Ancient India's Treasures and Sacred Duties
- Discover the treasures of ancient India, from carnelian belts to beautifully crafted ceramic pots. But what if the true treasure lies in the religious poems of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana?
- Prince Arjuna, a great warrior, is torn between love, duty, and war in the Mahabharata. With his charioteer, Lord Krishna, by his side, he learns the importance of performing his dharma for peace and salvation.
- Explore the deep philosophical concepts of conflicting sacred duties and the significance of performing one's dharma in the Bhagavad Gita, a poem within the epic tale of the Mahabharata.
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お願いします! Which of ancient India's treasures would you most like to take home with you? One of those cool carnelian belts? A rope of milky pearls? A personalized seal carved with your name and favorite animals? An intricately inlaid chest of shisham wood? Or perhaps a brightly glazed and gracefully shaped ceramic pot? Many of the people who love ancient India would choose none of those things.They would vote for the narratives Mahabharata and the Ramayana,religious poems that are as widely read and loved today as they were when they were first composed thousands of years ago. The hero of the Mahabharata is a great warrior named Prince Arjuna.He falls in love with Princess Draupadi,and wins her hand in marriage by stringing a massive bow that is too heavy for anyone else to use.Then he uses the bow to shoot out the eye of a golden fish spinning on top of a tall pole,while lonking at the fish's reflection in a vat filled with boiling water. Despite his beautiful wife and fabulous archery skills,Prince Arjuna has a problem.He and his four brothers,the Pandavas,are at war with his cousins,the Kauravas.Arjuna wants to win tge war and defeat his evil cousins.But at the same time,he wants to be a good man,and good men don't go around making war on their relatives.In the Bhagavad Gita,a poem that is part of the Mahabharata,Arjuna tells his charioteer that“conflicting sacred duties confound my reason.” Lucky for Prince Arjuna,his charioteer turns out to be Lord Krishna,who is an avatar of Vishnu,the deity who preserves life.Krishna explains to Arjuna that even though he may not want to hurt his cousins,it's Arjuna's duty－his dharma－to protect what is right.Krishna asks Arjuna what he thinks would happen to the world if the deities didn't do their duty,and dxplains that performing his dharma is the only path to peace and salvation.Otherwise,he will just be reborn endlessly until he gets it right.
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古代インドの財宝のどれをあなたは最も持ち帰りたいですか？素晴らしい紅玉髄のベルトの一つでしょうか？乳白色の真珠のロープでしょうか？あなたの名前や大好きな動物を彫り込んだ個人用の印鑑ですか？複雑に象眼を施したシシャムの木の収納箱でしょうか？あるいは、おそらく明るくつや出しをされて優美に形づくられた陶製の壺でしょうか？ 古代インドが好きな人々の多くは、それらのもののどれも選ばないでしょう。彼らはマハーバーラタとラーマヤーナに一票を投じることでしょう、数千年前に初めて編纂されたときと同様に今日でも広く読まれ愛されている宗教的な詩です。 マハーバーラタの英雄は、アルジュナ王子という名の偉大な戦士です。彼はドローパディ王女と恋に落ちて、あまりに大きすぎて他の誰も使う事が出来ない弓に糸を張り、彼女から結婚の同意を勝ち取ります。それから、彼は高い棒の上で回転している金色の魚の目を射るために、熱湯を満たした大樽に映った魚の像を見ながら、その弓を使います。 彼の美しい妻と素晴らしい弓の腕前にもかかわらず、アルジュナ王子には、問題があります。彼と彼の4人の兄弟のパーンダバ一族は、彼のいとこのカウラバ一族と戦争をしているのです。アルジュナは、戦争に勝って、彼の凶悪ないとこを破りたいと思っています。しかし、同時に、彼は善人でありたいとも思っています、そして、善人は彼らの親類との戦いに明け暮れることはないのです。マハーバーラタの一部となっている詩のバガヴァッド・ギーターの中で、「矛盾する神聖な任務が、私の理性を混乱させる」と、アルジュナは彼の二輪戦車の御者に話します。 アルジュナ王子にとって幸運なことには、彼の二輪戦車の御者が、命を保つ神であるヴィシヌ神の化身であるクリシュナ神であることがわかります。たとえ彼がいとこを傷つけたくないかもしれないとしても、正しいことを護ることがアルジュナの義務 ― 彼の自然の法 ― であると、クリシュナはアルジュナに説明します。クリシュナは、アルジュナに、神がその義務を果たさないならば、世界がどうなると彼が思うか尋ねて、彼の自然の法を実行することが平和と救済への唯一の道であると説明します。さもなければ、それを正しくするまで、彼はただ果てしなく生まれかわることになるのです。
関連するQ&A
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お願いします!続き Shiva wears a pair of mismatched earrings.This jewelry represents his masculine side and his feminine side.The one in his right ear is in the shape of a crocodile-like creature.That one represents his masculine nature.His other earring is circular with a hole in the middle.It represents his feminine nature.Sometimes Shiva is shown half male and half female to symbolize fertility.And sometimes Shiva is completely female.Then Shiva is known as Devi or the Mother Goddess.Devi changes her form depending on the circumstance.She can be either destructive or loving and gentle.Durga and Kali are terrible and extremely blondthirty forms of this deity.Although they seem frightening,Durga and Kali are not out to get good people.They are there to destory evil and demons.The Mother Goddess of Wealth and Prosperity,and Saraswati,the Goddess of Learning and Music. Shiva was not the only deity that people began paying more attention to about 1000 BCE.People began telling more and more stories about Vishnu.Vishnu takes on a special form(called an avatar)and appears on earth to save people whenever some major obstacle or evil power threatens the universe.Krishna,who drives the chariot of Prince Arjuna in the Mahabharata,is actually Vishnu appearing as a charioteer in order to lead the embattled prince to victory.Vishnu's job is to maintain the balance between good and evil in the universe.From time to time,it becomes necessary for Vishnu to destroy the universe,because there is too much evil and it has to be purified.But after a period of rest,the whole cycle of existence begins again.
