Episode 6 – Fish Highwayman

This week we’ll learn the strange story of how poetry was invented, and about how a god can upload memories directly into people

This episode is the beginning of the Ramayana.

The Ramayana is one of the two most famous epics from India. I would not be exaggerating in saying that the Ramayana and the other epic the Mahabharata are known by almost every single person in India – thanks to a combination of School curriculum, books, TV series, movies.

The saga itself is pretty big – the original version of the poem called the Valmiki Ramayana had 24000 verses.

We’re going to begin today and it’ll take several episodes to go through these.

Because the Ramayana is just one of several wonderful stories from India, I’ll spread these episodes out a bit so that there’s a bit of variety, but I’ll go through them in order.

The character this week is a girl who abducts a prince to avoid marrying his cousin. 

Valmiki

Valmiki was a fisherman-highwayman. You might wonder how does that works exactly – did he specialize in robbing only fishermen, or did he only rob fish? The answer is that he was just a robber, but his business cards said – fisherman. Kind of like how the Godfather  was an olive oil importer. 

Even back in those days you needed a front for any illegal business, so if the authorities found you, you could explain your way out of a pickle.

So we’ll leave the fisherman part aside and simply think of him as a highwayman. But seeing as it was around 800BC, there wasn’t much of a highway. Regardless Valmiki would waylay travelers and steal their valuables.

One fine morning, as Valmiki was out scouting for his next victims, he saw two wise men.

Hmm, almost not worth the effort he thought, but then nothing ventured, nothing gained.

He jumped in front of them suddenly – “your money or your lives’ he said.

It was fashionable for sages to swear off all worldly possessions, and these two sages were no exceptions.

We have no money – take our lives if you must.

That’s not exactly how this works said Valmiki. I meant I’d take your lives if you refused to hand over your money. But if you don’t have any, I actually feel sorry for you. How are you managing in this rough country?

The sages said – it’s not as bad is it seems. We sing and walk along the streets and people give us food.

And you don’t have to pay for that? said Valmiki incredulously.

Not a penny, people are doing this to be closer to god, and they don’t mind sharing their food with uninvited guests, its practically built into their moral code.

Valmiki was a keen observer and could read between the lines – so are they just paying you to stop singing? He said, or maybe they are actually interested in your words.

Definitely the latter, the sages said.

So what do you actually sing about? Valmiki asked

We mostly sing about gods. Those are our real valuables.

Tell me about these “gods” you speak of said Valmiki. And the sages did. In great detail. So much so that Valmiki decided to give up his life of crime, and became a devotee of Rama, the 7th avatar of Vishnu. We previously covered the 1st avatar(the unicorn fish) in the very first episode. You may want to check it out if you haven’t already but the avatars are fairly independent of each other.

Valmiki spent a long time meditating and praying, and was finally rewarded with a vision of the life of Rama. He composed it into what we know as the Ramayana.

Valmiki himself is an important character in the Ramayana.

In the very first chapter, Valmiki writes how we heard the synopsis of Rama’s story from… wait for it…. Me. Valmiki asked me to name a person who does basically everything great, cares about following rules, is fair to everyone and rules his kingdom well. Obviously, without any hesitation I said it was Rama. At this point, I gave Valmiki a very concise summary of Rama’s life, but we can skip the synopsis, because…. SPOILERS! 

Chapter 2 begins with me bidding Valmiki goodbye. Don’t ask me how I know what happens next – because I knew it would happen before it happened and I saw it happen again when it did! Sounds confusing? Remember my superpower is that I know the past, present and future.

Anyway, so Valmiki wandered about the forest definitely not looking for people to hold up.

He saw a couple of birds – cranes or krauncha as they were called. The birds were just being friendly with each other when out of the blue a hunter shot one of them with an arrow.

Valmiki flew into a rage and said to the hunter – you shall never be prosperous. Don’t enter the forest for many years. Only he said it in sanskrit and made it sound a lot better than I did.

So much better that the significance wasn’t lost on Valmiki. He immediately followed up; “what is this phrase I have uttered?” I think I have just invented a new form of poetry, and the length of my mini poem exactly fits a veena(which is an ancient guitar, I carry one all the time). Your mood suddenly seems to have changed said the hunter, so I can come back to the forest all I want right? Nope, said Valmiki, its too late I’ve already cursed you, and, curses dont have an undo feature yet. That’s in a future upgrade if you want to stick around for, I dont know a few centuries or so?.

Valmiki proclaimed that it would bring him great fame, and no one will think worse of him for inventing this. I’m pretty sure he’s right about the former, but I defer to millions of middle school children in India on the latter.

Valmiki then went back home, and prayed. Not long after, Brahma who was in the habit of making house calls, showed up. Brahma if you haven’t heard earlier episodes is part of the holy trinity, he’s the creator whereas vishnu is the preserver and Shiva is the destroyer. and Brahma is also my dad.

Valmiki promptly told him the incident with the krauncha from earlier in the day, being sure to elaborate on his poem. Brahma who seemed to have a good eye for literary talent, encouraged him. Let’s start calling that “poetry” from now. Deal! Valmiki said.

