VILLAINS
‘Villain’ the word spells hatred, doom, evil. Ever since our childhood, we have been acquainted with the word villain. This word is as old as dinosaurs. However, unlike dinosaurs, the word still survives.
The book, ‘Introduction to Mythology’, by writers Eva. M. Thury and Margaret K. Devinney display the mythological period, the myths, and legend of that era.
The book adds to the student’s knowledge about myths, creation, and distraction, about heroes and anti-heroes, Ritual and myth, folktales and myths. In short, it covers any and everything about myths in every and any literature
From Greek classics to Chinese mythology and Romans to Hindu mythology, the book discusses everything from good to evil.
The picture of villain portrayed in myths and legend, gives us an interesting picture of the qualities that we must guard against.
Villain, though a bad quality, is present in all. Only that some of us succeed in suppressing it.
Sometimes, the ill inside gets over the good, and thus letting the inner villain win.
However, at the last, the villain ends, no matter how much powerful or valiant he is.
One may check through any classic, legend, mythology, or epics; be it The Ramayana (Hindu Epic), The Epic of Gilgamesh or even The Bible.
Each character through myth and legend that is cast in the role of villain seems to have characteristics those are common to all.
Here, we look at few villainous characters from three mythological classics
The Ramayana, written by sage Valmiki, during the 4th century.
Ramayana revolves around the lives of King Dashrath, of Ayodhya, his three wives Kaushalya, Kaikayi and Sumithra and their four sons Rama, Laxmana, Bharat, and Shatrughana.
In The Ramayana, Raavanaa was not only the villain, but Rama’s step –mother Kaikayi was in the list too. Had it not been for her, Ramayana would never come to existence.
It was because of Kaikayi, Rama, Sita and Laxmana had to leave and go for exile. She wanted her son Bharat to rule over Ayodhya. She asked for two wishes from King Dashrath, which he had to fulfill.
First being Bharat crowned as the king of Ayodhya and second wish was sending Rama to exile for fourteen years, wherein he had to lead a life of ascetic leaving behind all the bonds, including family, kingdom etc.
Rama on hearing this agrees to fulfill Kaikayi’s wish and promises to leave for exile. Sita and Laxamana follow him.
While in Chitrakoot, one day when Shurpankha, Raavanaa’s sister appeares, with her devilish looks- her hair let loose, her crooked mouth, before Sita, who gets horrified on seeing her.
Lakshmanaa choppes off her nose and ears, thereby inviting a war with Raavanaa,
Raavanaa, the demon king who ruled the beautiful city of Lanka, gets terrified on hearing the news from his sister Shurpankha, decides to wage a war against the Ayodhya king and prince, Rama and Laxmana respectively.
Marich, Raavanaa’s devotee, on the orders of Raavanaa, takes a form of beautiful deer in order to misguide Rama. On seeing the deer, Sita wishes for the deerskin and asks Rama to get it for her.
Aware of Marich’s trick, Rama goes to hunt the deer, Lakshmanaa too follows Rama, but before going for hunting, Lakshmanaa draws a boundary line –Lakshman Rekha before Sita, warning her not to cross it, no matter what.
Cunning Raavanaa, on seeing this transforms himself into a sage and comes to Sita to ask for alms.
Sita gives alms but stands inside the boundary line drawn by Lakshmanaa.
Raavanaa gets furious at Sita for not coming out to give alms.
Sita tries to convince Raavanaa about her helplessness, but Raavanaa, who is in form of a sage, pays no heed to her words. He refuses to take alms from Sita and pretends to go away.
Finally, Sita crosses the boundary line drawn by Lakshmanaa for her protection. As Sita crosses the line and comes out to give alms, Raavanaa who is in guise of a sage, transforms himself into his original form and abducts Sita.
Jataayu, the vulture tries to stop Raavanaa, but is injured badly while saving her.
On Rama’s return, Jataayu narrates the whole incident to Rama.
Lastly, Raavanaa is killed in the war.
Thus proving that no matter how valiant or brave the villain is, there is an always end to it. Raavana was a brave, valiant and clever ruler, but his pride, his ill attitude became the cause of his destruction.
Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Mesopotamia, which means ancient Iraq.
The epic began as poetry about the brave mythological king Gilgamesh.
The epic emphasizes the relationship between king Gilgamesh, who becomes s addend by his kingdom and his friend Enkidu’s departure.
Enkidu was an evil man created by the Gods, as an equal to Gilgamesh, in order to distract his attention from oppressing the citizens of Uruk. After a long battle both Gilgamesh andEnkidu become close friends.
Both together undertake dangerous tasks that displease the Gods.
At first, both voyage to Cedar Mountains to defeat Humbaba, the monstrous guardian.
The Bull of Heaven, sent by Goddess Ishtar becomes the next target. .Ishtar, the goddess of Love wishes to marry Gilgamesh, but he turns her down. This results into a war between Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven, sent by Ishtar to kill Gilgamesh.
The later part of the epic throws light on Gilgamesh’s state of mind on losing, his friend Enkidu, resulting search for immortality.
The loss of a great friend Enkidu devastates Gilgamesh so much that he sets in the search of everlasting life or immortality.
A well-know quote from the Epic of Gilgamesh
“Gilgamesh, what you seek, you will never find.”
“For when God created Man, they let death be his lot.”
“Eternal life they withheld.”
Here we see that be it Gilgamesh or Enkidu, finally they had to lose their life. From the above verse we can also see that any mortal being created on the earth has the villainous quality, resulting into death.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is still remembered as one of the best works in Irish literature.
Our next story, Noah’s Ark, also revolves around the same statement that we discussed in our former two stories: villain.
It is believed in the Bible that when evil began to move freely on the Earth, and started to spread its wings, the Gods then decided to put an end to it. How was the task done form the crux of our following story.
Once the Gods saw, wickedness spread its wings on the earth covering almost every living being. It was then the Gods decided to end it up in their own way. They decided to wipe off the humankind from the earth, thus saving it from further destruction. God could find only one noble man from the entire humankind, Noah.
Therefore, they decided to shoulder him to share their responsibility.
Gods instructed Noah to build an ark for him and his family, saving all from the flood, Gods going to send on the earth to destroy the humankind. Further, they instructed him to bring into his ark two living creatures, male and female, along with every kind of food to be stored for him and his family.
As they entered the ark, the rains began to pour down, it continued to pour for about forty-five days and nights.
The earth flooded for almost hundred and fifty days, wiping out all the living beings on the earth.
As the rains moved away, the ark came to rest in the mountains.
Noah and his family waited for more eight years for the land to dry up.
Almost after a year, the Gods invited Noah to come out of the ark.
Again, here in the above story we see that evil was destroyed.
Be it any literature, myth, or legend evil does exist, it is powerful, cruel, and cunning; it has everything, but long life.
It is not that villains appear in only mythology, myths, or stories,
They appear in real life too. Each one has a villain inside him.
Now it is up to each one, either to let it suppress you or suppress over it.
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