Liberality levels
Cults are liberal (or not) to varying degrees.
Multiple valid deity paths
Different people may be centered on different such Gods (oft from a limited set), with mutual acceptance of such centerings showing the following traits:
- It is of the “my mother is the best mother in the world” kind.
- From a metaphysical perspective, there is no doubt that other centers than one’s own can fully play the role of adoration “center”.
Examples:
- “iShTa-devatA” (as a stepping stone towards attributeless, formless, unfathomable brahman) concept among advaita-smArta hindu-s
Single supreme deity insistence
- Example: the vaiShNava-s, shaiva-s etc.. can easily accord polycentrism (in the overall hindu population) hermeneutical significance (ie - one can reasonably imagine x,y or z is supreme based on texts). But full metaphyiscal agreement (where it concerns the nature of supreme God) would imply watering down their own philosophies.
“False Gods” fanatics
Some cults reject all other deities as false (not just lower) Gods, whose adoration leads to downfall and damnation.
Principles of competition
Fitness
- The great sage Charles Darwin proposed the principle of natural selection. A generalization of his vision informs this narrative.
- Every cult (or memeplex) that is more successful (ie fitter) than others (or successful at the cost of others) in the ecosystem of Indian minds, became so because of its superior adaptations. This spans not only hindu cults, but also buddhist ones - they were all in the meme pool competing against each other. You who use the term “comparative evolution” should consider these obvious parallels to biological evolution.
Connection to deity competition
Cult competition is expressed in terms of deity competition in myth and imagery. Yet, the wise emphatically understand that the Gods are themselves in perfect harmony - and any seeming competation is friendly (like friends betting in a cock fight).
Examples
- Egyptian Isis cult - SP17
- “The Prājāpatya-s competed with Viṣṇu for the two figures of the primordial turtle Kaśyapa and the primordial boar Varāha. While the former was originally associated with Indra (from the RV itself), the latter is hinted to be associated with Viṣṇu in the early AV tradition recorded in the Paippalāda-saṃhitā. However, the Prājāpatya-s laid a strong claim to both before Viṣṇu (bhaktas) eventually won and claimed both the figures as his avatāra-s in the Post-Vedic period.”
- The govardhana incident is a transparent (and in hindsight successful) attempt by the kRShNa cult to supplant the ancient vaidika aindra cult. This we also see in the khANDava forest conflict, and it is in line with other paurANika cult competitions (eps. shiva vs viShNu, as in: narasimha → sharabha → gaNDaberuNDa chain).
- buddhist subversion of hindu deities [MT1, MT2, TW1 ].
- jaina subversion of hindu deities [MT1, MT2 ].
Indian adaptations
Indian deity competitions show various successful adaptations, such as:
- absorption (eg. Indra is but a small manifestation of kRShNa, is less powerful)
- establishment of superior power (rAma defeats paraShurAma, sharabha humbles narasimha but is humbled by gaNDaberuNDa etc..)
- This extends to magic contests (atleast in popular imagination) - a gaNDaberuNDa-nRsimha mantra may supersede a sharabha deployment by an enemy.
- A few pre-Aryan (and superficially anti-Arya) deities - HH13.
- dismissal of rival narratives as ploys to confuse ignoble asura-s or cursed fakers. Eg.
- varAha-purANa calling rudra “moha” and generating moha-shAstra-s, and trying to rescue the confused with nihshvAsa-samhitA WP17.
- jayadratha the kAshmIra describing bauddha anti-astika tropes as confusion emerging out of a ploy by bRhaspati. [TW16]
- In “lay” circles the shivapurANa posits that viShNu incarnated as tathAgata or arihant to produce fake shAstra-s. [TW16]
- Claims to greater authority through association with honored beings, known from ancient times [TW16]. Also see notes on argument from authority and ploys to dismiss those here.
- Threatening divine punishment for switching ritual affiliations or weaking group cohesion through leakage :
- nihshvAsa text of shaiva siddhAnta - TW17.
- Later found in Tibetan vajrayAna as dorje shugden.
- absorption (eg. Indra is but a small manifestation of kRShNa, is less powerful)
- establishment of superior power (rAma defeats paraShurAma, sharabha humbles narasimha but is humbled by gaNDaberuNDa etc..)
- This extends to magic contests (atleast in popular imagination) - a gaNDaberuNDa-nRsimha mantra may supersede a sharabha deployment by an enemy.
- A few pre-Aryan (and superficially anti-Arya) deities - HH13.
