Writing on ancient literatures and world mythology. Future articles will be on Rig Veda, Sanskrit, Old English, Indo-European literature, Egypt, China etc.
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.
Read More On stealing from the godstime. 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.
Read More Emotions and our sense of timeOne criticism sometimes made against JRR Tolkien is that he somehow imitated the ring-based plot of Richard Wagner’s opera cycle ‘The Ring of the Nibelung’ in his own master work ‘The Lord of the Rings’. Prof. Tolkien expressly disclaimed any similarity between his own work and that of Wagner, once comparing his Lord of the Rings with Wagner’s Ring Cycle by saying, “Both rings were round, but there the resemblance ceases.”
Read More The Ring in Indo-European literatureਰਾਜਸਥਾਨ ਚਿੱਤਰਕਾਰੀ ਦੀਆਂ ਪਰੰਪਰਾਵਾਂ ਭਾਰਤ ਅਤੇ ਪੂਰੀ ਦੁਨੀਆ ਵਿੱਚ ਬਹੁਤ ਪ੍ਰਸਿੱਧ ਅਤੇ ਪ੍ਰਭਾਵਸ਼ਾਲੀ ਹਨ | ਰਾਜਸਥਾਨ ਪੇਂਟਿੰਗ ਵਿੱਚ ਵੱਖ-ਵੱਖ ਵਿਸ਼ੇ ਹੈ , ਜਿਵੇਂ ਕਿ ਹਿੰਦੂ ਦੇਵੀ ਦੇਵਤੇ, ਪ੍ਰੇਮੀਆਂ ਦੀਆਂ ਦ੍ਰਿਸ਼, ਦਰਬਾਰ ਵਿੱਚ ਰਾਜੇ, ਸ਼ਿਕਾਰ ਦੇ ਦ੍ਰਿਸ਼, ਇਤਿਹਾਸ ਪੁਰਾਣ ਦੀਆਂ ਦ੍ਰਿਸ਼, ਅਤੇ ਕਈ ਹੋਰ |
Read More ਰਾਜਸਥਾਨ ਅਤੇ ਭਾਰਤੀ ਚਿੱਤਰਕਾਰੀਆਦਿਤਿਆ ਤਾਂ ਸੱਤ ਅੱਠ ਕੁ ਦੇਵਤੇ ਹਨ, ਜਿਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਤੋਂ ਐਥੇ ਤਿੰਨ ਲਿਖੇ ਗਏ ਹਨ, ਅਰਥਾਤ, ਮਿੱਤਰ, ਵਰਣ ‘ਤੇ ਅਰਯਮਨ | ਮਿੱਤਰ ਦੇਵਤਾ ਦਾ ਮੁੱਖ ਕੰਮ ਇਹ ਹੈ ਕਿ ਉਸ ਨੇ ਲੋਕਾਂ ਵਿਚਕਾਰ ਸਮਝੌਤਾ ‘ਤੇ ਸਹਿਮਤੀ ਰੱਖਣਾ ਏ | ਉਸੀ ਦੇਵਤਾ ਕਰਕੇ , ਕੋਈ ਵੀ ਸੰਧੀ ਜਾਂ ਇਕਰਾਰਨਾਮਾ ਤੋੜਿਆ ਨਹੀਂ ਜਾਵੇਗਾ |
Read More ਮਿੱਤਰ ਅਤੇ ਮਿਤ੍ਰੇਅਮI 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.
Read More The rage of the warrior in literatureHuman emotions such as love, anger and sorrow have a universal dimension, affecting all peoples in all times and places similarly. But emotions also perhaps have a specific way of emerging and manifesting themselves which perhaps varies according to contextual factors.
Read More Some Indian love poetryThe engraving above, based on a sculpture at the Ellora caves, shows Pārvatī and Śiva playing a game of dice. We see Śiva about to roll the dice on some kind of gameboard while Pārvatī gestures expressively at him. This scene perhaps illustrates a well-known episode from the Skanda Purana where they engage in fierce and perhaps somewhat underhand competition at playing dice.
Read More Playing games in literature, art and historyGreat literature can express emotions in ways that are powerful yet also subtle. This is clear in epic literature, such as in the Iliad, which announces itself straight off the bat as a poem rooted in a specific emotion, viz. rage.
Read More On epic literature and the emotionsOur 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.
Read More Some Indo-European thoughts on time
Desire To Think 