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 The role of fate in the epics and legends
'Tis fate that flings the dice, and as she flings
of kings makes peasants, and of peasants kings.
--John Dryden (1631-1700), English poet
I. Fate --the purveyor of rewards and punishments?
Destiny, fate, karma, kismet - these words when uttered, immediately evoke a sense of awe in everyone for these words represent some inevitable result of one's own making in one's current life or even previous lives. Some accept it as inevitable when any adverse events happen to them while those with a disposition to weather the calamities sport an attitude that one can conquer fate through determination and effort. Either way there is a tacit acceptance by everybody that fate is something that happens to everyone whether they like it or not. It is not just ordinary mortals who are subjected to fate. Royalty, noblemen and even countries are subjected to it - it seems.
The incidence of fate is recognised (or at least written about) mostly in fiction, legends, and mythological stories. For example, William Shakespeare describes the inevitability of fate in 'King Lear'. King Lear is considered more "sinned against than sinning" in reaching the miserable end that awaits him. His trusted friend, the Duke of Gloucester, who is subjected to the worst of fortunes, remarks, "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport". He feels the fate of people is preordained and there is nothing one could do that is humanly possible to escape the cruelty of fate. Here nihilism is intertwined with fate. When man's law and natural law go on a collision course, it is the natural law, synonymous with moral authority and associated with divine justice, which wins. Who knows the exactitude of natural law?
In 'Far From the Madding
Crowd' Thomas Hardy, the Victorian novelist, describes the irony of fate when Fanny Robin ends up at All Souls Church for her wedding instead of All Saints Church where her lover Sergeant Francis Troy waits for an hour impatiently and then walks off in anger when finally Fanny, realising her mistake, runs up the aisle of All Saints Church. Fanny ends up dying in a poorhouse after giving birth to Troy's child. Troy indulges in so many misdeeds that ultimately do him in when Boldwood shoots him dead. What is apparent is not quite poetic justice but a sense of inevitable fate - for both Fanny and Francis.
The original sin committed by Adam and Eve is pretty much ascribed to fate also. They were given free will with a caveat. The consequences arose from the execution of that free will. Adam and Eve were punished by God because they disobeyed him. But it is questioned by some Christians whether the sin was bound to be committed by them so that there could be redemption later by the advent of Jesus Christ.
Omar Khayyam, the medieval Persian poet, wrote,
 The moving finger writes; and having writ
Moves on; nor all thy piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line
Nor all thy tears can wash a word of it
To this epicurean poet, everything is pre-ordained in this world. According to him, fate determines one's actions and the consequences despite any personal efforts to direct one's own actions. Fervent appeals to an unknown entity go unheeded. Even religious virtue is of no avail in this situation. The helplessness of human beings at the hands of fate is also portrayed by Omar Khayyam in the following quatrain.
'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
 In Homer's Iliad we are told that, Sisyphus, the king of Corinth, was punished in the underworld by having to push a practically immovable boulder to the top of a hill only for it to fall back again to the bottom and he was forced to do it all over again ad infinitum. This punishment was a consequence of Sisyphus snitching on Zeus for carrying off Esopus' daughter and the subsequent torture of Hades (the lord of the underworld) by Sisyphus. Was it Sisyphus' fate to which he had to succumb? He was punished because he did not conform to the rules of the gods. The gods made a decree which was executed. The gods thought that there is no other dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labour. Was the punishment written in Sisyphus's future? - only the gods knew. If the omnipotent god on Mount Olympus (Zeus) knows that one can't fight what is already decided for him, the human being is really helpless. On deeper analysis, did Sisyphus conquer fate, if only intermittently? The very fact that he did not give up his attempt and that he came down every time the rock rolled down only to heave it back up again tells us that he intended to prevail over his fate by determined action. Arguably fate can be surmounted, perhaps by ceaseless effort or by scorn.
Oedipus, the legendary king of Thebes, was the son of Laius and Jocasta. He fulfilled a prophecy made at his birth by unwittingly killing his father and marrying his mother - in what is now characterised by psychologists as Oedipus complex. Was it the fate of Oedipus? Was he targeted by the gods to commit that crime? Can these questions be addressed by the single general answer - fate?
The might of fate is also narrated by the following apocryphal story. A man in the ancient city of Baghdad was destined to die on a given date. He was not aware of it. He went to the town fair in Baghdad that morning. He happened to spot the agent of death there. He got scared. He returned soon to his home, borrowed a horse from his neighbor and rode as fast as he could to a distant city in the south. That evening he was met again by the agent of death in the remote southern city. The man was surprised to meet the agent of death again. The agent of death told the man that he was supposed to take the man's life on that day in the southern city and that he was surprised to see him in Baghdad that morning. What was the rush for the man to go to the southern city? Was it fate?
Alright, enough for narratives and fiction and let us examine it in detail. What is the counter force for fate? There is a school of thought which says "God does not make your destiny". Only your free will and actions are responsible for the consequences. You have to take the destiny into your hands. Events occur randomly and with your own determination or confusion you start moving in a given direction which is called fate by some but you are not destined that way from the beginning. Is this hypothesis valid? Is there a rational explanation for every event? Perhaps there is. But the epics and legends in Hindu mythology have myriads of incidents involving multiple people and can only be explained by fate since it is too much coincidence for all those events to happen. Let us examine some of those episodes in subsequent articles.
Sethuraman Subramanian
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