Week 10: Reading Notes A/B

For this week I watched all the Epified videos on Krishna on the two playlists. Krishna is a god that was born into the mortal world. A cruel King named Kamsa basically tries to stop him from being born by killing all the babies that are born. He does this to 7 but on the 8th one Krishnas father swaps him with a girl so that when Kamsa comes he laughs asking if a girl is going to kill him. The girl transforms to Durga and reveals that his killer has already been born and would come to him when he was ready. As Krishna grows up he gets the label as a naughty child.

In the second part of the reading for this week we have assorted examples of a grown Krishna performing divine things. An example of this is how when Brahma stole his friends and the cows, Krishna remade them using himself. Another good example that I think I might write about is Krishna riding Hastin. Krishna manages to ride the bull by being nice and feeding it, not by sheer force like other people have.

Bibliography:
Picture Source
Part A videos
Part B videos

Week 9 Reading Notes: Epified A and B

For this week I chose to watch the first two playlists on the Epified Mahabharata playlists. I really liked the story telling in these videos as they were all very short and in everyday language so they were easy to understand. I watched them all on twice the speed as well because they had non-auto generated subtitles so I could just read and watch the picture for each little story. The expressions the characters had were also very insightful. I think specifically I want to go back and look at episodes 15 and 16 to write my story for. These two episodes deal with Drona and Drona training the Pandavas. 

Image of Drona

Source: Wikipedia

Bibliography: Epified Story 

Reading Notes: Mahabharata D

For the second part of this week's reading I think I am going to look at death in the Mahabharata which is everywhere in part D. We see some long forgotten plots like Amba's come to fruition. There were three main characters that I will focus to chose on this week. These characters are Abhimanyu, Krishna, and Drona.

Abhimanyu: The death of Abhimanyu was very tragic. He was first disarmed as he was so fearsome when he was armed that he could not be slain and he was blinded. After this Duhshasana leaps forward and bludgeons him in his face.

Krishna: Krishna's death is a lot more subtle than Abhimanyu's. It is not intentional. Krishna gets shot in the ankle by an arrow and dies. This is the one mortal spot he had, similar to greek mythology and the Achilles heel.

Drona: Drona's death is also tragic like Abhimanyu's. Drona is a great warrior and he has divine weapons like we say earlier and in the Ramayana. Still grieving over his son, Drona can not think to procure these weapons and instead charges at the other warriors and is slain that way.

Krishna's Death

Source

Source: PDE Mahabharata 

Reading Notes: Mahabharata Part C

In this set of reading notes I think that I am going to draw mainly from Life in the Forest. In this section the Pandava princes walk further into the forest where Draupadi followed them. A brahmin then tells the rajah to call on a sun god. He does in a prayer and then Surya appears. He gives him a copper pot that has infinite food in it. For twelve years the Pandavas lived in the forest.  One day Krishna comes to visit the forest.

Surya the Sun God

Source

Mahabharata C: Source

Reading Notes: Ramayana Part B

Battle with Khara:

• Kind of a sinister setting. Animals howling with a red sun that gets swallowed.
• Rama wants to fight them alone.
• Laksmana and Sita go and sit in a cave
• The Rakshashas appear and come after him looking like a black cloud because they are so dense
• Thousands of weapons are thrown at him as he starts shooting flaming arrows.
• Rama gets a celestial weapon and slays Dushana.
• Sita comes out of hiding and kisses Rama

The Golden Deer:

• Maricha takes the form of a golden deer
• Maricha sings to Sita and has her convince Rama to go follow the deer

The Chase:

• Rama chases a deer and shoots it through the heart
• Maricha comes out of the deer and in Rama's voice calls out to Sita
• Sita gets scared and asks for help to check for what Rama is doing
• Sita gets mad because Lakshmana will not leave her side to go check on Rama
• Lakshmana gives in and goes to check on Rama

Maricha as a Golden Deer

Courtesy of Wikimedia

Source: PDE Ramayana 

Reading Notes PDE Ramayana-A Week 3

• 2 kingdoms
• Koshala: King Dasharatha
• Mithila: King Janaka
• Capital of Koshala was Ayodhya. Big grand city lots of temples and stuff. Lots of wildlife
• King of Koshala sad because no sons from his three queens
• Horse sacrifice. Horse wandered around for a year and came back and along with 21 other animals was sacrificed
• Gods promised 4 sons to king
• One of the sons born is a reincarnation of Vishnu and was born in order to defeat the king of the rakshasas Ravana. Vishnu born as Rama. Brahmin recognizes this and tells the king
• A wise sage comes and asks Rama to fight against the rakshashas. Reluctantly, Dasharatha agrees
• Rama fights Thataka and cuts off her arms. She turns invisible and then starts throwing boulders so he shoots her with an arrow.
• Suddenly rakshashas appeared and attacked Rama but he killed them all.

Source: PDE of Ramayana, Multiple Authors

Battle of Lanka

Source: Wikimedia

Week 2 Reading Notes: Jataka Anthology

The common theme in all of these stories seems to be the various forms of Buddha's reincarnations and the different lessons that he learns in each one. In this story, Buddha comes back as a monkey and gets real big and strong and is king of the monkeys. The crocodile's wife wants to eat his heart. The male crocodile caves in and says ok I'll try to get him to eat even though he lives on dry land. The crocodile then plunges him into the water and when the monkey is like hey why are you doing this the crocodile explains to him that he is going to bring his wife the monkey's heart. The monkey then tricks the crocodile into believing that he keeps his heart in a tree and makes the crocodile take him to a tree, where he promptly climbs up it and tells the crocodile that he was lying.

Crocodile looking up at the monkey after being clowned

Pixabay

Eastern Stories and Legends by Marie L. Shedlock, The Crocodile and the Monkey's Heart