~1590 Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
The Kathasaritsagara (Ocean of the Streams of Stories) is a vast anthology of hundreds of folk stories and fairy tales compiled in Sanskrit by the Kashmiri poet Somadeva in 1063–1081. Derived from earlier literary sources, the embellished tales were told by Somadeva for the diversion of Suryamati (or Suryavati), the queen of King Ananta of Kashmir (r. 1028–1063). The text was translated into Persian by Mustafa Khaliqdad ‘Abbasi for the Mughal Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), but only about a dozen illustrated leaves are extant. The known leaves are cropped and have the Persian text on the reverse.
This folio illustrates the story of the celestial nymph Somaprabha from Chapter 17 of the text. Born on earth because of a curse, Somaprabha is married to the merchant Guhachandra of Pataliputra (modern Patna in Bihar) on the condition that they refrain from sleeping together. Each night, however, Somaprabha mysteriously leaves the house to return at dawn. With the help of a charm given to him by a Brahman, Guhachandra gains the help of Agni, the God of Fire. That night, Agni and Guhachandra take the form of bees and follow Somaprabha. In the forest they discover her listening to heavenly music with another beautiful nymph. Agni advises Guhachandra to dally with a courtesan, which makes Somaprabha jealous and arouses her passion.
Judaism and the traditions of the Abrahamic religions are just as fascinating.
Yes the power of story telling is powerful. Seeing what exactly has always captured the human mind can tell us much about ourselves.
I love that you got to the idea of alienation by religion since just yesterday I said leftists ought to know more about Feuerbach and Bauer, two of the young Hegelians. People who laid the groundwork for Marx.
That is amazing!
PS. I’m not Hindu. Atheist now and an ex Muslim.
And now that I say that out loud, it’s amazing how long my ancestors were Muslim and it just ended with me.
I’m a Mughal as the figures on the left side of this image are. They were obsessed with religion.
Before that was Timur. So atleast 700 years of Muslim ancestory.
Well then I should have said salaam!
I did read and probably upvote that comment. It’s also sad we threw away the other classics we used to mandate.
I also like Rumi, but I can’t tell you jack about Sufism. I gor a little tidbit I didn’t know about Baha’i, last night.
I really like “Namaste,” because of the implications. We all came from the same source. And we all return to that same source. It staggers my mind that people who claim any sort of faith are so quick to disregard that for things we fight over, from holy wars to rotten dinosaurs.
Sorry I’m jumping around. I love these things.
Rumi and Sufism is cool stuff honestly.
Namaste is a perfect representation of what makes Indian religions so fascinating to so many.
I always saw a link between Hinduism, Buddhism and Hegel but I’ve never researched it and would like to do that sometime. Especially in regards to alienation, not necessarily the geist. And while Hegelian thinkers criticize religion as causing alienation by creating god and the devil and externalising what is internal, I think Hegelian thought is better lended to pro religious thought.
Rotten dinosaurs is amazing lol.
Conversations like these are the real treasures. And I love your sn, it’s clever.
Tell me more about the link between Hegel and mythos, please? I’m hijacking your thread, sorry; if you’re inclined to share, perhaps a new thread?
I didn’t miss Timur, I just don’t know anything about it. Perhaps one day you’ll write about it in these spaces.
Buddhism highlights that everything is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and lacking inherent substance. Yet, rather than rejecting the world, it turns back to the ordinary samsaric world as precisely the place where the emptiness of nirvana can be realized and where compassion can be practiced. Similarly, in Hegel’s philosophy, negation does not end in mere destruction. The dialectical dissolution of old metaphysical concepts produces a positive outcome: it opens a new method of understanding reality.
Both Hegel and certain Buddhist schools see individual minds as expressions of something greater.
Geist unfolds dialectically through history; Buddhist consciousness unfolds through conditioning.
In both systems, the individual mind is not ultimate; it participates in a larger process or reality.
The more I try to express it, the less convinced I am of my own argument lol.
I think you did quite well, thank you.
And that’s probably why taoism and mysticism in general says “who knows doesn’t talk; who talks doesn’t know.”