As you sow so shall you reap
Amid this world
Of toil and sin
Your head grows bald
But not your chin.
----- A billboard slogan in the 1950s for Burma-Shave
It was the 1950s in the US. The shaving cream company (Burma Shave Co) was promoting its new product “brushless cream”. There was no need to use a brush and the cream squeezed out from the can at the press of a button. The company wanted to have a good marketing programme. It rented several billboards tenths of a mile apart on the two-lane highways, split the slogan printed above into four segments and painted them in four consecutive billboards so that travellers speeding on the highway could still get the full message.
What is the message? On the surface it appears to be the inevitability of hair growth on the chin while the face was extending its rule over the head by taking away the hair on the head (in simple language, the head growing bald). The company goaded balding young men into shaving with Burma-Shave shaving cream by comparing the feel of the bristles on their faces (by their wife/fiancée) to walking bare-foot through some thistles.
Peering a little deeper into the slogan we might discern a subliminal message. Most of humanity toils. Many people commit sin. But the general outcome for all is that there are certain paradoxes in life and one of those is that hair falls out from the head where it is needed but grows on the face where it is an inconvenience at best and a nuisance at worst. The shaving cream company advised us to have a detached outlook on the outcome and face (pardon the pun, please!) the situation using the right shaving cream.
If we take the proverb on the title line as a mathematical theorem then the approach of the Burma Shave Company can be described as a derivative of the theorem:
Even if you didn’t sow you shall reap (derivative #1), i.e., you did not intend hair growth on the face but it does grow anyway.
There are other variations of the theorem. Let us illustrate one with the following case. There was a butcher (kasAppuk kadaikkArar in Thamizh) and a milkman living as neighbours. The milkman was very religious, used to contribute some of his milk to the temple, worship at the temple every day and give whatever he could to charities. In spite of all this he was poor and miserable.
The butcher, on the other hand, never used to visit the temple or give anything to charities (not even any advice!) but was quite prosperous and happy. The milkman, after being patient for a long time, couldn’t take it any more. One day he went to the temple and cried his heart out to the deity by comparing his lot with that of the butcher. That night God appeared in his dreams and told him the reason for the predicament in which the milkman found himself: the butcher does not “bug” Him as much as the milkman does! Lesson: Do what you have to do.
Here is something that the milkman missed. He forgot the advice that AuvaiyAr, the saint poetess of yore, gave:
nanRi oruvarkkuc ceidakkAl annanRi enRu tharungol ena vENdA
(when you do a good deed do not expect any immediate return for
it). This can be described in terms of our starting theorem as: You may not reap even if you sowed (derivative # 2). At least not right away. In addition, AuvaiyAr declared,
seithI vinaiyirukkath deivaththai nondhakkAl
eidha varumO irunidhiyam---vaiyaththu
aRumpAvam enna aRindhu anRidArkkinRu
veRumpAnai pongumO mEl?
AuvaiyAr, in the above verse, points out the futility of appealing to God for relief from one’s misery when one probably carries the baggage from his/her past sins. She exhorts the individual to fill the “merit pot” with good deeds since only a pot filled with water (and not an empty one) will boil (when heated). So the message here is: “accumulate
puNyam” for cashing at a later date (not sure when!).
“padhavi pUrva puNyAnAm” (current status depends on previous good deeds) is a common maxim to keep in mind.
Let us now look at another derivative of the theorem, which is:
As you sowed you do reap (derivative # 3). This is actually only slightly different from the main theorem itself in that the cause and effect span more than one birth. One classic example of this is the case of
Sisyphus, the Greek mythological figure of Corinth. He was sly and evil. He betrayed the secrets of the gods and chained the god of death so that the deceased could not reach the underworld thereby causing havoc in the underworld activities. He was severely punished by the gods for this. In the realm of the dead he is (apparently still) forced to roll a boulder against a steep hill, which tumbles back down when he reaches the top. The whole process starts all over again, lasting all eternity. Is there any more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless
labour?
Another example of derivative # 3 of the theorem is our hero of the epic poetry,
SilappadhikAram, KOvalan who got falsely accused of thievery while trying to sell one of the anklets (cilambu) of his wife and ordered executed by the Pandyan king
Nedunchezhiyan. The city goddess (dhEvadhai) of Madurai told
KaNNagi (Kovalan’s wife) that the execution of Kovalan was pre-ordained as a result of his misdeed (in accusing an innocent merchant) in his previous birth which resulted in the murder of the merchant. The widow of that merchant cursed that those responsible for her misery shall attain the same predicament that she was experiencing. That curse was responsible for Kovalan’s murder and the resultant misery of
KaNNagi.
That the evil deeds committed in a previous birth would follow the person predictably and punish, irrespective of the person’s virtue in the current birth, is one of the three dictums declared by
ILangO adigaL (author of SilappadhikAram). The dictum is:
‘Uzhvinai uruththu vandhu Uttum’ (Fate shall prevail
unfailingly).
VaLLuvar, the saint-poet of the sangam period in Thamizh literature, declared that prosperity of an individual depends not as much on his education and knowledge but very much on his fate (read: deeds done in one’s previous birth). According to him,
‘nanRu Am kAl nallavAk kANbavar anRu Am kAl allaRpaduvathu evan?”(KuRaL: 379)
(When Fate smiles at people, they enjoy all the good things; but when it frowns they agonise so much wanting to run away from the
misery).
We now come to the fourth derivative of the theorem, which can be stated as:
Your children shall also reap what you sowed (derivative # 4). This pronouncement is a strong deterrent to those inclined to commit sin. It is generally true that many people refrain from committing sin out of fear that they will suffer in their future births as well as their children would also experience the evil consequences. One of the Thamizh adages holds,
‘mAthA pithA pAvam makkaL thalaiyilE’ (the sins of the parents will be visited upon their
children).
Structure of DNA
There is a statement in the Bible, “Do not sin or up to seven generations your progeny will be cursed or punished.” Another is, “Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 34:7). Is there any truth to these prophecies? How does a sin committed by somebody survive like a primordial poison to infect succeeding generations? These are faith-based convictions and no rationalisation is possible. Perhaps the evil that one does has an effect on one’s genes
http://www.chennaionline.com/science/BiotechCorner/08aug-bio02.asp
making the genes undergo a mutation which gets perpetuated in several generations down the line. We will examine that possibility (a stretch of Lamarckian genetics) in a subsequent article.
Sethuraman Subramanian
