Olympus Read online

  Devdutt Pattanaik

  Olympus

  An Indian Retelling of the Greek Myths

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue: The Greek Conquest

  1. Zeus

  2. Minos

  3. Oedipus

  4. Heracles

  5. Jason

  6. Helen

  7. Odysseus

  8. Aeneas

  Epilogue: The Indian Headshake

  Author’s Note: Shadows and Sunlight

  Gods of Greek, Roman and Hindu mythologies

  Bibliography

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  I dedicate this book to Homer, Hesiod and Socrates,

  and to Vyasa, Valmiki and Yagnavalkya.

  Each one saw the world so differently.

  Prologue

  The Greek Conquest

  The soldiers refused to march forward. They had conquered Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Levant, Egypt, Persia and Gandhara, and were now camped on the banks of the River Indus. They were tired. They wanted to turn back before the lands they had captured devoured them.

  The adventure had consumed Alexander, anyway, hadn’t it? He was no longer the young Greek lad who had set out on his conquest. Now, painted in Eastern colours, wearing Eastern robes, he seemed no different from the distant, imperious God-king of Persia, surrounded by fawning courtiers. No, they would not indulge his madness any more. Enough had been done to earn him a place on Olympus. It was time to go home.

  Word of these rumblings reached Alexander. ‘That naked man is to blame!’ his spies revealed. ‘He sits on a rock staring at the sky and stars, doing nothing all day and all night. And when approached he asks questions. He has poisoned the soldiers’ minds with strange ideas.’

  Alexander’s teacher, Aristotle, had told him of such men who roamed in marketplaces and questioned people, compelling them to reflect on life and their assumptions. Aristotle’s teacher, Plato, had been a student of one such man— Socrates. Such men were dangerous. They threatened the social order. They were often killed. As Socrates was.

  Alexander decided to investigate. He did not fear such men. He respected them. How can one man disarm an entire army, turn them away from dreams of glory, he wondered.

  ‘What is his name?’ he enquired.

  The spies said, ‘Unlike you, King, who became great by acquiring land, this man, and others like him, have become great by giving up everything, their lands, crowns, families, horses, cows, jewels, weapons, and even their names.’

  A few days later, before dawn, without informing anyone, Alexander slipped out of his tent dressed as a commoner, and went to visit this strange person he had heard so much of. He found the man on the riverbank, naked, atop a rock, staring at the sky and the stars. He looked no older than the Greek king. But was he wise? Only that would make him a gymnosophist, a naked wise man, one of the many who wandered alone in the forests of India, about whom much was said across Gandhara and Persia. Legend had it that they could walk on water and float on air.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Alexander, hoping the man was familiar with his language.

  ‘Experiencing nothingness,’ said the gymnosophist, in a tongue that Alexander could understand. Alexander was impressed.

  ‘And you? What are you doing?’ asked the gymnosophist.

  ‘Conquering the world,’ replied Alexander.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To be great. To be remembered for eternity. To earn a place with the gods on Mount Olympus.’

  ‘What is Mount Olympus?’ asked the gymnosophist, leaning forward, his eyes sparkling with curiosity. He loved stories.

  Monsoon clouds hovered above. In the distance, one could hear the trumpeting of an elephant. The sky was red, waiting for the sun. A peacock quivered in excitement. An Upanishad was about to happen between a warrior and a sage.

  The battle-scarred conqueror of the world, with golden hair, transformed into a storyteller and retold tales he had heard long ago from his mother and father, servants, slaves, soldiers and tutors.

  Jain mythology speaks of three kinds of great men: the Vasudevas (heroes), the Chakravartis (kings) and the Tirthankaras (sages). Alexander mirrors a violent Vasudeva, who aspires to be a Chakravarti, a universal emperor who controls the world with his rules. The gymnosophist mirrors, or aspires to be, a Tirthankara, the sage who sees the world for what it is, in its entirety, without the desire to control it.

  Although there is little doubt that Alexander interacted with philosophers wherever he went, including India, the content of those conversations could be a later invention. Were they Jain sages, Buddhist monks, Hindu yogis? We will never know, and can only speculate.

