The Birth of Religion

(This piece was developed from a mail I received a few years ago from a friend in Kerala.)

Religion today has become a major player in world politics. People are using the ‘Religion’ card everywhere to gain political advantage. From terrorists to local councillors, everyone is invoking religion to muster support. The actual role of religion in one’s life is gradually becoming irrelevant. Time is ripe, perhaps, to have a close look at religion in general, and history of religion in particular, to get a clear picture.

To understand religion, one must first understand legion. Before you ask why, let me remind you that everything has to have a root. Like beer. Or arrow. There is a school of thought that believes that legion is the root of religion. This is the school I attended once, albeit intermittently.

In Roman times soldiers were formed into legions. In those days men couldn't count too well. Thus ‘legions’ came to mean ‘many’, irrespective of the actual number of men in the Roman ‘Legion’. A ‘legionary’ was the leader of a ‘legion’. Why it would be so is one of those unsolved mysteries of history.

Legionnaire seems to be the French form of legionary, but it isn’t. It simply implies one belonging to a legion. The most famous Legionnaire of all times is of course Legionnaire Beau Peep. This little Beau Peep never had any sheep to lose. Thus when he lost sleep he couldn’t count sheep. Owing to his quaint French accent, one can imagine him saying "lost sheep" when referring to any vessel passing through the Bermuda triangle, but that is quite irrelevant to our serious discussion of today.

Legionnaires, too, sometimes had their legions to lead. They would lead until it was time to take French leave. Thus, as the French leaves piled up, a thorough record had to be maintained. This led to the birth of a study of legion in ancient Mesopotamia or thereabouts. All this study material was neatly stored in a folder marked Re: Legion. Needless to say, this led, albeit indirectly, to the birth of religion. Obviously, some scribe must have misspelled ‘Relegion’ when translating the folder from Latin. The rest, as they say, is history.

It is well known that Karl Marx described religion as the opiate of the masses. This assertion only reveals Marx’s pathetic lack of experience in the subtle nuances of opium based hallucinogens. In this respect one would do well to remember the not-so-famous saying of the other Marx, Groucho, "Legion is the Mass of the Opiates." There is no record of Groucho ever having said this, but who else could have made such a statement? This one small sentence draws at once a vivid and descriptive picture of the Roman Legion, the Chinese Opium War and Einstein’s Theory of Relative Mass Movement. If you ask how, well that’s another unsolved mystery.

Historically ‘hysteria’ is another word that can easily be linked to ‘mass’, ‘opium’ and ‘religion’. However no one has to date linked hysteria with legion. If we do so we get ‘stampede’ under Roman boots. That is not too significant by itself but if you only consider the undeniable fact that Roman cobblers made Roman boots then perhaps you see the light. If and when you do, you can explain it to me, I can’t make head or tail of all this.

Coming back to legions, legionnaires and legionaries, leghorn has absolutely nothing to do with legion. Yet legions had to be fed; as the well known adage states, you cannot fight on an empty stomach. So one can imagine legions of leghorns marching down the Roman trade routes, with their own legionaries perhaps, to be methodically converted to Chicken Sicilian. Until the advent of Bird Flu, at least.

Leg irons are another example of ancient Roman militarism. You have perhaps noticed that leg irons are nothing but legions with an ‘space’ and a ‘r’ within. Which is most interesting, to say the least. However all that is beyond the scope of our present discourse, so we shall move on to the next important item.

As we have already established, legions gave birth to religions, and thank God they did! Because religions gave birth to holidays. To think how many holidays would have been lost if it were not for religions, especially in India, makes one shudder in awe and bewilderment. And of course it goes without saying so I shall go without saying anything further.