Cambodia touches my heart!

During my short visit to Vietnam and Cambodia, I was quite impressed by both the countries, but there was a perceptible difference between the two. Vietnam is forging ahead in developmental terms, and the place and the people look more prosperous than Cambodia. Not only that, the Vietnamese are more confident and forward looking, but Cambodians on the whole looked placid, submissive and docile. I wanted to probe further.

Then I learned that 90% of the Cambodians were followers of Hinduism up until 15^th century, but by the turn of 17^th century, 90% of the population had become Buddhist! I became further inquisitive. A Hindu kingdom was in place from 9^th century AD onwards, flourishing up to 15^th century AD, for nearly six centuries. I couldn’t contain myself and bought a few books on the history of Cambodia at Siem Reap and started reading these even before landing in Bangalore, in my quest to fathom the historical background of Cambodia and whether any explanation could be found in its history for its present position.

The show piece of Cambodia, the Angkor Wat itself, is a Hindu Vaishnavite Temple and was built by a Hindu King called Suryavarman II in the 12^th century. David Chandler in his “A History of Cambodia,” writes that in the first five centuries of the Christian ere, there was communication between India and Cambodia as Indians went as far as China to trade and used Cambodia as the middle crossover point. India provided Cambodia with a writing system, the alphabet and the script to write on, a Hindu pantheon to worship, temple architecture and a social hierarchy, not dissimilar to the Hindu Caste system. The present day Cambodian script is still that of south Indian, looking more like that of Telugu script. This influence was not forced by India on the Cambodians by colonization or by invasion.

Traditions have that a Brahmana named Kaundinya, from South India, came in a boat to Cambodia, married a dragon prince and started a kingdom called ‘Kambuja,’ which became Cambodia.

The actual rule of Hindu kings commence from 802 AD, with a monarch called Jayavarman II becoming stronger and assuming titles as universal king, united the smaller kingdoms around and the chieftains and extended his borders up to China. This kingdom covered much of Thailand and the southern Vietnam in its hay days. Thus started the Angkorean period of Cambodian history, which will last up to 1431, the 15^th century. It was a period of greatness, with Kambuja–desa ruling high and mighty in South East Asia. Angkor is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘nagara’ for town or city.

His successor Yasovarman II chose Angkor as his royal city. These kings built reservoirs to facilitate rice cultivation, built temples as a place of worship of Siva and also monasteries for sects honoring Buddha. They were tolerant of different religious beliefs and brought in legal code and collected taxes in kind. The king was divine and all the land belonged to him alone. 

Society itself was predominantly rural, people depending on rice cultivation, mainly of subsistence nature. A system of reservoirs and canals guaranteed one harvest a year during dry times and two during periods of adequate rains. Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma were worshiped. Nuclear family was the unit of society and people respected hierarchically placed officials and authorities, with patronage networks predominating relationships. The society elite were the Brahmin priests who hung around the king and conducted the temple rituals, also managed the affairs of the kingdom, including taking care of the education of the people. They were quite powerful. The King and his entourage, including the priests, bureaucrats, armies and temple caretakers, were supported by the people, who paid them a portion of the rice they cultivated, in exchange of protection and security, which the King and the gods he proffered promised to offer. The King also distributed patronage to the people around him. Trade was in the hands of foreigners, like Chinese, Vietnamese and the Chams (Muslim traders). Thousands of them settled in and around the capital and carried on trading. 

Utyadityavarman II in 1060s built a massive Siva temple in Bapuon, housing a huge lingam, the phallus symbol of Siva. Ruins of this could be seen today also. Suryavarman II built the Angkor Wat, but the work itself was completed only by 1150 AD, much after the death of the king. It occupied 500 acres of land with large moots all around with thick tree cover. This is the only temple for Vishnu, with a central idol standing in the centre, which is not there any longer; it is peculiar in the sense it opens to the West; its bas-reliefs are sculptured from counter-clock direction, reverse of normal temples and might indicate it dealt with the dead. It served primarily as a tomb for the king and also as an observatory. The bas-reliefs depict stories from Mahabharata and Ramayana, Indian epics, which are clearly visible even today. This is any day a grand architecture to behold. No wonder it is world famous and modern day Cambodians are naturally proud of this temple and the period when it was built.   