  In India, Alexander the Great (or his representative Onesicritus) had an interview with local sages including one Dandamis (Danda-pani?), who lived near Taxila. A sage called Calanus (Kalyana?), a student of Dandamis, followed the conqueror to the West, where he died. The story of the interview and of Calanus’s death are described in several sources, such as the Anabasis of Alexander by the Greek author Arrian of Nicomedia.

  Greek and later Roman writings describe Indian sages or gymnosophists mostly as naked and living without possessions in the forest. This leads one to conclude that they were probably shramanas or forest ascetics who gave up household life and spent all their time meditating, contemplating, and trying to overcome desires. Dandamis and Calanus could have been Vedic tapasvins, yogis, siddhas, or Jain munis or even Buddhist bhikkus.

  Porphyrus, a Roman scholar who wrote five centuries after Alexander, classified gymnosophists into two categories: the Brachmanes (brahmins?), who received knowledge from a divine source and whose leaders were appointed by other leaders, and the Shamaneans (shramanas?) who elected leaders and strove for knowledge.

  Nothingness or ‘shunya’ is a key concept in Buddhist thought, just as infinity or ‘ananta’ is a key concept in Hindu thought. From these philosophical ideas emerged the concept of zero and infinity that reached Europe by the tenth century via Arab culture. It led to a flowering of the subject we now call calculus.

  Book One

  Zeus

  ‘Mount Olympus,’ began Alexander, ‘is where the earth touches the sky. There sits Zeus, my father, king of the gods, who rides eagles, hurls thunderbolts, and holds aloft a pair of scales to ensure there is always balance and justice in the world.’

  Uranus

  In the beginning there was chaos: a gaping void full of darkness.

  Then came Gaia, the goddess, who is earth and the arena of life.

  Out of Gaia came Uranus, the starry sky. He became her lover and lay above her, clinging firmly to her.

  Together Gaia and Uranus produced many children.

  But they were all hideous and malformed: the Hecantonchires who had a hundred hands, and the Cyclopes who had only one eye. Uranus would not let them out of Gaia’s womb as they disgusted him. Then he fathered the beautiful Titans, twelve in number, but they made him insecure. And so he clung to Gaia even more firmly, refusing to let any child leave the mother’s womb.

  An exasperated Gaia gave the Titans a knife of flint and told them to castrate their father. None dared, except Cronus. He cut off his father’s genitals, slipped out of his mother’s womb, causing the sky and the earth to separate, and then cast his father’s genitals into the sea.

  With Cronus, time began. He would end things and start them anew.

  Blood spurted from Uranus’s wound. It spilled into the ocean and sprouted angry Giants and vengeful Furies, who punish crimes against fathers and mothers.

  The agitated bloodstained waters became foamy. From that foam emerged Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who unites the separated. With her came her son, the winged Eros, who shoots arrows of de
sire, and makes you long for the future and the past.

  In Hindu mythology, there is no movement from chaos to order. Nothing is permanent, neither chaos nor order; they follow each other with cyclical regularity. Our world emerges when we wake up and dissolves when we sleep, an idea presented through the story of the sleeping Vishnu.

  The Greek story of creation is traced to the epic Theogony (birth of the gods) by Hesiod, dating back to the seventh century BCE. This was the same time that the Upanishads were being composed in the Gangetic plains of India.

  In the creation stories of Orphic traditions, a lot of importance is given to Eros, the god of love. Scholars have linked this to Vedic hymns that refer to kama or desire as the origin of things, which takes people out of the void and darkness.

  The Greeks were clear that the origin was chaos and the purpose of the world was a movement towards order: hence the journey from chaos, through darkness and light; from Gaia and Uranus, through malformed beings towards the Titans and then the Olympians, who in turn create mortal beings with the ability to reason. These human beings are capable of overthrowing the gods—and hence comes religion.

  The separation of the sky and the earth is a key theme in many mythologies. Just as Cronus separates Uranus and Gaia in Greek mythology, Indra separates Dyaus and Prithvi in Vedic mythology.

