Week 14, Reading Diary B, Neogi

The Fatal Oath
About the goddess Sashthi, another journey of self discovery where the main character searches for the goddess, finds her, and everything becomes well again.

Sacrificed to Varuna
A Brahman sacrifices his grandson to Varuna so that they can get water for their well/pond, then by praying ardently to Sashthi, the daughter-in-law regains the sacrificed child.

The gift of Joya
A father commits some psychotic acts against his son in order to try and prove the falsity of his wife's deity.  However the goddess passes every test.

Saved from the Cat
Another about goddess Sashthi and her ability to save people.

The wife Who Use to Eat the First Morsel
So apparently in this fable, the gods were upset with a woman because she always ate the first morsels that were suppose to be given to them so the gods never let her children live past the age of the cradle.  The mother-in-law fixed this.

The Wife who Cooked Beef
in this a servant kills a calf for meat and her mistress cooks it unaware it is beef, when she finds out, she cannot serve it and throws it out and then after sacrificing to the gods she reanimates the cow.

The Banished Girls
This is just a repeat of "The Pir's Power" which places the girls in opposite positions and excludes the father Brahmin from the later part of the story.

Sashthi

Week 14, Reading Diary A

The Gift of the Ascetic
A story about a king that is childless and in order to have children makes a deal with a yogee who requests that one of his children shall be his. Reminds me of Rumplestiltskin. In the end the prince that is taken ends up beheading the yogee during a sacrificial ceremony after which he was married to the young princess who was being held with him and they lived happily ever after.

The Sun’s Twin Sons
A pure woman, in a difficult circumstance, promised to wed the sun should he appear for her. He appeared and when she refused to appear he wed her spirit. Then she had two children and without a flesh and blood husband. Her children turned into blood during the day and human by night so that she poured her children into a tree during the day. They required 17 plums and plum leaves and rice and other things fit for gods from travelers.

The Consequences of Generosity
A devout woman lends her image of Narayana to her friend the milkmaid, after doing so the devout woman and her husband become very poor and are not recognized by any of their friends or family. They spend a year in poverty and then when the year it up the devout woman chastises all her friends and family for treating her and her husband horribly during the year of poorness.

The Brahman’s Ban
This is the story of when a Brahman turns Indra into a cat for twelve years because Indra insulted him. Then Indra’s wife lives with him and begs a boon of the goddess Kalika that she should let them sleep deeply throughout the whole twelve years.

The Pir’s Power
Basically this is the story of how easily a god can give and take away, flighty creatures.

The Gander-Eater
In this a young boy steals a gander from the king’s aviary and the king finds out a sends him to prison. The mother of the boy prays for her sons release. The boy ends up being released and engaged to the king’s daughter and becomes the heir to the kingdom.

gander

Week 13, Reading Diary B

So for my second reading I"m actually reading Neogi's "Sacred Tales", which are really quite interesting!!

The first tale is about the Manasa ceremony where the goddess Padma and her reptilian brood, as all her children are snakes.  A young wife of a farmer is sad because she has no family to return to for holidays.  She finds some young koi fish in a small puddle and pick them up and take them home. These fish turn into snakes and she takes care of them.  For this care they take care of her and in the end earn a place for her in the kings castle as an almost royal family member.

The second is the Savitri Ceremony in which a married woman places an earthen jar at the foot of a banyan tree and Savitri is suppose to animate it.  If the woman does the ceremony right, she will never lose her husband much like Savitri when she followed death when he tried to take her husband away.

The third is the Itu Ceremony.  The tale associated with this showed how by worshipping Itu he could provide wealth and happiness, but if they forgot to worship him they would hit rock bottom and be back right where they started before worshipping him.

Manasa

Week 13, Reading Diary A

So originally I was going to read some of the comics for this week's readings and next weeks, but unfortunately I think I won't be able to go to campus so I'm doing some free online readings instead.  This reading diary is continuing my last reading diary about the gods and goddesses.

Surya.

The lord of light, born of Dyaus and Prithwi, marries Sangna.  She tries to leave him because he is too bright, so he vows to never show his full brightness to her again.

Waruna.

A king asks for a son from Waruna, and promises the sons life as a sacrifice to him.  The son instead finds a Brahmins son who sings praises of the gods and then Waruna grants them all a long happy life.

Ushas.

This is the wife of Agni, she drives her chariot and brings light and good thoughts to all of men.  She loves to wander and to bring her light everywhere.

Indra.

Story of the fight between Indra and Ahi. Ahi is jealous of Indra and creates a citadel and spells that Indra’s rain will not leave the clouds.  Ahi is no match for Indra and Indra crushes him and brings back the rain.