Brahma continued – “On a completely unrelated note I want you to tell the story of Rama that you heard from my son Narada earlier today. I will send you a copy of the entire story, direct to your mind”.

So that’s what Valmiki got. As he prayed, he got to know Shri Rama’s entire life story. I dont know why it took so long for him to get the hint from Brahma, but it then occurred to him, hey I invented poetry and on the very same day, I was asked by Brahma to spread the story of Rama. I could just as easily write Rama’s story in the same form as the one verse I composed. That would be killing two birds with one stone. Oops, bad choice of metaphor there.

In what is probably the earliest reference of breaking the fourth wall, Valmiki is described composing his classic including Chapter 4 which describes Valmiki composing his classics including Chapter 4… which includes…. forget it, this is infinite recursion.

So anyway, after he finished composing the Ramayana, he wondered to whom he should teach this classic? The obvious answer is to the whole world. The second most obvious answer was the two young boys Lava and Kusha who lived in the hermitage. You’re in for a double plot twist now. Rama(upon whom the entire Ramayana is based) was still the King. And the two young boys? They were Raam’s sons who didn’t know they were King Raam’s sons. Way to bury the lead here, Valmiki. We’ll later get into why they were living

So Valmiki decided to teach the two princes all about their parents without revealing that Ram was their father. They were great musicians and could play the veena really well, and Valmiki told them the measures, notes, and exactly how to tune their veenas to give the best concert ever.
And Lava and Kusha did just that! They took their Veenas, went to King Raam’s palace and sang the story to King Raam’s wise men.
Now I did a quick back of the envelope calculation – if you estimate 8-10 verses a minute which is a rather fast pace, it would have taken them 2 days to sing out the whole Ramayana, without any breaks. Everyone at Raam’s court loved their sweet voices and loved the story. They gifted Lava and Kusha with delicious fruits, because who wouldn’t be hungry after a 2-day concert? And Lava and Kusha also received antelope skins and clothes made of tree bark, because those were in vogue back in the day. The other gift was axes, which is just a weird gift to give to anyone who isn’t a lumberjack, and unsafe besides.

Now just as the boys were being praised by his wise men, King Raam was passing by. His curiosity being aroused, he took the kids to his chambers and introduced them to his three brothers – Lakshman, Bharath and Shatrughna, and his ministers. He then commanded them to sing the Ramayana again. Umm, someone has to you know offer these kids a chance to rest or something – they’ve been playing for 2 days straight, and you want them to go through it again?
But the kids did it with a smile!
This is the jumping-off point – we’ll stop here and next week we’ll start on the Ramayana as most people know it – which is the story within the Ramayana, obviously condensed because we don’t want to be caught in the infinite recursion I mentioned earlier.

Notes

The information about Valmiki’s profession as a highwayman/fisherman actually comes from a different source, called the Puranas.

In another version, it wasnt two wise men that Valmiki tried to rob, but… me.
Valmiki claimed to be doing it to feed his family but then I challenged him on that, and won. Shocked that his family did not actually want his tax-free earnings from looting and killing people, he decided to reform.

So there are two versions – one that Valmiki met two wise men, and the other that he met me.

Only one of these two stories is true. I’ll let you guess which one. 

Character of the Week

The character this week is Subhadra. She is Krishna and Balaram’s sister. Krishna was an avatar of Vishnu. In some versions, Balaram who was Krishna’s elder brother, was himself an avatar of Vishnnu. In other versions, Balaram is an avatar of Sesh Nag, the Ultimate Snake, whom you may remember from the Unicorn Fish episode.

Given that both krishna and balaram had divine origins, you might think Subhadra was the underachiever in the family. but she is herself considered an incarnation of goddess yogamaya, whom we can talk about in another episode. 

Prince Arjun, one of the pandav brothers at the heart of the Mahabharata,  and Duryodhan – the crown prince and one of the kuru brothers also at the heart of the Mahabharata, both wanted to marry subhadra. The difference was that subhadra wanted to be with Arjun.

Balaram had promised Duryodhan that he could marry subhadra.

Krishna found out about this and warned Arjun and subhadra. Instead of getting an injunction and challenging Balaram’s promise in a court of law, he did what was practical: he urged them to run away together.
But when Duryodhan and Balaram find out, wont they just crush me like a bug asked Arjun? I can’t face them and their armies alone.

Ever the sneaky one, krishna suggested that the couple be seen together riding off in a chariot, but with Subhadra driving. This had exactly the effect Krishna wanted- the couple were observed by people in the kingdom, and the same people would later swear to balaram and duryodhan that *subhadra* had abducted arjun and not the other way around. 

Thats it for this week.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please leave a comment or a review on the site – I’d highly appreciate it.

Next Week

We’ll continue the story of the Ramayana starting from King Dasharath who was Raam’s father.

The character next week is a real historical queen who broke all kinds of stereotypes in defending her people

See you next week