  Cronus

  Cronus imprisoned his malformed brothers, the one-eyed and the hundred-armed ones, in the dark void that is Tartarus, and made himself leader of the Titans. Having thus removed all ugliness and disorderliness, he went about organizing the world and encouraged his siblings to do the same.

  Titan brothers married Titan sisters. From the union of Hyperion and Theia came Helios, the sun, Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn.

  Oceanus circled the earth, and with Tethys, he gave birth to the various rivers and streams of earth.

  But when Cronus married Rhea, Gaia warned him that his children would overthrow him as he had done to his father. Consumed by fear and ambition, Cronus devoured every child that Rhea gave birth to: three daughters and two sons.

  When the sixth child, Zeus, was born, an exasperated Rhea handed him over to the forest nymphs to raise, and, instead of the infant, presented her husband with a rock. Cronus, who paid little attention to Rhea anyway, swallowed the stone and burped, feeling very secure.

  Zeus was placed in a cradle that hung from the branches of a tree. Suspended between earth, sea and sky he was invisible to Cronus. The dancing Kouretes, devotees of Rhea, made so much noise striking their swords to their shields and stamping their feet on the ground that Cronus never heard the crying of baby Zeus.

  Zeus thus grew up in secret, on the milk of the goat Amalthea. Such was Zeus’s strength that one day he broke one of Amalthea’s horns, which became the horn of plenty, or the cornucopia. When Amalthea died, Zeus stretched her hide to make his shield, the Aegis.

  Chronus is identified as Saturn in Roman mythology. He is time, visualized as the Grim Reaper, or death. This connects him with Shani in Hindu mythology, associated with obstacles and delayed beginnings.

  The horn of plenty of Greek mythology becomes the always overflowing vessel, the Akshaya-patra, in Hindu mythology.

  The Titans are imagined as creating more order in the world, giving rise to new shapes and forms, from the otherwise malformed and amorphous bog that existed before. Thus, with each generation, there is a movement away from chaos and confusion towards order and clarity.

  The theme of a child threatened by his own father and so raised in secret occurs frequently in Greek mythology; Zeus’s story is the first instance of this. The story of Krishna also speaks of threats to the infant Krishna from a father figure, his maternal uncle Kansa. Krishna’s story was first found in the Harivamsa, composed around 400 CE, following exposure to the Yavanas or Indo-Greeks who followed Alexander and had great influence in the north-western part of India.

  Amalthea the goat is sometimes identified with the constellation Capricorn.

  Zeus

  When Zeus came of age, he decided to rescue his brothers. He disguised himself as a cup-bearer and offered Cronus a drink that made him vomit. Out came the rock that had been consumed in place of Zeus, followed by all the children Rhea had borne: the sons, Poseidon and Hades, and the daughters, Hestia, Demeter and Hera. They were all alive.

  Though the youngest, Zeus led his brothers and sisters in a war against their father. Taken by surprise, Cronus was defeated easily and locked away in Tartarus. The victorious Zeus declared himself king and made Mount Olympus his home, which is why his siblings and he came to be known as Olympians.

  Some Titans, led by Atlas, challenged the rule of Zeus. Others, like Prometheus and Epimetheus, did not, choosing instead to support Zeus. Prometheus could see the future, and knew that eventually Zeus would be triumphant. Atlas did not believe him, and declared war on the Olympians. This fight came to be known as Titanomachy.

  In this great and very long battle, the Olympians prevailed, thanks to the thunderbolt that the Cyclopes fashioned for Zeus. The Cyclopes had never forgiven the Titans for imprisoning them and they pledged their allegiance to Zeus who liberated them.

  The vanquished Titans were also cast into Tartarus. Their leader, Atlas, was made to carry the sky on his shoulders for all eternity.

  That Prometheus can see the future indicates that the ancient Greeks believed the future was predetermined. This is reinforced by the idea of prophecy. Future-gazing happens in Hindu mythology through astrology, Jyotisha-shastra.

