Sunday, January 22, 2017

Reading Notes: Public Domain Ramayana, Part A

  • Beautiful temples, palaces, birds and flowers, lake
  • Solar Kings? Solar Dynasty?
  • Fire guards (people literally on fire or maybe had powers with fire?) around Maharajah Dasharatha's palace
  • Weird to sacrifice a living creature to get a son
  • Made horse walk around for a year before ritual
    • (later realized that it was given a year to be free with protection before the sacrifice)
  • All four of his sons (promised by the gods) was in fact one god born on Earth (like Jesus?) but in four parts to defeat another god
  • Ocean of Milk
  • Interesting that someone can be invulnerable to gods and demons but is totally vulnerable to humans and monkeys
  • Raining flowers
  • Men (2 of the sons and another) had to be sent to defeat a woman (how strong is she?)
    • She can throw boulders, so probably pretty strong
    • she could make stones rain
  • Sounded like she was defeated a little too easy though
  • Very powerful weapons appear when you need them (Harry Potter?)
  • Oh my gosh, a mother of 60,000 men?? (hopefully metaphorically and not actually)
  • Roar --> turn people to ash
  • People living for thousands of years
  • Takes forever to do anything in these stories
  • Water must flow over ashes for people to go to heaven (seems kind of silly)
  • "Ahalya" story is a poem (maybe could try that in some writing)
  • Why would you say when the curse could be broken? Wouldn't you want them to be cursed forever with no end in sight?
  • I would never want to get back together with someone that cursed me for years and years.
  • Could maybe tell a different version where she didn't get back together with her husband or he only cursed the trickery man and not his wife too
  • Rama knew he was going to love Sita before he even saw her, he only hear the bells around her feet (love at first sound?)
  • A bow so strong (and huge) that powerful men and gods can't even bend it
  • I like where men are given tests to see if they are worthy to marry the woman they are after
  • A possible really messed up ending: instead of the bow breaking, he shot off the arrow and it actually struck Sita
  • Weird to have so many weddings on one day
  • Could have a switch where Dasharatha names one of the ladies the new heir instead of Rama (his oldest son)
  • Probably just deny her wishes and let Kaikeyi poison herself instead of exile Rama

Bibliography

Public Domain Ramayana, link to the reading online.

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