Introduction and links to related topics Below are some short introductions. Click on the blue hyperlinked word to get more related articles.
Mahabharata - "[The Mahabharata] is...probably the longest single poem in the world''s literature. Traditionally the author of the poem was the sage Vyasa, who is said to have taught it to his pupil Vaisampayana. The latter, according to tradition, recited it in public for the first time at a great sacrifice held by King Janamejaya, the great grandson of Arjuna, one of the heroes of the story. ...the poem tells of the great civil war in the kingdom of the Kurus, in the region about the modern Delhi, then known as Kuruksetra."
-- A.L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India, p. 407
"The Mahabharata is the creation and expression not of a single individual mind, but of a whole people. ...The whole poem has been built like a vast national temple unrolling slowly its immense and complex idea from chanber to chamber, crowded with significant groups and sculptures and inscriptions, the grouped figures carved in divine or semi-divine proportions, a humanity aggrandised and half-uplifted to super-humanity and yet always true to the human motive and idea and feeling, the strain of the real constantly raised by the tones of the ideal, the life of this world amply portrayed but subjected to the conscious influence and presence of the powers of the worlds behind it, and the whole unified by the long embodied procession of a consistent idea worked out in the wide steps of the poetic story."
"The leading motive is the Indian idea of the Dharma. Here the Vedic notion of the struggle between the godheads of truth and light and unity and the powers of darkness and division and falsehood is brought out from the spiritual and religious and internal into the outer intellectual, ethical and vital plane. It takes there in the figure of the story a double form of a personal and a political struggle, the personal a conflict between typical and representative personalities embodying the greater ethical ideals of the Indian Dharma and others who are embodiments of Asuric egoism and self-will and misuse of the Dharma, the political a battle in which the personal struggle culminates, an international clash ending in the establishment of a new rule of righteiousness and justice, a kingdom or rather an empire of the Dharma uniting warring races and substituting for the ambitious arrogance of kings and aristocratic clans the supremacy, the calm and peace of a just and humane empire. It is the old struggle of Deva and Asura, God and Titan, but represented in the terms of human life."
-- Sri Aurobindo, The Foundations of Indian Culture, SABCL Vol.14 pp. 287-88
Mahabharata - Mahabharata (Sanskrit) One of the two great epic poems of ancient India, the largest poetic work known to literature, consisting of 220,000 lines.
The masses of tradition and tales in this epic make it the national treasury from which bards, poets, dramatists, and artists, as from an inexhaustible source, draw their themes. It contains the history of the family of the Bharatas in addition to a great many beautiful truly mystical and occult teachings, and a few really splendid minor episodes like the Bhagavad-Gita and Anugita.
Tradition makes Vyasa -- a generic name of high literary authority, used by at least several archaic writers -- the author of this grand poem.
The main theme of the epic is the great struggle between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, descendants through Bharata from Puru, the great ancestor of one branch of the Lunar race. The object of the struggle was the kingdom whose capital was Hastinapura (elephant city), the ruins of which are said to be traceable 57 miles northeast of Delhi, on an old bed of the Ganges.
Aurva - Aurva (Sanskrit) A rishi, son of Urva and grandson of Bhrigu, mentioned in the Rig-Veda (8:102:4). The Mahabharata relates that Aurva was the preceptor of Sagara (whose mother he saved from the funeral pyre), on whom he bestowed the agneyastra (fiery weapon).
Virabhadra - Virabhadra (Sanskrit) Heroically beneficent or benevolent; an avatara of Siva, the patron of occult study and achievement. Ancient Indian myth represents him as a monster to human vision, being a thousand-headed and thousand-armed entity born of the breath of Siva-Rudra -- Siva under his form of Rudra, and therefore the great destroyer because regenerator. In the Mahabharata, Siva commissions this entity "to destroy the sacrifice prepared by Daksha. Then Virabhadra, ''abiding in the region of the ghosts (ethereal men). . . . created from the pores of the skin (Romakupas), powerful Raumas, (or Raumyas): (SD 2:182-3). This allegory refers in human history to the evolution of the "sweat-born" or second root-race and the destruction of the remnants of the first root-race.
Cosmically Siva-Rudra is the active force of mahat (cosmic mind), both regenerative and destructive; and following the same line of thought Virabhadra in his human application has reference to the incessant effort of the manasaputras to break forth through the veils of maya to bring mind to the mentally somnolent or imperfectly awakened earliest human races. Hence, the reference to Virabhadra as thousand-headed, -eyed, or -armed may likewise be applied to mind -- for mind is not only all seeing but all performing and all wise.
Matsya-purana - Matsya-Purana (Sanskrit) One of the 18 principal Hindu Puranas, said to have been communicated to the seventh manu, Vaivasvata, by Vishnu in the form of a fish (matsya). It consists of over 14,000 slokas, but many of its chapters duplicate the Vishnu- and Padma-Puranas, and much of its material is drawn from the Mahabharata.