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お願いします!続き Without faith in dharma,men fail to reach me,Arjuna;they return to the cycle of death and rebirth. Despite Krishna's advice,Arjuna holds back at a crucial moment of the battle.The day is saved when Krishna jumps into the fray and sends his spinning chakra,a flat disk with a razor-sharp edge,slicing through the advancing army of the Kauravas.The poem ends with the words: Where Krishna is lord of discipline and Arjuna is the archer,there do fortune,victory,abundance,and morality exist,so I think. The Mahabharata is an exciting narative,a beautiful poem,and an important source of religious teaching.But it is also a historical document that tells us a lot about the Vedic communities at the end of the Vedic Era.For example,in the final battle,the warriors ride in magnificent chariots covered with gold and gems,with tinkling bells and iron-rimmed wheels,calling each other to battle with trumpets made of conch shells.“Tumult echoed through heaven and earth,”says the Mahabharata.That passage tells us that the Vedic people had horses and chariots,that their artisans knew how to work with iron and gold,and that they had reestablished trade with the coastal villages that collected conch shells.The place names in the poem also remind us that India was being settled along the Ganga and Yamuna River valleys and in the Punjaa.Krishna,for example,was from the city of Mathura,on the Yamuna,while the Kaurava brothers were from the city of Hastinapura,on the Ganga.
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お願いします!続き Archaeologists have found some of the things talked about in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.Both of the poems describe warriors and rulers gambling with dice(the good guys always lose everything because the bad guys cheat!).Sure enough,archaeologists have found colored counters and rod-shaped dice dating from that time－they look a lot like dice still used in India today.They have also found soapstone molds for gold and silver jewelry;horse bones;and iron,brass,and bronze tools. The Ramayana is a Sanskrit poem written by Valmiki sometime after 400 BCE.The Ramayana tells the story of Prince Rama and his lovely wife,Sita.Rama,an earthly form of Vishnu,is a noble and ideal person.Valmiki describes himself as a leader and a father to everyone:“As a father to his children,to his loving men he came.”Unforttnately,Rama's father had three wives,including－Rama's mother and stepmother,Kaikeyi.The king is about to name Rama as his heir when Kaikeyi reminds the king that he has promised that he will grant her two wishes.She wants the king to send Rama into exile for 14 years and to make her son,Bharata,the crown prince. While Rama is in exile with his wife,Sita,and his younger brother,Lakshmana,an evil ten-headed demon named Ravana captures Sita and takes her to his palace.Rama and his brother spend the next year searching for her,eventually helped by an army from the kingdom of the monkeys.(Monkeys are considered sacred throughout most of South Asia because of the help they gave Rama and Sita.)
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お願いします。 Prince Ashoka Maurya had two kinds of heroes.The first were the deities of the Vedic scriptures and the prince and princesses who served them in sacred texts such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.These religious heroes taught him the satisfaction of living with honor and justice(dharma),the excitement of money and succesr(artha),and the contentment of enjoying the world's beauties and pleasures(kama).They taught him that if he filled his life with these qualities of honor,excellence,and beauty,he would reach moksha,when the cycle of life,death,and rebirth would end. That all sounded good to Prince Ashoka.But so did the adventures of his second kind of hero－the warrior heroes like his father,King Bindusara,and his grandfather,Chandragupta.Ashoka loved fighting,and he was good at it.He may well have gone to a military academy like the one in Taxila.Brahmins and Kshatriya came there from all over the subcontinent to learn military science,including the use of the eight major eapoms.Brahmins shot bows,the Kshatriya were swordsmen,the Vaishya used the lance,and the Shudra wielded the mace－a heavy,spiked,hammerlike weapon.The teacher was skilled in all those weapons plus the disk(chakra),the spear,and fighting with his bare hands.Brahmin and Kshatriya students were also trained to command a war elephant. Military academies like the one in Taxila show how important war was to the people of Ashoka's time.Each town had its own central armory,a strong building for storing weapons,run by a superintendet.The government kept such tight control over its weapons that all soldiers had to return their arms to the armory after they practiced each morning.No one could carry a weapon unless he had special permit.
