Like many Indian arts, Indian dance also has its root in religion. Without the religious and cultural background of India, the growth and beauty of Indian dance is not possible. In ‘Natya Shastra’, there is a small story about the origin of Indian dance. According to Hindu mythology, dance first existed in heaven. There was always a constant conflict between the Asuras and the Devas for wealth and power. The Devas were tired of the Asuras’ greediness and jealousy.
It was during this long period of tedium that all the Devas approached Lord Indra too find good ways and means of entertainment. Lord Indra, who was also tired of the Asuras, approached Lord Brahma (believed to be the creator of the Universe) and asked him to help them. They made a request to Lord Brahma that this method of entertainment should be pleasing to both the eye as well as the ear, and that it should be enjoyed by the masses of both higher and lower classes. Lord Brahma gave a long thought to the request of Lord Indra and finally decided to help them.
Lord Brahma went into a state of deep meditation. He called to mind the four Vedas. Vedas are the earliest scriptures of the Hindus. He distilled the essence from each of the Vedas. From ‘Rigveda’, he derived the words, from ‘Sama Veda’, he derived the music, from ‘Yojurve Veda’, the code of gesture and from ‘Atherva Veda’, the element of sentiment or flavor. He blended all of these ingredients and added his own divine genious. Thus, he created an entirely new activity. Brahma named this activity ‘Natya’, which was later renamed ‘Natya Veda’.
Brahma had simply created a technique, but someone was needed for putting it into practice. Lord Brahma sought the cooperation of Bharat, a trusted sage. Bharat, with the help of his sons, started working. Vishvakarma, the supreme architect of heaven, then created a splendid theater in the hall of India’s court for the performance.
Bharat told Brahma that certain characters of the dance sequences could only be performed by women. Brahma solved the problem by creating twenty-three beautiful ‘Apsaras’.
All of the preparations were made accordingly, and for the very first time, the art of ‘Natya’ was performed before an audience of Devas and Asuras. In this Natya, the Devas were portrayed as victorious and the Asuras as losers. The Asuras (demons) got angry and rose in protest and threatened even worse consequences.
In the story Brahma is Lonely, Brahman is just that, lonely, so he takes the form of Brahma. In this form Brahma thinks about the loneliness and his body is split in two creating male and female humans. They would be considered to husband and wife and would be the beginning of humanity. The female would wonder how their love is real if it is just one being mating with another, so the male would change himself into the many different species we see walk the earth every day. Thus the women were to be coy and to play hard to get, and the man may sometimes have to change himself to get the girl. So such all the animals that were made came of the male and female who came from Brahma, so Brahma is in every living thing that came forth from
The Role of the Three Gunas in the Hindu Vision of the Cosmos To tackle this question we need to look at the way in which the Gunas
The founder of Buddhism was a man named Siddharta Gautama. He was born as a prince of a small kingdom located near today’s Nepal, around 500 B.C.E. (Gurinder 1). According to the legends, Siddharta was raised in the lap of luxury. He was given the finest clothes, riches, and a mansion for every season (Fisher 136). Despite having anything his imagination could conjure, he was unconvinced of their value (136). As the story continues, he was presented with the four sights that were being kept from him (136). These sights included death, sickness, old age, and a monk seeking lasting happiness rather than material possessions (136). After these sights, Sidhharta began his long path to enlightenment. After six years of searching, he had reached his goal of an ultimate consciousness called Nirvana, or enlightenment that is above ordinary human states of mind (Gurinder, Numrich, Williams 1-2). After his discovery of the ultimate consciousness, he was given the title of Buhhda, which means “Enlighten One” (2).
Why suffering, tragedies, misery, and many other things that relate exists has always been a question that mankind has been attempting to explain for years. Different regions from around the globe all referred to this dark side as evil. It is seen that in the African myth, “The Quarrelsomeness of Man and How the Earth was Peopled” (PM 47) and the Near Eastern myth, “The Enuma Elish” (PM 91) that the existence of the female is the pure reason why earth consists of evil, as well as what a female is capable of that man is not. However, within these two myths, this process is executed differently. In “The Quarrelsomeness of Man and How the Earth was Peopled” (PM 47) a woman unintentionally allows evil to be summoned over mankind; while in “The Enuma Elish” (PM 91) where it is the female who makes the decision to create evil and command it over mankind. One of these myths opens the door for evil, while the other is the source of evil. It is also found that the significance of evil differs from each of the two myths, one affecting the world more than the other.
First, the reader will recognize the distinct presence of the event, creation. In Genesis, the author documents the form of creation to have taken place over seven days. The creator is one person, God. There are stages. He started with the simple and ends with complex images. For example, the first day God created light and darkness, then sky and water, then fashioned water and land plants into existence. On the fourth day of creation God made the stars, sky and moon. Next, He made the creatures of the sea and then the animals of the land. Last, on the sixth day he breathed life into existence. In verse 26, God created humans, in his image, to rule and have dominion over everything on the earth. Therefore, on the seventh day, God looked at all that he had made and was pleased, causing him to rest. Meanwhile, in the first act of the fictional piece, Gilgamesh, the author explains the creation of the character, Enkidu. The author tells of the corruption in the life of Gilgamesh, exclaiming that he leaves no virgin to her lover nor the warrior's daughter or the wife of the noble, and exhausts men of their strength ( Gilgamesh 13). In response, the gods cried out to Aruru, goddess of creation to form someone of equal stature to contend together and leave Uruk in quiet (14). Therefore, the goddess dipped her hands in water and pinched off clay, then instantly the character, Enkidu, was created. He had long flowing hair lik...
