Humans have worshipped the Sun from time
immemorial. The Sun is the giver of life through light and heat. It is hence
not surprising that solar symbolism should find its way into literary sources
from around the world.
The famous opera
Swan Lake is but a parallel of the love story of King Pururavas & Urvasi.
Both versions are poignant love stories replete with Solar Symbolism, in which
the hero wanders in search of his lost love.
The Swan
Lake:
Briefly, The
Swan Lake is a tragic love story of Prince Siegfried and Princess Odette. The
couple are cursed by the sorcerer Rothbart to be a swan by day and a human by
night. The curse of Rothbart could only be broken by true love. Rothbart plays a further trick upon Siegfried
by creating a doppelgänger of Odette called Odile (the Black Swan). Mistaking Odile for Odette, Siegfried pledges
his love to Odile, dooming Odette. In the end, Siegfried locates Odette at the
lake. The story often ends with the two dying in a lake.
The Story of
King Pururavas & Urvasi
In this story,
Urvasi agrees to stay with Pururavas as long as he appears before her in his
royal robe. Urvasi has two pet goats that are tied to her couch. Seeing that
she has been gone from the celestial world for a very long time, the Gandharvas
play a trick upon the couple by kidnapping Urvasi’s goats. When Urvasi cries
for Pururavas’s help, he steps up, but without his royal robe, thus breaking
his promise to Urvasi. Having lost Urvasi, Pururavas wanders across the
battlefield of Kurukshetra until one day, when he locates her in the form of a
swan in a lake. At the lake, Urvasi promises to return to him for one night
every year.
Swan Lake Symbolism:
The name Odette
in Swan Lake means prosperity. Siegfried means victor. Rothbart literally means
Red Beard. In Sanskrit, Rakta Bhasa, Rakta means red, and Bhasa means rays. I feel
comfortable in associating Rothbart or Red Beard with Red Rays (Rakta Bhasa) of
the fiery Sun. Similarly, to me, the name Siegfried seems to be a version of
the Sanskrit SvarVid, meaning the finder of light. Odette could be a version of
the Sanskrit word Vidyota, meaning illuminating or vidyotita, the enlightened. Symbolically,
wealth is represented by light. Wealth, in the context of this story, is true
knowledge. Hence, Odette, the wealthy, is Vidyotita, the enlightened.
If Rothbart is
the Sun, then Siegfried-SvarVid has to be the moon. The moon is the one who
seeks light (Odette). At night, the moon is fancied to take a human form, where
he rules the night sky with his brilliant light. But the light that he has is
but a reflection (Odile) of sunlight. Realising his mistake, the moon goes in
search of his true love and finds her in the form of a swan swimming in a lake.
Commonly, throughout the world, swans are used to represent stars. In this
context, Odette (the shining light) in the form of a swan is none other than
Alderbaran (Alpha Tauri), the Indian Rohini Star. She is the wealth/light
sought by the moon as the moon becomes exalted when he meets this star in
Taurus. The lake in which she is found is the sunlight. Since the moon sets
during the day, metaphorically, the moon (Siegfried-SvarVid) dies with the star
Rohini (Odette) in the lake (sunlight).
King
Pururavas & Urvasi Symbolism:
Urvasi comes
down to earth and stays with King Pururarvas. The legend states that Pururavas
was self-effulgent (sva-dṛk, self-enlightened). The Devas created him to kill
Dasyus on the battlefield. This symbolically associates Pururavas with the moon
and Dasyus with darkness. The moon, the ruler of the night sky, kills darkness
with his brilliance. The moon rules winter and gains power in winter. During
the winter months, it is imagined that the star Rohini, in the form of Urvasi,
descends to be with the moon. The two goats tied to her couch are the twin
Ashwins. The Gandharvas are often perceived as the guardians of Vidhya (divine
light). At the commencement of summer, they kidnap the twin Ashwins. The Sun
becomes exalted when it enters the Ashwini star in the Aries Constellation.
When the summer light in the form of the twin Ashwins is stolen, King Pururavas
(the moon) loses his royal robe (moonlight). The kidnapping of the twin goats
then forces Urvasi to follow them sunward. Having lost Urvasi, Pururavas, the
moon searches for his lost love. He wanders across the vast battlefield of
Kurukshetra, a metaphor for the celestial sphere and more commonly the Orion
Belt. He, as the seeker, must cross the field to locate her - the light.
The light of knowledge doesn’t come automatically to a seeker. The person who
needs knowledge/light must seek it. He finds her in the form of a swan swimming
in a lake. Again, the water of the lake is the sunlight, and the swan
symbolically identifies Urvasi with the star Rohini. The moon becomes exalted
when it is conjunct with Rohini in the constellation Taurus. Unlike Odette,
Urvasi promises to return to Pururavas for one night in a year. Figuratively,
she promises to return to the moon every winter or when the moon enters Taurus.
Common
Lesson:
Both the Swan
Lake and the story of King Pururavas & Urvasi poetically show us that just as at daybreak the
queen star Rohini, representing all other stars, enters the solar light and is
followed by the self-sacrificing moon of the new moon day, to become one with
the Sun, so should we strive to identify ourselves with the Supreme Sun via self-sacrifice
(saranagathi). Dying in sunlight, i.e., the moon and the stars losing their
glow in the sunlight, is akin to us losing our false ego that we are
independent when we perform saranagathi.
The moon in these legends is the mortal soul because the moon waxes and
wanes. The waxing and waning of the moon represent cycles of births and deaths.
By seeking the divine light (Rohini), the moon learns to identify itself with
the Supreme Sun by merging into the solar light (lake) in which it finds the
divine Rohini (swan).
The moon needs his love (the light). The moon loses a part of himself
when the one he loves the most vanishes from him. For what is the moon without
moonlight? To regain his truest form, he has to go in search of his lost love
across a vast, deserted field (cosmic plane-Orion Belt). It is the Moon(soul)
as the seeker of light (Siegfried-SvarVid-Pururavas), who must wander across the vast celestial
field in search of the divine light (Odette-Urvasi).
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