Soma.

Creates a great draught of liquid that is loved by all gods and the children of men.  Was taken from Indra and put on Earth but he grew evil and caused men to do mad things and tried to take someones wife.

Brahma.

In this story Brahma is trying to make a sacrifice but can’t without his wife. SO he sends Indra to get him another wife causing his first wifes anger and curses.

Wishnu.

Wishnu marries Laxmi after she brought forth the gods physician from the milky sea to save the gods from the Asuras.  Wishnu was seen as the greatest because he was the best to greet the son of Brahma when he came to decide which god was the greatest.

Siwa.

The god of light, one of the three creators and destroyers. However this is more about Uma, his wife.  She died once, then went through challenges to marry him again, then she gained the name of Durga after defeating the Asura named Durg.

Ganesh.

Sprang from Siwa as the god of wisdom.  However as a babe his head was sliced off so Siwa replaced it with an elephant’s head an he had an elephants head the rest of his life.

Laxmi

Week 12, Reading Diary A, Krishna

This week I am reading about the gods more fully with a focus on Krishna again.  I'm reading Tales of Ancient India.

Krishna.

In this Krishna is again the focus, however it is interesting to note that this book shows the beginning of Kans as an evil ruler. So evil that when he was a babe he would throw his playmates off mountains, he would even crawl up people and strangle them with his arms. He caused his entire kingdom to basically wither up and die.  He brought demons into the land.  So bad that the gods begged for help from Vishnu and were reborn as mortals in the kingdom and that Vishnu himself would be born again as Krishna to defeat Kans.

After this then follows the regular turn of events and Krishna grows up, steals the milk, and fights the demons.  Then he went to Mathura and slew Kans and performed his funeral rights and all was well!

Krishna

Week 11, Reading Diary B, Krishna

This is the second half of the reading for Sister Nivedita's book "Cradle Tales" about Krishna.

Return to Mathura

• Kansa the Tyrant invites Krishna and Bolarama to fight in a tournament
• Krishna and Bolarama fight all the wrestlers and win
• Krishna grabs Kansa and kills him and all his brothers
• Krisna and Bolarama reunite with their mother and father

Charioteer of Arjuna

• This is the story of Arjuna and Krishna
• Krishna becomes Arjuna's friend
• Helps Arjuna defeat the Kuravas Brothers

The Lament of Ghandari

• Duryodhana's mother comes forth to grieve
• asks Krishna and curses him at the same time
• Krishna thanks her and tells her the truth she already knows

The Doom of the Vrishnis

• This is a story where the rumor of a kingdoms end actually causes the end
• the curse of Duryodhana's mother comes true
• Krishna leaves to the forest and never returns again

Krishna and Arjuna

Week 11, Reading Diary A, Krishna

This week I'm reading from Sister Nivedita's book "Cradle Tales" and the tales she has written about Krishna.

The Birth of Krishna

• krishna is the twelfth child of Vasudeva and Devaki, prisoners of the king.
• Krishna is switched at birth with a farmers daughter

The Divine Childhood

• Krishna has great strength
• kills many demons
• has strange skills like turning rice into jewels

Krishna in the Forest

• All the commoners have love for Krishna
• Krishna likes to play games with the Gopis
• Krishna kills more demons

The Dilemma of Brahma

• Brahma tests Krishna to see if he is god or human = definitely divine

The Serpent Kaliya

• Poison lake of Kaliya
• Krishna brings his friends back to life with his tears
• banishes Kaliya from the lake

The Lifting of the Mountain

• Krishna says worship of Indra is an old custom
• Indra gets mad and sends down a torrent of rain
• Krishna picks up mountain and shelters the town

Krishna

Week 10, Reading Diary A, Shiva

This week, following the reading guide that I made for myself, I read Nivedita's Cradle Tales on Shiva.

Shiva, The Great God.
This story really describes how Shiva looks, the beggar in simple clothes holding his beggar bowl and trident.  He is in eternal meditation up on his mountain peak in the Himalayas with his one possession , his old bull, Nandi.  His role as the creator and the destroyer, two sides of one stone. He welcomes the disabled, crippled, hunchback, and he wears the rejected snakes upon his neck.

Sati, The Perfect Wife.
This is another version of the story of Sati, Shiva's wife.  This one was quite different from Devee's version because in this one, Shiva offends Duksha before he is married to Sati and when Sati marries Shiva, Duksha tells her to never return.  However she does return for the worship party and kills herself in shame of her father, which is much the same.  Vishnu saves the world by chopping up Sati's corpse so that Shiva would return to his deep meditations.

