Death and its crusaders
To die with dignity is a fundamental right, the Supreme Court has said. In its judgment that allows for passive euthanasia, it has said that the terminally ill are allowed to choose to die, albeit under a stringent set of conditions. If this is finally turned into a law as the Court has said it ought to be, it could mark a big shift in the way modern-day policy-makers look at one of the oldest mysteries of human existence and, perhaps, throw some perspective on the flourishing end-of-life businesses that have made hay out of a universal fear. While that is a debate for another time, for now the Court’s decision has opened up the discussion on a topic that has fascinated poets, artists and myth-makers for millennia.
Death is a philosopher god, burdened with the task of delivering an unhappy truth, in many cultures. In India, Yama was the first man to be born and the first to die, he became a god because he had braved death and could shine a light on the road to the after-life. In a long and elaborate dialogue in the Katha Upanishad, Yama and Nachiketa go into the many aspects of life and its meaning and on what lies beyond. In the later texts, Yama is depicted as more of a tragic figure. Son of the sun god, abandoned by his mother and cursed by his step-mother, he is an unwilling participant in the cycle of life and death. His mother Saranyu/Sanjna is unable to stay with Vivasvat (Surya or the sun god) because she can’t bear the sun’s glossy brilliance. She flees, leaving her shadow behind who goes on to have children of her own and mistreats the firstborn Yama.
While Yama helped reconcile the worlds of the living and the dead, drawing an egalitarian frame on an otherwise unequal existence, there was still the issue of why and how would people die. For that, Mrityu was created by Brahma; she emerged out of his wrath over the raging chaos in the world that he had created. But Mrityu was reluctant to take on the role assigned to her and wept inconsolably. Moved by her plight, Brahma collected her tears and spread them in the world. The tears carry the seeds of death in the form of disease and disaster. In some ways, this is similar to the Greek myth about Pandora, whose curiosity caused her to open the jar full of disease, illness, plague and all things evil.
Death is inevitable, however unpalatable and grievous it may be, the myths tell us. But it was never an easy mystery to reconcile with. According to the psychologist Carl Jung, many myths looked at death as a transition. This was necessary because of what he calls psychic hygiene; life would have become unliveable knowing the house we live in is going to fall around us any moment. Hence death has to be a part of the life process, his theories suggested.
This is especially true of Egyptian mythology where death is so much a part of life’s journey that the people developed complex death rituals just so the body could be protected in the underworld. The purpose of Egyptian life is to prepare for a comfortable after-life. Osiris is the king of the underworld and the most powerful god in the pantheon. But his is a tragic life too. Murdered by his brother Set, Osiris is brought back to life by his wife Isis (also his sister) who uses her powers to prevent his body from decaying so that she can bear his child.
Death had to be borne by all, the myths suggested. A Native American story conveys this quite effectively in a story about the origin of death. There was an argument between Wolf and Coyote who rarely, if ever, agreed on anything. Wolf suggested that when someone died, he should be brought back to life by shooting an arrow into the earth beneath him. Predictably, Coyote objected. It would be disastrous, he said, to bring the dead back. Wolf agreed but secretly decided that the first to go would be Coyote’s son. When his son died, Coyote came to Wolf, begging for his son’s life. But Wolf countered Coyote with his own words and, ever since, death has lived in the world.
Ancient cultures did not have a consistent picture of death and they spun a diverse set of stories that explored the many imagined possibilities. For instance, just like death, gods of death are created cruel but just. Heaven and hell, like karma and reincarnation, helped rationalise the phenomenon and provide a moral compass for the living. Now it may be time to refresh these old stories to set a new context for the phenomenon of death.