Story Heroines - PART 2

Animals that talk and work with humans are not present In the Icelandic story but several are singled out as important characters in the Ponnivala Legend. Tangal, the twin heroes’ sister has a pet dog who is very powerful. She is also befriended by a giant cobra who follows her through the forest while she searches for her brothers’ dead bodies. This huge snake is well-intentioned and friendly. It protects Tangal from the sun and from the rain. 

Tangal’s mirror image, a forest princess named Viratangal, also has a pet. He is a huge and very black forest boar named Komban. Viratangal feeds him rice daily and talks to him as if he were her special pet. Eventually Komban attacks the hero-farmers’ fields. Tangal’s little dog on the other hand ends up attacking this boar and helps to stop his rampage. She ends up stabbing him with her very sharp well-poisoned teeth.

Ponnivala’s main magician, Tangal, also has other important powers. We learn more and more about her as the story unfolds. She is able to receive fire in her right hand (from Lord Shiva) and use this to burn both objects and people when she is angry. Her mother Tamarai had this power too. But Tangal’s powers develop far beyond the use of fire. She can hold sand in her palm and make it turn into cooked rice. 

Tangal also acquires a magic wand that she uses to call up a torrential rain, and then bright sun.

Most importantly, Tangal is able to collect together the magical substances she needs to revive her brothers from death in seven little magical pots. She uses these, along with her wand, to resurrect these two warriors (briefly) so that she can talk to them once more. 

Tangal can also fly. She uses a bird vehicle for this, a golden goose. Her means of transport resembles that of her mentor, Lord Vishnu, who frequently flies to earth to involve himself in the Ponnivala story. Vishnu rides on a half-man half-eagle vehicle. 

Eventually Tangal ascends to heaven in a golden chariot sent to fetch her by Lord Shiva himself. Tangal is the only human character in the Ponnivala story to “fly” at all and she is the only one to reach “heaven” without dying first. In all these ways, Tangal is a very magical character with traits that make her a prophetess and a sorceress all rolled into one.

There is one final female in the Ponnivala story that is worth a mention in the context of story heroines and their special powers. This is a mysterious woman called “The Sun Maiden” about whom we learn very little. But we do know that she has very special powers that relate to her constant worship of (connection with?) the sun.

As human yoga practitioners often incorporate an initial prayer directed to the sun, so too this woman directs her efforts towards the same source of power. Her yogic posture on top of a pillar suggests a focused and continuing embodiment of this widely honored sun-worshiping prayer. The Sun maiden of the Ponnivala story, as a result perhaps of this constant worship, has a very special power. She is able to release magical liquids directly from her right hand. In the story these “heavenly,” life-giving substances seem to flow directly down from the heavens, through her body, and then right into Tangal’s ritual pots. The Sun-maiden’s very special powers are clearly linked to her forest habitat and to her “natural” connection with some kind of magical regenerative essence whose source is the sun itself.

~ Brenda E.F. Beck

Story Heroines - PART 1

In the Vatnsdaela Saga a key theme relating to women is the gift a man makes by giving away his daughter to her husband-to-be. This is an Indo-European tradition with a wide reach and one also prominent in India. However, this particular custom was not previously the norm among non-Brahman groups in certain southern (Dravidian, e.g. non-Indo-European) language areas. In the Ponnivala area, in past centuries, wedding gifts conventionally traveled in the opposite direction, that is from the groom’s family to the bride’s (a custom known as bride price).

The second image (shows the “elder” of the twin grooms (Ponnar) with his sister (Tangal) performing a ritual called “the uniting ceremony.” Tangal has a winnowing basket on her head that contains the wedding sari and wedding necklace the bride(s), plural in this case because the story describes the wedding of twins, will wear for their up-coming nuptial ceremony. If you look closely you will see that there is also a sari held between the brother and sister, under their arms. This cloth, stretched between them, symbolizes that their relationship will not “break” in years to come. It is a gift to the sister from her brother. These key details in the image have been circled for clarity. The “uniting” cloth predicts another marriage, one expected, in the next generation. It will further binding his new family to the one these two cross-sex siblings already hold in common. To be more specific, traditionally one of his daughters-to-be will be expected to marry one of her sons-to-be. (Anthropologists call this a cross-cousin marriage). The items on the sister’s head have been purchased by the groom’s family. The sister of the groom endorses his gift by carrying it on her head as the two of them circle a sacred fire. This logic may seem complex, but the key point I am trying to make is that these two epics endorse opposing (but none-the-less related) wedding gift themes. The difference between them results from the two very different cultural milieus from which these two stories have sprung.