The Tale of Uma Himavutee.

This is the tale of Sati reborn.  Sati is reborn as the princess Uma daughter of the great king of the himalayas, whose love for Shiva is why Uma chose him as her father.  Uma was very beautiful and once again thought only of Shiva for her husband.  The gods even tried to help her in that the god Love shot Shiva with an arrow infused with love and desire.  But Uma's beauty alone could not make the great god forget Sati and therefore she went to a hermitage, wore simple clothing, and ate little food and with this sacrifice Shiva finally came for her.

Shiva

Week 9, Reading Diary A: Sakuntala

I read another part of Sunity Devee's book "Nine Ideal Indian Women"  this chapter was titled "Sakuntala".

This chapter is about the birth and life of Sakuntala who was conceived deceitfully between a fairy from the heavens and a mooni named Vishwamitra.  When Sakuntala was born her mother left her in the forest and she was raised by birds and eventually given to the mooni Kanva and his sister who adopted Sakuntala.  Sakuntala was raised as a hermits daughter and she learned to talk to the animals and grow the flowers that grew by their home.  One day the Maharaja Dashmanta came strolling by her garden while hunting for deer and saw Sakuntala working in her garden, he approached her and they fell in love.  He spent time with her at her home and then married her and impregnated her.  Then not too soon after he left to go back to rule his kingdom.

While dreaming of her new husband, Sakuntala was so distracted that she ignored a hungry hermit and he cursed her that the person she was dreaming of would forget her.  So Dashmanta forgot her, he never sent an escort to bring her to his palace.  Then eight months later as she is nearing her son's due date she and some of her family travel to Dashmanta's palace and confront him and he again says he does not know her or remember her.

Four years go by and by now Dashmanta remembers his wife but cannot find her.  Then one day he finds his son in a clearing playing with a tiger cub and follows him back to his mother Sakuntala.  They reunite and become one of those happily ever after couples.

Sakuntala

Reading Diary B

The second reading of Sunity Devee's "Nine Ideal Indian Women" including the stories of Sati and Uttara from the Mahabharata.

Sati

This is a story of true love once again.  Sati is among many daughter of a powerful Maharaja who marries his many daughters to gods.  Sati chooses Mahadeva as her husband, the creator and destroyer, as her husband.  However her father does not approve because although he is the most powerful, Mahadeva owns next to nothing but an ox to ride on.  He is the beggar god, the spiritual one with the third eye that can see the future.  Sati weds Mahadeva and becomes supremely happy with him and enjoys their marriage, but her father still hates him and thus intentionally does not invite Mahadeva to a prayer-party he throws to show him a lesson.  Sati goes anyways and when her father rages at her she turns his head into a goats head and then sheds her mortal body in shame of her father.  Sati dies and Mahadeva is enraged and nearly destroys the world. Eventually through meditation he comes to find Sati’s soul and then they are together again.

Uttara

This story is about the child-wife of Abhimanyu, son of Arjun, descendent of Pandu. She was found durng the last year of the Pandu brother’s exile, a young and bright princess.  Arjun wished to wed her to his son to become his daughter and eventually carry on his line through his son.  They wed and were happy, Uttara always playing with her toys and Abhimanyu her playmate and love.  They came to love each other greatly and when Abhimanyu died in battle, only the life of their child inside her kept her from joining him.  She stayed on earth in order to take care of her son who would sit on the throne as the only living heir of the Pandu brothers.  Then finally the day came when Uttara rejoined her husband in heaven.

(Uttara and Abhimanyu)

Reading Diary A

I read more stories from Mahabharata (Nine Ideal Women: Savitri and Damayanti by Sunity Devee)  by just as I did for the Ramayana.  Again I was not surprised to find more stories of great and beautiful women.


Savitri

This story is about the princess of Abunti and her everlasting love for her husband. One day siting by the edge of the river she sees a man, Satyaban, and instantly they fall in love. They fall so far in love that Savitri has no other choice than to marry him, even though he is destined to die in one years time. She shows her love for him time and time again, and when the King of Death comes to steal Satyaban from her, she proves her love once more. She proves that no matter what she will stick by his side, because he is all that she could ever want from life, he is all she cares about, and without him, she is nothing. She saves her husband from this untimely death and they live on through their lives as they should, happily married for forever and always.

