Week 14 Reading Diary B: Santal Folktales continued

Image Information: Red Fox Lying in Snow from Wikipedia page.

Today I've decided to focus on a story that I found particularly cute from the Santal Folktales: A Fox and His Wife. I thought this story was cute because it showed how a quick-witted woman who never bragged about her intelligence was able to out-smart the tiger while her husband, who always bragged about his own wit, cowered and shook with fright.

So in the beginning the story tells about how the Mr. Fox is always bragging to his wife about all of the wit he has (his wit would load twelve buffaloes) and Mrs. Fox never bragging about hers (hers would only fill a small vegetable basket). Then one evening they're on their way home and are stopped suddenly by a tiger who wants to eat them. Mrs. Fox tells him to wait a moment because she and her husband need someone to settle their quarrel about how to divide up their five children and the tiger agrees to help thinking that he will get both foxes and all five of their children if he plays along (plus he's flattered that she's given him an honorable title: uncle). He follows them home to their burrow and Mr. Fox goes in to gather the children, but when he doesn't come back out Mrs. Fox tells the tiger he must not be able to handle them all and she will go help him. She doesn't turn her back on him, however, because she somehow knows that he is planning to swipe her away and eat her if she does, so she backs in backwards. When the tiger asks what she's doing, she says that she couldn't possible turn her back on such an amazing person as he is and he's flattered again and lets her go. After she's safely inside, and - mind you - the hole is really small for the going in and out of the fox den, she calls out to him that he's free to leave now as she and her husband have figured out their dilemma on their own. The tiger realizes he has been fooled and is furious and tries to go in after them but is way too big for the door. So in the end, Mrs. Fox's wit was able to save them all from the tiger's hungry belly.

Week 14 Reading Diary A: Santal Folktales

Image Information - African Leopard in Serengeti, Tanzania from Wikipedia page

The story I liked best this time was actually the first story I read from the Santal Folktales page, called Ledha and the Leopard. I liked this story because it had several twists that were entirely unexpected but that weren't too far-fetched (most of the time) to be believable. I do wonder, however, what the moral of the story is because I thought folktales were meant to impart some lesson or other, but perhaps I'm mistaken and not all tales that are told are for learning, maybe some are just for entertainment.

So in this story it starts off with some pretty foolish young boys who like to call out to a leopard that lives in the forest above them, not expecting that he would ever show up. One day, however, he does come running for them because he has a lizard on his bum and can't get rid of it (he had been playing hide and seek with the lizard and accidentally sat on it, then got bitten by it and it wouldn't let him go). Ledha couldn't run fast enough to get away so the leopard caught up with him and promised not to eat him if he'd just take the lizard off and never tell anyone that a lizard had been able to bite him and scare him so badly. If he did tell, though, he would be hunted down and eaten. So the leopard apparently went on his way (though in reality he followed Ledha to make sure he didn't tell anyone). Ledha refused to tell his friends what had happened, but that night did eventually give in to his sister's wheedling and told her. The leopard heard him tell and that night snuck in and stole him and his whole bed away and carried it deep into the forest. Ledha woke up during the journey and realized what was happening so he caught ahold of a tree branch and escaped. The leopard, after finding him gone, retraced his path through the forest until he found Ledha in the tree. He promised not to eat him when he came down, so Ledha did, but the leopard was going to break his promise. Ledha asked if he could have just one pinch of tobacco first and the leopard agreed. When he heard the tobacco (which was apparently very dry and noisy) rustling around in the bag he asked what was really in there and Ledha told him it was the lizard from earlier. This scared the leopard away and Ledha escaped, though he didn't know how to get out of the forest so he made a home for himself near some wild buffaloes. He cleaned up after the buffaloes every morning when they moved away to graze and they were eventually curious as to how their home was getting clean so they left one of their kindred behind one day to see. She found out it was Ledha and told her friends it was a kind man who had come to take care of them. They made a bargain with Ledha, if he would take care of them and help them wash, they would give him the milk of whichever of the cows was his favorite and tastiest. One day, as he was washing in the river (and this was the most hard to believe part in the story because what on earth would have prompted him to wrap his hair up and why would she have cared about the hair of someone and then married that lame long-haired nobody who lived in the forest??) some of his hair fell out and he wrapped it in some leaves and let it float down the river. A princess found it and declared that she would not go on living without finding the man that the hair belonged to so her father sent a crow to find him and the crow lured him out by stealing his flute and making him chase it all the way back to the palace. She married him and they lived there for a while but the buffaloes were suffering without him so he moved her and him back to the forest and built a palace there and a highway so that he could travel back and forth between his forest home where he cared for the buffaloes and her home in the city.

