Mahabharata – 82

by 

Sankar Mukherjee

&

Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya
                                            Aadivamsavatarana Parva

Janamejaya was listening to the sage Vaisampayana with rapt attention. Now he asked why the gods should be born on the earth. What was the reason behind?.Vasaimpayana in reply went back to remote past .No wonder that  the Kurushkhetra war resulted in the mayhem of the ksatrya class. A similar event took place in  remote past .

There was a Brahmin named Parusharama.The warrior caste was then very powerful  & arrogant. Parusharam waged war against the warrior class for twenty one times. Finally the warrior class was wiped off from the face of the earth.

May be the readers of today might pray for another advent of Parusharama so that the business class & the politicians are totally annihilated.

With the wholesale destruction of the warrior class the earth was filled with laments of widows. God  the Father in the Bible asked man to multiply it is the duty of  man   to  perpetuate & continue  the race or the family line.So  fertile women went to the Brahamins. The latter cohabited with them. But they were never stained with carnal desires. The children born of them   were a fresh generation full of vigour,strength, valour, virtue & altruistic attitude.The golden era in human civilisation seemed  to show up. There was no untimely death during this period .No rape ,no murder, no assassination. The cycle of seasons was never erratic.In due time there would be the plants, flowers & fruits. Harvests showed up in time. No man was hungry. No one was poor.  one deviated from the path of virtue in those days. Heaven seemed to laugh at every nook & corner of the then earth.

In the meantime there was a great battle among the gods & the demons. The gods inflicted a crushing defeat on the demons. Totally vanquished the demons hit up a plan. They were born on earth as kings to destroy the ethos of the human society. That is how they wanted to take revenge upon gods.

This reminds us of the Bible & the Paradise Lost. The fallen angels wanted to seduce man, our first parents in Eden, so that God’s creation becomes out of joints. The Son of God Jesus Christ was born to redeem man in the eyes of gods & rescue virtue & piousness on earth from decadence & destruction.

In the Mahabharata seeing the earth & the human world becoming out of joints because of egoistic demons who were born as kings, the gods decided to incarnate as men & kings to fight the demons of kings on earth.

Thus Vaisampayana gave an answer meet to Janamejaya’s question --- Why gods should incarnate upon earth.?

Herein lies a philosophy of history.