Satyaban and Savitri

Damayanti

This story reminds me of the Pandavas brothers from before as a beautiful princess weds a wonderful king. They have two children and are very happy and the gods are happy for them because it is true love. However one man is not and uses the kings brother in order to take everything from him that he owns, his entire kingdom is lost in a game of dice! Damayanti follows her husband into his exile and loves him just as much as when he was king. He thinks otherwise and leaves her in order to give her a better life. In the end Damayanti throws a Swayamvara in order to entice her husband to come back to her and thus he does. Then after many years apart he has finally learned to play dice and wins back his kingdom from his brother and all is well.

Reading Diary B

So finally in these scenes the Pandavas brothers reach the end of their fourteen years of exile and wish to receive back their kingdom.  In order to do this, they approach Hastinapur with a small army, however they send a messenger of peace.  However Duryodhana refuses to accept anything except war or defeat due to his hatred, jealousy, and his own evilness.  He even thought to capture Krishna against his will even though he had offered some of his own troops to help Duryodhana's army.

61. Bhishma Falls
In this scene Bhishma is taken down by Arjuna with a volley of arrows.  Arjuna used a charioteer who was born a woman but became a man, which he knew Bhishma could not fight.  However Arjuna was not happy with killing the man he once called "father" , for they were very close when Arjuna was younger.  However Bhishma finally fell and in his absence Drona takes command of the army.

63. Abhimanyu and Jayadratha

In this scene Abhimanyu, Arjuna's son, is killed by Jayadratha and due to this Arjuna vows that he would kill Jayadratha before the end of the next day.  The entire next day Arjuna searched for Jayadratha with Krishna as his charioteer, they drove onward all day and eventually in the last rays of sun that day Arjuna found Jayadratha protected by Karna. By a trick of Krishna's design, Arjuna was able to bypass Karna and kill Jayadratha by way of cutting off his head.

So on and so the battle raged, Drona was lost to the battle, and the Pandavas won back their kingdom as was bound to happen.  Eventually after many visits to the battlefield, Bhishma finally lets himself die after providing advice to the Pandavas while awaiting his death.  Krishna too eventually fell to his death after being shot in the foot by an arrow and his city was swallowed up by the sea.

Death of Krishna

Reading Diary A

Wow, so much has happened in the Mahabharata that it's almost hard to be able to remember the details of each encounter!  As I am a little behind on the reading I've covered a little bit different amount of reading in order to catch up to where I should be.  As such I'd like to cover a couple of the stories that I found to be the most prominent to me.  Something that I've noticed in the Mahabarata is the occurrence of individual adventures of the Pandu brothers, such as when Bhishma married the she-demon and went to live with her for a while, or such as when Arjuna exiled himself for twelve years and came back with another wife.

27. Wife of the five Pandavas

I thought this was really interesting, not just because she was destined to be the wife of all five men, but because they seemed to be really okay with the five of them all sharing the same woman. My interest was really piqued at the way that the brothers even had rules and that there were no mention of jealousies between the brothers when one of the five was with her.  It's a little hard for me to understand how a woman could have five husbands!  Not only that but Draupadi's father actually was okay with the fact that she was marrying five men!

37. The Gambling Match

So this scene was the hardest for me to read, because not only did Yudhishthira agree to gamble knowing that he didn't know how, but he also agreed knowing full well that Shakuni did not gamble fairly.  Then while gambling, Yudhishthira knowingly gambled away all of his kingdom, his brothers, himself, and then the last straw of gambling away their wife Draupadi!  Could he really be so stupid as to not see the plot of Durodhana in this?  It was really hard for me to read knowing how stupid it seemed!

40. The Second Match

Alright, so not only did Yudhishthira lose everything the first time and then get his freedom back through his wife, but he stupidly agreed to a second gambling match!  This time he lost everything again and thus had to go into exile with his brothers and wife for twelve years in the forest!!  Who chose this guy to be king again?

After all this the Pandavas and their wife entered the forest to live with the sages in rags and with only an everful pot of food to keep them from becoming hungry.  While in exile Duryodhana tried to spy on them causing another of his failures where he was defeated by the gandharvas so that the Pandavas had to come rescue him.  This caused Duryodhana to become depressed and he vowed to let himself die for his failure and his embarrassment.  However a goddess carried him from death and gave him a new vigor for life, saying that he would have help in defeating the Pandavas.  So on the struggle between Duryodhana and the Pandavas continues!

Messenger to Pandavas

Reading Diary A

This reading seems to be mostly about the bloodlines of the kings and their women.  Many times the birth stories of Vyasa and his mother were repeated in order to show different ways the story is told.  Vyasa's mother was born a twin from the mouth of a fish and adopted by a fisherman.  This woman had Vyasa with the Brahmin Parashara who promised she would become a virgin again and she would smell sweet instead of fishy.