The king Jayavarman VII who ascended the throne in 1182 AD was a Buddhist of Mahayana tradition. Though he brought in Buddhist type of kingship, where the king was not held as divine and worked along with the people for salvation, he was tolerant of Hinduism. The religions underwent syncretism with Buddhism showing many features of Hinduism and vice versa.

By 13^th century, Angkor was well established and was collecting tribute from Thailand, Southern Laos and Champa-central Vietnam. It had 54 provinces, corresponding to the 54 gigantic half smiling faces in the Temple Bayon, each carved in a set of four faces, looking majestically on all the four sides. This is a sight to behold. The bas-reliefs showed the everyday life of the common people of Cambodia, especially in the country side. The same activities could still be found in the lives of the ordinary people in Cambodia. The central image was a Buddha, his head being sheltered by a huge hooded snake (naga). Looks as if Buddha had almost won over the Hindu gods and the population!

Wandering monks and Buddhist missionaries from neighboring Siam, Burma, Ceylon, etc., came and succeeded in converting the populace to Theravada Buddhism by the end of 13^th century. Though Brahminism and Shaivism were given the status of approved religions, they were on the decline. The Brahmins and priests were still in the royal courts, but with diminished importance. The rich mythological literary bases of Indian Hindu literature and iconography declined and very soon Angkor itself was abandoned as the capital city by 1560s. Inscriptions, stone temples, Hindu-oriented royal family, extensive hydraulic works, all faded very soon from the memory of the people and the elite. 

Thai successfully attacked and captured Angkor in 1431 and Cambodians took up Phenom Penh as their capital, which was on the confluence of Mekong River and Tonle Sap River. Maritime trade picked up with China, Laos, Malay, Champs, Indonesian islands and Chinese merchants were primarily involved in such trade.

By the 15^th century the glory of Khmer Raj or Angkor Kingdom was gone and it became weak and exposed to incursions from Thai first and later Vietnam. The idea of Greater Cambodia was no longer in existence. Angkor and its Hindu traditions were no longer strong or relevant. Instead of looking to their Hindu past, Cambodians looked to Thailand for mutual blending of same Theravada Buddhism and culture.

In India itself this was a troubled time. By the 10^th century the strong Hindu kingdoms were almost gone, and the then existing principalities were subjected to repeated attacks by Muslim invaders and marauders, some of whom succeeded in establishing their own kingdoms in India. I suppose India was in no position to support or revive Hindu religion or culture in Cambodia.

The history of Cambodia explained the Hindu influence and its architecture and also the glory of Angkor kingdom and its gradual demise and replacement of Hinduism by Theravada Buddhism. Still I am not done with Cambodia. There was to come a horrible phase in the history of Cambodia, the Pol Pot regime, heinous communist regime, wrecking terrible havoc on the population. More of this I will write in my next blog.  

     

A Personal Note!

Dear Friends,

I am taking a short brake, as I am going out of the country for a week. On return I want to refurbish the blog and make it a bit more presentable. Some people suggest that I go for .org instead of .com. I am not sure. In case you have any suggestions in this matter, please do let me know. Also if you would like me to deal with any subject matter that you want to, do let me know that also. I will try and do my best.

My e mail address is,

shanthakumaril@gmail.com

Thank you so much for reading my blogs and encouraging me. I am sure by God's grace, the blogs have been useful to you.

with regards,
shanthi
(L. Shanthakumari Sunder)

"Know my anxious thoughts!"

The Psalmist, David the King, was no stranger to anxiety, as we are in the 21^st century! He is asking God to search and see if there are any anxious thoughts in his mind and help him. The passage, Psalm 139:23-24, goes like this:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart;

Test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

And lead me in the way everlasting.”

What is this anxiety? Oxford Dictionary describes it as ‘the state of feeling nervous or worried that something bad is going to happen.’ It is something about which we are anxious even before it happens. The premonitions like, ‘I am sure I will fail in the interview and not get the job.’ Or, ‘I am going to go blank at the examination hall and flunk the exam.’ Or, ‘today it started bad, I am sure I will get into some accident as I drive my car.’ And on and on it goes, with no rhyme or reason. A lot of negative thoughts, self-proclaimed prophecies, keep flooding the mind, many of which come true, mainly because we think so. A pessimistic attitude to life, may be a result of put downs during early childhood by a parent, brings about such negative thoughts to mind. Fear of doom or something worse to happen surfaces during such times of anxiety.

