In the process, Pattanaik serves as a lay theologian of comparative religions with one foot in the monist/relativist socioreligious culture he has been shaped by yet nurtured by modern and post-modern influences. The book is designed as a primer with lots of trivia thrown in and summaries at the end of its varied sections to help the 'student' grasp Pattanaik's understanding of the 'alien lore'. He is sober in his approach and refuses to support the vituperative narratives of present-day political Hindutva which seeks to ethnically cleanse India of Muslims and Christians, whose Abrahamic narratives are seen as subverting and defiling the multifarious and casteist narratives of insecure Hindutvavdis who seek to deny people the liberty to follow a religion, ideology, mythology, 'lore' or identity of their individual or collective choice. To his credit, he does not go as far as to claim that Vedic Hinduism is the fount of all wisdom in the universe unlike contemporary Hindutva ideologues like Rajiv Malhotra et al. He compiles and collates tales from rabbinical, Islamic and fringe Christian writings (including Mormonism!!) to provide the reader with what he thinks is a cool contextual or intellectual perspective about 'lore' relating to the Abrahamic religions, appropriated and modified from Mesopotamia, Persia, and other places. In Eden, Pattanaik uses a syncretistic (what he calls 'Indian') approach to decode what he postulates as Jewish, Christian and Islamic 'lore'. Call him the Chetan Bhagat of Indian mythology!" A bit too harsh methinks, but then. Someone I once knew put it like this: Pattanaik is well read in mythology, knows a lot, tries to crack the code, and then passes it on at a childish level to others. His tack works, as affirmed by his soaring popularity. I am also curious about his exquisite skills at recycling deep mythologies into simplistic explanations for the simpletons. It also retells stories from Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Zoroastrian mythologies that influenced Abrahamic monotheism over time.ĭevdutt Pattanaik is someone I follow not so much for his being erudite about mythology, Indian or otherwise (to get a deeper feel, I would go to other writers), but his delightful illustrations. But these stories contrast Indian mythologies that are rooted in rebirth, where the world is without beginning or end, where there are infinite manifestations of the divine, both within and without, personal and impersonal, simultaneously monotheistic, polytheistic and atheistic.Įden explores the vast world of Abrahamic myths from a uniquely Indian prism, through storytelling that is intimate but not irreverent and introduces readers to the many captivating tales of angels, demons, prophets, patriarchs, judges and kings. They seek to make life meaningful by establishing a worldview based on one God, one life, and one way of living based on God's message transmitted through many messengers. Like the Ramayana and Mahabharata, Jewish, Christian and Islamic tales too are cultural memories and metaphors, i.e. It represents paradise in Abrahamic lore, which emerged over 4,000 years ago in the Middle East and has since spread to every corner of the world in three forms: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. To this garden, all humanity shall return if we accept God's love and follow God's law. Eden is the garden of happiness that humankind lost when Adam and Eve the first human couple, disobeyed the one true God, i.e., God, and ate the fruit of the forbidden tree.
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