Hindu ideals of marriage in Chaucer

It may appear paradoxical that Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", renowned for the bawdy Miller's & Reeve's Tales, should also contain a tale reflecting the highest ideal of marriage recommended in Hinduism.

This is the tale of Zenobia, the great Palmyra Queen, which is one of the many tales included in "The Monk's Tale." She was a great warrior, polyglot & a well-read lady.

When she married King Odenatus, she stipulated "that he would with her lie but once, to have a child." If she "was not with child at the first act, she let him gratify his passion again. If she were with child at the first cast, only after forty days had passed,  she would grant him once to do the same. He got no more of her, for she said 'otherwise were it lechery & shame for wives, if men should play with them in bed."

So, she had two sons, whom she reared to be ideal kings. In this she resembled the Hindu Queen Madalasa (story found in Markandeya Purana), whose lullaby for her children is immortal.

Presumably in Satya Yuga, the precursor of Treta Yuga, in which Vishnu incarnated as Sri Rama to destroy the demon king Ravana, the sages were living such a life.

In more modern times, Sri Ramakrishna, also advised his devotee couples to live like siblings after a couple of children. Mahatma Gandhi also subscribed to this ideal. (even though he had four sons.) More recently, the first spiritual leader in the history of the world to have a truly global following in his own lifetime, cutting across religious barriers, remarked that "Animals have a season & Man has been given reason, but behaves as if he has neither season nor reason."

When release from prison was bewailed

Usually release from prison is celebrated with joy. But there are two examples, one literary & one cinematic, where the prisoners have bewailed their release.

The literary example is from Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales." In the first tale, "The Knight's Tale", the knight relates how two cousins, Arcite & Palamon, were captured in war & thrown into prison. From the prison window, they caught sight of the queen's  sister & seeing her daily, fell in love with her. One of the king's friends takes a fancy to Arcite & persuades the king to set him free. The king agrees but sentences Arcite to exile, any return being punishable with death. But Arcite bewails "Alas! the day I was born! Now I have got the worser of two jails!" (because he can't see his love anymore).

The second example, this one cinematic, is from Adoor Goplalakrishnan's "Mathilukal". (The Wall). Basheer, a well known writer, is imprisoned during the freedom struggle for two & a half years. The men's & women's sections are seperated by a high wall. Once when Basheer is walking by the side of this wall, whistling, a female voice from the other side, questions him. An unseen friendship develops & Basheer finds out that the woman, Narayani, is doing 14 years RI (for a murder charge). Basheer throws up a rose plant over the wall occasionally & an emotional bond develops. When Basheer is released, it means he will miss talking to Narayani & he fumes "Who needs freedom? Outside is an even bigger jail!".

DNA or Romance? Antigone's Choice

In Sophocles' "Antigone", the king orders that the rebel brother (of Antigone), who died in a civil war, should not be buried & his body should fall prey to carrion animals, the harshest punishment of the time. In passing it may be observed that being consumed by carrion birds is the preferred last rites among the Parsis in their "Towers of Silence." So much for cultural differences around the world!

Then the eponymous character decides to bury him, at the cost of her life, because;

"One husband gone, I might have found another,

Or a child from a new man in first child's place,

But with my parents hid away in death,

No brother, ever, could spring up for me."

This belief of hers, places blood relationship above romantic love, where it should be remembered, there is no shared DNA, but only mutual attraction, arranged by nature primarily for the propagation of the species.

Later Sigmund Freud, postulated that despite shared DNA, romantic love may occur, as in his "Oedipal Complex" & "Electra Complex." But Freud himself admitted that his interpretation was not primarily found in Sophocles', because Oedipus unknowingly killed his father & had to marry his mother (again unknowingly) on account of social customs & not because he desired her. Similarly, Electra killed her mother because the mother had Electra's father killed & not because Electra was physically attracted to her father.

This also may be due to the observation (made by Freud himself in his "The Interpretation of Dreams") that "filial piety towards parents is wont to recede before other interests."

Though the fifth commandment explicitly says that "Honour your father & your mother", in the Old Testament it also says (Genesis 2:24), "Man shall leave his parents & cleave to his wife." The later quote was not followed much in Oriental Societies until the prevalent Westernisation.

So the basis of Freudian thought may be Eurocentric & according to recent scholarship, also patriarchal in ascribing Oedipus & Electra complexes as an Universal Paradigm. Much of Post-modern scholarship also ascribes a more central role to Antigone than Oedipus even in Occidental Culture. (Ref. "The Antigone Complex" by Cecilia Sjoholm, pub. Stanford University Press.)

The same Eurocentric view is also exhibited by historians, notably Oswald Spengler, who asserted that "Causality had nothing whatever to do with time." But the eminent Indian historian, Dr S. Srikanta Sastri, points out the impossibility for the Western mind to understand that there can be an intense individual existence which can be independent of the World-as-Nature.