India's glorious past is the proverbial magic cauldron of folklore. It is an inexhaustible store of scientific and military achievements, medical marvels and cutting-edge mathematical inventions. Listen to our political leaders and you will have no doubt that every major scientific breakthrough had its origins in India.
The flying chariot in which Ravana kidnapped Sita is now being showcased as an early model of the modern aeroplane. The various instances of unusual birth (of being born in a jar, from the side of a womb and such others) in the epics are examples of advancements in genetic sciences. And the many-headed or animal-headed deities and demons indicate proficiency in plastic surgery and organ transfers. By this account, mythology is history and history is mythology.
At the other end of the spectrum are sceptics. For them, mythology is nothing more than a bunch of nonsense tales. Stories of giants, gods, goddesses and demons are just puff and piffle.
But mythology exists in the realm of nuances, subtleties and interpretations. It is like a solid geometrical shape, with many surfaces and dimensions, no one side being equal to the other.
Mythology has an interesting history. In the beginning, scholars treated mythology as proto-science or failed science, as allegorical representations of nature, as exaggerated accounts of historical events and so on. Then there were those who sought to define mythology by its function - as embodied codes of conduct upheld by the ancients. Some regarded myth as a companion of ritual; a ritual needed a myth to exist. And, finally, there was a school that propagated the toolbox approach for analysing myths: pick the theory that suits the myth and the context.
Despite the large variance in definitions, there is unanimity over the belief that mythology is a collection of the earliest recorded utterances of men (John Fiske; Myth and Mythmakers). It is a window into how early men thought and their impressions of natural phenomena, physical functions and the world of animals and birds. Understand impulses that created myth and you understand mythology. Cultural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss says, 'I am always struck by statements that establish a link between realms otherwise unlikely to be associated. Popular thought has always strived to discover such analogies - a mental activity in which we will recognise one of the prime impulses of myth creation.'
So, what does the myth of a hero's unusual birth mean? A hero may emerge from an egg as in the case of Garuda, or from the union of the sun god and a mortal mother (as Karna and the Pandavas in the Mahabharata) or out of the fire like Draupadi. While the nature of the events and their sequence may vary, they all share their strangeness of origin.
Why? Mircea Eliade explains that the "origin of anything presupposes and continues the cosmogony". Men have always associated creation of the universe with magic and prestige. And this is why some origin myths, he says, "begin by outlining the cosmogony." (Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality) The birth of a hero is in some ways like the birth of the universe - a cataclysmic event that is preordained and conceived by a higher force and one that ultimately leads to the good of all humanity. For example, the birth of Garuda from an egg is a lot like the creation mythologies where the universe emerges out of a golden egg.
Not only does a hero's birth mimic an extraordinary event, it also serves as a source for their special powers. If a hero is born from fire, he not only bears the characteristics of that element, but also has the power to influence it. Draupadi, who plays a key role in the battle between her husbands and their cousins, emerged from fire and is depicted as a dark-complexioned woman with a fiery temper. Interestingly, a cult of Draupadi worshippers in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, as well as in Sri Lanka, worship fire and are fire walkers.
Mythology supplements the study of history, culture, philosophy and science but can never be a substitute for any of these disciplines. To employ myth to buttress any one subject would be an enormous waste. That would be missing out on the metaphors and nuances that shape the myths of world. We will lose out a chance to understand what makes us human.