Worry is a close cousin of anxiety, which again is defined as to keep thinking about unpleasant things that might happen or about problems that one has. It could be an anxiety to get into a good college after schooling, or marriage of a son or a daughter to be solemnized, or to get a job or old age or any one of life’s problems, which confront us in the various stages of our life.

Where does the anxious thought originate? Why does it do so?  Medical science has discovered the seat of all our emotions and passions, including fear and anxiety, in a small part of the brain called amygdala. ‘It is an almond-shaped cluster of interconnected structures perched above the brain-stem, near the bottom of the limbic ring,’ one on each side of the brain, writes Dr. Daniel Goleman, in his book “Emotional Intelligence.” It functions like an alarm system, reacting to emergent situations, impulsively enabling the body to decide to either stand and fight or take to flight. When our hunter-gatherer forefathers roamed the forests in search of prey, they had to remain alert and such ‘flight or fight’ situations would come and split second decisions had to be made. Amygdala decided that action and it is also the place, where our instinctive and impulsive thoughts arise. It almost sounds like children’s standard phrase, ‘trick or treat,’ during Halloween, who is then treated to some chocolates by the friendly neighbors!

Worry or anxiety is a warning system build into our emotional make up and is good, when it is within the limit. It becomes unhealthy only when it becomes chronic and takes over all the other functions of the body. Then it leads to too much of anxiety, stress, leading to depression, where a person feels very sad, anxious, without any hope and sinks into the morass of helplessness.

How do we get over such chronic anxiety and worry? First, as the Psalmist prays, we need to examine our hearts and thoughts. Where our thoughts are fixed and what are our hearts’ desires? As it is difficult for us to examine and find out our own wrong desires and wrong motives, it is better, like the Psalmist, we ask the Lord God to examine our thoughts and bring to our notice any unwanted thoughts rising up in our minds, which will be detrimental to our well being.

Thoughts that could give rise to anxiety are pursuit of happiness as the single one goal of life; lust for money - to make money by any and every means; slothfulness and indulgences, making self-disciplined life a difficulty and may be even setting impossible goals to achieve. We need to analyze our thoughts and motives and goals to see if they are reasonable and manageable and worthy of leading peaceful life.

Secondly, sit down and write down what exactly is causing the anxiety or worry. In case of a job interview, there is anxiety that one should do well and get the job. So set to work on it instead of worrying about it. Learn more about the job, the requirements and be ready for any question on the issue. If communication is the problem, take a course and improve the skills. If sloppy appearance is the problem, go to a salon and groom yourself up. See what you can do about it all to make a success out of it. Be prepared, be alert, and be ready to face the task.

Thirdly, have faith in the Lord, your God. Jesus Christ, when he was on earth said a few beautiful truths about worry. In Matthew 6:25-34 he says thus,

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barn, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe  you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, “what shall we eat/” or ‘what shall we drink?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  

A few things become clear. Jesus is telling us that none of us can change anything by worrying. It will only affect our health. Secondly God our Father in heaven knows what we need and will provide for it, as long as our priorities are correct.  Instead of pursuing wealth and happiness and enjoyment, if we focus on seeking God and how He wants us to live in this world, everything else also, like food and clothing will be provided for. God knows we need these things and He will provide for us. Only those who do not know God run after money and mirth. We need to live on faith in God and His provision.

It doesn’t mean that we sit and expect God to pour everything onto our lap, but work for it and earn it in the right way, keeping our focus on God and godly living. Thirdly Jesus is telling us that lets deal with each day as it comes and not worry about tomorrow. Leave that in God’s hands, for He is able to take care of it. Deal with today, in the present, and not something unknown, the future. Future is safe in the hands of our Almighty God. He will give us the wisdom and capacity to deal with whatever comes tomorrow. We are to have that faith. 

