October 25, 2018 Thursday
Bedtime Story
Religion and Myth
Here is where it is important to have a
decent understanding of both our religions and mythologies as they both form an
essential ingredient of our rich literature and cultural past.
In fact, mythology is the bed-rock of all
religions, from the most primitive to the most modern off shoots of some
specially privileged ones.
Religion is a larger form of mythology that
incorporates rituals that seemingly have a purpose to please the deity in order
to receive benefits from it.
It has been seen that any mythology if
ancient enough is bound to be associated with some religion or the other,
either of the present or a dead and forgotten one.
It is funny but even what one will define
as a “myth” depends to which religion one is affiliated to or more likely born
in.
It is almost by definition of religion and
faith that one would classify a traditional folklore as a “myth” if and only if
one does not belong to that specific religion.
Broadly speaking, though all religious
stories are mythologies some would like to disagree with such a broad
generalization and try to limit myths to those religious stories that pertain
to the creation aspect.
They argue that those part of the religious
stories that pertain to biographies or more correctly hagiographies of saints
and ecclesiastical leaders should be left out of the definition of myth.
I must let you know that the very word
“hagiography” is a derogatory equivalent of the word “biography” holding in
doubt the authenticity of such unverifiable biographies of god-men, saints and
accounts of miracles.
Then there is another side of argument.
There are a bunch of people called
folklorists for formally and academically dedicate themselves to the study of
folklore which is not only limited to the study of lore or stories of primitive
and rural folks but also their activities and various artifacts.
Understandably, such departments can thrive
only in well-funded universities of developed nations since most nations simply
cannot afford to spend their already limited resources on such luxuries.
These folklorists have come to the
consensus that all myths are religious/sacred stories to the respective
tribes/societies but not all religious stories are myths.
There is a good example to justify this
kind of definition by the folklorists.
It is a common knowledge that in the Early
Modern Europe starting from around the 15th century (marked by the
invention of the first moveable type printing around about 1450) the Christian
leadership and churches developed elaborate stories concerning women that
brandished them as witches.
The idea that was wielded about
passionately and became quite popular among the masses that malevolent Satanic
witches were in operation as an organization thus making them a threat to
Christianity.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer
and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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