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お願いします! At about the same time as Mahavira was wandering around the forest and cities of the Ganga Valley,another prince was asking similar questions.His name was Siddhartha Gautama.Like Mahavira's father,Siddhartha's father tried to protect him from anything ugly or painful.Like Mahavira,Siddhartha married and had a child.And like Mahavira,Siddhartha gradually realized that the world was a place of suffering.He gave up his life of luxury,left his palace,and began to seek enlightenment.Buddhists believe that after six years of fasting and long periods of meditating in the same position without moving a muscle,he realized that physical discipline was not the way to achive enlightenment.When he told this to five fellow sages,they left him in the forest,disgusted that he had given up so easily.But Siddhartha continued to meditate.One night,as he sat on a grass mat under the arching branches of a bodhi(wild fig) tree,he realized something that would change his life forever.It occurred to Siddhartha that 1)humans experience pain 2)desire or wanting is what causes this pain 3)the only way to avoid suffering is to control desire 4)a person can be freed from desire,and achieve Enlightenment,by living with others and following the Eightfold Path. Siddhartha called this form of enlightenment Nirvana.Once he experienced Nirvana for himself,he became known as the Buddha. Although he did not think anyone would be interested in his message,he decided to share what he had discovered.At the town of Sarnath,the five friends who had abandoned him in the forest came to listen to him teach.These five became his first followers.For the next 45 years,the Buddha traveled from city to city and village to village,teaching people about kindness,compassiom,and truth,as he did in these instructions to one of his followers: The wise and moral man Shines like a fire on a hilltop Making honey like a bee Who does not hurt the flower.
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お願いします!続き In sculpture,Vishnu often has four hands,each holding a symbol of his power.Two hands are not enough to rid the world of evil.In one hand he holds a conch shell which,just like Shiva's,symbolizes his power.In another hand,he wields a razor-sharp disk,a weapon that symbolizes the way intelligence can destroy all evil(the disk is called a chakra).In another hand,Vishnu holds a lotus,a flower that grows in water.Lotuses are rooted in mud but they blossom above the water.Vishnu's lotus is a symbol of his creative force and lordship over the universe.In his fourth hand,Vishnu holds a club or mace,which is a symbol of his power and knowledge. Shiva and Vishnu are sometimes shown together with Brahma in art.Brahma,who should not be confused with Brahman,the Ultimate Supreme Being,is the oldest of the three major Hindu deities.Although all three deities are mentioned in the Vedas,Shiva and Vishnu didn't become really popular until later.In the Ramayana,Brahma himself says that“Of the Trinity,I am the Creator,Shiva is the Destroyer,and Vishnu is the Protector.” Brahma rides a swan or goose to symbolize purity,detachment,and divine knowledge.Brahma represents the balance between forces that destroy and fragment the universe and those that create and unite.He is usually shown with four heads,facing north,south,east,and west,so that he can see everything(at one point he actually had a fifth head,but that was cut off by Shiva during a fight).His heads also represent the four Vedas and the four groups that people are divided into(called varnas).He is often shown with four arms that hold symbolic objects: a special pot with a spout that is used for ritual cleansing and represents the earth,the sustainer of all things; palm-leaf manuscripts,which represent the Vedas; prayer beads that he uses to recite prayers; and the sacred conch shell that calls the deities to sacrifices.
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お願いします (13) By 50 BCE, the Triumvirate had ended. Crassus had been killed in battle, and Pompey had become very jealous of Caesar's military success and his great popularity. Pompey had married Caesar's daughter, Julia, but when she died in childbirth, the bond between the two men was broken. Before Caesar returned from Gaul, Pompey sided wit the Senate to declare his former father-in-law an enemy of the State. The Senate demanded that Caesar give up his army and return to Rome. Knowing that he would be arrested if he obeyed, he refused. But now his life and career were at stake. Did he dare go back to Italy at all? (14) In January of 49 BCE, Caesar's forces were camped just north of the Rubicon, the river that marked the boundary between Gaul and Ital. As soon as Caesar heard the Senate's ruling, he slipped away from the camp with a few trusted men. It was night, and everyone else was feasting. No one noticed that he was missing. When he reached the banks of the Rubicon, he paused, thinking about his next step. After a moment, he declared, “The die is cast” and crossed the river. This was his way of saying that his mind was made up and wouldn't be changed. Now he was ready to meet his former ally, the great general Pompey, in battle. (15) Caesar was never one to stand around, waiting for someone else to do something. Decisive as always, he began his march right away. He set out in the dead of winter with a single legion of soldiers. He knew that by marching on Rome he would start a civil war. What he didn't know─and couldn't have known─was that this war would last for nearly two decades and destroy the Republic.
