The Indian Oedipus 

The stories and myths that echo across a culture and get handed down over time speak volumes about the people who inherit them. They give us an insight into the values and the beliefs of that particular culture and the society that has come to flourish upon such foundations and its moral fabric. 

We draw upon heavily from the myths and stories to understand our origins and how our current way of being is influenced by our pasts. We are often intrigued to know how our past has left its mark on our present and whether it will carry forward into our future. Ancient myths and symbols have been researched extensively to unravel their meaning and purpose in our lives. 

It is true that freud was deeply influenced by the story of oedipus and that formed the bedrock of his work in psychoanalysis. Freud saw myth and ritual as an unconscious expression of repressed dreams of a community that explained universal taboos against incest and patricide.

Story of Oedipus

Oedipus was abandoned at birth by his father because he was destined to kill him. Oedipus grew up without any knowledge of who his father was or who his mother was. Years later he met his father on a bridge. Both were proud warriors. Each one refused to let the other pass. A fight followed. As foretold, Oedipus killed his father. He then reached the land, which he did not know, was his father’s kingdom. There he saved the city from a monster called the Sphinx. In gratitude, the people of his father’s kingdom welcomed him and requested him to marry their queen who was now a widow. Oedipus accepted not knowing he was marrying his father’s wife, his mother. When this was revealed, years later, after his mother had borne him children, he blinded himself. Because, though he had eyes, he had not seen.

While Greek mythology is full of stories in which a son is responsible for the death of his father or a father figure (Chronos castrates Uranus; Zeus kills Chronus; Perseus kills his grandfather, Acrisius; Aegeus killed himself, believing his son Theseus to be dead; Jason’s wife, Medea, kills his stepfather Pelias), such narratives are not found in Hindu scriptures.

The interpretation

The author A.K.Ramanujan, attempts to search for parallels of the oedipus myth in hindu mythology and comes away with a certain few stories that highlight relationship between mother and son, father and son and father and daughter as well as mother and daughter. He does this by exploring tribal myths related to the epics. 

We find certain parallels but there are distinct variations that are present due to the character from whose perspective the story is told. There are significant cultural and social influences that signify interpolation of a story and its conclusion to the social context present at the time that it was being told or its evolution. It is evident that the characters in the stories and their respective roles have evolved in tune with the social norms. 

The reversal of the roles or the parent and child in indian mythology suggest that while in greek mythology it was acceptable to relate the oedipus story from the protagonists perspective, in the indian context the protagonist is the parent and there is no heroic deed of killing the parent. Also in the oedipus myth a curse begets the protagonist to fulfil his destiny, in the indian myth its foretold by astrologers.

Even a natural act of conception when being described in the case of an unwed woman is spoken of metaphorically and the act of birth indirectly stated as a divine intervention, e.g  kunti giving birth of karna. This description itself speaks of the cultural context that would have existed at the time this story was written. 

If the opdipus complex is a universal phenomenon, then such phenomenon would have existed in myths across the globe but such is not the case. While in western mythology the character rises to be a hero despite killing his kin or his father, in the indian context such an act is not seen as a heroic deed.

In Hindu narratives the hero is one who submits to the will of the father, society, and tradition. Obedience is the highest virtue. He is the good son. He who obeys. Surrenders. Submits. Because the father knows best. Father must win in the Indian tradition. Father is tradition. Father is the great keeper of cultural values. His indiscretions must be forgiven.

When everyone talks about the great sacrifice of Bhisma, nobody questions the father. An old man who was so obsessed with a fisherwoman that he was willing to sacrifice the conjugal life of his son. In Jain traditions, Bhisma is said to have castrated himself so that no one doubts his integrity. Imagine, a father allowing his son to castrate himself so that he can get a wife.

Indian narrations a focused on the virtuous and not the heroic. It is the virtue that triumphs over the individual need and zeal of power. It is the moral value that overcomes the primal urges and these are exemplified in every narration that we encounter. These narrations go on to exemplify the qualities of the marayada purshotttam from Rama to Bhishma to Yayati. 

Not everyone appreciates Freud’s rereading of myths in terms of sexual anxiety. Some people do not agree with the view that all ritual and religion emerges from the desire to recall, remember, and repeat primal crimes that apparently marked the dawn of civilisation in order to come to terms with them. Indeed Freud’s mythography has been deemed reductive and phallocentric, focusing on penis envy with an almost misogynist zeal.

In this sense, it can also been said that myths do not exist in isolation but are integrated organically in its culture, its weltanschauung.