Practical Path

SR No.: 006703
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1917
Total Pages: 268
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 11 MB

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THE PRACTICAL PATH.
dressing up real historical figures in mystic and symbolical garb,* they at the same time effected immense reform in religious worship by showing up the real character of their gods to consist in pure personifications.
* As an instance of this kind of personification may be mentioned Draupadi, who, according to the Mahabharata, was the common wife of all the five Pandava brothers. The Jaina Puranas of the Digambara sect dispute the correctness of this statement, and affirm that she was the married wife of Arjuna alone who had won her hand in an open sva yamvara. It is certainly not likely that men whose sense of right and wrong was so highly developed as that of the Pandavas would have been so much wanting in morality as to force her into a union with no less than flve husbands at one and the same time. The truth is that the author of the great epic has distorted and twisted the facts of history to suit his allegorical requirements, leaving it to the good sense of his readers to get at his real meaning. The arrival of the young Draupadi, as a bride, in the family of the five Pandavas, furnished too striking a resemblance to the relation between life and the five organs of sensation to be ignored by his versatile genius, and he promptly employed her as an impersonation of the living essence in his great military drama, a huge allegory of the final combat between the higher and the lower forces of the soul and the complete vanquishment of the latter (see the Permanent History of Bharatavarsha' by K. N. Iyer, vol. II.) Thus, while the real Draupadi was regarded as their daughter by Yudhishtara and Bhima, her husband's elder brothers, and as a mother by Nakula and Sahadeva, who were younger than Arjuna, her mythological double came to be known as the common wife of them all, to complete the resemblance between the five senses and life. According to another myth associated with her personality, she had been given a wonderful bowl by Surya (an impersonation of pure Spirit) from which all kinds of food and other things could be obtained by a mere wish. The explanation of this desire-fulfilling bowl is to be found in the fact that soul is all-sufficient by nature, and independent of outside help. The failure of the wicked Dahsâsana to expose her charms to the public gaze by removing her robe, which became interminable miraculously, is a circumstance which tends