More striking than wedding gift contrast between the Icelandic Saga and its South Indian epic parallel, however, are differences in their respective understanding of divination and prophecy. In the former magicians and sorcerers are largely male, though there are at least two females also mentioned who perform negative magic. And a fair proportion of the Icelandic sorcerers in the story come from Lapland, a faraway place with a significantly different culture from that of mainland Norway. (Scholars think the Lapp language, because of its Finno-Ugric connections, may actually be distantly related to the Dravidian language family). Furthermore, several of the Vatnsdaela Saga characters are described as “berserks,” quite possibly due to a habit of using hallucinogenic mushrooms to aid in their divination efforts. In the first image we see three men who, after consuming mushrooms, fly as Shamans from Norway to Iceland hoping to find the location of a gold ring a previous sorceress had planted there.

In the Ponnivala story, however, it is only the women who exhibit these shamanistic-type powers. Mainly that idea is embodied in a teenage girl, Tangal, the sister of the story’s twin heroes. As her story unfolds her powers grow. At first she exhibits a surprising ability to “see” what is happening at a distance through her dreams. This develops into a power to divine what the future holds and then into other skills such as the ability to force others to do her will and even, eventually, her ability to “fly.” The image here shows Tangal just before her two brothers leave for a key battle. Tangal wants to know if they will ever return alive and so she requests their presence at a divination ritual where she throws mustard seeds and pepper corns high in the air. Her brothers’ swords must cut each seed in two as it falls. Unfortunately, after the test a few seeds remain unsliced. As a result Tangal predicts that these two men, her brothers, will never return home. Tangal keeps this knowledge secret. She is afraid that if she shares it she will undercut her brothers’ will to fight the great battle that is soon to come.

~ Brenda E. F. Beck   

Prestigious Gifts

Giving gifts that show respect is an important theme in both the Vatnsdaela Saga and the Ponnivala Legend. Just as pointed out in many anthropological studies, gift giving helps to bind the two parties to such a transaction together. In particular it serves to create a sense of future obligation and indebtedness between the giver and the taker. The most famous gift in the Vatnsdaela story is Ingimund’s discovery of two polar bear cubs on the sea ice, along with their mother. He decides to take all three to the king of Norway to thank him for his support and as gesture of goodwill. You can image the king’s surprise!

Although not nearly as grandiose, a gift equivalent to Ingimund’s in the Ponnivala epic is given when Kunnutaiya, takes the Chola king a pot of fine curds made from the milk of his family cow. Humble though this sounds, it expresses his respect. The Chola king had earlier sponsored his and his brothers’ settlement along the South bank of the river Kaveri. Kunnutaiya returns to the king’s palace to report on his fine harvest of a first maize from the lands the Chola assigned to him. He had measured the impressive yield generated on this piece of land (with a little help from Lord Vishnu) just days earlier. Kunnutaiya wanted to express his gratitude to the king for s protection and help in establishing a pioneer agricultural settlement in the area.

According to these parallel stories, both the Norwegian and the Chola kings are pleased with their gifts. Both kings, in return, recognize the importance of maintaining a positive political alliance with a regional leader (the story hero) who has taken the trouble to visit him and report on local economic progress. In the Vatnsdaela case the king returns the favor by giving Ingimund a marvelous ship, one of the finest of its day. He also puts “wind” in its sails. Furthermore, he gives his visitor gold and some fine building wood to take back to Iceland aboard his new vessel. Ingimund brings all this back to his new homeland. He quickly builds a fine shelter for his new boat on shore of the inlet near his home, hoping the boat will weather the hardships of many winters there. Of course he has received an ostentatious gift, a fitting exchange for the king’s receipt of that magnificent mother polar bear and her cubs! 

Kunnutaiya receives something equally important from the Chola king, though in size it is much smaller. His reciprocal gift is a small crown that he can wear proudly, symbolizing the Chola monarch’s respect for his success. The crown acknowledges his proven power as a manager of the local economy. Neither king makes mention of his expectation: that future tribute will flow from the respective outlying region where his ally lives, into his central coffers. However, we can suspect that both have a future exchange of this sort in mind!

