The study analyses the
story of the birth of the first woman in Greek mythology and contrasts it with
the story of the birth of the first woman in Indian Puranas, revealing the
Indian perception of woman in contrast to the Ancient Greek and Western
perception of woman. In the ancient Greek perception, woman appears as a curse
on mankind, born out of the anger of the gods and their need to punish man, all-negative
except that she can be the mother of his children; whereas in Indian stories,
she is born of the calm, serene mind of the creator in meditation and is an
expression of the sacred creativity inherent in the divine: all-beautiful, with
not one thing negative about her.
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Pandora is the first woman created according to ancient
Greek myths and Sandhya, the first woman born according to ancient Indian
myths. While there are a few similarities between the two, the contrasts
between them are great. By comparing the stories of the first woman in these
two cultures, we can arrive at how the two cultures perceived women –
perceptions that influenced Indian and western attitudes towards women for millennnia
and still continue to influence to some extent. True, one example from each
culture is not enough for such a study, but then when it comes to the first
woman, we cannot have many examples either.
Let’s begin with Pandora. There are variations in the story
Greece tells us about her, as is true of all Greek stories, but according to
Hesiod, one of the earliest Greek poets and Homer’s near contemporary, in whose
work Theogony she first appears, Pandora’s story begins when the gods and human
beings decide to have a sacrificial feast together at Mekone. Human beings
until then were only male – anthrōpoi – there were no women, the first one was
yet to be born, yet to be created. And these human beings lived in perfect
harmony among themselves, perfect peace and perfect concord with gods and
nature. Life was a symphony and man did not have to work – the earth yielded
whatever he needed and more, without sweat and toil. There existed no old age,
no disease, no suffering, no pain, and nothing unpleasant ever happened – as in
the satya yuga of India!
Enter Prometheus, the titan who had immense love for men and
wanted to do what is best for them. And when he heard about the feast, he slew
an ox, as was common in ancient Greece, and divided the ox into two parts – one
consisting of the most edible parts of the animal like its meat, muscles and
fat and the other, just the bones. Prometheus is known for his cunning – he
wrapped up the good parts and covered it with the innards of the ox, making it
unappealing; and the bones he wrapped up and covered with fat, making it look appetizing. He then offered the choice to Zeus – the god could
choose for the gods whichever part he preferred. Zeus knew the cunning of
Prometheus – generally considered a great asset by the ancient Greeks as by
folk cultures all over the world. In spite of knowing the trap, he chose the
wrapped up bones and as a punishment for the people for whose sake the titan
wanted to cheat the gods, pronounced a curse on them: from then on, the earth would
no more yield food on its own and men would have to sweat and toil to produce
it. And even that yield would depend on the seasons, would be unpredictable and
so on and so forth. He also decreed that in future, when a sacrifice is
offered, gods would take the bones of the animal burnt at the altar – the
smells carried upward by the smoke – and all the meat men can have for
themselves. Still not content with what he had done, his fury at the cheating
still not appeased, Zeus took away fire from the earth – men would no more be
able to cook food, but would now have to eat it raw.
Titan Prometheus, with his cunning and his love for man, had
an idea about this too. He wouldn’t allow Zeus to punish man so cruelly for
what was essentially his mistake. So what he did was to hide a spark of fire in
a reed and bring it to the earth. For which blessing, humanity called him their
savior, the fire-bringer. They could now eat cooked food, work with metals,
bake earthenware, do all kinds of things with fire and thus have civilization.
That was again an act that would not go unpunished by Zeus –
Prometheus was given, as a punishment for his transgression of trying to
benefit man once again, the most awful punishment imaginable perhaps, a brutal
torment that would have no end and would go on and on. He would be chained to a
rock where a vulture would forever feed on his liver – the vulture would peck
and pull out pieces of his liver and feed on it; and the liver would grow back
overnight so that the vulture can feed on the immortal titan’s liver the next
day again.
That was the punishment for Prometheus. But men whom he
loved so much, for whose sake he did all this, wouldn’t be spared either. Their
punishment would be worse than the earlier two: a new being would be sent into
their midst, a new being called woman. And what would be woman’s job? To
separate man from joy and happiness forever, to destroy his peace and serenity,
to create discord among men, to drive them crazy – she would be the source of
all their misery and yet they wouldn’t be able to live without her, for she
promised them bliss, one look at her would fill them with intense pleasure; and
also, she would be the mother of their children. An amazing creature that made
them go dizzy, she would enter their homes, cunning, insidious, manipulative,
treacherous, take over their hearts and make sure there was no peace there. She
would create discord among them; would sow the seeds of jealousy, rivalry,
disputes, conflict, dissonance, clashes, quarrels, discontent and greed. Her
way would be seductive submissiveness. They wouldn’t be able to do without her,
they would so pang for her that separation from her even for a moment would be
hell for them. And with her in their homes and hearts – from where she would
rule over them, dictate to them what to do and what not to do, play with them
as though they were mere puppets, make them dance to her least wish and drive
them insane, life would be hell again.
