[Advaita-l] Re: Thanks
Vidyasankar Sundaresan
svidyasankar at hotmail.com
Sun Oct 15 09:13:20 CDT 2006
Re: eating vegetarian food, there is no single injunction that is binding on
all people. Generally speaking, the vast majority of human beings (even in
India) eat meat of one kind or other. It is only recommended that to give up
tAmasika and rAjasika elements, one should also withdraw from meat eating
and move towards sAttvika vegetarian food.
The mahAbhArata is a marvel of the complexity that can arise in deciding
questions of dharma. Additionally, bhIshma's personal situation in the
mahAbhArata is most complex. When he took the vow to renounce his claim to
the kingship in favor of the children of satyavatI, he also undertook to
protect the kingdom of hastinApura as long as he lived. As such, there was a
very strong reason for dhRtarAshTra and his sons to call upon bhIshma to
fight on their side in any war.
The other thing to note is that at the time of the war, the situation was
such that much could be said on both sides, on the question of who should
have been the rightful king. The ideal situation was that the eldest son of
the king would succeed to the throne. duryodhana being the eldest son of
dhRtarAshTra, who was the elder to pANDu, had a very strong claim to
becoming the king. On the other hand, as pANDu was the one who was crowned
king, yudhishThira, his eldest son, also had a very strong claim to the
kingship. This ancient rule of succession did not say anything about the
character of the eldest son - all that was needed to inherit was the primacy
of birth. It was because of this very complicated scenario that bhIshma and
vidura had advised a partition of the kingdom with the pANDavas ruling from
indraprastha. However, bhIshma's original vow still bound him to protect
hastinApura.
In fact, if one traces the history for a few generations before the kauravas
and pANDavas, the eldest son had always been set aside for one reason or the
other. Santanu, father of bhIshma, was the second prince. His elder brother,
devApi, had renounced the world at a young age. bhIshma was the youngest son
of Santanu and gangA, but the oldest surviving son. He too renounced the
throne in favor of the sons to be born to Santanu and satyavatI, citrangada
and vicitravIrya. Here again, citrangada, the elder son, was killed in a
battle and vicitravIrya, the younger son became king. In the next
generation, the only reason for not formally crowning dhRtarAshTra was that
he was born blind, so pANDu was named king. After this long history of
complicated succession, a war was perhaps inevitable within the kshatriya
norms of the day.
bhIshma had a very tough choice, but in the end, he had to honor the vow he
had taken of protecting hastinApura. So also with droNa - although he knew
that yudhishThira was a better person than duryodhana to become king, and
arjuna was also his favorite student, he was indebted to the court that had
given him patronage. He also felt duty bound to fight on the side of
duryodhana. Take the case of Salya, uncle of nakula and sahadeva. He was
essentially tricked by duryodhana, because he originally came to kurukshetra
to fight on the side of the pANDavas. However, he was bound by his word,
althogh it was originally given in an ambiguous manner. It was a matter of
personal integrity and honor, at a time when people did what they said and
said what they meant.
Regards,
Vidyasankar
>Namaste Kathirasanji,
> Thanks for pointing out the book on vegetarianism in the Hindu
>dharma. I could not reply earlier as I was away on a trip.
>
>Could you also (or someone else) point out a good analysis of the episodes
>in the mahAbhArata for learning about issues of dharma -- reasons why
>bhIShma did fight with the kauravas, whether it was dhArmic or not, etc.
>Thanks.
>
>A.Siddhartha.
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