Week 13 Extra Reading Diary: Folktales of Bengal part 2

Story source:Folk-Tales of Bengal by the Rev. Lal Behari Day, with illustrations by Warwick Goble (1912).

I'm going to write about two stories that were very similar in this unit (Folktales of Bengal part 2): The Ghost-Brahman and A Ghostly Wife. In these two tales, a ghost poses as one of the characters and lives as if it were them until it gets caught.

In the first story, a Brahman is too pore to afford a wife so he begs for the money until he can afford one. Once he marries her, he moves her in with her mother but doesn't stay with them because he really can't afford to support all three of them, so he leaves. Later a ghost takes his place and nobody can tell the difference. The Brahman comes back but people call him an impostor and banish him from his own house. He goes to the king, asking for help. The king agrees to try the case but he can't tell the ghost from the real man either. The Brahman is distraught until he finds another king who comes up with a plan. He comes in and says the real Brahman is the one who can fit inside the very small container. The ghost is tricked and gets into the container, showing that he is, indeed, a ghost. The ghost-Brahman is then thrown out and the real Brahman is reinstated in his family.

In the second story, a young wife marries a Brahman and moves in with him and his mother (I'm sensing a theme here...). One day she offends a ghost who almost strangles her and then traps her in a hole in a tree and takes her shape (another theme?), rejoining her family. The mother notices that something is amiss with the wife (aha, a difference!) and watches her very closely. She sees her stretch her arm out too far one day and tells the Brahman, and then they both watch her closely. The wife does some more ghostly things, like lighting the stove with her foot, and someone is called in to perform an exorcism and he gets the ghost to admit what she's done to the wife and then exorcises her. They rescue the wife just in time and return her to her family.

Week 13 Reading Diary B: Khasi Folktales part 2

(tiger from wikipedia)

Now I'm going to write about the next half of the Khasi Folktales and focus on How the Tiger Got His Strength. I chose this story as my favorite because I love learning about tigers as they are my favorite animal and I thought maybe I could retell it for my story this week. Ok so, in the beginning all of the animals were created equal, but this led to some problems as they were always fighting about everything. So the gods got together and decided that to fix this problem they would give specific animals different specific gifts so as to separate them and maybe make them live more harmoniously. So all the animals were gathered and the gifts were handed out. Men got the gifts of beauty and wisdom and tigers got the gifts of craftiness and the ability to walk silently. When the man got home that night though, the mother sent him back to the gods to ask for strength so that they'd be at the top of the food chain. The man did but was told to come back in the morning. The tiger overheard this and because he was so crafty he was able to come up with a plan to get the strength for himself. The next morning, before man was even awake, the tiger sent a messenger to receive the gift for himself. The gods, thinking they were bestowing strength upon man, gave him 12 times the normal strength. Later the man woke up and headed for the gods, but the tiger intercepted him and challenged him, telling him about getting the man's gift. The man dodged the tiger's attack and ran to tell the gods what had happened. They were dismayed but didn't know how to fix it, so they gave man skill with a bow and arrow instead so that he could hunt the tiger.

