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 The role of fate-3
Fate leads the willing and drags along those who hang back.
--Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE), Roman philosopher
III. Fate –How is it dispensed?
The influence of gods on the exploits of the heroes of the epics (whether Indian mythology or Greek mythology) is well documented in various legends. In the Hindu religion (also known as sanAtana dharma which means ‘perennial faith’) “karma” is defined as deed or act. Karma itself is not called fate. It is said that man creates his own destiny out of his acts committed according to his own volition. He accumulates demerits from his bad deeds and merit from his good ones. A supreme power is needed to pair up such karma with the soul of the person who indulges in such karma. God is considered a divine accountant who takes care of the appropriate pairing. In that respect God is mostly a dispenser rather than a creator of fate.
Some religious gurus advise their disciples that fate is past karma and free will is present karma. The disciples are told not to resign to fate but just recognise its inevitability and concentrate on the free will part to accentuate the good deeds or mitigate the bad deeds of the past. In the Buddhist and Jain faiths, karma is considered a natural law that attaches to the soul of its perpetrator as naturally as a calf finding its mother. Irrespective of the mode of transmission of karma it is recognised that fate is very powerful, capable of rewarding or punishing people.
It appears, then, that fate is an invisible force which is recognised after the event and not something to be recognised beforehand or that can be forestalled. Adam Smith (1723-1790), the Scottish economist and philosopher, wrote a great treatise titled, The Wealth of Nations (1776). In it he wrote that if people were set free to act on their own, it would - “as if by an invisible hand” - actually benefit the whole society. This invisible hand moves events randomly in a secular fashion and it is the secularism that is supposed to be causing the benefit in the economic sense. The invisible hand can be called fate but then it is not the consequence of any single person’s karma. Perhaps it is the collective karma. There are rewards (economic prosperity) as well as punishments (recessions and depression) in this free market theory just like the dispensations of fate.
SilappadhikAram:
silambu (anklets)
 Let us now consider the incidence of fate in the Thamizh epic poetry SilappadhikAram. That the evil deeds committed in a previous birth would follow the person predictably and punish, irrespective of the person’s virtue in the current birth, is one of the three dictums declared by
iLangO aDigaL (author of SilappadhikAram). The dictum is:
‘Uzhvinai uruttu van^du UTTum’ (Fate shall prevail
unfailingly).
The hero of the epic poetry, KOvalan, got falsely accused of thievery while trying to sell one of the anklets
(cilambu) of his wife in the city of Madurai and ordered executed by the Pandyan king
neDunchezhiyan without recourse to a proper trial. In the words of the author,
maNNaga maDan^dai vAntuyar kUrak
kAvalan sengOl vaLaiiya, vIzhn^danan
kOvalan paNDai Uzhvinai uruttu en
(Mother earth agonised. The king’s righteous rule got blemished. As a result of his karma (fate) carried over from a previous birth, KOvalan got killed as the target victim of such a fate).
The guardian angel (dhEvadai) of the city of Madurai told
KaNNagi (Kovalan’s wife) that the execution of Kovalan was preordained as a result of his misdeed (in accusing an innocent merchant) in his previous birth which resulted in the murder of the merchant. The widow of that merchant cursed that those responsible for her misery shall attain the same predicament that she was experiencing. That curse was responsible for Kovalan’s unjust murder and the resultant misery of
KaNNagi.
The guardian angel also said that despite some virtuous deeds done by the king, owing to his fate he committed a mistake of ordering the murder of an innocent man (kOvalan). The goddess says,
nI Idu onRu kETTi, em komagaRku
Uzhvinai van^dak kaDai;
mAdarAi! Idu onRu kEL, un kaNavaRkut
tIduRa van^da vinai
(My king got into this situation as a result of his fate. Your husband also met with this inglorious end as a result of his fate).
The king paid for the mistake right away with his life. In addition, the city of Madurai was also cursed to be consumed by fire.
“ADit tingaL pEr iruL pakkadu
azhalsEr kuTTattu aTTami gnAnRu
veLLi vArattu oLLeri uNNa
uraisAl maduraiyODu araisu kEDu uRum enum
uraiyum uNDE”
(In the Thamizh month of ADi, on the eighth day (Friday) in the fortnight leading to the new moon the city of Madurai will get destroyed by fire and kingship will sustain a blemish. That oracle was uttered before and shall prevail”,
so said the city goddess.
kaNNagi & kOvalan
The angel further told kaNNagi,
ummai vinai van^du urutta kAlaic
cemmaiyilOrkku seitavam udavAdu
(When the effect of the deeds of previous birth starts to get manifested, those who were not virtuous in the previous births shall not get the benefits of all the good deeds done in the present birth).
 Such strong words emphasise the force of fate. There is an irony in all of this. Was KOvalan’s desertion of KaNNagi and association with MAdhavi (only to part from MAdhavi later due to a misunderstanding) preordained? Was the reunion with KaNNagi the prelude to (the couple’s journey to Madurai and) the eventual doom of KOvalan? The ultimate determinant in the whole story is the nature of the precious stones encased in the anklets of KaNNagi and those of the Pandyan queen kOpperun^dEvi. The precious gems in the lumen of the anklets are mANikkam (rubies/red stones) in the former’s and muttu (pearls) in the latter’s. But for that difference, the guilt of the king would not have been established and KaNNagi would not have burned the city of Madurai. One could say the crux of the fate (and consequently KaNNagi’s redemption) was in the gemstones of the anklets!
Despite the fate of kOvalan, kaNNagi gets redeemed as a result of her chastity and steadfastness as the goddess tells her that on the fourteenth day of the death of kOvalan, he will come (not in the human form) from the heavens to take her with him. It is believed that incident took place in reality and there is a temple for kaNNagi in the cEra country of yore, currently known as
Kerala.
Sethuraman Subramanian
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