The theft of the mead

In a recent article, I discussed the theft of fire in the Rig Veda, and this may remind us of another similar incident of theft from the gods, viz. the theft of mead or soma by a falcon.

On stealing from the gods

wisdom, forbidden knowledge, and access to divinity itself. Divine trickery may be involved. And the theft may be followed by divine anger and punishment. This article will briefly review and compare three such myths, that of the eating from the ‘tree of knowledge’ in the Garden of Eden, the Greek myth of the theft of fire on behalf of humanity, and a similar Vedic myth about the stealing of fire.

Emotions and our sense of time

time. The deepest parts of our personalities are structured in terms of our sense of time, such as our memories from the past, our hopes and dreams for the future, and our awareness of our own mortality.

The rage of the warrior in literature

I previously discussed how strong emotions such as grief and rage well up from a very deep place within the self, expressing themselves in ways which go beyond the usual range of human expression, and how, according to the Indian tradition, the first poetic verse utterance emerged as an expression of deep sorrow. We see this particularly in the expression of rage on the battlefield, as will be described here.

Some Indo-European thoughts on time

Our day-to-day experience of time passing can be highly non-linear and subjective, as we move from giving rapid presentations to enjoying lazy Sunday afternoons. Science too has studied how our brains have the ability to slow down and speed up our perception of time. In this way, our lived experience of the flow of time diverges sharply from the scientific description of this experience.

Some meaningful numbers and number systems in history

According to a famous comic tale, there was once a very beautiful and intelligent young lady who was highly conceited about her profound spiritual knowledge. She had rejected many suitors for her hand in marriage, mockingly telling them that their intellectual level was far below hers. Some of these disgruntled suitors then plotted together to get their comeuppance.

Trysts by night in art and poetry

The painting above, by one of the great Indian artists of the late eighteenth century, Nainsukh, depicts such a scene. Our paramour sneaks away from her home by night to a spot in the forest where she has arranged to meet her lover during the night, and she must be back before anyone awakes and misses her in the morning.

Love, death and Sanskrit literature

In romantic literature across the world, we frequently read about lovers who would die rather than be apart. In the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, Pyramus kills himself, believing Thisbe to be dead. When Thisbe finds the dead body of Pyramus, she also kills herself. Romeo and Juliet, based on this story, and many other tales of world literature, follow a similar pattern.

On craft-worker gods and heroes

For ancient as well as modern people, God has been conceived of in a bewildering variety of ways. At one extreme, we see a wholly abstract and ineffable power, such as the Advaitic conception of Brahman, and on the other hand, we find an anthropomorphic god such as Krishna in the Mahābhārata, who is faced by the same moral dilemmas and limitations on his ability to act as the rest of us.

T.S. Eliot, the Vedas and the Concept of Time

The concept of time seems to have been a preoccupation for many leading figures of this generation across a variety of fields, stimulated perhaps in part by the linking of hitherto distant regions through railway and telegraphy during the nineteenth century, and likely also by the impact of Einstein’s work. Such figures might include Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, Marcel Proust, Salvador Dali and many others.