Apostle Peter writes in 1 Peter 5:7,

“Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.”

Yes, we have a caring and loving Father in heaven, who will not want His children to suffer without reason. It is a great solace to know that He cares for us.

Apostle Paul states while writing to the church in Philippi, in Philippians 4:6-7,

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

All that we need is to hand all our problems and anxious thoughts over to God, in prayer and petition. I usually write it down in my prayer journal. It helps! Of course you are to do that with a thankful heart. Let us be thankful for what we have got, what God has blessed us with and then in recognition of God’s grace, let us bring our fresh petitions before him. The result is peace that passes all   understanding in our hearts. Again priority is to guard our hearts and minds, that is our desires and thoughts in Christ Jesus, seeking His kingdom and His righteousness in our lives.

Finally I just want to bring to remembrance, what the disciple Peter did, wanting to walk on water like Jesus, who walked on waters of Sea of Galilee and came towards them, who were in the boat. He started well, climbed out of the boat to walk on water, but soon noticed the boisterous waves and started to sink. He cried to the Lord, who immediately stretched forth his hands and held him. When we focus on the situations around us, we sink, but the moment we focus our attention on the Lord, we rise above our situations like an eagle that soars above the clouds.

God help us to rise above our situations and soar high in our lives, with a thankful heart and carefree soul. 

Origin of Life: Creation or Evolution?

Having done Masters (M.Sc) in Zoology in my college days, I was a sworn adherent of evolution theory, as propounded by Charles Darwin in his book “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” published in 1859. Though Darwin was not the first person to suggest evolution, he got all the credit for it, may be because famous people like Aldous Huxley popularized his work.

We now know it as the evolutionary theory, by which we mean every organism in the course of its life, undergoes changes in its genetic material, due to mutations in the DNA of its cells and these changes, if found favorable in its surroundings, gives it an advantage in the struggle for survival and thereby giving the organism a better chance of passing on these advantageous traits to the off springs. The off springs start off with an advantage over the other members of the species and thus establish themselves in life. The ill-adapted members die off and lose the chance of passing on their genes to the next generation. Such changes lead to the formation of new species and races and this happens over millions of years, either through a process of incremental changes or through sudden leaps.

Though I generally believed in the Bible, when scientific explanations like these were available I gravitated towards that. Even after I became a believing Christian, I still held on to the evolutionary ideas, superimposing it on creation. Well, God created the heavens and the earth and all that there is in six days, says the Bible. But who knows how many human years equal one day of God? It could be millions or billions of years. So in the process of explaining the creation, why not use evolutionary approach, and we can understand God’s creation in a more scientific manner applying evolutionary process to creation account. Or so I thought! 

  

It took me some time, a few years to realize that people adopting the view of evolution are really anti-God, just as Darwin himself was, for he was an atheist. At the age of 42, he lost his favorite and beloved daughter Anne, who was just 10 years old when she died. Her death affected him deeply and once for all he set his face against God, whom he thought was heartless for having taken his daughter, who did no wrong, at such a tender age.

Evolution really proposes that natural selection, a natural force was all that was necessary for producing new species and there was no need for a God to do that. In the 19^th century it caught up the imagination of the intellectuals and the creation account of Genesis chapter 1 in the Bible lost its credibility in the eyes of these people, and along with it Bible and Christianity.

That is when I realized that I either believe that God created everything as written in Genesis, or life evolved on its own over millions or billions of years due to a process of natural selection. There is no overlapping of each other or mixing of these two approaches. Evolution is in actuality antagonistic to God and creation. Once I realized that I gave up my admiration for evolution and depended entirely on God’s wisdom and power to produce all kinds of life on earth and let them adapt themselves to the various climates and geological locations so that they can survive.

A dog may have many varieties or breeds, but a dog remains a dog and no new race or a new animal has been produced so for. Even when due to human ingenuity such hybrids are produced, they are not able to reproduce. Similarly there is really no solid evidence for evolution or natural selection, for the scientists have not been able to show a single ‘missing link’ or an ancestor that showed characteristics of both the animals, say for example, an animal that shows the characteristics of human beings and apes. According to evolutionists, humans evolved from apes. If so, where are such ‘missing links’ or hybrid animals, either living or fossils?   

