It is human arrogance to presume that crows or for that matter any creature exists for the convenience of man or that they act as proxies of men or divinity..
Crows, or birds, are a species of living things..
They just share this earth with all other living things.. and in fact they have their right to exist on this globe just the same way as we humans..
Do we really know, or is it right to presume that the clan of birds called crows have adopted or assumed the name kaka.. just becuase the humans identify them with that name in one language.. and phonetically similar names in some other languages?
I wonder..
Of course human beings understood and appreciated the necessity of the scavenger species in cleaning the earth and environs for their use, in spite of the continued dirtying by the humans..
The idea of Bhuta Yajnam.. especially in Vaishvadevam, arose from such considerations..
The scavengers should live and survive..
So we offer food for such beings under some pretext or other..
The Vaishvadevam provides for scattering food materials all around in the open dumpyards, so that crows, birds, vagrants, reptiles etc could eat..
It is ultimately the instinct of sustaining eco balance that led men to adopt such rituals.
I read somewhere the explanation given by a respected saint about the allegorical significance of feeding crows.. in pitru yajnams..
The explanation is just symbolic.
.
I am not trying to contradict what the revered saint has said.. No one should challenge him.
But I think he said so because the so called devotees around him would do that pious act of feeding crows if religious dimensions are point out..
We as a clan do not care much about saving the environment .. we would rather take pride in making the earth as polluted as we can manage..
It is better we consider at least once in a while the social and scientific background for the rituals.. But ..
No comments:
Post a Comment