I scanned this from the children's supplement of the New Indian Express.
It's a good story, but it also interests me because it represents a very old strand of Hinduism. The Bhakti movement (c. about 9th c. AD onward?) changed mainstream Hinduism, emphasizing devotion to an individual deity. In the oldest Hinduism, the power of ritual practice was so great that, when performed perfectly, it had the power to affect the gods themselves. This is one of many stories in which a human or demon (asura) performs such austerities that the gods must confer together and plan a way to stop him/her before things get completely out of hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment