Reading Notes: PDE Ramayana Part C

Ramayana Online: Public Domain Edition

from M. Dutt, R. Dutt, Gould, Griffith, Hodgson, Mackenzie, Nivedita, Oman, Richardson, and Ryder.

Notes for Part C

#49
After learning about Sampati, Jatayu's brother, we get to learn more about him. Sampati lost his wings because he and Jatayu flew too close to the sun, and to save his brother, Sampati shielded Jatayu with his wings. Sampati sacrificed himself for his brother. This story has parallels with Icarus flying too close to the sun, but doesn't end in the death of Sampati. A common theme in the Ramayana is redemption, and it seems like Sampati might get his chance at that by helping Rama. It is interesting how much of the story is set up for Rama to meet all these cursed people and creatures, especially those who are told to wait for someone similar to Rama. It seems like time passes but everyone lives a really long time, and they are all waiting and waiting for Rama to restore them.

#50
So now we come to the point in the story where the monkeys need to confirm Sita's location and plan how they will save her. This feels like an action movie where the bad guys have one of the main characters trapped and the rest of the good guys are planning how to get them out of captivity. Except in those cases you can fly a drone or plane over the area to collect intelligence, because we have technology. In the Ramayana, apparently there aren't any boats the monkeys can use to cross 100 leagues of water (which according to Google's distance converter is about 345 miles - just a bit short of the distance from Norman, OK to Houston, TX), so they need to jump across. Luckily Hanuman can easily jump across the distance. I liked how Hanuman is able to make the jump while taking a detour to kill a rakshasi - Ramayana physics are weird. This is very action movie esque as well, because those movies tend to use larger than life effects, and things that aren't physically possible to drive the plot

Hanuman making his jump and killing the rakshasi, Source: PDE Ramayana

Comments

Comment Wall

Hi Everyone! Here is the link to my storybook: Super Ramayana Bros. (If the link doesn't work, here is the full version: https://sites.google.com/view/super-ramayana-brothers/home ) Thanks for commenting about my project on this Comment Wall! Mario on a real life wall - graffiti is a comment. Source: Wikimedia

Introduction to a Robotics Nerd: Justin

Hi everyone! My name is Justin Kleiber, and I am a senior in Computer Engineering. My passion is robotics, which is the main reason I ended up choosing my major. At OU, I am the president of Sooner Competitive Robotics, which is one of the engineering college's competition teams (hit me up if you want to join!). I also do research on campus, where I mainly work on making a quadcopter fly around without a pilot controlling it. I help a group of high school students in OKC build and program a robot for the FIRST robotics competition, a worldwide high school robotics program. I love robotics, and as such, robots tend to surround my life. A picture I took of the research drone flying in its cage Additionally, I am really competitive and love sports. I've gone to every home OU football game in the four years I have been here, as well as to the Rose Bowl, the Peach Bowl, and two Red River Shootout games. Growing up, I was a huge Virginia Tech fan because my parents went there...

Week 7 Story: Comedy Mahabharata

Comedy Mahabharata: Act 4, Scene 3 The scene opens up on a battlefield. The Battle of Kurukshetra is only growing in intensity. In the midst of the scrum, ARJUNA comes out to the front and begins speaking. ARJUNA: The Kauravas have killed my son! It had to be that Jayadratha. He is evil, and has always had it coming to him. We should have killed him back a few scenes ago, but... JAYADRATHA appears from the melee JAYADRATHA: I didn't do anything! It was Duhshasana! He killed your son with a mace not I! ARJUNA: That is irrelevant! You led six warriors against him and killed him! I'm going to kill you now. JAYADRATHA: Oh no. ARJUNA and JAYADRATHA begin running around in circles but nobody intervenes. DRONA steps forward DRONA: Yes, we know what you are wondering - why are we Kauravas stopping Arjuna from killing Jayadratha? Jayadratha is on our side after all. But Jayadratha is insignificant to our plans, so we don't really care if anything happens... ARJUN...

Epics of India

Search This Blog