Epic Hindu Literature: Ramayana, Mahabharata and

Bhagavad Gita
Eventually, Hindus followed the impulse that had appeared among the
Sumerians: they wrote poetic stories that focused on the power of the gods.
These stories were written to create ideals for people to follow. The better
known of these are poems called the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Ramayana translates as the Story of Rama. It is believed to have been written

by a Brahmin named Valmiki, a man whose style of poetry was new and a
style to be copied thereafter. It is said to have appeared between 400 and 200
BCE. The story takes place centuries earlier, when Aryans were expanding
their influence over Dravidians in southern India, the Aryans engaging in
missionary endeavors supported by military power and a strategy of divide
and conquer. In its seven books and 24,000 verses the Ramayana praises the
heroism and virtues of Aryan warrior-princes: the Kshatriyas.
The Ramayana has as its main hero a prince called Rama, whose life
the Ramayana describes from birth to death. Rama and his brothers are
depicted as embodying the ideals of Aryan culture: men of loyalty and honor,
faithful and dutiful sons, affectionate brothers and loving husbands, men who
speak the truth, who are stern, who persevere but are ready and willing to
make sacrifices for the sake of virtue against the evils of greed, lust and
deceit.

Lord Rama, with brother, wife, and devotee.

The Mahabharata, meaning Great India, is said to have been written by a
Brahmin named Vyasa, between 400 and 100 BCE, but no one really knows.
Across centuries, priestly writers and editors with different attitudes in different
centuries were to add to the work, and the Mahabharata emerged three times
its original size. The Mahabharata was divided into eighteen books of verses
interspersed with passages of prose. It attempted to describe the period in
which Aryan tribes in northern India were uniting into kingdoms and when
these petty kingdoms were fighting to create empire. The work attempted to
be an encyclopedia about points of morality. One of its heroes is Krishna,
described as a royal personage descended from the gods – an eighth
incarnation of the god Vishnu. The Mahabharata's heroes are described as
yearning for power but, like the heroes of the Ramayana, devoted to truth and
having a strong sense of duty and affection for their parents.

New contributions to the Mahabharata gave greater focus to the gods Vishnu
and Shiva. A story incorporated into the Mahabharata became known as
the Bhagavad Gita (the Lord's Song), shortened by many to the Gita.
TheBhagavad Gita became Hinduism's most popular scripture and into
modern times it would be read by many for daily reference – a work that
Mahatma Gandhi would describe as an infallible guide to conduct. In
the Bhagavad Gita, Vishnu acquired a new incarnation: Krishna. Krishna was
originally a non-Aryan god in northwestern India. In the old Mahabharata he
was a secondary hero, a god who had appeared in human form. In
the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna became the Supreme Deity in human form.

The Gita is an account of the origins, course and aftermath of a great war
between royalty. In it a dialogue takes place between a prince, Arjuna, and the
charioteer alongside him as the two ride into battle at the head of Arjuna's
army. The charioteer is Krishna in disguise. Arjuna sees that his opponents
ahead of him are his relatives. He drops his bow and announces that he will
not give the signal to begin the battle. He asks whether power is so important
that he should fight his own kinsmen, and he states that the pain of killing his
kinsmen would be too much for him, that it would be better for him to die than
to kill just for power and its glory. Krishna is like the god of war of former
times: Indira. Krishna gives Arjuna a formula for accepting deaths in war, a
Hindu version close to the claim that those who die in battle will go to
paradise. He tells Arjuna that bodies are not really people, that people are
souls and that when the body is killed the soul lives on, that the soul is never
born and never dies. According to Krishna, if one dies in battle he goes to
heaven, or if he conquers he enjoys the earth. So, according to Krishna, one
should go into battle with "a firm resolve." Attitude was of the utmost
importance. "Let not the fruits of action be thy motive, nor be thy attachment to
inaction."

Krishna reminds Arjuna that he is a warrior and that to turn from battle is to
reject his karma, in other words, his duty or place in life. He makes the
irrefutable argument, an argument that leaves no room for questioning one's
own intentionality: that Arjuna should make war because it is his destiny to do
so. He states that it is best to fulfill one's destiny with detachment because
detachment leads to liberation and allows one to see the irrelevance of one's
own work. To give weight to his argument, Krishna reveals to Arjuna that he is
not just his charioteer, not just another military man who talks like he is divine
but that he is the god Krishna – a claim that Arjuna accepts. Some readers of
the Bhagavad Gita interpret this to mean that Arjuna does not need to step
from his chariot to find God and that humanity does not need to search for the
divine: that God is with a person and for a person.

Arjuna expresses his support for family values, and he is a defender of

tradition. He complains of lawlessness corrupting women, and when women
are corrupted, he says, a mixing of caste ensues.

Krishna became the most loved of the Hindu gods, a god viewed as a teacher,
a personal god much like Yahweh, a god who not only believes in war but a
god of love who gives those who worshiped him a gift of grace. A loving god
could be found here and there in the old Vedic hymns of the Aryans, but this
new focus on a loving god and the satisfaction it brought to the people of India
was a challenge to Hindu priests, for it offered salvation without the need for
ritual sacrifices. In the Bhagavad Gita (1:41), Krishna says: "Give me your
heart. Love me and worship me always. Bow to me only, and you will find me.
This I promise."

According to Krishna, as expressed in the Gita (2:37), one could accumulate

possessions and not lose blessedness so long as one remained indifferent
about success and failure. One can attain salvation so long as one restrains
one's passions in whatever one does. One should be fearless, steadfast
generous and patient. One should be compassionate toward other creatures.
One should be without greed, hypocrisy, arrogance, overweening pride, wrath
or harshness in speech. And one should "study the Holy Word, austerities and
uprightness." (16:1-2)

The Gita (2.22) describes the soul as shedding a worn-out body like an old
worn-out garment and putting on a new body as one would a new garment.
The soul is immortal and the body is subject to birth and death.
The Gita extends the metaphor to reincarnation, to Karma as described in the
Upanishads. Where a soul went depended on how well a person had behaved
in his previous life. Good actions in the former life led to a soul to take on a
new higher form of life. The soul of the doer of evil led a soul to take the body
of a lower form of life. Hinduism epic literature described what was good
behavior, and in a new work, the Laws of Manu, defined more clearly what
was bad.