Week 2 Reading Diary A: Starting the Ramayana

pp. vii-53

I liked reading the introductions, though they weren’t technically part of the reading assignement since they were before page 1. I liked that it gave me an overview of what was going to happen, which I’ll put in here so I can look back at it and remember what’s coming next: Dasaratha gets his wives pregnant after a sacrificial ritual; he chooses Rama as his successor but his second wife is jealous and gets him to banish Rama and make her own son king instead; Rama and Sita, his wife, and his half-brother (from the third wife) Lakshmana travel away from their homeland and encounter many adventures; a demoness Soorpanaka tries to get Rama to marry her but he won’t so she tries to attack his wife out of jealousy but the half-brother stops her and wounds her; she goes to her brother the demon Ravana and complains, so he lures Rama and the brother away and kidnaps Sita; Rama pursues them and meets Hanuman the monkey, his greatest ally; eventually he kills Ravana and co., but suspects Sita has been fooling around with Ravana while in his captivity so forces her to undergo tests, which she passes, but he still isn’t entirely convinced; after he is crowned king he believes rumors that he hears about her chastity and banishes her, at which point she dies after childbirth and he is distraught and follows her into the afterlife. There, that was a pretty succinct version of the whole book which I believe will help me keep things straight while I’m reading.

I also like the first part of the story which is of Dasaratha getting asked by Viswamithra to give him his young son Rama as a guard for some religious activity he wants to perform. This reminded me of general themes in mythology and folklore when men had to give up their firstborns for great and terrible tasks to be named later, or else bad things would happen to their kingdom. It wasn’t said that bad things would happen here but I kind of got that impression when everyone would freak out that Viswamithra was leaving without getting what he wanted.

Viswamithra and the boys travel across a great desert, and when Rama asks why it is so barren Viswamithra tells him the story of Thataka who was a beautiful demigod who married a chieftan named Sunda. They had two sons who were arrogant and awful and liked to destroy everything around them. Their father took great pleasure in this, probably thinking something along the lines of “boys will be boys” and joined them in their destruction. The savant Agasthya lived in the forrest they were destroying and cursed them, killing Sunda and making the boys and their mother demons instead of demigods whenever they came for revenge for Sunda’s death. Thataka became a drain on the land, destroying everything living around her and creating a desert, so when Viwamithra and the boys came upon her, Viswamithra instructed Rama to kill her and end her terrible reign.

I will probably write about this story because I like that it is the first time that the young boy Rama gets to show his strength and morals by fighting the demon who is destroying the land. I will probably either do something from Rama’s point of view or maybe from Thataka’s point of view, because she wasn’t always evil and it might be nice to remember that things can go wrong in your life because of the choices you make in difficult times. Below is an image of Rama battling Thataka (who I guess is the same as Taraka?).

Image source: Rama battles Taraka