Zeus was not finished yet, so furious was he, he ordered the
gods to bestow gifts upon her – all kinds of gifts: that is what Pandora means,
pan meaning all, and dora meaning gift. These gifts were meant to punish man,
turn the world evil, fill it with misery and agony and distance man forever
from the gods and all that made life worth living. She would be beautiful
beyond words, and for that reason men would crave her, and suffer endlessly for
it. Man would no more be the simple man, but would be split into male and
female, forever restless, forever seeking, forever crazy, forever driven to the
unattainable, forever searching for the paradise lost.
The last gift given to Pandora as ordered by Zeus was from
Hermes, the heavenly thief. He gave her his thieving nature, the desire to
exploit others, to steal what belongs to others, to live like a parasite
without producing any food on her own unlike men who sweated in the fields in
the sun and the rain, and in heat and cold, to plough the earth and sow seeds
to produce yield from the earth, while she stayed home.
Pandora brings with her all these “gifts” in a jar. Down on
the earth she opens the lid of the jar and all the gifts given her by the gods
to punish man escape and spread all over the world – all except hope, which
sustains man in the middle of all the misery that life had become.
The vengeance of Zeus is complete now.
This then is the story of Pandora, the first woman created according
to Greek mythology.
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Let us now take a look at the story of Sandhya, the first
woman born of the Creator, Brahma according to Indian myths. As in the case of the
Greek myth of Pandora, there are several versions of Sandhya’s story – in fact
much more so – but for our discussion we shall follow the detailed Kalika
Purana narration. The story is told in the opening chapters of the purana.
Brahma, the Creator [different from Brahman the Ultimate
Reality, pure existence-consciousness-bliss], first created the Prajapatis such
as Daksha and then the ten mind-born sons such as Marichi, Angira etc. Following
the birth of the mind-born sons, manasa-putras, as Brahma sat in deep meditation,
from his mind was born a woman of amazing beauty named Sandhya, Twilight. She
was endowed with every desirable quality, says the Kailka Purana: sampūrna-guṇa-śālini.
There was no equal to her in the world of gods or anywhere else, and she was
without equal in the past, present or future. Her hair was enticing blue-black and
she had large blue eyes that reminded you of blue lotuses. Those eyes were
timid like those of a doe, moving constantly, and her eyebrows reached out
towards her ears. Her nose resembled a sesame flower and was so incredibly
beautiful that it made one feel as though it was the beauty of her forehead
melting and flowing down in such a wonderful shape. Her face reminded you of a
golden lotus; and her rich, lush red lower lip, the ripe bimba gourd. Her two full
breasts, thrusting upward as though they were trying to reach her lovely chin [pīnottuṅgau,
chibukaṃ yātuṃ udyatau iva], her thin waist, broad hips, heavy thighs, lovely
feet, all made her temptingly, irresistibly alluring.
But of course, Kama, the god of desire and love, was yet to
be born. So while Brahma, the prajapatis and the manasaputras were all curious
to know who she was and what her function in the process of creation would be,
none of them lusted for her – at least not for now.
And then, all of a sudden, without any warning, as they sat
musing about Sandhya, there emerged from the mind of the Creator yet another
being of great beauty – this time a male, of the complexion of gold dust, with
a wide chest, long dark-blue hair, dancing eyes, young, tall, chest as wide as
a door plank, shoulders like those of a rogue elephant. The Kalika Purana here
pauses to give us a description of the perfection of male beauty and unless we
are familiar with Indian mythology, we expect him to be the match for Sandhya –
the perfect male and the perfect female.
As the prajapatis and the mind-born sons of Brahma look on,
their curiosity awakened, the new being, from whom wafts a heady fragrance, looks
at Brahma, bows to him and asks him what his function is, what he should do –
remember the creation of the universe has just begun and is still in the
initial stages. He requests Brahma to assign to him any work befitting him. The
Creator does not say anything for a while – he is himself taken aback by the
majesty of the awesome things that are happening. Then, mastering himself, overcoming
the awe he is feeling, he speaks to this male being, giving him a bow and five flower
arrows, telling him to continue the process of creation with the help of his
superb body and the five arrows, bewitching men and women. Brahma assures him
that neither the gods, nor the gandharvas or kinnaras, nor the yakshas, nagas,
rakshasas, pishachas, asuras, daityas, vidyadharas or human beings will be able
to resist him. Nor will birds, beasts, worms, fish, insects or anything else
that breathes.