Varuna - Varuna (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root vri to surround, envelop]
The all-enveloping sky; originally Varuna represented the waters of space, or the all-investing sky, akasa, but in later mythology he became the god of the ocean. In the Mahabharata he was one of the four guardians of our visible kosmos, the guardian of the West.
"Uranos is a modified Varuna, ''the Universal encompassor,'' the all-embracer, and one of the oldest of the Vedic deities -- Space, the maker of Heaven and Earth, since both are manifested out of his (or its) seed. It is only later that Varuna became the chief of the Adityas and a kind of Neptune riding on the Leviathan -- Makara, now the most sacred and mysterious of the signs of the Zodiac. Varuna, ''without whom no creature can even wink,'' was degraded like Uranos, and, like him, he fell into generation, his functions . . . having been lowered down from heaven to earth by exoteric anthropomorphism. As the same Orientalist [Muir] says, ''The attributes ascribed to Varuna (in the Vedas) impart to his character a moral elevation and sanctity far surpassing that attributed to any other Vedic Deity.'' But to understand correctly the reason of his fall, like that of Uranos, one has to see in every exoteric religion the imperfect and sinful work of man''s fancy, and also to study the mysteries which Varuna is said to have imparted to Vasishta. Only . . . ''his secrets and those of Mirat are not to be revealed to the foolish'' " (SD 2:268-9n).
Writing of Varuna, Muir says:
"The grandest cosmical functions are ascribed to Varuna. Possessed of illimitable knowledge . . . he upholds heaven and earth, he dwells in all worlds as sovereign ruler. . . . He made the golden . . . sun to shine in the firmament. The wind which resounds through the atmosphere is his breath. . . . Through the operation of his laws the moon walks in brightness, and the stars . . . mysteriously vanish in daylight. He knows the flight of birds in the sky, the paths of ships on the ocean, the course of the far-travelling wind, and beholds all the things that have been or shall be done. . . . He witnesses men''s truth and falsehood" (TG 360).
Varuna, essentially the all-encompassing ether of space, is the Vedic representative of cosmic spirit, and therefore has always been one of the noblest, most mysterious conceptions of divinity.
Itihasa - (Sanskrit) "So it was."
Epic history, particularly the Ramayana and Mahabharata (of which the famed Bhagavad Gita is a part). This term sometimes refers to the Puranas, especially the Skanda Purana and the Bhagavata Purana (or Srimad Bhagavatam).
See: Mahabharata, Ramayana, Smriti.
Jatayu - Jatayu (Sanskrit) King of the vultures, steed of Vishnu and other gods, son of Aruna and Syeni according to the Mahabharata; or son of Garuda according to the Ramayana.
Jatayu promised his aid to Rama, and when the demon-king Ravena was carrying off Rama''s wife Sita, the king of birds gave pursuit, but was mortally wounded after a furious battle with Ravena. In the Puranas, when Rama''s father, King Dasaratha, went to the ecliptic to recover Sita from Sani (Saturn), his chariot was consumed by a glance from Sani''s eye, but Jatayu caught the falling king and saved him.
"Jatayu is, of course, the cycle of 60,000 years within the great cycle of Garuda; hence he is represented as his son, or nephew, ad libitum, since the whole meaning rests in his being placed on the line of Garuda''s descendants" (SD 2:570-71). Birds have been from time immemorial the emblems of migrating and evolving monads.
Vasishtha Vasistha - Vasishtha Vasistha (Sanskrit) The most wealthy; a celebrated Vedic rishi, representing the typical Brahmin sage. Many legends have clustered about him, especially in regard to his conflict with the sage Visvamitra -- the king who raised himself from the Kshatriya to the Brahmanical class.
Many hymns of the Rig-Veda are attributed to these two sages: one hymn represents Vasishtha as the family priest of King Sudas, and in the Rig-Veda (7:33:11) he is called the son of the apsaras Urvasi by Mitra and Varuna, hence his name Maitravaruni. He is also supposed to have owned Nandini, the cow of plenty (offspring of Surabhi). As this cow was able to grant the sage all his wishes, he became the master of every vasu (desirable object).
In Manu (1:35) Vasishtha is enumerated as one of the ten prajapatis, the patriarchs produced by Manu-Svayambhuva for the peopling of the earth. In the Mahabharata he is regarded as the family priest of the Suryavansa (solar race), and also as one of the seven great rishis associated with the seven stars of the Great Bear. In the Puranas, Vasishtha is represented as one of the arrangers of the Vedas in a dvapara yuga of a certain chatur yuga, and as the father of seven celebrated sons.
