Animal Kingdom (Tiryak) in Epics

by Saranya P.S | 2019 | 51,616 words | ISBN-10: 8190396315 | ISBN-13: 9788190396318

An English study the Animal Kingdom (Tiryak) in Epics.—The present thesis is based entirely on Ramayana and Mahabharata although an attempt is made to analytically compare the Animal kingdom with Mriga-pakshi-shastra—‘The ancient Indian science of of Animals and Birds’....

Chapter 1.5 - Myth, religion, ritual and other practices

Myths are very different in various traditions and religions everywhere in the world. They reveal the awesome forces and strengths of the divine and supernatural powers which perform miraculous and seemingly impossible things. Many of the customs and religious ceremonies are rooted in these myths. They justify the reasons behind a belief or a ritual.

Scholars of the modern day think that myths were, in their earliest forms, accounts of customs, values and traditions. According to James Frazer, myths and rituals together provide evidence for man’s earliest preoccupation, namely fertility. Frazer speaks of primitive man and the savage, the latter term also applied to contemporary hunter and gatherer societies, making them the opposite of civilized man, by which he means his fellow western population having adapted the world view presented by natural science.

He takes a lot for granted about the lack of intellectual capacities in those not "civilized." He regards them as completely unable to recognize the flaws in their beliefs, and does not at all allow them doubts in their own traditions and mythologies, nor the ability to think of them in any kind of symbolic way: "The savage, whether European or otherwise, fails to recognize those limitation to his power over nature which seems so obvious to us."2

Frazer insists that to them every superstition is just the way things are. But that is not proven by the vast volume of myths and rites he goes through. If it were, the customs of the monotheistic societies would not rank any higher. He just bases his assumptions on prejudice and a questionable application of the principle of evolution.

His basic theory is that "primitive man" was trying magic, first and foremost in fertility cults, as a means to control aspects of life that were beyond hands-on control, and that this magic evolved into religion, which in turn much later evolved into science. Thereby, he defined magic as a kind of pseudo-science. When it failed to provide sufficient results, people had to accept the power of fate and magic was replaced by prayers and sacrifice.3 The last stage of this development, according to Frazer, is into scientific thinking, albeit by a detour through the mechanical thinking implicit in the practice of magic: But when, still later, the conception of the elemental forces as personal agents is giving way to the recognition of natural law; then magic, based as it implicitly is on the idea of a necessary and invariable sequence of cause and effect, independent on personal will, reappears from the obscurity and discredit into which it had fallen, and by investigating the causal sequences in nature, directly prepares the way for science. Alchemy leads up to chemistry.4

Human society developed in stages. From the magical, it came to the religious and from there it passed on to the scientific realm. Myths and legends bore witness to archaic modes of thought that were otherwise difficult, nay, well-nigh impossible, to reconstruct.

Some important myths portray animals in various situations. They are used as domesticated pets, for many household uses, for play and for hunting. Agricultural civilizations tend to give weight to agricultural practices in their myths. Pastoral cultures give prominence to pastoral practices. Myths also explain some of the harvest customs, festivities, initiation ceremonies of both men and women and the secret and mystical social activities that were prevalent in that societies.5

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