Dennis Suyeoka asked me what is Diwali all about. Knowing his curiosities, I promised him a full post. Diwali is our festival of lights symbolizing victory of light over darkness, and good over evil. No one knows the true origins of Diwali, as Hinduism is an ancient religion, being practiced way before writing was invented. Given limited information that could be orally passed generation to generation our great forefathers chose to transmit the philosophy of Hinduism rather than accurate historical facts. So all we have is philosophies, stories and myths, but no accurate history. There are at least 10 stories in the modern days that is linked to Diwali. The most prominent story is about an exiled king, Rama who returned home on this day with his wife and his brother. There is another story that Goddess of wealth Laksmi was born on this day when the gods and daemons were churning the sea. There is a third story that a deadly daemon called Narkasur was killed by Lord Krishna on this day. There is no way for us to date these stories, but in the myths, the Rama story have been attributed to Dwapar Period (Yuga) which is the second of the 4 periods of our basic time cycle. The whole time cycle repeats over endlessly and we dont know which number of that time cycle we are presently in as it has not been recorded. Our ancient forefathers observed that on a certain new moon day fly-insects stop getting attracted to lights in India after a peak suddenly. And this cycles not to a solar calendar but to a lunar calendar. So it was a special day, and New Moon day of Kartik month in Hindu lunar calendar was appropriated for a light based festival which legended into Diwali festival. The first mention of Diwali came in late Puranic period which was the third major phase of Hinduism after Vedic and Upnishadic periods. All the then existing stories linked to this event were compiled together by Sage Valmiki into a book called Ramayana, which forms our earliest mythical history(or philosophy .. good vanquishes evil). India is the oldest continuous civilization in the world which has a side effect of transmitting good (yoga, ayurveda) and bad (caste system) of our entire existence to this date. Diwali is one of those continuities which links us to our ancient past, and we celebrate it with fire-crackers, lights and sweets.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:50:56 +0000
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