- dismissal of rival narratives as ploys to confuse ignoble asura-s or cursed fakers. Eg.
- varAha-purANa calling rudra “moha” and generating moha-shAstra-s, and trying to rescue the confused with nihshvAsa-samhitA WP17.
- jayadratha the kAshmIra describing bauddha anti-astika tropes as confusion emerging out of a ploy by bRhaspati. [TW16]
- In “lay” circles the shivapurANa posits that viShNu incarnated as tathAgata or arihant to produce fake shAstra-s. [TW16]
- Claims to greater authority through association with honored beings, known from ancient times [TW16]. Also see notes on argument from authority and ploys to dismiss those here.
- Threatening divine punishment for switching ritual affiliations or weaking group cohesion through leakage :
- nihshvAsa text of shaiva siddhAnta - TW17.
- Later found in Tibetan vajrayAna as dorje shugden.
- Monolatry: only worship one God while actively refusing the worship of the rest, while not rejecting their outright existence.
Functional retention
- Despite new deities taking on old roles, the roles themselves remain fairly conserved.
- Example: “the paurANika trinity is merely a condensed abstraction of the old Aditya-s (viShNu) - rudra-s (rudra) - vasu-s (dyaus→prajApati → brahma) triad”- [MT].
Dealing with foreign deities.
- Translate and relocate
- Deities are easily translatable and relocatable to other geo-spatial contexts - by special rituals, or crafting new sthala-purANa-s (place-stories). Greeks and Romans the other people’s Theoi or Dei were Theoi and Dei.
- Plutarch and near contemporaries - TW17.
- Identify as lesser or inimical
- Foreign deities were sometimes described as being lesser (xudra-devatA-s/ monstrous), somewhere lower in the heirarchy of one’s own favorite deities; or as entirely opposite forces. [Virgil’s Rome-egypt-monstorous-gods quotehere] They were considered powerful, requiring appeals to one’s own gods to counter or contain them (yajJNa-muSha-s in taittirIya-samhitA 3.5.4.1 - SayaNa, mahAbhArata etc.. GA).
- Adaption and absorption
- Explained earlier in the hindu case.
- “we see Egyptians adopting foreign Gods, numerous Canaanite deities and also Nubian Gods, keeping their original, foreign names but labeling them as Netjeru, as “Gods”, just like their native Gods.”
Contrast with deity competition in other eco-systems
- When the deity cults were closely connected with an enemy nation, one would occasionally find fomenting of intolerance towards those cult’s practices. While objections to specific enemy religious practices arose partly from one’s own sense of high culture, the dissuasion of regard to deities of enemy nations occurred only in case of conflict, as one could occasionally find the conflicts between nations perceived and described in terms of conflicts between the corresponding nations’ deities.
Example:
- “Biblical vilification of child sacrifice to the god Moloch by the Canaanites.” [KE16]
- “Roman war leaders would emphasize this phenomenon of child sacrifice among the Carthaginians to portray them as barbarians in urgent need of Rome’s civilizing intervention.” [KE16]
- “Caesar would also demonize as human-sacrificers the Druids of Gaul, another “barbarian” country the Romans “liberated” from its own traditions after conquering it.” [KE16]
- Likewise, the Chinese Zhou dynasty justified its coup d’état (11th century BCE) against the Shang dynasty by demonizing the Shang as practising human sacrifice. [KE16]
- The cult of Isis was proscribed in Rome as it was at war with Cleopatra’s Egypt. [Insert link]
- Maori forcing Maoriri to defile their ancestor’s shrines. [Insert link]
Suppression
- Suppression of cults as part of pagan consolidation (oft in response to abrahamist threats) and voluntary acculturation.
- Japanese suppression of Ainu culture.
- Suppression of local Metei cults by the vaishNavized elite [IMG1].
- One adaptation that was wildly successful was one of Mosaic exclusivism. It incited violent intolerance towards adoration of other deities, and alternative forms of adoration.
- An early form of this can bee seen in the harsh good vs evil dichotomy one sees in the Zoroastrian ahura mAzDa vs anghri mainyu and the asura-adorers vs deva-adorers case.
- The harsh reactions to this on the part of more free spirited polytheists, was a successful response. Examples:
Summary
- The above probably says something about how the Indian ecosystem was different from the middle eastern or other ecosystems -
- there was the hoary vedic lore one could not afford to diss,
- the competition happened in the hearts and minds of philosophers well established in their homeland, rather than a population of common ruffians stressed by an exile to Babylon or escape from Egypt.
- Discussion : WP15.