Well, he adds by way of concluding, why to say more, neither
I, nor Vishnu or Shiva will be beyond your capacity to influence. None shall be
impervious to you! Sneak into the hearts of all, unseen and unknown to them,
become the cause of their happiness and continue the eternal process of
creation.
Brahma then blesses him: May the hearts of living beings
always be the target of your arrows! May you be the giver of joy and delight to
all that breathe!
This mind-born son of the Creator is given the name
Manmatha, for his capacity to churn the minds of people, and Kama, because he is
the most charming and beautiful of all. He is also given a couple of other
names for similar reasons – Madana, Kandarpa, etc. He is again blessed: his
flower arrows will be more powerful than the weapons of Brahma, Vishnu and
Shiva. He is given omnipresence – the entire universe will be his abode, there
will be no place where he has no entry and all will be subject to him – all,
including plants, bushes and grass, right up to Brahmaloka, and no one anywhere
shall be equal to him. He is told that the daughter of Daksha, Rati, shall be
his wife.
It is now that the story takes a turn. Kama muses over all
the powers and blessings he has received, picks up his bow Unmadana shaped like
the eyebrow of a beautiful woman and his five flower arrows and decides
something very daring: He would test his powers on Brahma himself along with
the others present there. He stretches the bow fully until it forms almost a
circle and places the arrows on it. A sweet, fragrant wind starts bowing and,
as he lets go and the flowers hit Brahma, the prajapatis and the ten mind-born
sons of brahma, every one of them becomes erotically enchanted. Unable to take
their eyes away from Sandhya, they keep looking at her and as they do so,
powerful desire for her arises in their minds and fills their bodies with sexual
craving – they all lust for her deeply, the lust engendering sexual reactions
in their bodies and making them perspire.
Kama doesn’t spare Sandhya either – she too is hit by his
arrows. And as Brahma looks at her his mind and body filled with lust for her,
from her body are born the forty-nine sentiments [bhāvas] as well as haughty
indifference, tempting talk, cajolery, coquettish gestures and other hāvas.
Also born of her are the sixty-four arts.
Sandhya too, pierced by the arrows of kama, starts
exhibiting feminine behaviours under sexual desire – sidelong glances, smiles,
giggles, shyness, embarrassment, light tremor of the body, restive eyes, and so
on. With those gestures, Sandhya’s desirability multiples and she becomes
enticing beyond words. In the words of the Kalika Purana, she becomes irresistibly
charming like a heavenly river filled with fine, golden ripples.
As Brahma looks at Sandhya, herself a victim of Kama and
filled with sexual longing, expressing that longing in her looks, gestures,
stance and glances, expressing it through her entire body, her sexually awake body
is covered by perspiration.
Seeing his effect on Brahma, the prajapatis and the
manasaputras as well as on Sandhya, Kama concludes: Yes, I am capable of
performing the job the Creator has allotted to me.
It is at this moment that Shiva appears in the skies above
them and looking at them laughs at them ridiculing them. “Brahma,” he asks,
“how come you get sexually excited seeing your own daughter? Certainly very
inappropriate for someone who follows the Vedic way! One should treat one’s
daughter-in-law exactly as one treats one’s mother; and one should treat one’s
daughter exactly as he treats his daughter-in-law – this is the Vedic way of
life, expressed in words that came out of your own mouth. How is it that just
because of Kama you have forgotten all that? What holds the world up together
is firmness of the mind – and you have lost that firmness because of something
as insignificant as Kama. And how have the great ascetics who spend all their
time in meditation fallen and started lusting for a woman? How has some silly guy like Kama, who has just
got his work allotted to him by you, who has no sense of the right time and the
right place, made you victims of his arrow? Shame! Shame on you all!”
Hearing these words of Shiva, Brahma becomes doubly ashamed
and his body becomes covered with perspiration again, this time out of
embarrassment. He masters himself and holds himself back, though a moment ago,
filled with lust, he was about to grab Sandhya in his arms.
