Hindu gods and heroes : $b studies in the history of the religion of IndiaBarnett, Lionel D. (Lionel David)
ReligionEastern
Hindu gods and heroes : $b studies in the history of the religion of India
Barnett, Lionel D. (Lionel David)
Hindu mythology; Hinduism
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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