Reading Notes: PDE Mahabharata Part C

     Some of my favorite scenes from this week's reading come from Arjuna's solo adventures, specifically the story Arjuna and Indra.  In this story, Arjuna collects celestial weapons from the gods, though also is cursed.  He spends years perfecting the arts of singing and dancing because of this curse.  At this time he also becomes proficient at yielding the celestial weapons bestowed upon him.  My favorite part of this story, which I am thinking about writing a story based off of these events, is where Arjuna travels to fight giants and demons which are the ancient enemy of his father Indra.  He takes his father's chariot to the underworld beneath the sea, in the region where these enemies reside called Patala.  Arjuna proceeds to wage war with demons who attempted to thwart him in an epic battle. After taking down the defenses, Arjuna ravages the demon city called Hiranyapura.  I think it would be a lot of fun to write about these battles in more detail.  The PDE of the story glosses over the battles; I would love to make it an epic battle.  I realized I really enjoyed writing about epic battles after I wrote about Hanuman journey to Lanka.  I had such a good time making him absurdly powerful that I knew I wanted to continue writing in this way except for different heroes.  I was pleasantly surprised to find Hanuman in this week's reading interacting with Bhima! I was certain I had heard the last of him after we finished up the Ramayana.  Another short scene that stood out to me was where Karna vows to kill Arjuna.  I feel as though this foreshadows an epic battle, and I can't wait to read about it and maybe even write about it.  I enjoyed getting to read more about the relationship between Krishna and Arjuna.  They seem to have a special sort of friendship.  It was amazing and yet unsurprising that Arjuna selected only Krishna over an entire army of mighty soldiers.  Krishna has become one of my favorite characters.  It's really cool to see him to take on his more powerful forms, as he did in the story Krishna's Mission. 

Krishna playing the flute.

Source: Flickr

 

Bibliography: The Public Domain Edition of the Mahabharata, used from sources including Arnold, Besant, Devee, Dutt, Ganguli, Kincaid, Macfie, Mackenzie, Nivedita, Seeger and Tagore