Indian civilisation: Oldest and
most influential
By S.S. Bhatti

INDIA is the home of one of the world’s oldest and most influential civilisations. Though it is the largest part of the landmass of South Asia, comprising the present states of Bharat, Pakistan and Bangladesh, India is not merely a geographical entity. It is a socio-cultural and politico-economic reality built around Man’s microcosm in a live interaction with God’s macrocosm. Perhaps "Holism", coined by General Smuts, a contemporary of Mahatama Gandhi in South Africa, is a good term to express such a unique work of art — India. Holism is the philosophy that the fundamental principle of the universe is the creation of wholes i.e., complete and self-contained systems from the atom and cell by evolution to the most complex forms of life and mind.

The people of India are largely the product of successive invasions that, from times immemorial, have swept into the country - to capture this "golden sparrow". The main ethnic streams that have mingled in various combinations to produce the "Indian Peoples" are the Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Australoid, and Negroid.

The perception of the present-day Indians of their country is in terms of the rich cultural heritage everyone is so proud of — though very few can spell it out in tangible terms. Culture consists of languages, ideas, beliefs, customs, codes, laws, indeed, anything and everything made by man and used as an integral part of his behaviour. For the purpose of this essay — which is an attempt at revisiting India in the light of modern knowledge — I am restricting the term "cultural heritage" to encompass mythology, metaphysics, and mysticism that are the peculiar endowments of this great country. I will briefly deal with these subjects and try to pinpoint their timeless and universal import and applicability to ever-changing human situations.

Myth and mythology: Something untrue can be referred to as a "mere fable" and fictitious, and instructive stories like those of Aesop, an ancient Greek story-teller, are called fables. But, genuine myths, on the contrary, are not presented as fictitious or untrue. Myth is thus a collective term used for one kind of symbolic communication and specifically indicates one basic form of religious symbolism, as distinguished from symbolic behaviour (cult, ritual) and symbolic places or objects (such as temples and icons). Myths (in the plural) are specific accounts concerning gods or superhuman beings and extraordinary events or circumstances in a time that is altogether different from that of ordinary human experience.

In myth, the function of explanation and the narrative form go together, and myths have thus been significant in many traditional systems of education. Myths present the model for man’s behaviour, idealised in the thoughts, words, and deeds of gods and superhuman beings. The world of myth is a continuous source of the knowledge needed for crucial problems in man’s existence : war and peace, life and death, truth and falsehood, good and rich.

The term mythology is used in two distinct ways. It is the study of myth, but it is also the body of myths given in a particular religious tradition. Mythology occurs in the history of all human traditions and communities, and is a basic constituent of human culture.

According to T.S. Eliot, Nobel Laureate poet-critic and father of modern English poetry, literature is the purest creation of the human imagination. In this sense, mythology is a form of literature, often regarded as sacred by the community that produced it. In my view, mythology is faith fiction which, unlike science fiction, deepens and broadens with the advance of technology. Technology is one of the four major fields of human endeavour; the other three being humanities, art and science.

I will take just three instances from Indian mythology to pinpoint its uniqueness embodying timeless and universal significance and applicability. The first is of Vishwakarma, the mythic architect of the cosmos. He did not build the cosmos with stone, concrete, steel, and glass. Nor did he design it to need future expansion or renovation. It is a self-contained, self-renewing, and self-sustaining continuum fashioned with just two elements: Space and Time.

Here is the second example. When Rama killed Bali, the latter reminded him that it was unbecoming of a great hero that he was to have accomplished his aim on the sly. Otherwise he had the boon of drawing fifty per cent of the power of the facing enemy thereby rendering him ineffective for the combat. That Lord Rama accepted his victim’s view readily speaks volumes for his stature as a perfect hero. However, the crowning glory of his heroism as an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the Provider-Sustainer of the universe in the Indian Triune concept of God, was that he promised a moral recompense in a subsequent avatara. This he did, as the story goes, as Lord Krishna who was fatally shot by a fisherman (an incarnation of Bali). The beauty of this myth does not lie in its engrossing narrative. It is the use of Time as a fourth dimension (remember, its modern discoverer : Albert Einstein) to conjure up a Time-Space continuum for the enactment of moral, emotional, and spiritual drama separated by Yugas : Tretayuga and Dwaparyuga. Even when this myth is regarded as a pure creation of human imagination, the author deserves full marks for his matchless mental faculty that could conjure up an inordinately long span of time for his faith fiction. The fulfilment of promise by Lord Rama as a commitment of great ethico-spiritual value should be obvious.

The third example is of Arjuna winning Draupadi as an infallible archer. There are three parameters to the test of his perfect skill : (1) the target was the eye of the fish, (2) the target was revolving, and (3) the target had to be shot at by looking downwards at its mirror-image. That Arjuna accomplished it with miraculous precision leaves no doubt as to his stature as the ancient world’s most outstanding archer! But the lesson goes beyond myth in the realm of science. It is an extremely imaginative (but factually demonstrable) precursor of guided missiles. In the case of Arjuna, one must not miss this signal fact: it was the imperturbable stillness of his mind which achieved such a moving mechanical accuracy.

That Indian mythology is still living is given by the fact that it has adjusted itself effortlessly to modernity. Movies and TV serials based on mythology are extremely popular. So are bhajans (devotional songs). Mythic illustrations are favourites in Indian calendar art. Lord Rama’s story was evoked by Mahatma Gandhi, Father of the Nation, when he set the Ram Raj (Kingdom of Rama) as India’s governmental ideal.

Metaphysics: Metaphysics is the philosophical study whose object is to determine the real nature of things — to determine the meaning, structure, and principles of whatever is in so for as it is. Indian philosophy has, among its significant concerns, the study of the nature of the world (cosmology), the nature of knowledge (epistemology), ethics (morals and the mores), aesthetics (nature and form of beauty), and religion (integrated view and way of life). Indian philosophy includes both orthodox (astikla) systems, namely, the Nyaya, Vaisesika, Samkhya, Yoga, Purva-mimamsa and Vedanta schools of philosophy, and unorthodox (nastika) systems such as Buddhism and Jainism. The upanishads, which are the best-known Indian philosophical treatises, contain one of the first conceptions of universal, all-pervading, spiritual reality leading to a radical monism (absolute non-dualism, or the essential unit of matter and spirit).

Three basic concepts form the cornerstone of Indian philosophical thought: the self, or soul (atman), deeds (karma), and salvation (moksa). The concept of Karma is most typically Indian, and signified the moral efficacy of human actions. In my view karma is an inheritance of genetic characterstics which together form the ground, embodying determinism and free will, from which an individual draws the substance of his thoughts, words, and deeds in the present life. The intrinsic restraint that Karma imposes on an individual’s mind should be noted. It makes for him regulation and maintenance of dharma (moral law possible through the psychokinesis of an inner discipline. Since moksa is the ultimate goal of human life it leads one on to a state of mind where the immanent allurements of material well-being are often transcended in favour of the metaphysical quest for complete freedom from samsara: endless cycle of birth and deaths). Similarly atman is a suprapsychic reality beyond the restless activities of the mind that is an aggregate of three gunas (qualities or attibutes): sat (harmony and poise), rajas (activity and ambition), and tamas (inertia and ignorance). In terms of the staggering diversity of its concerns, and their exhaustive treatment, Indian metaphysics is most truly the art and science of thinking out to their ultimate significance.