Word: arjuna
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...high Himalayas, polyandry has the sanction of immemorial legend. According to the Mahabharata, the great epic poem of India, Arjuna the Bowman, third of the five sons of King Pandu, won Draupadi, daughter of the King of Panchala, by shooting five swift arrows through a ring hung in midair. But Arjuna's mother Kunti told him, "All things must be shared." So the five Pandu brothers all wed Draupadi and went to live in a grand palace with crystal floors. Last week in Jaunswar Bawar, a region in the northern tip of India, the legend of Arjuna the Bowman...
Like many race myths, the legend of Arjuna clothes a simple economic fact: in the upland valleys, existence depends upon a limited number of tiny terraced fields and the careful balancing of population against food reserves. Each family avoids dividing its meager tillage in ever-diminishing lots among its progeny by having the younger sons share the wife of the eldest son. Not only does this practice reduce the number of children in each generation, and keep each property permanently within the family, but it has some other curious results. Polyandry, for some reason not wholly accounted for by anthropologists...
...three paths for the soul's union with God: karma-yoga, the way of action, Jnana-yoga, the way of knowledge, and bhakti-yoga, the way of love. The poem is set in the frame of bloody battle, a great battle on the plain of Kurukshetra. The hero, Arjuna, is downcast because he must fight against men who, he suspects, are his brothers, even though they are foes, and the god Krishna givers Arjuna advice. Krishna persuades Arjuna that it is permissible to fight, indeed, that he must fight, so long as the struggle serves no selfish ends. Although...