Elephants and the river in the sky

Varāhapurāṇa chapter 82: A "river of the sky" starts at the "ocean of the sky" and, being agitated by the elephant of Indra, falls at the top of mount Meru, where at the bottom it forms four great rivers...From "Indra as God of Fertility" 1916 article By E. WASHBURN HOPKINS, Professor in Yale University.

Basically a description of summer monsoon...

But why elephant?

Because Indian elephants mate during Indian monsoon season...

Which is why Indra, the thunder and rain god, rides on a white (cloud) elephant...

Articles about elephant calendar marker, India: "Musth", "Samantabhadra", "Modesty", "Ganesha"...

As for ocean (and) river in the sky (Okeanos Potamos 🙂)

The 340 BC Derveni papyrus which contains commentary on an Orphic poem by Anaxagoras, says this: "...It is unclear to the many, but quite clear to those who have correct understanding, that Oceanus is the [river in the] air". This river? 

I talked about this in my post "River in the sky"...

That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...

Elephant memory

 

This figurine depicts elephant headed Indian god Ganesha writing down the epic Mahabharata...Why?

Well considering that Ganesha was regarded as the god of knowledge and wisdom, who better to write down (preserve) one of the most important Indian epics?

But why was Ganesha considered to be the god of knowledge and wisdom? Well knowledge and wisdom is accumulated with experience. The longer one lives and learns the more knowledgable and wise one is...(At least in theory 🙂)

Now Indian elephants reach adulthood at 17 years of age, just like people...The life expectancy of the Indian elephants is about 60 years. Always has been...

While the human life expectancy in India was 25 years in the year 1800, and and is only today the same as the life expectancy of the elephants...

At the time when Indian religion was created, the human life expectancy was probably not higher than in 1800...Probably lower...

Which must have made people believe that elephants, because they were able to live almost three times longer than people, were three times more knowledgable and wiser than people...

Is this also why Ganesha was the god of knowledge and wisdom? 

Now elephants have big ears...Is this where the belief that the bigger the ears in a man the more knowledgable and wiser he is? 

Like Buddha for instance...

We know that the ancients, including Ancient Indians, believed that the ears were the seat of memory...

Which is why kids at school are pulled by the ears to "stimulate their memory"....

Is this why Ganesha was in charge of writing down (preserving) Mahabharata? Bigger the ears, bigger and better the memory...And these ancient epics were originally preserved through oral transmission, through people learning them by heart...

But because no man lived as long as elephants, and no man had ears as big as elephants 🙂, no man was as wise and had as good a memory as an elephant (you know elephant memory)...

Which is why it was Ganesha, god with elephant head (and most importantly elephant ears 🙂), that was charged with preserving Mahabharata for posterity...

Well at least this is what I think...