May 23. Story of the Day: The Brahmin and his Small Gods

For today's story, I offer another contribution from Suniti Namjoshi (see her previous story here: The Cat Shrine). This time, she has taken one of the 19th-century stories and reworked it. You can compare the versions and see what you think! Here is the Mukharji version she started from: The Brahman and His Idols ... and her version is below. She has made so many important little changes, starting with the title itself: not "idols" now, but "small gods." Details matter.

She says:

I was trying to stay as close to the original as possible; but realised that in spite of myself I was altering it in accordance with my own mindset. For example, as a feminist I’ve given  the brahmin’s wife a greater role, and as someone with a Hindu background I’ve tried to make it clear that what is being worshipped is the divinity inherent in creation, not the objects themselves...  Rewriting someone else’s work, as opposed to writing one’s own stories – though I’m not sure there’s a hard and fast difference – is a strangely disturbing experience. Try it!☺

When stories are in the public domain, like all the 19th-century folktales and nursery rhymes you will find at this site, they are just waiting to be told again, made new by storytellers who change the old stories to suit themselves and to share with their own audiences. If you have a story retelling you would like to contribute to this site, let me know! There's contact information in the blog sidebar.

Now if only we knew something more about Mukharji's source(s) and other versions of this story from the farther past. If I learn anything more about that, I will be sure to add those versions to the site.

Want more? Click here for previous Stories-of-the-Day.

THE BRAHMIN AND HIS SMALL GODS

(by Suniti Namjoshi, from Ram Satya Mukharji)

There was once a brahmin who was happy enough worshipping the household gods. He would bring them flowers, light incense and bow his head in reverence. He and his wife led a contented life, until it occurred to him that he ought to find out which of his gods was the most powerful. The question obsessed him. He meditated, he worried, he even took to wandering the streets and asking people. They thought he was mad, which in a way he was.

He went to the forest [as people tend to do in Indian stories] and there he met a woodcutter. The woodcutter told him that the most powerful god was probably the one who could best withstand a blacksmith’s hammer. The brahmin borrowed a hammer and smashed all the gods, except a small Shri Krishna which was made of bronze. He started to worship the bronze god alone and threw the rest into a well.

This was desecration.  His wife tried to bring him to his senses, but it was no use.  As he saw it, he was doing his duty. He brought the god small offerings of fruit and milk and completely ignored everything and everybody. One day he noticed that his offerings were being consumed. The god had accepted them! He was overjoyed and he became more devout than ever.

Then he saw a rat in the little room set aside for the gods, and he realised that it was the rat who’d been eating all the food. He caught the rat, threw Shri Krishna into the well, and began to worship the rat instead. The rat was clearly more powerful than the god had been. What’s more, now the brahmin could actually see his offerings being accepted.

This went on for a while till a cat got the rat. Obviously, the cat was more powerful, and the cat got installed in the rat’s place.  The cat enjoyed being a goddess. She drank huge quantities of milk. She drank so much that the brahmin’s wife got more and more annoyed. And when the cat overturned a pan of milk, the brahmin’s wife threw the kitchen knife at her. The cat died.

The brahmin’s wife worried about this; she needn’t have. Her husband decided instantly that his wife was more powerful than the cat had ever been.  He made her his goddess. She hated it. She had to sit absolutely still. One day when she shifted her knees a little, the Brahmin hit her so hard she was knocked unconscious. He did his best to revive her, but it was evident to him that she wasn’t all that powerful. He must be the most powerful one! He must look within.

When he did so, he understood at last that it was the Divine Power – the Great Force or  Maha Shakti – within him and in all things that ought to be venerated. He learnt to respect himself and the whole of creation. Gradually the small gods returned to their household, and in the course of time both husband and wife achieved liberation.