Week 13 Reading Diary A: Khasi Folktales part 1

(snail)

Today I'm going to write about my favorite of the first half of the Khasi Folktales, The Stag and the Snail. I liked this particular reading because it reminded me of the story of the hair and the turtle in our own folktales. In this folktale, the stag is bragging to the snail that he is much faster and the snail points out that that may be true but at least she isn't all sweaty. Well the snail ends up challenging the stag to a long race to prove herself to the other animals and they set it for the next day. Her family decides to help her win the race when she goes home that night and tells them all about it, so they all split up and go to different parts of the trail and hide. The next day the snail takes off her shell and they start the race, her moving at a slow and steady speed and him moving very quickly. After a time, he stops and looks back but can't see her because of the grass and her being so tiny, but he's sure she hasn't caught up to him, so he calls back to her but heard a voice from right under him cry out "I am here, I am here!" He was so shocked that she had caught up that he takes off running even faster this time, and the next time he stops it happens again. This continued on and by the end of the race the stag was all out of energy from running so fast that he had to stop and rest, and the snail won! The stag was so upset by this that he coughed up his gallbladder and to this day he doesn't have a gallbladder in reminder of the shame of losing to a snail.

Week 12 Extra Reading Diary: Folktales of Bengal

Story source:Folk-Tales of Bengal by the Rev. Lal Behari Day, with illustrations by Warwick Goble (1912).

For the extra reading this week I read half of the Folktales of Bengal and focused this reading diary post on one story I found particularly interesting - The Boy Whom Seven Mothers Suckled. This story started out with a king who had seven lovely wives who were childless. He found a way to give them children by feeding them a certain kind of fruit and they all became pregnant. He then met a new wife who was actually a demon. The new wife said that if he really loved her he would have his other wives blinded and killed, so he ordered it done. The executioner blinded them but then took pity on them and hid them away. They started to give birth one by one, but decided to eat the children in order to survive, except for the youngest wife who kept her portion aside. They ate all of the babies except the youngest wife's baby. She tried to save it by giving the other wives her portions of the other babies but they knew she was lying about it because the meat wasn't fresh. She convinced them to save her baby however and they all suckled him until he grew big and strong. Meanwhile, back at the palace, the demon wife was secretly eating all of the staff at the palace and then moved on to eating citizens, so the king had nobody to take care of him. The child came to the palace and volunteered to be his caretaker. The boy became like the child of the two rulers, but he was protecting the king from being eaten by the queen. She decided to send him on an errand for her to her mother to get a special melon to cure her "sickness". When he got there, the woman gave him the melon and let him stay the night. He noticed a peculiar bird in her house and asked her about it. She told him that the bird contained her daughter's soul and if it died, she died. When he left, he took both the melon and the bird and hid it in the palace. The people complained to the king that their fellow citizens were being eaten by a bird and the boy volunteered that he knew where the bird was and could take care of the problem. When he brought out the bird, the queen recognized it and fainted. The boy told everyone that if they tore off the bird's limbs they would find out who had really been eating the people, so he tore off its leg and the queen's leg was also torn off! Then he strangled the bird and both it and the queen died. The boy then told the king that his wives were still alive and that he was their son. The king was very happy to hear this and summoned the wives, whose vision were restored miraculously when they returned. The boy was the heir to the throne then and they all lived happily ever after.

Week 12 Reading Diary B: Indian Fairy Tales

 Indian Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by John D. Batten (1912).

Today I'm going to write about the strangest story I read this week in the Indian Fairy Tales, which I liked because it reminded me of Rumplestisken in our own fairy tales. This story was called The Prince and the Fakir.

This story starts out with a king who has no children and is very sad about it, so he goes to lay down in an intersection (was he trying to die?). A Fakir comes along and asks what he is doing so the king explains that he is very depressed because he has no children. The Fakir asks what the king would give to have children and the king says anything. The Fakir says he will let the king have two sons, but that he must later give one of his sons back to the Fakir. The king agrees, but when it comes time to give his son back he is heartbroken by the idea because he loves both of his sons. So instead he tries to trick the Fakir by giving him a slave's son, but the Fakir knows the difference because he hears ants talking about how the king's sons are eating in the cellar and then he is very angry. He demands that the sons show themselves. Then the sons go with the Fakir and I think one of them dies in a vat of oil because it says he's turned into roasted meat. The other one escapes and sets all of the Fakir's prisoners free and takes the Fakir's clothes. While pretending to be the Fakir in another kingdom, he ends up marrying the princess there and eventually reveals his true identity to her father, who is happy that she married a prince and not a Fakir.

