Hindu gods and heroes

by Lionel D. Barnett

One of the stages in this transformation was the absorption of Nārāyaṇa in Vishṇu. Nārāyaṇa was originally a god of a different kind. The earliest reference to him is in a Brāhmaṇa which calls him Purusha Nārāyaṇa, which means that it regards him as being the same as the Universal Spirit which creates from itself the cosmos; it relates that Purusha Nārāyaṇa pervaded the whole of nature (ŚB. XII. iii. 4, 1), and that he made himself omnipresent and supreme over all beings by performing a pañcha-rātra sattra, or series of sacrifices lasting over five days (ib. XIII. vi. 1, 1). Somewhat later we find prayers addressed to Nārāyaṇa, Vāsudēva, and Vishṇu as three phases of the same god (Taitt. Āraṇ. X. i. 6). But was Nārāyaṇa in origin merely a variety of the Vēdic Purusha or our old acquaintance Prajāpati? His name must give us pause. The most simple explanation of it is that it is a family name: as Kārshṇāyaṇa means a member of the Kṛishṇa-family and Rāṇāyana a man belonging to the family of Raṇa, so Nārāyaṇa would naturally denote a person of the family of Nara. But Nara itself signifies a man: is the etymology therefore reduced to absurdity? Not at all: Nara is also used as a proper name, as we shall see.[21] Probably the name really means what naturally it would seem to mean, "a man of the Nara family"; that Nārāyaṇa was originally a divine or deified saint, a ṛishi, as the Hindus would call him; and that somehow he became identified with Vishṇu and the Universal Spirit.

This theory really is not by any means as wild as at first sight it may seem to be. Divine saints are sometimes mentioned in the Ṛig-vēda and Brāhmaṇas as being the creators of the universe[22]; and they appear again and again in legend as equals of the gods, attaining divine powers by their mystic insight into the sacrificial lore. But there is more direct evidence than this.

In the Mahābhārata there are incorporated two documents of first-rate importance for the doctrines of the churches that worshipped Vishṇu. One of these is the Bhagavad-gītā, or Lord's Song (VI. xxv.-xlii.); the other is the Nārāyaṇīya, or Account of Nārāyaṇa (XII. cccxxxvi.-cccliii.). Their teachings are not the same in details, though on most main points they agree; for they belong to different sections of the one religious body. Leaving aside the Bhagavad-gītā for the moment, we note that the Nārāyaṇīya relates a story that there were born four sons of Dharma, or Righteousness, viz. Nara, Nārāyaṇa, Hari or Vishṇu, and Kṛishṇa. In other places (I. ccxxx. 18, III. xii. 45, xlvii. 10, V. xlviii. 15, etc.) we are plainly told that Nara is a previous incarnation of Arjuna the Pāṇḍava prince, and Nārāyaṇa is, of course, the supreme Deity, who in the time of Arjuna was born on earth as Kṛishṇa Vāsudēva, and that in his earlier birth Nara and Nārāyaṇa were both ascetic saints. This tradition is very important, for it enables us to see something of the early character of Nārāyaṇa. He was an ancient saint of legend, who was connected with a hero Nara, just as Kṛishṇa was associated with Arjuna; and the atmosphere of saintliness clings to him obstinately. Tradition alleges that he was the ṛishi, or inspired seer, who composed the Purusha-sūkta of the Ṛig-vēda (X. 90), and represents him by choice as lying in a yōga-nidrā, or mystic sleep, upon the body of the giant serpent Śēsha in the midst of the Ocean of Milk. Thus the worship of Vishṇu, like the worship of Śiva, has owed much to the influence of live yōgīs idealised as divine saints; though it must be admitted that the yōgīs of the Vaishṇava orders have usually been more agreeable and less ambiguous than those of the Śaiva community.

We must briefly consider now the religious teachings of the Bhagavad-gītā and the Nārāyaṇīya, and then turn to the inscriptions and contemporary literature to see whether we can find any sidelights in them. We begin with the Bhagavad-gītā, or The Lord's Song.