From Bramha’s perspiration, says the Kalika Purana, are born
the pitarah/pitrs – the manes. And from the perspiration of Daksha, who has a
hard time controlling his sexual arousal, is born Rati, the goddess of sexual
love and beauty, the slim wasted, slender, irresistible goddess of the golden
hue, whom he gives to Kama as his wife.
To end the story, Brahma becomes infuriated with Kama for
making him lust for his own daughter and curses him that he would be burned to
ashes by Shiva. Later, when Kama explains he was just testing the powers Brahma
had said he has, and begs forgiveness, the Creator forgives him and tells him
that he will regain his body when Shiva takes a wife.
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As far as the Kalika Purana is concerned, the story of
Sandhya ends here. However, the Shiva Purana which tells exactly the same story
of Sandhya, even using identical vocabulary, imageries and metaphors in its
Rudra Samhita section, continues her story from here. The Purana tells us that
after Shiva and Brahma leave the place, Sandhya muses over the incidents that have
happened. Her own father was tempted by her, her brothers – the prajapatis and
the mind-born sons of Brahma – too were tempted by her, shot by the arrows of
Kama. Not only that, because of the arrows he had shot at her, she too had
become erotically excited and had started behaving in sexually suggestive ways.
True, Kama has reaped the fruits of his actions in the form of the curse he
received from Brahma, but she too had committed the grave sin of lusting for
her own father and her brothers. She decides to perform the expiatory rites
prescribed by the Vedas for such a sin – ending one’s body by entering a sacrificial
fire. She decides to do that, but before that she would do one thing for the
good of the world. She had felt sexual feelings from the very moment of her
birth – she was just born when all these things happened. Hence she would
perform extreme penance so that no new born will have sexual feelings.
Eroticism, sexuality, should come to all only on maturity. After achieving that
goal, she would give up this body of hers that had tempted her father and
brothers and in which she had felt sexual arousal for her father and brothers.
She realizes she is inspired to meditate and purify herself
by the sight of Shiva that she had had as he appeared before them all.
With these noble thoughts, Sandhya goes to the foot of the
mountain Chandrabhaga in the Himalayas and prepares to meditate and do tapas
there. Brahma sends his son Vasishtha to her so that he can instruct her in
meditation and tapas, telling him that she considers the temptation she felt
for them as her first death – the real death – and now she wants to make her
death complete by abandoning her present body so that she can be reborn in a
fresh, unstained body. Brahma asks
Vasishtha to assume a different body so that Sandhya would not embarrassed by
his sight – she had sexually desired him earlier.
When Vasishtha sees her, Sandhya is sitting on the bank of
the Himalayan lake Brihal-lolita, near Mt. Chandrabhaga. Seeing him, now
appearing as an ascetic, Sandhya bows deeply to him and responding to his questions
tells him she is Sandhya, she is blessed by his sight, and she has come there
to perform tapas but does not know how to do it. Vasishtha asks her to meditate
upon Shiva – focus her attention on him, worship him using a mantra he gives
her. She does it for so long that her matter hair growing down from her head
covers her entire body, leaving her face bare, making her look like a frost
covered lotus in the words of Shiva Purana. When Shiva appears before her and
offers her boons, she tells him her first boon would be that no one should have
sexual feelings right from birth. She also requests that the man who would
become her husband should be an intimate friend of hers and any man other than
her husband who looks at her lustfully should become impotent. These boons are
granted by a highly pleased Shiva who declares her free from all stains from
her past. Eventually she burns her body in the sacrificial fire of Rishi
Medhatithi and is reborn from it as Arundhati and marries Vasishtha.
Vasishtha and Arundhati have since then been the highest
example for marital love and fidelity and the ideal couple in every imaginable
way. A ritual that is still performed in Hindu marriages is called Arundhati
darshana, seeing Arundhati: immediately after marriage, the newly married
couple standing close to each other and holding hands takes a look at the early
morning sky for a view of Arundhati, today seen as part of a constellation.
Thus Sandhya who begins as the embodiment of female splendour
and is used by Kama to tempt her own father and brothers ends up as a symbol of
not only beauty but also loyalty, unswerving fidelity, perfect love, total
commitment and all other qualities that make married life worth living. She
also enjoys the total love of her man – Vasishtha’s love for Arundhati is the
most complete love a man can have for his woman.
