CRADLE TALES OF HINDUISM
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The Indian Story-Teller at Nightfall.
CRADLE TALES OF
HINDUISM
BY
THE SISTER NIVEDITA
(MARGARET E. NOBLE)
AUTHOR OF "THE WEB OF INDIAN LIFE," ETC.
WITH FRONTISPIECE
NEW IMPRESSION
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
HORNBY ROAD, BOMBAY
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167 MOUNT ROAD, MADRAS
LONDON AND NEW YORK
1917
All rights reserved
TO
ALL THOSE SOULS
WHO HAVE GROWN TO GREATNESS BY
THEIR CHILDHOOD'S LOVE OF
THE MAHABHARATA
PREFACE
In the following stories, it may be worth while to point out, we have a collection of genuine Indian nursery-tales. The only discretion which I have permitted to myself has been that sometimes, in choosing between two versions, I have preferred the story received by word of mouth to that found in the books. Each one, and every incident of each, as here told, has one or other of these forms of authenticity.
To take them one by one, the Cycle of Snake Tales is found in the first volume of the Mahabharata. The story of Siva is inserted as a necessary foreword to those of Sati and Uma. The tale of Sati is gathered from the Bhagavat Purana, and that of the Princess Uma from the Ramayana, and from Kalidas' poem of Kumar Sambhaba, "The Birth of the War-Lord." Savitri, the Indian Alcestis, comes from that mine of jewels, the Mahabharata, as does also the incomparable story of Nala and Damayanti. In the Krishna Cycle, the first seven numbers are from the Puranas—works which correspond to our apocryphal Gospels—and the last three from the Mahabharata. The tales classed as those of the Devotees, are, of course, from various sources, those of Druwa and Prahlad being popular versions of stories found in the Vishnu Purana, while Gopala and his Brother the Cowherd is, I imagine, like the Judgment-Seat of Vikramaditya, merely a village tale. Shibi Rana, Bharata, and the two last stories in the collection, are from the Mahabharata. Of the four tales classed together under the group-name "Cycle of the Ramayana," it seems unnecessary to point out that they are intended to form a brief epitome of that great poem, which has for hundreds of years been the most important influence in shaping the characters and personalities of Hindu women. The Mahabharata may be regarded as the Indian national saga, but the Ramayana is rather the epic of Indian womanhood. Sita, to the Indian consciousness, is its central figure.
These two great works form together the outstanding educational agencies of Indian life. All over the country, in every province, especially during the winter season, audiences of Hindus and Mohammedans gather round the Brahmin story-teller at nightfall, and listen to his rendering of the ancient tales. The Mohammedans of Bengal have their own version of the Mahabharata. And in the life of every child amongst the Hindu higher castes, there comes a time when, evening after evening, hour after hour, his grandmother pours into his ears these memories of old. There are simple forms of village-drama, also, by whose means, in some provinces, every man grows up with a full and authoritative knowledge of the Mahabharata.
Many great historical problems, which there has as yet been no attempt to solve, arise in connection with some of these stories. None of these is more interesting than that presented by the personality of Krishna. In the cycle of ten numbers here given under his name, many readers will feel a hiatus between the seventh and eighth. Now about the year 300 b.c. the Greek writer Megasthenes, reporting on India to Seleukos Nikator of Syria and Babylon, slates that "Herakles is worshipped at Mathura and Clisobothra (Krishnaputra?). It would be childish to suppose from this that the worship of the Greek Herakles had been directly and mechanically transmitted to India, and established there in two different cities. We have to remember that ancient countries were less defined, and more united than modern. Central and Western Asia at the period in question were one culture-region, of which Greece was little more than a frontier province, a remote extremity. The question is merely whether the worship of Herakles in Greece and Phœnicia, and of a Herakles (presumably known as Krishna) in India, does not point to some distant Central Asian progenitor, common to the two,—a mythic half-man, half-god, strong, righteous, and full of heroic mercy, who leaves his impress even on early conceptions of Siva, amongst Hindu peoples, to be transmitted in divergent forms, in long-echoing memories, to one and another of the Aryan peoples. If so, is the Krishna of the Return to Mathura, of the Snake Kaliya, of the Mountain and the Demons, the Indian version of this Central Asian Herakles?
We have thus to decide whether the Krishna of the Puranic stories here given, and the Krishna Partha Sarathi of the Mahabharata, are two, or one. On the answer to this depends a great deal of history. If they are two, is Krishna Partha Sarathi new at the time of the last recension of the Mahabharata, or is he some ancient hero of the Aryan peoples, with whom Krishna-Herakles is then fused, to become the popular vehicle of Vedic ideas? In the hands of highly-trained Indian scholars—competent as no foreigner could be to apply the tests of language and of theological evolution—it is my belief that these inquiries might receive reliable solutions. I doubt that alien opinions could ever be much more than interesting speculations. But, in any case, the point of importance to our present purpose is that the story of his life, as here set forth, is that told to this day by the people amongst themselves.
My special thanks are due for the help afforded me in the preparation of this volume to the Hindu lady, Jogin-Mother—a kind neighbour, whose deep and intimate knowledge of the sacred literature is only equalled by her unfailing readiness to help a younger student—and to the Swami Saradananda of the Ramakrishna Math, Belur. The frontispiece, of "The Indian Story-teller at Nightfall," and the Thunderbolt of Durga on the cover, are the work of the distinguished Indian artist, Mr. Abunendro Nath Tagore.
NIVEDITA,
Of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda.
Calcutta, June 1907.
CONTENTS - THE CYCLE OF SNAKE TALES
page 3 9 17 27 - THE CYCLE OF INDIAN WIFEHOOD
35 44 53 67 - THE CYCLE OF THE RAMAYANA
103 116 124 139 - THE CYCLE OF KRISHNA
- the birth of krishna, the indian christ-child
153 - the divine childhood
160 - krishna in the forests
168 - the dilemma of brahma
174 - conquest of the snake kaliya
180 - the lifting of the mountain
186 - the return to mathura
189 - krishna partha sarathi, charioteer of arjuna
202 - the lament of gandhari
218 - the doom of the vrishnis
228 - TALES OF THE DEVOTEES
- the lord krishna and the broken pot
239 - the lord krishna and the lapwing's nest
240 - the story of prahlad
241 - the story of druwa—a myth of the pole star
247 256 - A CYCLE OF GREAT KINGS
- the story of shibi rana; or, the eagle and the dove
267 - bharata
271 - the judgment-seat of vikramaditya
277 - prithi rai, last of the hindu knights—the indian romeo and juliet
288 - A CYCLE FROM THE MAHABHARATA
- the story of bhishma and the great war
303 - the ascent of yudhisthira into heaven
330
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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