BLUE IS DARK AND RELIGION IS IN A COMIC BOOK

VEDAS TO AMAR CHITRA KATHA

Colorfully: How we learnt our stories.

India’s ancient texts were scribed on Palmyra leaves. The ‘books’ looked like mouth-organs which opened from one side.

Picture of a Palmyra leaf by Zdenek Machacek on Unsplash.

The evolution of printing and media has led to most of them being transferred to books and electronic media.

These aren’t illustrated. Just word-pictures.Lord Krishna is described as sitting in the shade of the parijat (a heavenly) tree, Shyam/dark, sitting on a Hema-Simha-asana/a golden throne with a lions’ head, with Rukmini and Satyabhama, two of his consorts, on either side of Krishna/dark. Krishna by definition means “dark”

Sometimes the printed books have a picture on the cover. That’s a recent innovation, though.Some of them even have illustrations inside of the book.

The following is the cover of Srimad Bhagavadgita (Song Celestial, according to late Sir Edwin Arnold, who translated it into English).

Picture of Bhagvad Gita, version published by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)

In this picture, Lord Krishna, the charioteer, avatar of Lord Vishnu, is blue. Arjuna, the warrior, is supposed to be dark but he’s usually drawn as fair.

The ancient texts describe the Gods and clearly state that Lord Krishna was dark-श्याम।

Open up any Hindi grammar textbook and flip to the antonym list. Dark-श्याम is the opposite of श्वेत-White.

Lord Krishna is NEVER represented as dark. He’s blue. Never dark.

Why blue?

The texts described Lord Krishna as नील-मेघ-श्याम which is blue-cloud-dark, and the illustrators took the blue and ran with it.

A Kannada book salesman, G. K. Anantharaman, created 10 comic books based on the stories of Indian Mythology in 1965.

These were translated into English and became very popular.

Ananth Pai was brought in and he created a wonderful series and a great brand.

They were the Amar Chitra Katha series- the immortal picture stories.

Illustrations across the ACK series followed this pattern.

Lord Rama and Lord Krishna In ‘Vali’ and Pradyumna

Lord Rama, avatar of Lord Vishnu before Krishna, blue.

Lord Krishna was also blue. There are plenty of temples where there’s a blue statue of Lord Krishna.

Lord Shiva: usually a grayish blue. Lord Shiva is an ascetic God who resides on Mount Kailash.

He swallows some poison to save humanity and thus his throat is blue. He’s referred to as BlueThroat, Neel-Kanth नीलकंठ।

Lord Shiva’s never dark-with-blue-throat in pictures. That would be shocking. Sacrilege.

Lord Shiva would get angry. I mean, enraged. Seriously. The Gods are real for us.

The fisherman in the bottom left picture below, whose daughter the king wants to marry, is dark.

The daughter isn’t dark.

The daughter’s pretty, fair, and so beautiful the king wants to marry her, even though she’s a fisherman’s daughter.

I don’t know if the story would be appealing if she wasn’t drawn like that.

So, the fisherman is one dark skinned character.

The opposite of the Gods, the Devas, the Rakshasas are demons. They’re dark, too.

Like Asura, Dundubhi, who is challenging the Sea God.

Or Asura, Shambara, who’s kidnapping baby Pradyumna, to throw into the ocean. Pradyumna survives as he is swallowed by a fish which when caught reveals a live baby.

Pradyumna grows up and beats up the evil Shambhara.

Sugreev and Bali, the monkey brothers, are trying to catch the dark Asura, Mayavi.

Collage of dark characters in ACK comics. Asuras and poor people.

The monkey brothers are heroes, so they are fair. The Asura is dark.

I didn’t think of these characters as being dark, blue, fair, or whitewashed.

They were a ripping good read and they taught me more about Hindu Gods and Goddesses than any priest ever did.

In India, if you work in the sun, you’re dark. If you worked indoors, you were fair.

It isn’t just a color thing, it’s a profession thing too.

The illustrators were already working hard enough, making hundreds of panels.

ACK started in ‘65, well before computerized animation.

I never blamed them for making the heroes fair and the villains dark.

They weren’t required reading for us, like our bricks of text in books.

ACK was read for fun, and the more fun it was the more likely it was that kids would read and learn(and pay for copies)

Also, whenever I met someone who actually listened to the Vedas- shlokas in Sanskrit- they said that “Ananth Pai was true to the original”

It was convenient and easy to explain: good, bad or poor, and God.

If one of the Gods was written into the Vedas(our holy texts) as dark, the God would be painted blue.

An ACK comic a day is a great way for Indian children to learn about their heritage.

There are comics for all the religions. The ten Sikh Gurus have their own comic books. Here are two of them.

Author-owned copies of Sikh Guru ACK comics. Linked to currently available copies below.

There is an ACK comic on Jesus as well, though I never had this one as a kid. Never needed one, studied in a Christian Missionary school for 6 years! This one is from the Kindle e-book.

Kindle cover of Jesus Christ ACK comic.

Pictures were taken from the Srimad Bhagvad Gita ISKCON and Amar Chitra Katha books owned by the author, as below. Linked to currently available copies on the Net.

Pradyumna, son of Krishna

Vali: brother of Sugreev

Bheeshma: son of the Ganga

Guru Har Gobind:The saint-soldier who was the sixth Guru of the Sikhs

Guru Tegh Bahudur: Hind-di-chadar

Jesus Christ: taken from Kindle-ebook on Amazon.in

My photos are of comics bought in my childhood, over 35 years ago. They show the prices as ₹2.50 per copy. They are around ₹150 per copy now in bookstores. Kindle books are around ₹32.

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