One of the most peculiar things about the Harappan civilisation is its obsession with weights and measures. They had binary measuring systems and decimal measuring systems. They also had pans for measurement. The people of Indus were particular about measurement. The weights and volumes were standardised and uniform and did not deviate much, spanning a period of 500 years. This indicates a strong trading culture and an obsession with fairness and balancing things to avoid conflict. But weight and value are not the same things. The difference becomes an important role in later literature.
You can weigh food but it is hunger that determines value. The more we want something, the more valuable it gets. The less we want something, the less valuable it gets. In the Buddhist, Jain and Hindu stories, King Shibi saves a dove from an eagle. The eagle then demands that the king provide him with food because the dove was its natural food. The king offers his flesh equal in weight to that of the dove. To his surprise, he finds no matter how much flesh he cuts from his body and places on the pan, the dove’s weight turns out to be more. He is forced to cut out most of his flesh. Even when he is reduced to his bare bones, he still is not able to balance the pans.
The story ends with everybody celebrating the great sacrifice of the king. But what is often overlooked is the attention drawn to the weight of the eagle’s hunger that is greater than the weight of the flesh offered. The eagle does not value the flesh being given, as it is not enough for all his meals. Did the king not promise to satisfy all his hunger, not just the hunger of a single meal?
In the Bhagwat Purana, we are told the story of how sage Narada asks Krishna’s wives to give him Krishna. The queens refuse. Then Narada asks for something equal in value to Krishna. Krishna is then put on one pan of the balance and on the other pan the queens put their valuables. Satyabhama puts all her gold but that gold does not balance Krishna’s weight. Rukmini puts a sprig of tulsi leaves, stating that the sprig was an indicator of her love for him. The tulsi sprig is heavier than Krishna. The weight of gold does not match the value established by the symbolic sprig of love. This reveals that the craving for love is far greater than the object of love. Rukmini’s love is greater than Krishna himself. No amount of wealth can match the object of love; in other words, you can never buy love, though many try. For love satisfies our relentless desire to be seen, appreciated and indulged.
Devdutt Pattanaik is an Indian physician turned leadership consultant, mythologist, author and communicator whose works focus largely on the areas of myth, religion, mythology, and management.
Comments