The Bhagavad-gītā purports to be a dialogue between the Pāṇḍava prince Arjuna and Kṛishṇa, who was serving him as his charioteer, on the eve of the great battle. In order to invent a leading motive for his teaching, the poet represents Arjuna as suddenly stricken with overwhelming remorse at the prospect of the fratricidal strife which he is about to begin. "I will not fight," he cries in anguish. Then Kṛishṇa begins a long series of arguments to stimulate him for the coming battle. He points out, with quotations from the Upanishads, that killing men in battle does not destroy their souls; for the soul is indestructible, migrating from body to body according to its own deserts. The duty of the man born in the Warrior-caste is to fight; fighting is his caste-duty, his dharma, and as such it can entail upon him no guilt if it be performed in the right spirit. But how is this to be done? The answer is the leading motive of Kṛishṇa's teaching. For the maintenance of the world it is necessary that men should do the works of their respective castes, and these works do not operate as karma to the detriment of the future life of their souls if they perform them not from selfish motives but as offerings made in perfect unselfishness to the Lord. This is the doctrine of Karma-yōga, discipline of works, which is declared to lead the soul of the worshipper to salvation in the Lord as effectually as the ancient intellectualism preached in the Upanishads and the Sāṃkhya philosophy. But there is also a third way to salvation, the way through loving devotion, or bhakti, which is as efficacious as either of the other two; the worshippers of Śiva had already preached this for their own church in the Śvētāśvatara Upanishad. Besides treating without much consistency or method of many incidental questions of religious theory and practice, Kṛishṇa reveals himself for a few instants to Arjuna in his form as Virāj, the universal being in which all beings are comprehended and consumed. Finally Arjuna is comforted, and laying the burden of all his works upon Kṛishṇa, he prepares in quiet faith for the coming day of battle.

There are four main points to notice in this teaching. (1) The Supreme God, superior to Brahma, he who rules by grace and comprehends in his universal person the whole of existence, is Vishṇu, or Hari, represented on earth for the time being by Kṛishṇa Vāsudēva. The author makes no attempt to reconcile the fatalism implied in the old theory of karma-saṃsāra with his new doctrine of special and general grace: he allows the two principles to stand side by side, and leaves for future generations of theologians the delicate task of harmonising them. (2) Three roads to salvation are recognised in principle, the intellectual gnosis of the old Upanishads and the Sāṃkhya, the "way of works" or performance of necessary social duties in a spirit of perfect surrender to God, and the "way of devotion," continuous loving worship and contemplation of God. In practice the first method is ignored as being too severe for average men; the second and third are recommended, as being suitable for all classes. (3) The way of salvation is thus thrown open directly to men and women of all castes and conditions. The Bhagavad-gītā fully approves of the orthodox division of society into castes; but by its doctrine that the performance of caste-duties in a spirit of sacrifice leads to salvation it makes caste an avenue to salvation, not a barrier. (4) The Bhagavad-gītā has nothing to say for the animal-sacrifices of the Brahmans. It recognises only offerings of flowers, fruits, and the like. The doctrine of ahiṃsā, "thou shalt do no hurt," was making much headway at the time, and the wholesale animal-sacrifices of the Brahmans roused general disgust, of which the Buddhists and Jains took advantage for the propagation of their teachings.

I have previously spoken of the solitary passage in the Chhāndōgya Upanishad in which Kṛishṇa's name is mentioned, as receiving the teachings of Ghōra Āṅgirasa, and it will now be fitting to see how far these teachings are reflected in the Bhagavad-gītā. Ghōra compares the functions of life to the ceremonies of the dīkshā (see above, p.68): and this is at bottom the same idea as the doctrine of karma-yōga preached again and again in the Bhagavad-gītā. "Whatever be thy work, thine eating, thy sacrifice, thy gift, thy mortification, make of it an offering to me," says Kṛishṇa (IX. 27); all life should be regarded as a sacrifice freely offered. Then Ghōra continues: "In the hour of death one should take refuge in these three thoughts: 'Thou art the Indestructible, Thou art the Unfailing, Thou art instinct with Spirit.' On this there are these two verses of the Ṛig-vēda:

Thus upward from the primal seed
From out the darkness all around
We, looking on the higher light,
Yea, looking on the higher heaven,
Have come to Sūrya, god midst gods,
To him that is the highest light, the highest light."