~ Brenda E.F. Beck

Adoption

Adoption is an important theme in both the Vatnsdaela epic and in the Legend of Ponnivala. Furthermore, the imagery surrounding this family reality is surprisingly similar, particularly in one case. One of Ingimund’s great grandsons, Thorkel Scratcher, was born out of wedlock. His mother was a mistress of Ingimund’s grandson Thorgrim. On the command of Thorgrim’s jealous wife, baby Thorkel was put out to die. But Thorstein, another son of Ingimund, then spoke to another in this set of brothers, a man named Thorir. Thorstein asked Thorir to raise the child that was found in a field in a sorry state. It was discovered lying on bare earth but was somewhat hidden and had its face covered. Thorir agreed to take on this responsibility while his brother Thorstein called on the sun (to help bind the child to him?

In the Ponnivala story every descendent of the pioneer grandfather Kolatta is created at least in part by Lord Shiva (who bears mythological links to the sun). In the closest Ponnivala parallel, Shiva creates a male child whom he hides under a rock pile in a back field belonging to Kolatta. Kolatta soon finds this babe with the help of others and happily adopt him. 

He and his wife raise this unexpected gift, a tiny young son, with love and care. The couple call him Kunnutaiya or “boy of the rock pile.” In the next generation something similar happens again. Now Lord Shiva (immaculately) impregnates Kunnutaiya’s wife (after years of barrenness) and she then bears him triplets.

The two boys (Ponnar and Shankar) born of this “magic” are immediately adopted by the goddess Celatta, just after their birth when she carries them through a secret tunnel to a cave under her temple. 

There the two boys are raised lovingly for five years. During this period Kunnutaiya and Tamarai do not even know of their existence. All they know is that they have a little girl, actually the third child to exit her womb, born that same day.

The goddess’ personal tiger now begins to play with the two boys regularly. She trains them in several martial arts and raises them on a diet of tiger’s milk. After five years are up the goddess delivers these two young heroes to their biological birth mother Tamarai and her husband who is their (social-but-not-quite-biological) father, Kunnutaiya.

~ Brenda E. F. Beck

Morality and Divine Justice

In both the Vatnsdaela Saga and the Legend of Ponnivala there are multiple references to the orthodox and prevailing religion of the time, Christianity in the first case and Hinduism in the second. In the Icelandic case the Bishop and his assistant both appear in the story, though they do not have a very big role. Right alongside this “church presence,” are multiple references to pre-Christian beliefs, particularly to sorcery, witchcraft and other kinds of magic. Divination and spirit flight (from Norway to Iceland and back) also have a role to play. In this sense the Vatnsdaela epic presents a sort of moral ambivalence that mixes these two traditions. However, as seen in my last blog, a general and strong sense of what is correct or “right” behavior certainly prevails. In this sense this Icelandic legend has obvious “Christian” overtones. It is important to remember, however, that this saga was redacted and preserved in written form by Christian monks. They no doubt had some influence in shaping its general moral tone.

In the case of the Ponnivala story the two main Hindu gods, Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva, are both given active roles. Vishnu is by far the more active of the two gods and he intervenes by visiting the earth to influence the key characters’ decisions at least once (frequently several times) in every episode. Vishnu is also the more sympathetic god, the helper, the healer, the magician and also the “go-between” in many situations. This is very much in keeping with his personality and mythology portrayed elsewhere in India’s broad and deep traditions of Hinduism. Shiva, on the other hand, is an ascetic and a loner. He enters the story only a few times, and then only after a request (often outright pleading) by others. But this second great god can certainly not be discounted. Quite the contrary, in the Ponnivala story Shiva is definitely THE supreme being. It is he who makes most of the important life-or-death decisions. Of special interest is the fact that Shiva and Vishnu are here described as brothers-in-law. The supreme goddess Parvati is both Lord Vishnu’s sister and Lord Shiva’s wife. The epic therefore exhibits a balance between these two divinities in many interesting ways. Ultimately, however, this is a Saivite (as opposed to a Vaisnavite) story in the broadest sense of these terms.

Some pre-Hindu themes are also present in The Legend of Ponnivala, or at least we can suspect as much. The huge wild boar Komban provides one example since the presence of a similar character is abundant in pre-Hindu rock art documented from nearby areas. Various details of the heroes’ final funeral ceremony and their momentary resurrection also exhibit pre-Hindu features. These features, though of great interest, are too complex to further detail here.

~ Brenda E.F. Beck