Recently I came across a book “The book of Rama” written by the famous mythologist Devdutt Patnaik. Devdutt has thought on various aspects of Ramayan and tried his best to find out the hidden facts about different tales. He himself doesn’t proclaimed that each and every analysis is correct but it is as per his views and understanding. However it has definitely given a thought to me.
Whenever we think about Ramayan different question come to our mind. What is Ram? Why Ram? Is this a true story? Is this just about a poem? And everyone has the different opinion about it. On the same line one of the questions came to my mind is “what can be the significance of the four brothers?”. Well the thoughts came after that are just random and it is nothing to insult anyone or there is no political intention behind it.
a) What can be the significance of the four brothers?”.
We all know that the vedic culture was mainly following a chaturvarna system. Where a role of a Brahman was to do a preaching, living for the cause of learning, spreading knowledge & to show a path of Karma to other varna. A role of a Kshatriya was to mainly protect all, Vaishya to look at business,farms & for a Shudra it was to serve all. Eventually everyone is ended in serving each other. Ramayan is a tale of a Tretayug where everything was supposed to be stable. It was a time where obeying rules was important to upheld Dharma. Here Dharma is the Manushya Dharma & not the religion which we follow today. It is the Manushya dharma which teaches a human how they are different than animals. It is about including everyone right from the strongest to weakest to form a society. Also , it was the time free from Jati & unhuman laws of recent era.
Chaturvarna was the model defined for the day to day life as we define processes or roles in the organization. It is for everyone to follow their duty so as for the success of the organization. These are the four pillars of the society and every pillar is so important that without existence of any one pillar entire society can collapse. If we consider these four brothers as a role model of Chaturvarna system then we can map each individual to each role.
Ram is there to show path to all. He is the one who is more knowledgeable. He is the one who sacrifices for the good of other. He is continuously taking knowledge from the other. Even at the end when Ravan was about to die and was in his pure state of mind, Ram has prayed for the knowledge. Throughout the Ramayan Ram spreads the knowledge through his behavior.
If we see Laxman throughout the Ramayan, he wants to follow Ram. He wants to protect Ram. When Ram chooses for vanvaas, Laxman is the one who decided to follow Ram to protect him in Jungle. If we consider Ram as a symbol of society then we can understand the role of a Kshatriya here.
Bharat is mainly running a business, business of Ayodhya. He knows that this is the kingdom of Ram and he is just an administrator of it. Whereas we do not know much about Shatrughna except that he was there to help Bharat. As there were no clashes and quarrels noted in Ayodhya it shows that it was because of Bharat and Shatrughna. It is all because of their pure duties towards Ayodhya.
Overall it is showing importance of unity. A power of belief and duties which has taken care of the king and kingdom not only for 14 years but even after it. It is all about a journey towards a Ramrajya and that is too with the help of all the four pillars of the society.
