Phule’s Criticism of Hindu Mythology

Phule explained how the mythological accounts of the ten incarnations of Vishnu and Parshuram’s extirpation of the Kshatriyas from the earth were deliberately distorted versions of the actual historical conquest and defeat of the natives. Phule devotes the first nine chapter of slavery to reconstructing the past end reinterpreting the ten incarnations of Vishnu in historical terms. According to Phule, the Aryans fist attacked in small boats that moved in water like fish or masa’ and hence the nickname of the first Aryan leader to attack the Kshatriyas came to be ‘Matsya’ (the first incarnation of Vishnu). Brahman writers distorted this historical event in the Bhagwat Purana to say that Lord Vishnu emerged from a fish. The second time the Aryans attacked, they came in larger boats which were slow moving and resembled the tortoise movement. This event was distorted in the Bhagwat Purana as the second incarnation of Vishnu. The purana describes Vishnu as emerging from the tortoise to recover things of value lost in the deluge. And in this way Phule goes on to give his unique explanation of the third, fourth and fifth incarnations of Vishnu as the boar Varah, as the man-lion Narsimha, and the dwarf Vaman, respectively. Varaha, Narasimha and Vaman were incarnations, Vishnu took in order to deliver the world from the tyranny of the Datiya or demon kings who were historically the defeated kshatriya rulers.

Then breaking with the conventional Hindu accounts of the incarnations, Phule describes the next leader of the Aryans to be Brahma. Brahma has a Central place in Hindu Mythology with the Brahmans claiming that they came from his head, the kshatriyas from his arms, the Vaishyas from his stomach and the Shudras (servants of the other three) from his feet. The Vedas are also claimed by the Brahmans to have come from Brahma’s mouth. Phule debunks all these stories as deliberate distortions by cunning Brahmans to fool the masses, and reinterprets Brahma in an ingenious way. After Vaman died, the Aryans had no significant leader, says Phule, and hence a cunning and avaricious Brahman clerk by the name of Brahma, who first invented the art of writing on palm leaves, got a chance to take over. Brahma, says Phule, composed little poems like those of the Parsis (Phule is obviously referring to the Avesta and the Gathas of Parsi Zoroastrians) which along with a few magical incantations, popular in his days, he put down to palm leaves and this (according to Phule) gave birth to the subsequent belief that the Vedas came from the mouth of Brahma. Taking advantage of the death of the native King Banasira, Brahma invaded his kingdom of Kshetra’ and after defeating the inhabitants (Kshatriyas sought to permanently humiliate them by reducing them to the position of Shudras by debarring them from education).

Parshuram, the sixth incarnation of Vishnu, Phule goes on to tell us, succeeded Brahma as the head of the Aryans. It was at this time that the small group of Kshatriyas, still left unconquered, attacked Parshuram 21 times. The Aryans called them the maha-ar, or the ‘great enemy’ and described them as a demon race (daitya) who had rebelled against the Gods. Parshuram’s historical defeat of the `maha-ari is Mythologically described as the wiping out of the Kshatriya race from the face of the earth. However, the historical fact, says Phule, is that the banished maha-art were reduced to such misery and poverty that in order to survive they even had to eat the flesh of dead animals. Thus were born the Mahar and Mang communities whom the high castes consider unclean or untouchable because they eat dead animals’ meat. Since the brave ancestors of the present day Mahar and Mang communities were the valiant last resisters, the Brahmans marked them out for the most severe punishment. Thus they were forced to wear a black thread round the neck as a sign of identification and were to be treated as Ati-shudra, people whom even the other Shudras could not touch.

For the first time in the history of modern Maharashtra Phule rejected the whole system of superstitions, rituals traditions, and religious beliefs which were advocated by Brahmans. He treated all the scriptures as legends, which offered some insights into the past history. It was the history of the period when the alien invaders i.e. the Arya Brahmans sought to establish firm control over the aborigines. On the basis of the principle of equality. Phule criticized the hierarchical structure of the Hindu society i.e. caste system. He was equally critical of the authoritarianism in Hindu family which denied equal opportunity and enjoyment of rights to the women who deserved a better position.