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お願いします!続き The Ganga River may physically spring from the Himalaya Mountains,but according to some ancient South Asian beliefs,this deity cascades from the top of another deity's head.He is Shiva,lord of creation and destruction.Vishnu is the other major deity.These powerful deities represent the forces of the universe,according to some scriptures called the Upanishads: Fire is in his forehead,the sun and moon are his eyes,the directions of space are his ears,the Veda is his voice,the wind that pervades the world is the breath which raises his chest,his feet are the earth.He is the inner self of all living beings. Shiva is said to have three eyes.When he opens his third eye,a flash of fire destroys his enemies,and blesses the good with wisdom.Shiva holds a trident,a three-pronged weapon to kill evil demons,in one hand and a conch shell in the other.The conch shell comes from the bones of a demon named Shankhachuda,whom Shiva destroyed with the help of Vishnu.Not only does Shiva have one more eye than humans do,he is often described as having many hands that represent different aspects of his power.His hands may hold an axe to cut off the heads of evil demons; prayer beads; or a small drum for dancing.Shiva loves to dance,which represents the way the universe is always moving.Since he is responsible for death as well as life,he is often shown wearing the crescent moon,which represent the waxing and waning of life,in his piled and matted hair.
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お願いします。 Ashoka wanted Kalinga not only for its riches,but also because the highways that connected north and south India ran right through the middle of the state.And war elephants or no war elephants,what Ashoka wanted,he usually got.His attack was brutal and effective.By the time the war was over,one out of every four Kalingans was dead or wounded.Many more had been taken prisoner and were separated from what was left of their families.Those who survived faced lives as broken and barren as their wrecked houses and ruined fields.Ashoka reported that“150,000”were deported,100,000 were killed,and many more died(from other causes).” As Ashoka stared out over the ruins left by his armies,something changed.He'd seen the agony of defeated people before,but this was different.He was different.He remembered the lessons of dharma,artha,kama,and moksha,and realized suddenly that there was nothing honorable,creative,beautiful,or peaceful about this victory. So Ashoka,who called himself“Beloved of the Deities,”sent out a royal edict,a message,which he had proclaimed in every village and carved into rock pillars for all to see:“After the Kalingas had been conquered,Beloved of the Deities came to feel a strong inclination towards dharma,a love for dharma,and for instruction of dharma.Now Beloved of the Deities feels deep remorse for having comquered the Kalingas.” Ashoka adopted a new philosophy,one he called“conquest by dharma,”instead of by arms.As he explained in one of his proclamations: I have had this edict written so that sons and great-grandsons may not consider making new conquests,or that if military conquests are made,that they be done with forbearance and light punishment,or better still that they consider making conquest by dharma only,for that bears fruit in this world and the next.May all their intense devotion be given to this which has result in this world and the next.
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お願いします! Sometime during the sixth century BCE,a prince named Vardhamana was born in northern India.His father was a Kshatriya and his mother's family controlled much of what is now Nepal and Eastern India.As the son of a powerful ruler,he lived alife of luxury.Wealth and pleasures surrounded him.He married and had a daughter,but when he was 30 years old,he began to feel bored and trapped by his life and all of his things.He decided to leave the palace and,after tearing out his hair in five handfuls,he began to wander the land,meditating,and living off the food that people gave him. He traveled into faraway forests,where he met holy men and women who,like him,disliked the violence and greed of ordinary life.Together they looked for a better way to live.In time,Vardhamana found out about a holy man who had lived hundreds of year before,in about 800 BCE.This man,whose name was Parshvanatha,taught that as long as you did not lie,steal,own more than you needed to survive,or kill anything,your life would be pure and you would be freed from having to be born yet again. Vardhamana began to follow these teachings,living only off the charity that people gave him.Sometimes people beat and abused him,but he stuck to his beliefs.Finally,after 12 years,6 months and 15 days,he was able to conquer his earthly desires.He no longer cared about fancy food,fashionable clothes,or even his family and friends.He had finally reached a state called Enlightenment－the burden of always wanting stuff didn't weigh him down anymore.People called him Mahavira,“the great hero.”He taught the four teachings of Parshvanatha,plus one more: celibacy.Total celibacy was a tough one,since if no one had children,people would die out. So,many people who followed the teachings of Vardhamana gave up worldly pleasures after they had finished raising a family.
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