This led to the eventuality that a king came along and wanted her so in order to have her the king's son gave up any claims to the throne and vowed to never marry or have children.  Thus Bhishma became the overseer of Satyavati's children, who all died.  At which point she called out to Vyasa to take up the widows of her other sons, and then his sons became heirs to the throne instead.


Then from there one of Vyasa's sons married a woman named Kunti who birthed a son by the sun and put him in the Ganga to float away where he would end up being picked up by a woman in Anga.


It's all a whirlwind of intermixed bloodlines and a terrible fate for Bhishma, born as Devavrata!

Bhishma

Reading Diary B

A lot more information came from this version of the Ramayana that was from Sita's point of view.  This version focuses on Sita and how misfortunate her life seems, it focuses on her destiny as Ravana's ultimate destruction, however that makes her life full of unhappiness.  There are good times whenever she, Rama, and Lakshmana are in the forest  in their little hut and come to think of it that seems the only time she was truly happy except for right after their wedding.

In these last few scenes Ravana is killed with an arrow to the heart and all of Lanka is sad. Then as in the other version of the Ramayana, Rama tests Sita's purity and she walks into the fire to prove that she was still pure.  Then after they reach home, the citizens of Ajodhya whisper of Sita's possible impurity reach Rama and he decides that his people come before his queen.  So Rama asks his brother to take his PREGNANT WIFE and LEAVE her in the forest!  He left his pregnant wife in the forest alone by herself! So then she is found by Valmiki and he takes her in as his daughter and helps her raise her twin boys, and he becomes a poet of the Ramayana and so on.  Then Sita returns to Rama with her sons but asks the Earth to swallow her up when he asks her to prove herself again.  Her suffering and unhappiness is over.

There's also the addition of the story of Promila, the wife of Indraji and crown princess.  The whole scene is completely different from the public domain Ramayana.  It depicted Indrajit as a proud prince who spent time with his wife in their pleasure palace surrounded by a beautiful garden full of flowers.  His wife Promila was very beautiful and brave and she entered the city of Lanka following her husband by riding up to Rama on a charger and telling him that she will enter the city whether he wishes her to or not, and he allows her to enter the city.  In this version Vibhishana betrays Ravana and allows Lakshmana to enter a hidden door in a temple and kill Indrajit while he is trying to pray to the fire god Agni.  Promila is so loyal that she burns herself with her husband during his funeral!

(Indrajit)

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)

Reading Diary B: Public Domain Ramayana

First of all I'd like to talk about this portion of the readings as a whole.  I was really excited to be reading of the end of Ravana because honestly that's what we've been waiting for since the beginning of this epic.  However, I was very unhappy with the treatment of Sita after she was rescued.  She was accused several times of having stained Rama's reputation and that of their families, it seems very little thought was had of what Sita actually went through.

65. Hanuman and the Mountain.  I actually really liked this scene.  Hanuman, since he can jump the farthest, is sent in search of some mystical herbs that will help the wounded and revitalize the troops after Indrajit's attack. Jambavan, leader of the bears, sends Hanuman to Himalaya, king of mountains.  Hanuman searches all over the mountain and when he cannot find the herbs he lifts up the mountain and brings it back with him! Not only did he take it, he also took the mountain back! I really liked the ingenuity that Hanuman has in taking the entire mountain instead of giving up!

67. Ravana's Lament.  I thought that this scene was a good look into Ravana's character, a look at how he may be the villain but he is still a father to his son and has certain rules he follows.  After his son is killed he weeps in lament, he had never expected that his son should precede him in meeting death.  After his initial sorrow he becomes angry and at first intends to kill Sita in order to make Rama feel his pain, but in the end some rakshasa women persuaded him to not cross the line of killing women for the sake of his reputation.

74. Sita Tested.  In this Sita says that due to Rama's awful words she would throw herself on a pyre and that the fire god would not let the fire harm her if she were pure, if Ravana had not stained her purity.  The gods became angry with Rama and begged him to trust her and still he hesitated, then the fire god welcomed Sita into his arms and did not harm her.  Rama delighted in the fact that she was pure, apologized for his harsh words and told her he did it to show the people her purity.  This to me is insult to injury, she was just released from a most likely long incarceration under Ravana only to be treated this way by her own husband!

78. Valmiki's Hermitage.  Again in this scene Rama spirits the innocent Sita away from him and puts her in the care of Valmiki the poet.  There she would stay for sixteen years without seeing any of the royal family and she would have twin sons in the likeness of Rama, but he wouldn't know that because he stashed her away like a purchased item he no longer wanted to play with.

Rama and Sita