Week 12 Reading Diary A: Indian Fairy Tales

 Indian Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by John D. Batten (1912)

Today I'm going to write about one of the Indian Fairy Tales that I might use for my storytelling assignment because I liked it so well. The specific fairy tale I'll write about is The Magic Fiddle, which I liked because it was a nice story and had a surprising twist in that the lady in the fiddle fell in love with the fiddle player and married him. I didn't expect her to be able to come out of the fiddle like this, but I get ahead of myself - here is how the story goes:

Seven brothers, their wives, and their sister all lived together. The wives resented the sister because she did all of the cooking (which I don't understand, I would be extremely pleased if someone else did all of the cooking, but maybe it made the brothers like the sister better than the wives, which really they should anyways because she's their sister and they're supposed to love and protect her). The wives tormented the young girl and made it so that whenever she went to get water she couldn't because it would miss her pitcher or just dry up, so the sister was very distressed. She decided to turn herself into a bamboo to escape them, but one day a yogi decided to cut down the bamboo and make a fiddle out of it. She begged him not to, but he thought someone was playing a trick on him and did it anyways. The fiddle that resulted from this made beautiful music and the brothers heard the music and wanted to buy the fiddle, but the yogi refused. Eventually though, the yogi got drunk and sold the fiddle to the village chief. The chief's son took very good care of the fiddle, so in repayment, the girl would come out of the fiddle while he was away and prepare his meals for him. The chief was really confused by this so he decided to hide one day and see who was making his meals. Alas it was the sister, he caught her, and they fell in love and were married. The sister was very happy and later saw her brothers, who had become poor. She said that that was the repayment they got for knowing about the abuse she suffered for all that time and never doing anything about it.

Week 11 Reading Diary A: The Buddha Learns Tough Lessons

Myth-Folklore Unit: The Life of Buddha

The Encounters, Laotian temple painting

Today I'm going to write about my favorite episodes in this week's readings, which were about the young Buddha. My favorite part that I might write about in the storytelling was the chapter The First Encounter (and also its sequel, Two More Encounters). When Siddhartha was growing up (Siddhartha was the young Buddha), he decided he wanted to go on a visit outside the kingdom but the king was frightened that he might see something that would cause him to not want to be king anymore and to fulfill the prophecy, so he had all of the streets cleared of beggars and sick and old people so that his son wouldn't see them. Everything that the prince has is bedecked in gold, he is really very spoiled if you think about it so it's a wonder that he didn't turn out a spoiled brat of a prince but instead was a selfless Buddha. The gods were jealous of the happiness of the city so they decided to upset Siddhartha's mind by setting an old man in the road in front of his chariot. The gods also muddled the charioteer's mind so that he answered truthfully Siddhartha's questions about the old man and he then learned about old age and that it would eventually happen to everyone in the world, including him. In the next chapter he decided to go out once more into the city but the gods put a diseased man in his path so he learned all about sickness and how it could happen to anyone, including him. He was greatly affected by the fact that men stay strong and courageous during life even though they are faced with such adversities as old age and possible sickness, so he ended his trip. The king was grieved at what had happened to his son despite his careful planning and punished the charioteer for it, though not too badly. At first he tried to keep Siddhartha more entertained than ever within the palace walls but when that failed he decided to let him go out one more time and once again had the streets cleared of everyone "unsavory." He even changed charioteers. The gods interfered again, however, and made a corpse being carried by four men and grieved by several people so Siddhartha learned all about death. 

