OF CLEANSING AGENTS, I AM THE ‘WIND’ — No antiseptic or sanitary equipment is as efficient to clean a place as the Sun and the wind. If the wind alone is indicated here it is because of Vyasa’s perfect knowledge that wind can rise only when the Sun is hot. Where there is constant wind, there the Sun also must be available; in a cave there can be neither sunlight, nor movement of air.
OF THOSE WHO ARE WIELDERS OF WEAPONS, I AM ‘RAMA’ — The hero of Ramayana, Sri Ramachandra was delineated by Valmiki, the first poet in India to use metrical compositions and write out a full-fledged Kavya, very elaborately, of a “perfect man” in all aspects of his existence: perfect as a son, as a husband, as a brother, as a friend, as a fighter, as a teacher, as a ruler, and even as a father. Such an all-round perfect one — his perfections shining out all the more against the background of seeming imperfections and extremely irritating and confusing circumstances — should necessarily be the noblest hand that ever wielded an honest bow to shoot out the most effective arrows!
OF THE FISHES I AM THE ‘SHARK’ AND OF THE RIVERS I AM JAHNAVI — The story goes that Saint Jahnu drank the Ganges dry, and later, for the redemption of man, let her out to flow through his ears! The concept of the Ganges, we have indicated earlier, is a symbolism, freely used by the Hindus, to represent the “spiritual culture” of India. The wealth of the Rishi-knowledge, as it reaches a seeker, at the seat of his meditation, at first makes him swallow and dry it up. “Drinking at the fountain of Knowledge,” “to satiate the thirst for knowledge,” etc., are usual expressions in almost all languages of the world that have some slavery to the Mother of all Languages, Sanskrit.
Here the stream of knowledge is described as having flown out through Jahnu’s ears; it is indeed a brilliant poetic concept to connect the term Shruti (heard), which means the contents of the Upanishads, comprising what the Masters declared to the world and what the disciples “heard” from them. In India, teachers come from time to time to reinterpret the Ancient Wisdom in the context of their own age, only after having gained their own personal experiences of Vedic Truth-declarations. Without the stamp of realisation, no teacher worth the name will dare come into the world to propagate the old Truth in new language.
Of the many names by which the sacred river Ganges is known in India, this particular name has been chosen here in order to emphasize the above-mentioned special implications.
AMONG FISHES I AM THE ‘SHARK’ — the shark is the most dangerous fish in the ocean. So among fishes, Bhagawan declares Himself to be the ‘shark.’
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