Anthropologists construct a whole human being and his family from a tooth or a jaw bone and tell us these were the intermediary humans, but it is far-fetched. No reliable data or evidence is available.

I would rather believe that God created man as His crowning glory, someone created in the very image of God Himself, with an ability to think and rationalize. He was created above all animals including apes. He was created to rule them, take care of them and nurture them, as God’s viceroy on earth. Human being is not a mere animal, albeit highly evolved animal, a descendant from apes. He is the glory of God’s creation, crated in His image, to be His viceroy on earth.

Biblical account of man is much better and reliable and trust worthy than the imaginations and creations of scientists, who had their own axes to grind. 

Death and the Dying

It is surprising that we know so little about death and the dying, even though people are dying all around us, of old age, accidents, illnesses like cancer, war, terrorist attacks and so on. Sometimes we are so scared of talking about it, an unpleasant and may be unnecessary topic to engage in. Nonetheless people of certain profession need to engage in such matters day in and day out. Doctors, nurses, Pastors, counselors and may be psychiatrists. These people cannot avoid seeing people die, sometimes in their hands and deal with such situations. Even so they also are not really comfortable talking about such topics.

I recently read a book “On Death and Dying,” by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a book prescribed for reading for my fourth session of Counseling course, conducted by ‘Person to Person,’ a training Institution on counseling, run by Dr. Samson Gandhi, with head office in Hyderabad. It was an eyes opener. Dr. Kubler-Ross and some theological and medical students had undertaken interviewing of some 200 odd terminally ill patients in the University of Chicago Billings hospital, to see how these people on the verge of death feel and what are their wants and needs, so that they can be better attended to, when they are confined to the hospital. This work had turned into a monumental work, for it has opened the eyes of the medical professionals and the families of the dying, and taught them what such people feel and how to care for these people, who are at the verge of death.

Dr. Kubler-Ross describes five stages these people go through when they come to know they are affected by a disease for which there is no cure and that it is fatal. The terminally ill people first deny that such a fate has come to be theirs. At this stage they consult many doctors, take up many tests hoping that some where the doctors could have wrongly diagnosed or the tests done might be wrong. Once it dawns on them that the diagnosis is correct, then they get angry, angry with every one, any and every healthy person and angry with God, asking this pertinent question, “Why me?” Then they move on to the third stage, where they start to bargain with the medical doctors or God, if they believe in one, that they may be given time, a few years more, so that they can finish with the unfinished tasks of their life. A child to graduate, parents to be taken care of, marriage of the daughter to be attended to, legal matters to be settled and so on. Once they realize that they do not have that type of time, they sink into deep depression, mired in their own sorrow and suffering. Finally comes the stage of acceptance, acceptance of the fact that they are going to die and they start saying good bye to friends and family and giving instructions regarding the funeral and such other arrangements, getting ready to leave this world, with peace in their heart.

Of course, not everyone goes through all these stages, neither are these stages gone through consecutively. Some might get stuck at the angry stage itself; some might progress through to the final stage of acceptance early on; some will fight to the end. Nevertheless there will always a hope, a hope that a miracle might happen or a new medicine might be discovered, which might pull them through.

It was also found that the religiously strong persons, who had faith in God and an afterlife, and were ready to face their Maker, were the ones who were able to face death with equanimity and peace. It gave them a strong sense of being taken care by God, who knew the best and that they will be with Him in death.

What comes out clearly is that these terminally ill patients wanted to talk, wanted to give vent to their feelings, fears, hopes, and dreams. This is where a busy Doctor attending to them could take a few minutes off and sit with them and listen to them. Equally important is the attention given by the nurses, who could discuss these issues with them and not shy away from it. Even rapprochements with family members, is possible and desirable.

Christ taught clearly that his people, people who have put their trust in him, will also rise after death, just like he rose from death after three days. Christ will come again to gather his people, John 14:3,

“In My Father’s house are many mansions; … I go to prepare a place for you.