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As we can easily see, the two women have hardly anything common
between them except that they are both young and beautiful and the first women
created. One is created in anger and in order to punish man, for what was no
fault of man, the creator’s heart full of vengeance and fury, whereas the other
is born of meditative calmness, serenity, joyfulness, the festive feeling that
is the result of meditation. Sandhya is also self-born, not intentionally
created; she just emerges from the Creator’s heart, as all highest creation
does, in what is called the flow state, in what China calls wu-wei and India
calls akarma, the state of effortless efficiency in action with no actor/doer
being present, actions originating from the highest dimension of existence, as
a manifestation of the creativity that is inherent in pure
existence-consciousness-bliss. She is born of egolessness, from the state of
self-transcendence that meditation takes us to, as all that is best in
existence is, unlike Pandora who is a creation of Zeus’ wounded ego. Since
bliss is the source of Sandhya’s origin, her essence is blissfulness, what
India calls ananda. There is absolutely not one thing negative about Sandhya.
Whereas except that she is beautiful, desirable and can
become the mother of his children – a huge thing indeed, of course – there is
not one thing positive about Pandora. The way Greek mythology describes it, the
joy she promises is a trap. Her true promise is what she is born to do to man –
fill his heart and home with hatred and jealousy, with competitiveness and
rivalry with others, with anger and jealousy, with lust, grief and sorrow, with fear, anxiety, discontent, greed, envy, cruelty,
rage and the hundred other negative emotions. She would make man hate man, make
man kill man for her sake, would transform what was heaven into hell. Pan-dora,
all-gift, is not a gift at all, but a pestilential curse.
Sandhya excites men sexually, fills their hearts and body
with lust, even forbidden lust, but that is not her fault. It is because of
Kama, the god of desire, love, lust – because of the arrows Kama shoots at men.
And she is as much a victim of Kama as the men are. And when she has excited
men with incestuous desire for her, she feels guilty about it, feels repugnance
for herself, and deciding to atone for it, sets out immediately on a journey to
purify herself through meditation and penance. In an act of atonement for what
she considers her sin – even though we can see she has committed no sin – she
wants to abandon the very body which tempted them, in which she herself felt
desire for them. She then takes another birth, this time as the very embodiment
of chastity, loyalty, conjugal devotion and what Krishna in the Gita calls dharma-aviruddha
kāma, desire that does not go against dharma, righteousness, the common good.
She does another amazing thing. Before abandoning the body
in which she feels she has sinned and done something repugnant, as the Shiva
Purana which continues her story tells us, she would spend years praying to
God, meditating upon Shiva, and when he appears, ask him as her first boon:
that no newborn would feel the sexual urge, sexuality would awaken only years
later, when the child has grown up.
I want to add one more thing here, a beautiful thing that
her story tells us: the way to self-mastery, to mastery over unbridled
sexuality as well as over everything else, is consciousness, what the western
world today calls mindfulness. In fact that is the only path to self-mastery,
which all of us need everywhere, at all times, the absence of which leads us to
excesses and to horrible crimes, news about which the media fills us every
morning as we sit down to watch the news on TV. Shiva in Indian culture stands
for consciousness, awakened consciousness, pure consciousness – the chit/chid
of sat-chid-ananda. It is his sight that awakens Brahma, the prajapatis and the
mind-born sons of brahma from the darkness of blind lust. Again, it is his
sight that awakens Sandhya. The antidote for Kama’s arrows is Shiva,
consciousness, conscious living, awakened living, mindful living. The Shiva
Sutra, a brilliant Kashmiri Sanskrit text tells: triṣu chaturthaṃ tailavad āsechyaṃ, a sutra that asks us to
bring in the fourth state, consciousness, into our other states – waking, dream, and sleep. This is the highest spiritual path
and the only way worth living, and that is what Sandhya teaches us through her
own practice.
To conclude, Pandora is woman as a punishment to man, as a
curse, created in anger, to destroy, whereas Sandhya is a result of
meditativeness, an expression of God’s creativity, divine creativity, sacred creativeness,
a manifestation of creative sacredness in female form. She is an expression of
the beauty that is within God – sundaram – finding expression in feminine form.
She performs tapas so that no one becomes a victim to the enormous powers of
kama as she had become, so that kama will have power over us not until we are
grown up and matured enough to understand and handle it. That is her parting
blessing to the world before she ends her body which she feels has been polluted
and is reborn as Arundhati. It is interesting to note that she does not curse kama, does not say no to sex, which would be the denial of life itself, denial of the flowering of new life, denial of one of the greatest joys of life, but only delays it until maturity.
These two stories about the first woman speak of two
completely different perceptions of woman: India speaks of her as irresistibly
beautiful and essentially sacred, a blessing upon mankind. Whereas for ancient Greece
she was a curse, a punishment, someone who sows the seeds of hell on earth.
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