Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 114

VALOR AGAINST TIME ern Hinduism. Which it is asked) is the more potent, the finally decisive factor in life's ceaseless struggle for survival and success, personal valor or the simple, fatal turn of time?" Those who speak for the former-virya, that dauntless prowess and endurance of the licro who never yiclds but battles through and outlives all reversals, never is downed but has the fortitude to rise again, and thus ultimately masters stubborn, stony, merciless fate
-maintain that valor in the end prevails; and this argument is used against the weakling who becomes disheartened, life's exile who gives in, the craven who resigns and abandons the game. We detect in this view of life and destiny something of the British bulldog attitude, though without the Christian belief that the right cause will prevail, and that a humblc acceptance of one's own suffcrings as punishment for shortcomings and faults will have redeeming power.
The oppositc argument is one of blank falalisin, based on sad and long experience. Many of the most valorous fighters in the course of history, it is declared, have failed, time and time again. Brave men have fought in vain, to the last stroke, against rising tides that have swept all away, while men of comparatively little valor, delighted by all the blandishments of Fortune, have sat proudly and safely in the seat of the hero. For in history there are times and tides. There are mounting periods, when everything supports the hero-conqueror. He rides the wave. His very faults and deficiencies turn to his advantage. No reversal can break his career. And his enemies, though great with valor and backed by superior resources, struggle in vain to halt his triumphant march. "Time" (kāla), the supreme power, favors him-that is all. But time proceeds in cycles, now expanding, now contracting. The hero's career only happens to coincide with a period of increase.
The gods-so runs this hopeless argument-in their battle with the anti-gods, gained the victory, not because of valor, not by cunning or by the craft of their all-knowing Brāhman-priest adCf. Mahābhārata 12. 25; 13. 6; and passim.
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