to carry mountains as he flew to the south over the sea across the sky, to help an exiled prince called Rama rescue his wife named Sita. “How dare you steal fruits from my garden?” said Ravana. Hanuman replied, “But are you not stealing another man’s wife?”
Stories such as these provoke conversations. What differentiates an animal from a human? And what differentiates a forest-dweller from a Vedic scholar? Animals do not have property. In the jungle, might is right. There are no thieves. Theft is a human idea, based on the social construct of property. Ravana, the Vedic scholar, is being challenged, in Sanskrit, by another Vedic scholar. But we are not trained to see Ramayana this way by Vedic experts today.
Historians reject any uplifting interpretation of Hindu stories. They see everything as political and prefer racial, nationalistic and caste templates. So, the Fifth Veda becomes a Brahminical propaganda tool meant to overthrow Buddhist ideology, and establish caste supremacy, spreading Aryan hegemony to the south. Others see it as a sectarian tale that establishes the supremacy of Vishnu (Rama) over Shiva-worshipping Ravana. Politicians see Ravana as the invader who steals Hindu women. Their rivals argue that Ravana was a defender of the Dravidians. Scholars ignore that the stories self-identify themselves as the Fifth Veda. They are meant to explain how knowledge (veda) turns animals into humans.