The Religeon of Panditu (Pandituism)

Pandituism, or the religeon of Panditu, is the religeon that follows the god Panditu, the god of Harmony and balance. He is a blue spotty & stripy Panda, but is also the world... So, he makes it up. The Blue Spots represent bodies of water, the blue stripes represent the areas where humans live. The white spots represent the Cities and towns, whereas the white stripes represent fields and agricultural land.

The Book of Rana is our holy book. Here is a taster of it, please go to one of our communication platforms to read the full version.

Chapter One: How Panditu came into the world.

When the world was new, when rocks still floated freely in the atmosphere, a bamboo shrub grew. But it was not like the bamboo we know today – it had many branches, with leaves on them – like what we would now call a tree. It was in the frozen plateau, which was not frozen at all at that time, but bare, only grass, the sun, and the one bamboo shoot. As many days passed by, the sun and the moon switching places on the horizon, the tree grew heavy and soon gave birth to a son.

The son was unlike anything ever seen before. Thicker. Blue. Stripes and spots covered his body. And it had no roots – he moved. And spoke softly, but harshly. He said: “My name is Panditu, I am a Panda, and the king of the world! He then threw himself on his surrogate mother, and ate her. Only when he had finished, did he realise what he had done. He felt great grief, and his tears splashed heavily to the ground. Where they landed, the earth froze – the grass withered, and died.

That made Panditu even more sad – so he decided to make life around him, to give him company. He somehow knew how to – he tore one of the blue spots from his fur, and threw it into the lake made by his tears. Out swam fish, waterbirds, and other kinds of waterfowl. He stopped, shocked, and stared from them back to his fur. But the fish swam away, happily slipping between a crack in the ice of the lake. Panditu’s sadness then turned to slight annoyance. He called to the fish and cried “Come back, come back! I am your creator, come back to me!”

He then spoke quietly with the birds, who, bewildered by their own sudden appearance, were seated on the ground. “Stay with me!” he called to them. “Keep me company! Do not leave me!”

But one by one, the birds found their wings, and flew away, across the lake, looking for fish to hunt. Only a lone otter stayed with him, the only creature far and wide, but Panditu did not see him. The Panda god stamped around the lake, shouting to the animals, “Do you fear me? Why? Why!” And his tears continued falling freely, the ground freezing everywhere around him, until only ice and snow lay around him as far as he could see.

Eventually, he arrived back at the place where everything started – and sank down next to the remains of the bamboo shoot, begging to be taken back into its soft embrace, but it was broken, destroyed by his own greed following his birth. That night, he cried himself to his first ever sleep.

When he awoke the following morning, he was greatly surprised to see the little otter which was still beside him. Panditu was overjoyed, and cried. “You have not left me! You will be my companion!” “I am afraid I cannot,” the otter responded. “You have frozen the land and killed the plants – I am cold, and will soon die. But I have advice for you: create a new species, bestow them with ethics, emotions, and language, thought and feelings. Call them homo, man, and sapiens, wise. Take my advice, and know it well.”

He then sank into the ground and died, his body cold as the boundless ice.

“Oh, what have I done!” Panditu howled. “I have killed my only loyal companion!” But he still followed the dead mammal’s instructions, and, painfully tearing two hairs from the blue parts of his fur, he wished the things that the otter had requested. He kept the hairs on his person, and travelled far away, until he found land that was not frozen, and did not carry the same ominous coldness as the frozen plateau. It was a place where his tears had flown down to form a river and widened into a harbour. On the far bank, where the river made a turn, on a small island, he carefully laid down the two hairs on the ground. Soon, two humans appeared. Panditu was overjoyed, he finally had the companions he could feel connected to, ask for favours and guidance from, and who could keep him company.

The two humans looked around, saw Panditu, and exclaimed, “Horrible and disgusting being! Quick! Escape!” So, instead of revering their creator. They fled.

Panditu was greatly saddened, beyond any measure he had been sad before. He buried himself under a mound of earth, and fell into a deep, mournful sleep.

Chapter 2:

Much to his astoundment, Panditu awoke, not in the hole in which he had buried himself, but sitting on fine upholstery, with a human waving a fan at him.

He looked around in awe, and noticed a human sitting upon a sandstone block, who was dictating words that busy scribes wrote on papyrus beneath his feet. Panditu, after having taken in the scene, moved, and motioned his stiff limbs to get up.

The fan-bearer and scribes, shocked, ran away, leaving simply the old man on the plinth.

“Oh Great Panditu!” He said with a voice a booming voice. “You have suffered great scorn from our ancestors, but we are your true followers! My name is King Sabert, and I am the king of this noble land between the ocean and the wide river Thal, your sanctuary, where we currently reside.”

Panditu did not know what to say. “How long have I slept?” he asked the king.

“Longer than my lifetime,” he said, smiling softly. “I found you as a boy, and that’s already a long, long time ago,”

“How did you know about my story?”

“It was passed down from my elders,” came the reply, “But I always thought that the concept was unjust. When I found you, I believed you dead. But I have learnt to trust my master.”

And the king bowed, and then climbed down from the sandstone plinth and bowed again.

Panditu was confused, and was still wondering how it all should be. Was it even real? Or just a cunning hoax played by his plagued mind? He wondered how these people lived, why they did not despise him, as their ancestors did. He therefore aroused himself to ask.

King Sabert was still standing, watching the Panda god with considerable interest.

“What would you like, my master?”

Master? Goodness, he thought. Finally, people are taking me for what I was meant to be…

“I would like to know why your people respect me. And how do you live?”

“Ah, you would like to have evidence of our loyalty?” The king replied. “Well, then come with me.”

Panditu followed King Sabert down from the island that they were still on, and entered a boat that was waiting for them.

Pandituism is also the state religeon of the Thalizar Empire