Week 6 Reading Diary A: More from the Ramayana

p. 219-270


In this week's reading A, I read a lot more about Hanuman's leap to Lanka than I learned in the previous reading. For this week, I will most likely write about Hanuman this week but I'm not sure which part of his story I will focus on - when he rests on the mountain who had stollen the other mountain's wings and was hiding from Indra, or when Sinhika tries to stop him from reaching Lanka and he flies into her body and crushes her heart before flying back out of her body through her ear, or when he finally gets to Lanka and and has to fight Lanka personally to get through the gates and Lanka realized he was the fulfillment of a curse. Perhaps I will write about all of them from his perspective with his journey as a whole, or perhaps I will pick one of the three and write about it from someone else's perspective - like focus on the mountain's back story and just briefly connect it to Hanuman at all. We learn a lot more about Hanuman's stay in Lanka in Buck's version of the Ramayana than we learned in Narayan's version. In it we get many more details about his visit with Sita as well as his destruction of Lanka. We also learn more about Hanuman's trip back to Sugriva and Rama.

Image source: Hanuman and Sita in the ashoka grove

Week 5 Reading Diary B - Sita gets stolen again

Once again, Ravana manages to convince Maricha to help him capture Sita, so he turns into a golden deer and lures Rama away. Before he dies after being shot, he calls out for help in Rama's voice, luring Lakshmana away and leaving Sita alone to be captured. Once at the palace, we learn more about why Ravana can't rape women anymore - he raped the wrong woman once upon a time and a curse was laid upon him that would make his heads explode if he did it again. Rama and Lakshmana return to find Jatayu dying and set off after Sita and Ravana. We learn more about why Rama decides to be friends with Sugriva in this version of the story - Savari tells them to before joining her husband Matanga in death. We also learn more about the monkey's origins and about Hanuman trying to reach for the sun/mango and why Hanuman can take different forms. We also learn about Vali (the monkey king) and the buffalo and why Vali and Sugriva are at odds.

Image source: Hanuman and the sun (thinking it is a mango)

Week 5 Reading Diary A: Continuing the Ramayana

This week we're reading pages 110-161. This reading begins with Bharata returning to find his father dead, then following Rama into the forest and takes his sandals back to wait for Rama's exile to end. My favorite story from this reading that I will probably use for my storytelling is the story about Kashyapa's two wives and their children. Kashyapa really wants kids so he worships the gods and they give him two seeds to feed to his wives. Vinata's seed split in two and she gave birth to two sons. Kadru's seed splits into 1000 and she gives birth to the naga race. Kadru thinks she's better than Vinata because of the number of children she has so she tricks Vinata into losing a bet and becoming her slave. When her son Garuda is born and grown and finds out about why his mother is a slave to Kadru, he asks what ransom is needed to free her. Kadru and the nagas want the elixir of life from Indra's palace so Garuda steals it from him and brings it to them. Before he gets to them he meets Narayana, who grants him immortality. As repayment for immortality, he offers to be Narayan's mount. Garuda tricks Vinata into freeing his mother forever in the end. After this, Virhada tries to abduct Sita and Surpanakha propositions Rama, tries to kill Sita, and is mutilated and flees. Rama defeats the army of 14000 that she sends after him, and Surpanakha starts Ravana's obsession with Sita by telling him all about her and Rama and begging for his help.

Image Source: Wikipedia. Vishnu on Garuda.

Week 4 Reading Diary A: A New Beginning with the Ramayana

So this retelling of Rama's story starts out by telling how the original author, Valmiki, got involved in the story. In this beginning, Sita is being exiled, though she doesn't yet know it. This part of the story wasn't part of Narayan's Ramayana though, so it's new to me. Valmiki is unhappy in the world because cruel things happen, including a bird in love getting killed even though it had little to no meat on it. Brahma comes to visit him and tells him this sadness has made him a poet and he needs to use that to write Rama's story which will defeat time. Valmiki composed the Ramayana and taught it to Rama and Sita's twin sons (who were living in his hermitage after Sita's exhile). When they were old enough they sang it at Rama's yearly get together in the forest and Rama came and listened.

This time, we get to see the very beginning of the story instead of just Rama's birth. We start off with Dasaratha offering sacrifice to get sons, just like last time, but this time it then shifts to Indra and Brahma discussing the problem of Ravana after the battle in heaven. They come up with a solution: Rama. 

This is my favorite part because we get to see much more detail about the backstory and the gods in this version. 

