Suncraft
BY ALPER ÖZKAN (MBG/III)
d_ozkan@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Oh dear, it's Tuesday already. This means sending a column, and I haven't written one yet (of course, by the time you read this, I will already have. But I digress). I do keep one prepared beforehand for those times, but let us try something different today. It is 4:07. Let's get it ready by 5:00. This means I'll be writing from memory and won't be able to use an extensive set of references (read: Wikipedia and wherever Wikipedia links), so this'll be a test about how much I know! Not much, admittedly.
No modern fiction matches up to Vedic and Hindu myths when it comes to sheer glory of it all: while the rest of the world is content with gods and goddesses meddling with human affairs, mythology of India regularly features anachronistic items such as chainsaws, spaceships, and Ollie Queen's trick arrows. Of course, even in such a world, being the embodiment of the sun is difficult - for one, you're a large, blazing ball of fire, which rather limits human interaction. Doubly so if you're married (which the sun-god Surya is), and your wife cannot go near you without being nicely roasted.
The solution to Surya's dilemma came in form of another deity, Surya's father-in-law Vishvakarman. The creator deity made Surya shine less intensely, so that he may interact with people without cooking them. The leftover blaze of the sun was fashioned into three items. One was the Sudarshana Chakra, for which I find the name "Chainsaw Frisbee" adequate, if a bit vulgar. It was, indeed, a chainsaw frisbee, belonging to Vishnu. It was invoked and not thrown, and once called, nothing would save you from spinning, saw-edged death.
Another item crafted from the remnants of the sun was the Pushpaka Vimana. A vimana is.... Well, depictions vary. It is sometimes a temple and sometimes a flying chariot-tower-temple. Alongside the google-eyed Japanese dog statues, these gave rise to theories about how aliens visited human culture. Those were rather interesting, to say the least: the more you read them, the more hilarious they get. At any rate, the third item was Shiva's trident, emblem of his sovereignity. Knowing Indian mythology, I wouldn't be surprised if it shot missiles (Indian mythology, you see, also featured missiles), but I'm running low on time here, so I will not check what exactly it can do. 4:37.
The other part of Indian mythology I'd like to mention is boons. A boon was typically offered to you when you did something of note or were a great devotee of a particular deity. You could think of it as the Nobel Prize of Indian mythology. Except instead of a medal and diploma, you'd get to have laws of physics bend to your whims to grant one wish of yours. Here is an example of one such wish, from Bhagavata Purana.
"O my lord, O best of the givers of benediction, if you will kindly grant me the benediction I desire, please let me not meet death from any of the living entities created by you. Grant me that I not die within any residence or outside any residence, during the daytime or at night, nor on the ground or in the sky. Grant me that my death not be brought by any being other than those created by you, nor by any weapon, nor by any human being or animal."
"Grant me that I not meet death from any entity, living or nonliving. Grant me, further, that I not be killed by any demigod or demon or by any great snake from the lower planets. Since no one can kill you in the battlefield, you have no competitor. Therefore, grant me the benediction that I too may have no rival. Give me sole lordship over all the living entities and presiding deities, and give me all the glories obtained by that position. Furthermore, give me all the mystic powers attained by long austerities and the practice of yoga for these cannot be lost at any time."
I'd like to remind you that this was a demon (well, an asura, as close as India gets to demons, although there were decent people amongst the asura too) and he got his wish granted, word by word. Raktavija was another example, for his boon involved every drop of his blood touching the ground spawning a new copy of him. Of course, when those asura needed to be killed, it took quite some effort to get around their boons . I'd like to write the details here, but I'm very much out of space. Their Wikipedia articles cover the stories in question 16:51. Goal accomplished. I guess I've learned not to postpone my columns.