(Mahashakti)

CHAIN: man worships bronze god - rat - cat - wife - self

May 16. Story of the Day: The Brahman and His Idols

Today's story comes from Indian Folklore by Ram Satya Mukharji. This is a new book to me, and I am glad to have learned about it thanks to this project. (It is one of the books referenced in The Oral Tales of India by Stith Thompson and Jonas Balys.) It is classified as TMI Z42.3 Brahmin worships idol. No other sources are cited, but I would like to find more examples of this story if possible; it is quite fascinating! You can find out more about Krishna and about Shakti at Wikipedia.

UPDATE. You can read another version of this story by the modern fabulist Suniti Namjoshi here: The Brahmin and his Small Gods.

Additional stories? Click here for previous Stories-of-the-Day.

THE BRAHMAN AND HIS IDOLS

Once upon a time there lived a Brahman who, though married, was childless. All the same, however, the Brahman loved his wife.

He had a good many idols of different metals in the house for worship. Having had a moderate income from his rent-free lands, the Brahman passed his days happily in the worship of his family gods. Neither cares nor anxieties ever crossed his mind, till one day he was disturbed by the thought of finding out which of the gods, whose images he worshipped, was the most powerful. He considered the merits of the idols one by one, but failed to decide about their comparative superiority. He meditated for days together, but yet was in the same state of doubt and indecision.

The question sat heavily upon his mind and disturbed his peace. His looks showed that he was unhappy. His wife perceived this change and enquired of its cause, but he would give no reply.

By and by he became demented. He would come out of the house and wander aimlessly through the streets of the village with the question constantly on his lips as to which of his idols was the best. Men mocked, boys ran after him, and the village grew too hot for him altogether. He then took shelter in a neighbouring forest, though his wife tried her best to dissuade him.

One day as he was wandering listlessly in the forest, he saw a woodcutter, and questioned him as to the relative superiority of his family idols. The woodcutter taking him for a mad man wantonly replied, "The idol that stands the best test under a smith's hammer is the most powerful."

The Brahman readily accepted the answer and returned home. The first thing accordingly that he did was to get a hammer from the nearest blacksmith, and with it he began striking his idols in order to test their toughness or power as he called it. All the idols, as could be expected, broke to pieces save one, which being made of solid bronze stood the proof of the hammer. The Brahman selected this image for his worship, and flung the shattered pieces of the other images into a tank.

His wife, however, wept at the sacrilege, scolded him, and tried to bring him back to his senses, but to no effect. She was frightened, too, at what her husband had done, as she expected that the wrath of the gods would fall on their heads.

The idol that passed the hard ordeal of the hammer was an image of Sri Krishna-ji. The Brahman began worshipping it with deep devotion. He would sit before it for hours together forgetting hunger and thirst. So very absorbed did he become in his thoughts while worshipping that he could not catch even the sound of drums if beaten near him. In short, he became, while engaged in worship, so thoroughly absorbed in the meditation of his idol that he hardly perceived the existence of the outer world for the time.

An incident happened one day which made the Brahman still firmer in his new faith. He had performed the Puja with his accustomed zeal, but when he rose he found, to his utter surprise, that the offering of rice and fruits which he had placed before the idol had disappeared. His joy knew no bounds, as he believed that Sri Krishna must have partaken of them himself. Thenceforward his faith in the idol became unshaken; more so, as he found that the offerings disappeared every day with the most unfailing regularity.

One day as the Brahman had just opened his eyes accidentally in the midst of his meditations before the idol, he saw a big rat running into a hole in the Puja room. His firm faith in the powers of the idol was shaken. He now began to think that it was the rat and not the idol that had been daily eating the offerings of his Pujas.

The doubt destroyed the serenity of his mind. When he sat down to worship the next day, he could not concentrate his thoughts as on previous days, and remained consequently quite alive to the external world. The rat, as was its wont, came and was caught by the Brahman. He now began to think that the woodcutter must have misled him. The idol he was worshipping could never be the most powerful; for, if that had been so, the rat would not have been allowed to eat his offerings. The idol instead of being the all-powerful one was evidently a powerless image.

