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10 LITERATÛRZINÂTNE, FOLKLORISTIKA, MÂKSLA
On the whole such judgements are not very original. Harsh attacks on the most
powerful gods– usually through the mouths of demons can be found already in the
Purânas– very bulky writings that perhaps are the main sources for today’s Hinduism.
The daitya Târaka in “Ðiva Purâna”, for instance, is allowed to say: “You gods
are shameless, especially Indra and Vishnu…Vishnu is deceptive, defective and
indiscreet…Taking birth as Râma he killed a woman…Sinful as he was he forsook
his own wife (Sîtâ – V.I.)…In the sixth incarnation (as Paraðurâma – V.I.) he cut off
the head of his own mother…Incarnating as Krishna he defiled the wives of others
and forced them to violate the traditional virtues of the family.” 1 . Even taking into
account that judgements about Vishnu occur in a shivaistic source, still it is remarkable
that this happens within the fold of the same religion. One may agree here with
the widely spread opinion that Hinduism is an extremely tolerant religion in all aspects.
But a different interpretation is also possible: as morality in India was always
regarded as part of the natural order of the Universe, authors in one way or another
couldn’t escape making gods act as people are acting.
The main task of this paper is to find in authoritative sources of Hinduism testimonies
to the fact that strong mundane individual and social ethics in them have always
coexisted with spiritual strivings and that India does not really need to import
Kant’s or some other Westerner’s ideas to tackle contemporary ethical problems. The
preoccupation with moksha or liberation as the supreme goal, the identification of
one’s innermost soul with the Soul of the Universe, at the cost of enjoying pleasures
provided by the senses, seems to dominate all traditional Indian thinking, including
literature, theatre and other arts. But there is also a genuine striving to advise the
human individual to concentrate his efforts mainly on artha (worldly success) and
kâma (mainly love) at the expense of dharma (religious ends).
This idea may be rooted in the commonplace assertions that being one of the
many living beings man still stands above them and even above the devas– lower
gods. “Mahâbhârata” declares that “there is nothing higher than the human being” and
in “Shiva Purâna” we read: “Even to the god and the asuras the birth of the human
being is very rare to be achieved…Human birth is glorified as the root cause fot the
four aims of life.” 2 . One can say that Vivekânanda even sneers at gods by saying: “For
instance, Indra and Varuna are not the names of certain persons, but the names of
positions as governors and so on. These are certain positions, which are filled successively
by human souls who have raised themselves to the conditions of gods, and
yet even they die.” 3 . And indeed we do know from the Purânas that even the great
triad– Brahmâ, Viðhnu and Ðiva die whereas the person’s karma which is not exhausted,
survives through all pralayas (regular dissolutions of the world) when everything
else is reduced to the primeaval state.
Karma, which affects all beings, operates without the intervention of any great
supernatural authority but with absolute inevitability. In theory we get in this life what
we deserve for our good or bad deeds in the previous ones and there no escape from
the possible misfortune. Yet, interestingly, karma which often is also dharma sometimes
becomes destiny– a notion which is easily understandable to anyone anywhere.
Even the powerful Shiva, admitting his own helplesness in fighting the anonymous
superforce behind the world order says: “What should happen necessarily must happen.
There is none to stop it.” 4 . The incarnation of Visnu– Râma acknowledges: “Hap-