…I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”

We will live with him in eternity. The second death, which is the spiritual death, will have no power over us. So death is only a passage to the other world, where we will meet our loves ones when their times come and they also enter eternity. Eternal life is the gift of Christ. Those who believe in him as the Son of God, who came to earth to give his life as a ransom for the lives of many as a penalty for the sins committed by them. All one has to do is to accept Christ as one’s Savior, seek his forgiveness in repentance of the sins committed and then one is safe in his arms. Such a person is admitted into the family of God and can look forward to meeting his/her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the next life and enjoy eternity in the presence of God and Christ.

Along with Apostle Paul we can also ask, 1 Corinthians 15:55,

“O death, where is your sting?

O Hades, where is your victory?”

To the people strongly rooted in the Lord, death is no longer a threat or a fearful event. Christ has conquered death and so shall we, by His grace. 

Devadasi System – another form of sexual exploitation?

As Director, Women and child welfare in 1980s, I was confronted with what was called a social evil, the Devadasi system prevalent in Karnataka State and debate was going on with demands to do away with that system. I went with a few officers of my department on a fact-finding mission and organized a widely participated, taluk level seminar on the subject and undertook some field study. Very interesting facts emerged.

The place where this tradition is practiced is in Soundatti, a taluka place in the district of Belgaum in Karnataka State. It is some 70 kilometers away from Belgaum town, on top of hillocks there. There in a temple, where the local goddess, Yellamma is worshiped and tradition has that her real name is Renuka. She is worshiped as a Mother goddess, Yellamma. The Devadasi tradition associated with this worship seems to have been strongly established even since 10^th century AD. Here on a full moon day, anytime between November to February, young girls are dedicated to the goddess. At least five times during that period such rituals are organized.

The girls are dedicated, mainly as young children around 8 to 12 years old by her parents, seeking the intervention of the goddess in their affairs. It could be a serious sickness in the family, when the parents vow to dedicate a daughter praying the goddess to bring healing; or it could be a prayer wanting a son; or to overcome a financial difficulty or simply to get rid of a superfluous daughter. There could be a ‘call’ by the deity in many cases, with a sign, like the formation of a clump in the hair or a white patch of leprosy, indicating the desire of the goddess to have that child as her devotee. There are male children who are offered similarly.

The girls are taken to the ponds near the temple, given ritual bath, made to wear only neem tree (Margosa tree) leaves as dress and with a pot full of water on their heads, made to climb the hill to the temple. Of course the path is lined by ogling young boys and men. In the temple, the priests amidst rituals tie around the neck of the girl, a thread with beads, taken from the goddess’ neck. Now she has become married to the goddess and enters into the service of the deity, serving her by singing and dancing and worshiping. Such girls are forbidden to marry any mortal. 

  

So far so good; but what happens in reality after this marriage to the deity is sickening. The girl is taken in by the temple poojari (priest) first or by the landlord or a rich man of a village, the highest bidder. The patron pays lump sum money to the parents of the girl, pays for the ceremony and also maintains the girl. She may be kept as his mistress for a year or more, till he is tired of her or finds a new girl. Thereafter the girl really enters into prostitution to eke out her livelihood, with any and every one. These girls are forbidden to claim to be a wife of any one man. The children born out of such unions are given the surname of Basava, the goddess. Virginity of a girl is offered as an offering to the goddess. They become the female prostitutes attached to the temple; there are male prostitutes also.

When the seminar was going on with many experts speaking on the subject and social reformers waxing eloquent, I took a few of my officers and quietly went and visited a few Devadasis in the surrounding villages. In the local temples of the villages I was able to find three to four Devadasis and fell into conversation with them. They were about 40 to 50 years of age and they said that they were married to the goddess, when they were still young and for so many years they have lived as Devadasis. Surprisingly they all belonged to the lower castes of Mahar or Chambahar. They were poor, illiterate and marginalized. The men who visit them are usually from the village itself and mostly the upper caste men. They got paid Rs 5 and 6 for their services in the 1980s. They seemed to be satisfied with their lot, casting the burden on the goddess, saying that type of life was the will of the goddess for them.

It immediately struck me that here was a system devised by the rich and the upper castes men of the area to have a few women to serve as prostitutes in their own villages, sanctified by their religion and traditions. It was so very convenient; they need not go anywhere in search of such services; they had them in their own villages and at a cheap rate. No one can point their fingers at them, because are they not serving the goddess by taking care of her devoted female servants? What a stark exploitation of poor and illiterate women in the name of religion? 

