Reading Diary A, Devee

For this reading diary I decided to read Nine Ideal Women: Sita and Promila by Sunity Devee provided free online.  I've noticed several differences between this telling of the Ramayana and the Public Domain version I read before.  This version seems more detailed and includes more dialogue between the characters, spending a lot of time on the characters and their relationships.  It provided more information on Sita's birth which was absent from the version I had been reading.

Section 1 and 2:  These scenes capture the birth of Sita, who, in the bigger picture, is plotted to be the downfall of Ravana.  The events that happen to Sita are directly caused by the fact that Ravana would not let the holy men travel his lands without providing tribute and thus Ravana caused his own end.  What's most interesting though is that Sita is unaware that her father found her while plowing his fields and that he and her mother automatically accepted Sita as their daughter and princess without a second thought!  These scenes seem to explain a lot more why such a life is given to Sita.

Section 6:  Something that called my attention was the description of Rama as the sun-prince and Sita as the Moon-princess, that had never been mentioned before and I thought it was an interesting way to sort of throw into the story the idea of fate, that the two were destined to be together in order to bring about the downfall of Ravana.  Their whole union was planned in time before their very existence!

(Birth of Sita)