Although Daoism and Hinduism are two completely separate religions with the former indigenous to China and the latter to India, both of them encompass striking similarities that undeniably make it seem that one influenced the other. However, no known relations between the two religions exist. Comparing the small, but contextually vital part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata known as Bhagavad Gita with the central text to Daoism, Tao Te Ching offers an unparalleled journey of knowledge and understanding. Tao Te Ching emphasizes the crucial concept of Dao, which is translated as the “Way” while Bhagavad Gita stresses the all-encompassing Brahman. Since no sufficient language can express the full meaning of Dao, the most suitable example that shows its operations is the movement of water (TTC 8). Water simply flows with unity with nature – it can transform itself into whatever form is needed to flow. Dao is essentially an indescribable eternal energy and origin of the entire universe. Fully arriving at the Dao is the main goal of Daoism. Similarly, Brahman is the ultimate end to everything in the universe. In the Bhagavad Gita, Brahman is described as the source from which all beings originate from and eventually return. The fundamental principle of both concepts is, therefore, one and the same. I will specifically focus on vital parts of the two concepts in order to illustrate the parallelism of the eventual goal of the Dao and the Brahman. The emphasis on action with no desire for the “fruit” of the action, Dao and Brahman’s inexpressible essence, and following one’s own duty in order to complement the movement of the universe. These concepts illustrate the similarity between Dao and Brahman and ultimately demonstrate that they are ide...
Hesiod’s Theogony and the Babylonian Enuma Elish are both myths that begin as creation myths, explaining how the universe and, later on, humans came to be. These types of myths exist in every culture and, while the account of creation in Hesiod’s Theogony and the Enuma Elish share many similarities, the two myths differ in many ways as well. Both myths begin creation from where the universe is a formless state, from which the primordial gods emerge. The idea of the earth and sky beginning as one and then being separated is also expressed in both myths.
Hindus have a sense of interconnectedness that pervades throughout everything in the universe: all plants, animals, people, and the cosmos. Brahman is the sacred force that holds everything together is. It is the ultimate reality that is unseen in the karmic cycle of birth and death, called samsara, which Hindus believe we...
The Bhagavad-Gita, a portion of the great epic the Mahabharata, is the “most typical expression of Hinduism.” It is eighteen chapters long and was composed around the first century BCE. The sage Samjaya recites the story to the blind king Dhrtarastra, the father of the Kaurava princes. While presenting ideas of wisdom, duty, and liberation in the midst of the rivalry between the Kauravas, the Bhagavad-Gita epitomizes the teachings of Krishna. Focusing specifically on the moral struggle of the Pandava prince Arjuna, the Bhagavad-Gita’s major themes include yoga, karma, dharma, and moksa. Yoga, being discipline or the strict and “attentive cultivation of mental character and meaningful action” , is crucial to the text because it is dharma yoga, acting properly according to one’s dharma, and bhakti yoga, a disciplined life of devotion that allows one to achieve moksa, or liberation, one of the four aims of li...
Since the beginning of time, societies have created stories to explain the mystery of the origin of man and the universe. In the Babylonian text, Enuma Elish and the book of Genesis-which originated in the same part of the world-one finds two very different stories about the creation of man. These two creation stories contrast the two societies that created them: the chaotic lives of servitude of the Babylonians and the lives of the recently freed Jewish people.
In this paper I will discuss three similarities and four differences between Enuma Elish-The Epic of Creation (King,1902) and Genesis 1:1-3:24 as described by Michael Fishbane (Fishbane, 1979). These writings are selected to describe the story of creation of the earth and the inhabitants of the earth. However, each author has a very different view and way of explaining what they have interpreted the sacred texts to mean.
Over the course of history many different people and cultures have tried to explain human existence. Many forms of arts have been used to express these theories and myths but nothing more popular than literature. Two of the most popular stories of creation include the biblical tale of Genesis and the Babylonian epic, Enuma Elish. Many historians have debated over which of the two stories was derived from the other. While both stories are different and depict different ideals of how the universe came to be they due hold striking similarities.
Have you ever thought about the history of dance, or how long human life has known it? Dance has been here longer than we actually think. We can take dance back all the way to 600 BC to Now. Dance has made very big changes overtime. It went from doing it in honor for only the dead or religious situations to now just doing it for fun. The way or different moves have also changed over this big course in time. It ways and moves have changed, and the outfits used to perform these different types of dances. There has been clean and dirty dancing all along, some of things in those dances have stayed, others haven’t. Dance has been a very great thing and will stay being a great thing during human life because it expresses a lot. It expresses itself, and a person can express their feelings, in the different kind of moves. It does take time to get to know the moves but you can get through.
Another example equally as potent and yet sadly overlooked by many particularly those outside India is that of Kathak. A classical Indian dance, today held in great esteem among the 6 great classical dances of India, 21st century Kathak combines incredibly complex technique and elegant, slow abhinaya (or story telling) and owes almost the entirety of its current day form to the Mughals. The transformation that Kathak underwent from its original form to how we see it today that occurred during Mughal Era is perhaps the most underestimated and truest remaining symbol of the vibrant Indo-Islamic cultural melding that occurred under the patronage of the Mughals, and to...
The purpose of this essay aims at analysing and comparing the historical background and current context of Malay Dance, an uncharted dance culture. The essay will investigate the general dance elements evident in Malay Dance, and the different historical and socio-cultural influences on its development. The primary source and basis of this essay is the Malay Dance Workshop conducted by Mdm Som Said.