I was so angry, I made a detailed report to the government and law was passed in 1982 abolishing the Devadasi system and making such dedications punishable by law. Plans and schemes were drafted for the rehabilitation of the affected women. The worse off were the younger women, who had one or two children and slowly being lured to Bombay red-light area for better prospects. They had to be educated, taught skills and shown other respectable means of earning their livelihood. We did our best to institute these changes in the area.  

Well, recently I learnt that the tradition is still strong in the area, though the rituals of dedication are held clandestinely without the knowledge of the authorities. It takes times and constant vigilance from the government and society to root out these social evils of open exploitation in the name of religion. 

Such traditions were found in other places too; temple Devadasis of Brihadeeswarar temple in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu; Jaggannath temple of Odhisha. These girls were experts in Bharatanatyam dance in Tamil Nadu and Odisa dance on Odhisha. They were simply the nautch girls, the dancing girls of the yester years attached to the temples.

They were not unlike the Geisha girls of Japan, who served a similar role, but not attached to any temple, but all the same entertained their male customers serving as courtesans. What makes the exploitation in Devadasi system acute is the religion sanction attached to it, for it becomes a divine prostitution, in the service of the deity, the goddess, but in reality serving the lust of the upper caste men in society. Every attempt must be made to root out such exploitation.

We need a God who says, 'I hate such practices;' God of the Bible says, in Deuteronomy 23:17, 18,

“No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute.

You must not bring the earnings of a female prostitute or of a male prostitute into the house of the Lord your God to pay any vow, because the Lord your God detests them both.”

Such things are abomination to God of the Bible. Moses wrote these laws around 1500 BC, as commanded by God. He is a holy God, demanding holiness in the life of His children.

“Be thou holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” Leviticus 19:2.

No wonder man-made traditions of exploitation in the name of religion do not hold sway under the banner of Christ, who is the core subject of the Bible. As Christ wins over people, these forms of exploitation will wither and fade away for good. That is the only hope for humanity.

Sex as an offering to goddess?

I read in the newspapers today about the Tamil author Perumal Murugan, who is to be felicitated in the Fourth Indian Languages Festival to be held on November 28^th. This author got into problems with the local Hindu and caste-based groups for having offended the Hindu sentiments. In December 2014, there was an uproar in Tamil Nadu, a southern state in India, regarding his novel, “One Part Woman’” a literal English translation of the Tamil title, “Madhorubhagan,” a novel which he wrote in 2010. Highly disgusted with the Hindu opposition to what he had written, he announced his decision never again to write another word. According to him, the author Murugan was dead.

The author writes about a tradition that prevailed in India around 1935-1940, some 75 years back, in Thiruchengodu, a temple town in Tamil Nadu. Here there is a temple for Ardhanareeswaran, an idol of Shiva, left part of whose body is that of a woman, his consort, Parvathi. It is half male and half female, that is, ‘One part woman.’ In the ancient Hindu chariot festival held in this temple annually, there was a tradition, where childless women can go to the temple and choose any man to lie with and if she becomes pregnant, it is taken as ‘god-given child’ or ‘god’s child.’ Such a man is called ‘anonymous sami.’ The novel spins around a childless couple married for 12 years, who attend this festival and the wife, on the encouragement of the mother-in-law and other relatives, ventures into this tradition and it creates huge problems, for her husband presumably was not a party to this decision. This is the story. The objection was that it showed Hindu traditions in a bad and derogatory manner and that the book should be banned and author taken to task.

This is extraordinary. That there was a tradition like the one mentioned in the novel cannot be disputed. The author has done his research sufficiently for he is also a Tamil Professor. There are other resources which mention such traditions in the 19^th and beginning of 20^th century in India. For example, Abbe J.A. Dubois, a French Catholic Missionary working for 31 years in the Madras Presidency of British Raj, writes about such practices in his book, “Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies.” This book was published in 1897.

