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Sunday, April 22, 2012

#131 Unwithering flowers -why do they come only from the sweat of hermits and not women?


Vol. 3 Book of Forest AraNya kAnDa
Chapter 73 i.e. sarga 73
Verse 24 and 25 i.e. SlOka 24-25.
tesAm bhAra abhitaptAnAm
vanyam aaharataam guroH

ye prapetuH mahIm
tUrNam sharIrAt svEda bindavaH

taani maalyaani jaataani
muniinaam tapasaa tadaa

sveda bindu samutthaani
na vinashyanti raaghava




CONTEXT
Protagonist rAmA and his brother lakshmaNa were in danDaka forest. 14th year of the exile. rAvaNa abducted SIta. rAma and lakshmaNa came across accursed celestial kabandha who tried to devor them. They killed him. He got his original celestial form and started guiding rAma and lakshmaNa on further travel.

kabandha advised the brothers to go to Sage matanga's hermitage. kabandha was describing the hermitage.

GIST
matanga's disciples were getting wood-strips and other paraphernalia required for maintaining fire and sacrifices. Owing to heavy load, and walking they started perspiring. The sweat drops (svEda bindavaha) emerging from their bodies rose upwards and struck up to branches of plants and trees above their heads, as flowers.

The flowers never wither (vinaSyanti).


ybrem 1
The problem not only with most Indian scriptures, but also the the whole Capitalist and feudalist literature was (in those days) and is (even now), they describe they have an elitist bias. They overlook the working class.

For example, Indian rural / tribal women carry water pots and metallic water containers, on their heads, shoulders, and arms for distances stretching to 10 kms. to fetch drinking water from rivulets. They perspire profusely.

Why vAlmiki, being a tribal poet himself, does not write about the sweat of such women? Why all that such sweat evaporate in the heat or fall on the earth and disappear? if hermit-sweat drops can become unwithering flowers, women-sweat-drops can also become unwithering flowers!

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