  When European Orientalists were first exposed to the Vedas and the Puranas and read tales of war, they looked for parallels to Greek myths. They assumed that the asuras, enemies of the devas, were Titans, and that Indra, the king of the devas, was Zeus. But unlike the Titans, who are defeated and locked forever in Tartarus, the defeat of the asuras is not permanent, just as the victory of the devas is not everlasting. The Titan–Olympian war evokes a linear theme with an end while the deva–asura war evokes a cyclical theme with no final outcome.

  Tartarus is the dark void that existed before Gaia and so is chaos of chaos, and is used as a dungeon by Cronus first, and then Zeus, to confine all those who threaten their reign and disobey their rules. Eventually, it becomes the template for the Hell of Christian mythology and the Jahannum of Islamic mythology. Such a concept is not found in Hindu mythology.

  Typhon

  Gaia did not like the way the Olympians treated the Titans. So she created a terrifying monster called Typhon, the very embodiment of chaos, to destroy Zeus. Terrified of this creature, the gods took the form of animals and ran away. Hera turned into a cow; Aphrodite and Eros turned into a school of fish. Zeus turned into a boar and charged at Typhon. While the others ran, he stood his ground and fought the monster, hurling thunderbolts at it.

  Following the defeat of Typhon, Gaia goaded some Giants, born of the blood of Uranus, to attack Olympus. They piled mountain upon mountain and laid siege to the abode of Zeus and his siblings. But eventually Zeus broke the siege, cast the Giants into Tartarus, and became the undisputed master of the world.

  Gaia then tried to poison the minds of Zeus’s brother Poseidon and his sister Hera against him, but Zeus warned them against questioning his authority. In a voice that boomed across the three worlds he warned, ‘If you try to pull me down from the sky, know that I will pull the earth and sea towards the sky and leave you dangling in the wind.’ The Olympians never even thought of rebellion again. Zeus became overlord of the cosmos.

  Gaia became quiet and distant and was eventually forgotten.

  In the Rig Veda, Indra defeats the monster Vritra. In the Jaiminiya Brahmana, there are tales of how Indra sends Kutsa to seduce and defeat the lustful ogress Dirgha-jivhi, who steals the sacred soma. These stories speak of the archetypal Indo-European hero, mirroring the acts of Greek gods and heroes. However, in Puranic times, the Goddess is the all-powerful mother of the gods, sought by Indra to defeat his enemies, the asuras.
r />   There are many versions of the defeat of Typhon by Zeus. In one version, the Fates feed the monster mortal food and make it weak. In another version, the monster tears away the sinews of Zeus and immobilizes him. The hero, Cadmus, distracts Typhon with the music of his pipes enabling Zeus to recover his sinews, and hence his mobility and strength, in time to destroy Typhon. Typhon is ultimately buried under the volcanic Mount Etna.

  The defeat of Typhon by Zeus mirrors the Mesopotamian epic Enuma Elish where Marduk defeats the monster-goddess Tiamat. It marks the end of the era of the Goddess and the rise of the patriarchal gods.

  There is an earlier version of creation, when the Goddess dominated human culture. According to this, Eurynome, the Goddess, rose from chaos, separated earth from sky, danced naked on the waters, rubbed her palms with the wind, created the serpent Ophion, mated with it and became pregnant. She then turned into a dove and laid an egg. Ophion coiled around the egg until it hatched. From the egg emerged the cosmos, the various celestial bodies. But Ophion claimed to be the creator of the world, and Eurynome banished him.

  The worship of the Goddess as the embodiment of nature is explicit only in the later phase of Hinduism, with the writing of the Devi Purana and the rise of Tantra around 700 CE. However, from Vedic times, nature is held in regard, not feared. While nature (prakriti) is seen as chaos in Greek mythology, in Hindu myths it is seen as different from culture (sanskriti), but not inferior to it. Nature is the mother (Kali), and culture is the daughter (Gauri) of humanity (Brahma).

  Olympus

  Zeus and his two brothers, Poseidon and Hades, divided the cosmos between them—everything except their grandmother Gaia.