Abbe talks in his book about barren women flocking to the Temple in Tirupathi, again in South India, where they are told that Lord Venkateshwara will come in the night and grant them their desire. And it was the priests of the temple who really fulfilled the dreams of these women. He describes another temple in Nangungud, near Mysore, again in South India, where women go to cure their sterility. And they were indeed cured, but in similar fashion. He writes that this happens in Junginagatta also, on the banks of Cauvery River during January festivals.

So what are we objecting to? Is not such a tradition seen in many of the ancient cultures around the world, before Christianity conquered them all? Abbe himself quotes from the writings of Herodotus that similar prostitution by decent family women occurred in the name of religion among Assyrians and Babylonians, in the Temple of the goddess Mylitta, the Aphrodite, and consort of Assyrian god Ashur. So should they object now? It all happened so many centuries or decades back.

We have the Temple of Artemis, the Great Artemis of Ephesus, mentioned in the Bible, Acts 19.28. 34. Ephesus is in the present Turkey and was a great place of worship of the goddess Artemis, a goddess of fertility, depicted with many breasts. She was the great mother earth, causing humans to be born and sustaining them. She was also the goddess of moon and the hunt. She was served by eunuch priests and young maidens.

The Roman goddess of fertility was Diana, equal to the Greek goddess of Artemis. Diana was a virgin goddess of hunt, moon and child birth. Her shrines were always under great sacred oak trees and her male priests will have to fight and kill the reigning priest to occupy that post. Even here such clandestine night visits were made even by the aristocratic women to offer their sex with some unknown men in the temple premises as an offering to the goddess.  

Going further back in time, Ashtoreth, the female principle of fertility was worshipped as goddess through our Canaan, mentioned in the Bible, warning the Israelite not to become pray to their lewd cults. Ashtoreth was the fertility goddess, the consort of the male god Baal or Moloch. In the Mesopotamian region of Assyria and Babylon of yester years, Ashtoreth was called Ishtar and she was a goddess of sexual love and warfare. Sacred prostitution abounded and her devotees had sex with the priests and priestesses of the goddess and considered it as an offering to the goddess.

Well, so this was the dark side of the religions in many parts of the ancient world. It was in the past and may be trying to come back through many ways in the modern world. There is nothing new or to be ashamed of, particularly in India. It was all over the world, in different forms. 

It was only with the coming of the teachings of Christ, such worship was considered morally wrong and these gradually disappeared from the world. The Judaeo-Christian culture, which pervaded the world after 1^st century AD, almost put a stop to these practices. To India it came quite late, in the 19^th century.

God of Bible warns Israel repeatedly against sexual sins. In Leviticus 18:20-24, God commands,  

“Moreover you shall not lie carnally with your neighbor’s wife, to defile yourself with her.

And you shall not let any of your descendants pass through the fire to Molech, nor shall profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination,

Nor shall you mate with any beast to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before a beast to mate with it. It is perversion.

Do not defile yourself with any of these things; for by these the nations (before you) are defiled, which I am casting out before you.”   

The sins of the Amorites were these sexual sins and God threw them out and planted His people Israel there, so that they would prove to be holy, following all his precepts.

God asked the Israelite to destroy the altars, sacred pillars and cut down the wooden images of the gods and goddesses of the Canaanites, who were before them in the Promised Land (now Palestine). 

This command was given so that Israel will not fall for the abominations practiced by these nations. Exodus 34: 15-17,-

“lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods and make sacrifice to their gods, and one of them invites you and you eat of his sacrifice,

And you take of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters play the harlot with their gods and make your sons play the harlot with their gods.

You shall make no molded gods for yourselves.” 

The sad thing was, in spite of all these warnings, Israel did play the harlot with the gods and goddesses of those nations around them and got punished and the ‘land vomited them’ and were displaced.

As we look around our world today, there are increasing sexual assaults and violence and extremes of sexual behavior, against which God of the Bible, both in the Old Testament through His prophets and in the New Testament through Christ and his Apostles, warned severely.

But who listens to these warnings? If we have listened we would have been a far better world, morally, psychologically and emotionally.  

Who listens? Only those guided by the Holy Spirit of God and those who have become His children by accepting Christ, His provision for saving us all from our sins. Let us strive hard to be those blessed people.