I still recall the days when my grandmother used to narrate bed time stories. She made them interesting, exciting and more importantly convincing. As a result, all her grandchildren would slip into a slumber sleep even before the story is completely told. The next night, before the start of a new story, she made sure we remembered the previous story by quizzing us. Most of the stories were from Puranas and Itihasas. Even as a child, although I believed in the ‘stories’ I always had plenty of questions for which my grandmother or mamma as we call her, often had no answers. If pestered, like how would Sanjaya see the battle of Kurukshetra between Pandavas and Kauravas sitting comfortably in the palace or how would a single arrow from Arjuna multiply by the time it hit the enemies or how would Abhimanyu listen to the Padmavyuha, or how would Ravana’s Pushpaka Vimana looks like, she would try to answer the questions by saying that all great men had divya drishti and super natural powers. If we kids are not convinced and bothered her for further details, she would frown upon us and bellow ‘listen to elders’.
May be such unanswered questions drove me to take up research as my living, not sure but as I see those kinds of questions answered by modern technology, my belief in the Sanatana Dharma had quadrupled not because our sages have foreseen this, but the way they envisioned these concepts floors me to this day. . How else can Sanjaya would see the battle of kurukshetra without ‘live’ telecast? Or how else does a Pushpaka vimana fly just as any air craft does? I was told that the Sudarsana chakra would follow the person its aimed at even if the person runs way in different and various directions. How true is this just as today’s heat seeking missile? In Mahabharatha, I heard of stories where Bhima would rip off the enemy at his thighs and lo, they would rejoin. Was unbelievable then. But now, the news of complete face transplants, leave alone organ transplants, is not very uncommon. I used to have a very hard time believing that an elephants head could be substituted for a human’s until couple of years back when I saw that one of my close family members skin had to be xeno grafted with pigs skin. Sure enough pig became a revered animal (varaha murthy) to us family members at that point of time. It was funny to envision monkies helping Rama and Lakshmana, but is a moving sight today to see dogs, birds etc helping the rescue operations and help nab the criminals... Its a all too well known fact that fetuses can hear, but can they grow up and remember what they have heard..don't know (May be a good question to solve for medical researchers)
Such technological and biological concepts and questions are innumerable in our Puranas, itihasas etc.. yet I do not know why most of the people cast a doubt, apsersion in our puranas and itihasas. Unfortunately, instead of taking a cue and researching it further for the benfit and progress of mankind, we belittle, joke and simply shun it as a myth. Aren’t we as Indians losing a lot of wealth by ignoring those concepts? Sure enough there is a lot of it in terms of science, tecnology, psychology etc in our puranas and itihasas. All we have to to do is to reseach it...or at least believe it
Such technological and biological concepts and questions are innumerable in our Puranas, itihasas etc.. yet I do not know why most of the people cast a doubt, apsersion in our puranas and itihasas. Unfortunately, instead of taking a cue and researching it further for the benfit and progress of mankind, we belittle, joke and simply shun it as a myth. Aren’t we as Indians losing a lot of wealth by ignoring those concepts? Sure enough there is a lot of it in terms of science, tecnology, psychology etc in our puranas and itihasas. All we have to to do is to reseach it...or at least believe it
Mamma, wish we all 'listen to elders' and we can make great progress
