As pure as a Lotus

Last fortnight we had talked about an imaginary but likely situation, where someone, in times far removed from the present, had for the first time, noticed the contradiction of the beautiful lotus, growing in dirty stagnant water. These were times when our lives, though much harder than now, were simpler and it was in times such as these that the lotus came to represent purity.

We had also discussed the possibility of how we had later, much later, moved away from animists believes and had begun to imagine Anthropomorphic Gods (gods in human form). These Gods in human form, and they came in all shapes and sizes, were imagined by all ancient civilisations. The ancestors of all humanity in these ancient civilisations imagined these gods to be responsible for  a vast variety of tasks, like birth, death, rain, thunder, lightning, eclipses, fires, wealth, health, disease, holding up the heavens, causing earth-quakes and so on.

All, or almost all, these Gods had their families, parents, siblings, wives and children. They were offered food on a regular basis. Sacrifices were made before them to placate them, if we thought that they were angry or to make them happy if we wanted a special favour from them. 

So in many ways they were like us, humans, all Gods have two feet and they walk erect like humans, unlike all animals, even when they might have the heads of an animal for instance. 

Elephant: Ganesha - Remover of obstacles, patron of science & arts

Stag: Cernunnos- the Celtic God of Fertility, Animals and Wealth,

Wolf: Anubis - the Egyptian God of Death,

Bull: Chi You- Mythical Founder of China and God of War

Hawk: Ra- Egyptian Su God of the sun, sky, earth and underworld

So there are animal headed Gods in all ancient civilisations. The animal head symbolised an attribute that the animal represented, Elephant - wisdom, stag- fertility etc. These animal headed Gods could do everything that humans had ever aspired for, fly, understand the language of birds and animals, run fast, destroy mighty armies, live forever and change form. 

Gods were capable of multi-tasking and therefore had several set of arms. Despite all these things that separated them from humans one of their human like traits made them extremely like humans, we are talking now specifically of Indian or shall we say South Asian Gods and this was their ability to sit cross legged.

So we have Gods that have many human traits and one of these traits is their need to sit. But because they were gods, despite so many similarities with us humans, they could not sit on the floor like us, -their worshippers, so they had to be seated at an exalted throne and what could be more exalted than the Lotus, the epitome of purity.

And so when we began to imagine Anthropomorphic Gods, we seated them in the lotus, Brahma the creator was imagined to be born out of the lotus, growing from the Navel of Vishnu who rests on the coils of the Sheshnag floating in the Ksheersagar. And every God and Goddess was then placed in the Lotus, Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Kartike, Ganesh and others. The lotus thus began to be universally venerated as a symbol of purity and so when Mahavir Jain and Gautam Buddha began to be deified they too were depicted seated in the lotus. Buddhism travelled to many places including China through Kashmir and Tibet.  It were perhaps the Tibetans who imagined a feminine Buddha, who was later incorporated as a Boddhisatva in both Mahayan and Vajrayan Buddhism and is also shown seated on a lotus thrown, as is Bodhisatva Padampani also venerated as Avaloketswara.

And so with Buddhism the veneration of the Lotus also travelled through Tibet, China and Japan and also to Sri Lanka, and the lands of the Far East, Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaya, Java, Sumatra, Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal and elsewhere and wherever Buddhism travelled, the veneration of the Lotus too became part of rituals and prayers.

Centuries later the Lotus was to make its mark on our lives in a spectacular manner and it is this that we will discuss, in the third and last part of this mini-series on the lotus.