Bhargava - Bhargava (Sanskrit) Descendant of Bhrigu, the great rishi; Sukra, regent of the planet Venus and preceptor of the Daityas; likewise an ancient people mentioned in the Mahabharata.
Kurus - Kurus (Sanskrit) The foes and cousins of the Pandavas, as related in the Mahabharata.
See also KAURAVAS
Vyasa - Vyasa (Sanskrit).. Lit., one who expands or amplifies; an interpreter, or rather a revealer; for that which he explains, interprets and amplifies is a mystery to the profane. This term was applied in days of old to the highest Gurus in India. There were many Vyasas in Aryavarta; one was the compiler and arranger of the Vedas; another, the author of the Mahabharata - the twenty-eighth Vyasa or revealer in the order of succession - and the last one of note was the author of Uttara Mimansa, the sixth school or system of Indian philosophy. He was also the founder of the Vedanta system. His date, as assigned by Orientalists (see Elphinstone, Cowell, etc.), is 1,400 B.C., but this date is certainly too recent. The Puranas mention only twenty-eight Vyasas, who at various ages descended to the earth to promulgate Vedic truths - but there were many more.
Sakti - Sakti (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root sak to be powerful, energetic, have force]
Universal energy, the feminine aspect of fohat; one of the seven forces of nature, of which six are manifest and the seventh partly manifest. It is energy that proceeds through itself, not being due to the active or conscious will of the one that produces it. Popularly, the wives or consorts of the gods -- the energies or active powers of these deities represented as feminine influences.
"These anthropomorphic definitions are unfortunate, because misleading. The Saktis of Nature are really the veils, or sheaths, or vehicular carriers, through which work the inner and ever-active energies. As substance and energy, or force and matter, are fundamentally one, . . . it becomes apparent that even these Saktis, or sheaths, or veils, are themselves energic to lower spheres or realms through which they themselves work.
"The crown of the astral light, as H. P. Blavatsky puts it, is the generalized Sakti of Universal Nature in so far as our solar system is concerned" (OG 150).
Sakti in another sense is soul-power, the mental-psychic energy of the god as of the adept. In the Mahabharata, Draupadi, the wife or sakti of the five Pandava brothers, represents a spiritual power they all possessed in common. In legends and tales of the ancient peoples, the wives of the great heroes mystically represent the aggregate of the saktis or spiritual powers that the heroes had individually attained.
Considering the saktis as more or less conscious forces in nature, gives a picture of not only the turbulent and ever-active movements in the lower planes of nature, but likewise the calm and stately measures of spiritual activity. It is common in the West to associate power, activity, energy, and force with masculine correlations; but this is quite arbitrary, and an impassionate viewing of nature will show it to be continuously moved by vehicular as well as inspiriting causes.
Cosmically sakti or the saktis originate in the summit of the astral light or akasa, which in one sense may be considered as not only the womb of the cosmic saktis, but as their playground and in another sense as the saktis collectively themselves. In man, sakti is the buddhi in its higher aspect, and the activities of the various pranas in the human constitution in its lower aspect. There is no essential distinction between any divinity and its consort, between Brahman and pradhana, Brahma and prakriti, or between parabrahman and mulaprakriti. Furthermore, all the saktis are either conscious entities in nature, or vital effluxes or emanations, cosmic fluids, with which nature is infused throughout.
The reason the occultist of all ages looks askance at the tantric practices, or the Tantras dealing largely with the saktis, is because these tantric books and practices are almost wholly occupied in relations and correlations both in nature and in man of the saktis in their lower aspect. The kundalini, for instance, is likewise born in the buddhi in man, but descending through the human constitution has its pranic or psychovital physical representations in the various chakras or vital centers of the human frame, and thus the kundalini is an example of sakti or of its fluidic effluxes in the lower portions of the human constitution.
The early Christians looked upon the Holy Spirit as of distinctly feminine characteristics, influence, or svabhava, as the center not only of vital but of spiritual and intellectual activity, whether in the universe or man, so that the Holy Spirit corresponds to a divine sakti. A notable instance in Hinduism is the Sakti or goddess Durga, having both a lofty or spiritual, and an inferior or distinctly material, function in nature, and therefore a beneficent as well as a terrible action therein -- the very name Durga meaning "terrible in action," or "terrible in going." And yet Durga is the consort or sakti of Siva, often called the Mahesvara (Great Lord); and the name of this goddess arises from the utterly impartial, infinitely just, and yet often simply terrific action of the forces in nature, particularly when karmically directed to works of regeneration, often called destruction. Cosmic operations or cosmic justice are often indeed to human vision terrible in their operation, which can never be set aside, stayed, or diverted. Hence Durga is often represented in iconography as surrounded with a necklace of skulls or by similar ghastly emblems -- a series of ideas which the pragmatic West misinterprets and consequently depicts as horrible and revolting.
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