N. Gopala Pillai, M. A
from the Proceedings of the All-India Oriental Conference
Vol. IX (Trivandrum: Government Press, 1937), pp. 955-997
Theocrasia, or the fusing of one god with another has played a conspicuous part in the history of religion from prehistoric times. In the oldest Egyptian religion, Horus, the son of God Osiris (Serapis) was regarded as the intercessor with the Father for sinners. H.G. Wells says,
“many of the hymns to Horus are singularly like Christian hymns in their spirit and phraseology. That beautiful hymn “Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear”, was once sung in Egypt to Horus. In this worship of Serapis which spread very widely throughout the civilized world in the third and second centuries B.C., we see the most remarkable anticipations and usages and forms of expression that were destined to dominate the European world throughout the Christian era. The essential idea, the living spirit of Christianity was, as we shall presently show , a new thing in the history of the mind and will of man; but the garments of ritual and symbol and formula that Christianity has worn, and still in many countries wears to this day, were certainly woven in the cult and temples of Jupiter-Serapis and Isis”.[81]
The cult of Skanda was super-imposed on the Muruka cult. But the ancient form of worship persisted. With slight modifications, it exists to the present day.
When Dionysos first came to Greece – from where exactly we do not know whether from Thrace or elsewhere – he came with a vast train of attendants; his revel rout of Satyrs and Centaurs and Maenads.[82] “The Centaurs, it used to be said, are Vedic Gandharvas, cloud-demons. Mythology now-a-days has fallen from the clouds, and with it the Centaurs.” Homer alludes to them as “wild men, mountain haunting”.[83] On the metopes of the Parthenon, they appear as horses with the head and trunk of a man. “By the middle of the 5th Century B.C., in knightly horse-loving Athens, the horse-form had got the upper hand. In Archaic representations, the reverse is the case. The centaurs are in art what they are in reality, men, with men’s legs and feet, but they are shaggy mountain-men with some of the qualities and habits of beasts, so to indicate this in a horse-loving country, they have the hind quarters of a horse tacked on to their human bodies.” [84] The Satyrs were essentially akin to the Centaurs.[85] But when the Centaurs evolved in mythology from wild men to become more and more horse-like, the Satyrs retained their characteristics of wild men with diverse beastly adjuncts. The Maenads are the women-attendants of Dionysos, his nursing nymphs, in mythology. Maenad means ‘mad woman’.[86] In actual ceremonial, they were women worshippers[87] possessed, maddened or inspired by his spirit. They had various titles, “Maenad, Thyiad, Phoibad, Lyssad”, meaning “Mad one, Rushing one, Inspired one, Raging one”.[88] These Satyrs and Centaurs and Maenads correspond to the Sattvas (bhūtas) and Kinnaras and Mātrganas of Indian Mythology. The Bhūtaganas retain, in India too, the same mischievous and frolicsome Puck-like traits of their Greek counter-parts. The Kinnaras appear with palpable corporal inversion. Their trunks are human, but the heads are horse-like, and they are frequently referred to as aśva mukhas (‘having horse-face’). The Mātrganas figure prominently in the Mahabharata and the Puranas. The wome n who were seized with divine frenzy when possessed by the God have left traces of their vanishing existence in ancient Tamil poetry, though they have faded out of the social life of modern times in India.
These Maenads or nursing nymphs were represented, as we know, by “frenzied sanctified women”[89] who worshipped Dionysus as a baby in his cradle. In this particular form, Dionysus came to be called ‘Dionysus Liknites’ – Liknon meaning a cradle. The Orphic ceremonial of the Liknophoria or the carrying of the Liknon was widely practiced in Greece. Votive offerings of various sorts, originally the first fruits of the earth and often the best of things dear to man were carried in the Liknon to the shrine of Dionysus.
The kāvadi in South India is almost the representation of an Indian cradle, carried topsy-turvy by the devotee on his shoulder with offerings hung from the horizontal pole. The word kāvadi means, in Tamil “a decorated pole of wood with an arch over it carried on shoulders with offerings, mostly for Muruka’s temple.” [90] In a vase-painting from a Krater in the Hermitage Museum at St. Petersburg, we get an exact representation of the modern Indian kāvadi – the outline of an arch covered with fillets, curving over the ends of a horizontal pole with foliar decorations, placed under the feet of Dionysus. Dr. J.E. Harrison, the talented of the author Prolegomena’ and ‘Themis’, regards this representation as the Omphalos of Gaia, the earth Goddess, the mother of Dionysus.[91] But, the Earth Goddess does not appear in the picture, and the filleted arch is under Dionysus’s feet. Whatever that be, its resemblance to the kāvadi is striking and noteworthy. [92]
How was Dionysus worshipped in Ancient Greece? Exact details of mystic rites cannot possibly be had. But we get interesting descriptions. “His worshippers, women especially, held nightly revels in his honour by torch-light on the mountain tops. Dancing in ecstasy to the sounds of cymbals and drums, they tore in pieces a sacrificial animal, whose blood they drank with wine.”[93]
In Athens, the worship of Dionysus was later reformed by Epimenides and was purged of certain objectionable elements. Dr. J.E. Harrison quotes a dialogue between Pentheus and Dionysus.[94]
P. How is this worship held, by night or day?
D. Most oft by night, ‘tis a majestic thing
The darkness.
Ha! With women worshipping.
‘Tis craft and rottenness”.
Herodotus speaks of the maddening influence of Dionysus. The band of raving revellers seized by the god go dancing in divine frenzy.[95] The scenes were similar in India. The veteran scholar Mr. P.T. Srinivasa Iyengar says,
“The god of the hilly region was the Red God (Seyon) also called Murugan, who was the patron of prenuptial love. He was offered by his worshippers balls of rice mixed with the red blood of goats killed in his behalf. He was a hunter and carried the Vel or Spear…This god created a love-frenzy in girls.” [96]
He quotes again from the Pattinapālai, 11. 134-158, and translates:
“In the market streets there were ceaseless festivals to Murugan, in which women, obsessed by him, danced, and the flute, and the Yāl [lute] were sounded and the drums beaten.”[97]
We behold today with our own eyes, around us here, pious devotees of Skanda dancing in ecstasy to the rhythmic beat of resounding drums. We cannot afford to ignore the unchanging persistence of this very ancient cult. Men may come and men may go, but it seems, the cult goes on for ever.