His faith in the figure was shaken, and he consigned it to the same tank in which lay the broken remains of its former companions. The rat, thought the Brahman, must be more powerful than all the idols, and, therefore, was the most proper object of worship. So the rat was duly installed on the throne vacated by the idol and he went on worshipping it with the same fervour and devotion that he had paid to the idol.

The rat proved to be a god thoroughly alive, as it ate up the offerings before the very eyes of the Brahman himself. It so happened that one morning as the Brahman was deeply engaged in his meditation before the rat-god, a cat sprang upon it and tore it away from the throne.

"What!" thought the Brahman, "the cat must be more powerful than the rat or else why the rat should allow itself thus to be carried off by the former. The cat then was the fittest object of worship."

Now the cat occupied the place of the rat, and the Brakman began worshipping her with great devotion. The cat grew fat and fatter on the milk offered to her by her worshipper. The Brahman would reserve the greater portion of the milk from his cow for the cat, and would himself drink but very little of it.

His wife did not like this, but there was no help for it, as the least wish of the Brahman was law in the house. She, however, hated the creature.

One day the cat wishing for more milk than was allowed to her overturned the milk-pan. The Brahman's wife, who was peeling some vegetables with a knife at the time, flung it in a rage at the cat. The weapon hit the creature in a vital part and it dropped down dead.

The lady was frightened at this act of hers, as she knew that her husband would not spare the killer of his feline deity. She apprehended the direst consequence. There was, however, no help for it. She disposed of the dead cat in the best way she could. But what excuse would she make for the cat's disappearance to her husband? How would she account to her husband for the cat's absence when he would enquire about it. These were the thoughts that troubled her sorely, and she became very uneasy in mind. Failing to devise any excuse, she thought it best to allow things to take their own course and resumed her household work which the cat's death had interrupted for the moment.

The Brahman who had been out when the catastrophe upon his deity had fallen came home, bathed and entered his Puja room. The cat was so fond of him that no sooner would he enter the room than she would come to him mewing and wagging her tail, and would caress his legs by rubbing herself against them. But now there was no Mother Tabby to welcome him. The Brahman called out for the pussy, but she did not turn up; he called again and again but to no purpose.

The Brahman called his wife and asked her what had become of the cat. The wife, fearing to tell a lie to her husband whom she was enjoined by the Shastras to worship as her god, told him what had really happened.

The Brahman, much to his wife's relief, looked at the death of the cat from a point of view different from that which his wife had expected. He exclaimed, "My dear! thou art even more powerful than the cat as it has succumbed to thy strength; so I must worship thee henceforth."

The wife got ashamed, bent down her head, but dared not reply. The Brahman took her into the Puja room and made her sit down on a dias, the throne on which his former idols had sat not being big enough to hold her. He began worshipping her as the most powerful deity of all he had known.

A few days passed in this way. And they were days of hard trial for the Brahman's wife. It was very difficult for her to have to sit still and in the same posture for hours together, while the husband worshipped her. She was always afraid of causing disturbance by changing her position or moving.

One day the worst that she had apprehended happened; she actually moved and roused the Brahman from his deep reverie. Instantly he gave a slap right across her cheek and she was stunned and fell down senseless.

The Brahman soon realized what he had done, hastily fetched some water and bathed her face and eyes with it, and the wife slowly came to regain her consciousness. The Brahman dismissed her with kind words.

When he was alone, he thought that the wife certainly was not the most powerful person in the creation as she had fallen senseless under his blow, and that he himself was the most powerful. And now true knowledge dawned upon him. He began to perceive the importance of his own self. He found that his arm that gave the blow to his wife was a mere instrument of him but that the strength which moved it must be somewhere in his person. He should worship that strength or the Maha-Shakti in him. He should know his own self and realize it. For this purpose he began worshipping his inner self. In due course of time, by this process, he knew the great Spirit working in and through himself and every other thing in the universe, and was liberated from the bonds of karma (action).

(Mahashakti)

CHAIN: man worships metal idol - rat - cat - wife - self