Good and Evil
By Miho Kataoka2007©
Bharatanatyam is the dance of prayer which the dancer yearns for the god.
The heroine (Nayika) longs for the god to unite but suffer from the separation. The heroine often betrayed by the god and suffers. Then you think what in the world the god can betray and sometimes get angry like human beings?
There is a story of good and evil in SAURA PRANA (prana is a corpus of Sanskrit myth and legends).
The king Pratardana was living in his kingdom with perfect dharma (order) with grace which is well balanced because of his piousness to the god Shiva. After a while, the evils got tired of their Karma (religious concept of Hinduism and Buddhism, entire cycle of cause and effect. The effect of your deeds create your future situation.), succeeded to go up to the world of gods from hell by following to Veda (The Hindu sacred scripture) faithfully. All people lived in the heaven piously. Therefore, the Yama, the god of death has lost his role and the king of gods, Indra said, how can we distinguish gods from low people if all are living in the heaven together? Then Indra ordered to the father of gods, Brihaspati, to make heresy against Shiva worship. So that people will go to hell as a result of Shiva`s wrath. But any gods did not agree to this idea, therefore, Indra ordered to Centaur who has a body of horse. The people (Brahmins) of Pratardana were persuaded by Centaur and evil heart has sprout in their mind and started to argue among them. According to the law, the king Pratardana has to kill people (Brahmins) who slander the god Shiva. But on the other hand, he is not allowed to kill Brahmins according to the law. In the meanwhile, people who slandered the god Shiva have fallen to hell. The hell was filled with people again.
The goddess Rakshmi awoke Vishnu, the protector of good and the god of dharma (order), from deep sleep on Ananta (the thousand headed serpent). Vishnu saw the world is being destroyed. All the gods were at a loss and went to beg to Shiva. All the gods explained that all these deeds were done in order to protect the creation…
From this story, we see that the king of the god Indra, himself created the good and evil. The world of perfect dharma (order) is the world which is well balanced of good and evil. There is good because there is evil. These good and evil is relative but not absolute. They would change according to time, place and people.
According to his notion of Indian mythology, the world divided into 4 Yugas. (1 Kruta Yuga. 2Treta Yuga.3 Dwapara Yuga.4 Kali Yuga.) Yuga means age and this world repeat these 4 Yugas. The first Kruta Yuga is a golden age which perfect Dharma (order) exists. Then slowly the world falls and corrupts. Now, we are in Kali Yuga which the Dharma exist only 25% and loosing the balance of good and evil. This is a so-called eschatology of Hindu. As we see, Hindu thought see the world falls in a natural manner and repeat the cycle of creation and destruction.
