Reading Notes: Ramayana, Part A

 The Birth of Rama

Story source: Indian Myth and Legend by Donald A. Mackenzie (1913).

I chose this one because I thought it would serve me well to compare with the birth of Jesus I read last week.

Pretense:

Valmiki went to bathe and saw 2 birds, one was shot by a hunter so he composed a poem for the birds partner of sorrow. 

Brahma heard this poem and demanded that Valmiki celebrate the story of Rama and therefore he composed the Ramayana.

Plot:

There were 2 kingdoms, one ruled by the father of Rama the other ruled by the father of Sita. 

Unfortunately, Dasaratha (father of Rama) was unable to have a son by any of his 3 wives. So he began a horse sacrifice to intrigue the gods to provide. 

After the horse was free to roam for a year it was sacrificed in a massive sacrifice to the gods. 

The gods said he would have 4 sons because his festival sacrifice was so nice. 

The gods go back to their dwelling to discuss the fight against Ravana the demon king. 

Vishnu told the other gods to disguise as apes, then Vishnu was born in 4 parts to Dasaratha destined to fight Ravana.

The End

Thoughts:

    I love this tale because when you get down to the essence of it you can really see a beautiful plot and interesting storylines interconnecting. The problem is that the vernacular is very hard to sift through. It can be tough what the text is trying to say because so much of it is so complicated. I will try to settle it down a bit in my own version. 

    As far as what I might do in my own version, I didn't like how the birth of Rama was hardly even mentioned. Sure, we understand a lot of the circumstances here but he isn't hardly even a subject of the story. It's not about him at all and it really seems like he should be the main character of his own birth story.

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