In the Bhagavad-gītā (IV. 1 ff.) Kṛishṇa announces that he preached his doctrine to Vivasvān the Sun-god, who passed it on to his son the patriarch Manu; elsewhere in the Mahābhārata (XII. cccv. 19) the Sātvata teaching is said to have been announced by the Sun. Ghōra in his list of moral virtues enumerates "mortification, charity, uprightness, harmlessness, truthfulness"; exactly the same attributes, with a few more, are said in the Bhagavad-gītā to characterise the man who is born to the gods' estate (XVI. 1-3). Ghōra's exhortation to think of the nature of the Supreme in the hour of death is balanced by Kṛishṇa's words: "He who at his last hour, when he casts off the body, goes hence remembering me, goes assuredly into my being" (VIII. 5; cf. 10). These parallels are indeed not very close; but collectively they are significant, and when we bear in mind that the author of the Bhagavad-gītā is eager to associate his doctrine with those of the Upanishads, and thus to make it a new and catholic Upanishad for all classes, we are led to conclude that its fundamental ideas, sanctification of works (karma-yōga), worship of a Supreme God of Grace (bhakti) by all classes, and rejection of animal sacrifices (ahiṃsā) arose among the orthodox Kshatriyas, who found means to persuade their Brahmanic preceptors to bring it into connection with their Upanishads and embellish it with appropriate texts from those sources. Very likely Kṛishṇa Vāsudēva, if not the first inventor of these doctrines, was their most vigorous propagator.

Now what are the teachings of the Nārāyaṇīya? It appears to contain two accounts. In the first we have the story of king Vasu Uparichara, who is said to have worshipped the Supreme God Hari (Vishṇu) in devotion without any animal-sacrifices, in accordance with doctrines ascribed to the Āraṇyakas, i.e. the later sections of the Brāhmaṇas, including the older Upanishads. This fully agrees with the standpoint of the Bhagavad-gītā. The second account gives the story of a visit paid by the divine saint Nārada to a mysterious "White Island," Śvēta-dvīpa, inhabited by holy worshippers of God who are, strangely enough, described as having heads shaped like umbrellas and feet like lotus-leaves and as making a sound like that of thunder-clouds[23]; they are radiant like the moon, have no physical senses, eat nothing, and concentrate their whole soul on rapturous adoration of the spirit of God, which shines there in dazzling brightness to the eye of perfect faith. Nārāyaṇa there reveals himself to Nārada, and sets forth to him the doctrine of Vāsudēva. According to this, Nārāyaṇa has four forms, called mūrtis or vyūhas. The first of these is Vāsudēva, who is the highest soul and creator and inwardly controls all individual souls. From him arose Saṃkarshaṇa, who corresponds to the individual soul; from Saṃkarshaṇa issued Pradyumna, to whom corresponds the organ of mind, and from Pradyumna came forth Aniruddha, representing the element of self-consciousness. Observe in passing that these are all names of heroes of legend: Saṃkarshaṇa is Vāsudēva's brother Bala-rāma, Pradyumna was the son and Aniruddha the grandson of Vāsudēva. Nārāyaṇa then goes on to speak of the creation of all things from himself and their dissolution into himself, and of his incarnations in the form of the Boar who lifted up on his tusk the earth when submerged under the ocean, Narasiṃha the Man-lion who destroyed the tyrant Hiraṇya-kaśipu, the Dwarf who overthrew Balī, Rāma Bhārgava who destroyed the Kshatriyas, Rāma Dāśarathi, of whom we shall have something to say later. Kṛishṇa Vāsudēva the slayer of Kaṃsa of Mathurā, the Tortoise, the Fish, and Kalkī. Then follow some further details, among them a statement that this doctrine was revealed to Arjuna at the beginning of the Great War—a clear reference to the Bhagavad-gītā—that at the beginning of every age it was promulgated by Nārāyaṇa, that it requires activity in pious works, that at the commencement of the present age it passed from him to Brahmā, from him to Vivasvān the Sun-god, from him to the patriarch Manu, etc., that it does not allow the sacrifice of animals, and that for salvation the co-operative grace of Nārāyaṇa is necessary. Most of this doctrine is already in the Bhagavad-gītā; what is not found in the latter is the account of the mysterious White Island, the theory of vyūhas or emanations, which represents Vāsudēva as issuing from Nārāyaṇa and so forth, and the details of Nārāyaṇa's incarnations. It is therefore a distinct textbook of the Sātvata or Pāñcharātra church, not much later than the Bhagavad-gītā. According to it, the Supreme Being is Nārāyaṇa, the Almighty God who reveals himself as highest teacher and saintly sage, whose legendary performance of a five-days' sacrifice (above, p. 76) has gained for his doctrine the title of Pāñcharātra. Next in order of divinity is Kṛishṇa Vāsudēva, whose tribal name of Sātvata has furnished the other name of this church; then follow in due order Saṃkarshaṇa, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha, all of his family; and with Vāsudēva is closely associated the epic hero Arjuna, a prototype for this mortal pair being discovered in the legendary Nara and Nārāyaṇa.