Tags:
Journalism of Courage
An unreasonable amount of Hindu social attitude has evolved from the Puranas, which are tiresome to read. One cannot relate to their archaic, unfair worldview unlike the Upanishads, which do us proud. Yet, credit where credit is due. The Markandeya Purana, the shortest Purana with a mere 9,000 slokas, divided into 137 adhyayas or chapters, is actually pretty interesting to read. The Chandi Paath, still read during Durga Puja, is from here chapters 81 to 93, and so is the tale of Raja Harishchandra. So it8217;s very much a living text even in this millennium, for all that they say it was composed around 300 CE.
The Markandeya Purana tries to answer several questions that inevitably come to mind about the Mahabharata. The story frame is that Rishi Jaimini, a disciple of Vedavyas and a lawgiver in his own right, goes to the powerful rishi Markandeya with what seem like our own questions today. If God is formless, why did he take human birth as Krishna? Why did Draupadi have to marry five brothers at once? Why did all these terrible deaths happen?
Uttama was rebuked by another sage that though he came from a noble line, he had deviated from the path of husbandly dharma, which was to protect his wife from everybody, even himself. No wonder the patriarchy wouldn8217;t let women be educated for centuries 8212; and still won8217;t, in swathes of India. But perhaps the ancients were not the wholesale bunch of creeps that praxis suggests, with one of the oldest puranas upholding such views?