Image Source: Dasaratha announces the birth of his four sons. 

Week 3 Reading Diary B: Ending the Ramayana

Today I read the end of Narayan's Ramayana. It started with Hanuman beginning the search for Sita in Lanka. He grew to a huge size to cross the ocean, which reminds me of the dog on Adventure Time who can change his proportions. Once in Lanka he searched everywhere and finally found her being tormented and about to commit suicide in a garden, but still holding strong against Ravana's advances. He conveyed Rama's message and ring to her and took a piece of jewelry from her to give to Rama. On his way out, he allowed himself to be captured so that he could warn Ravana to give up Sita and apologize or he would be destroyed by Rama. Ravana orders him to be destroyed but his brother says not to kill an emissary (this brother later deserts Ravana and joins Rama, then is crowned the new king of Lanka). Instead they set his tail on fire but he escapes and lights the whole kingdom on fire on his way back to Rama.

Next we have Rama's army figuring out a way to cross the ocean and the battle between the armies in which Ravana is constantly losing his best men and family members. I won't write much about this because battle scenes don't interest me much. 

Once Rama has killed Ravana, Hanuman fetches Sita and returns her to Rama, but he spurns her, thinking she has been unfaithful to him with Ravana. She is devastated and has a fire built, I think to kill herself. The fire spits her back out, however, because she is too pure, so Rama accepts her again as his wife. Dasaratha appears to his son Rama and grants him one wish, which is to un-disown his brother and stepmother. Then they return to Baratha and get crowned the king and queen and that's almost the end, though Narayan mentions that there is a sort of sequel that may or may not be legitimate in which Rama and Sita are separated again, have twin sons, and are rejoined in the afterlife. 

Image Information: Bharata and Rama; note also the sandals on the throne; by Raja Ravi Varma. 

Week 3 Reading Diary A: Rama's foolishness

Image source: Vali and Sugriva fight while Rama, Lakshmana and Hanuman watch from in hiding.

Today I'm going to write about my favorite (or rather the one I find most intriguing) story from this reading (pages 89-130, specifically pages 92-105). This story is the story of how Rama was very foolish to get involved in a familial dispute and actually killed someone who had never done him any wrong by shooting him from behind a bush! I just want to know who made him judge, jury, and executioner and what right did he have to take the life of a non-evil, non-demon king of another race?? At the beginning of the chapter, Narayan supports my belief that this was a foolish thing for Rama to get involved in by saying that even the greatest of men sometimes make mistakes. I can understand why Rama would have wanted to get involved in this because he felt that someone else had been done a wrong, but there were so many other ways to go about it. For instance, instead of just deciding that Vali was wrong and killing him so that his brother could take his place, he should have considered that there are two sides to every story and that Vali had every right to think that his brother had tried to de-throne him and bury him alive. He was wrong, in my opinion, to not listen to his brother's side of the story, but being rash and reacting badly to being buried alive does not necessarily warrant a death sentence does it? Instead of just killing him, Rama could have first tried to go to Vali and explain Sugreeva's position in the matter. Sure Vali won't listen to Sugreeva without trying to kill him, but the way he describes Rama to his wife shows that he has at least some respect for him and maybe would have listened if Rama had tried to explain. Failing that, he then could have either moved on and let them work out the family squabble on their own or gone back and aided Sugreeva in a more honorable way than just distracting Vali and killing him. But alas, that is not what happened. I can also understand why Rama would want to jump to Sugreeva's aid in order to get aid in return for defeating Ravana, but he could just as easily have asked for the stronger brother's assistance (sure Vali had tried to kill Sugreeva as revenge for feeling that Sugreeva had tried to do away with him, and sure he was an adulterer, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't have helped Rama because by the way he was talking about him to his wife, he doesn't hate him and thinks that he is an honorable man). I'm not sure yet how I will retell this story, but maybe I'll show Vali's side of things like I showed Thataka's side of things; maybe for this semester I will play the devil's advocate over here and just show everyone how wrong Rama was sometimes even though he was a reincarnation of the god Vishnu. 

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