Christian's Epic Blog

     Part B of this Epified series made me learn even more about the details of Krishna's life.  I never knew Brahma had an interest in Krishna--the series talks about a day where Krishna is out eating with his cowherd friends.  Brahma decides to watch this interaction.  He sees Krishna sharing his food with his friends off of his own plate--this makes Brahma question the divinity of Krishna.  Brahma wondered why Krishna would ever share food off of his own plate with mortals.  In order to test Krishna, Brahma takes away all of the cows and the cowherds.  Krishna, not being able to find them but eventually understanding that Brahma was at work here, decides to make new cows and cowherds from himself.  They go back to the village and no one even realizes that these people weren't Krishna's original friends.  Brahma returns sometime later and was confused as to why no one in the village was missing out on their sons and companions....

     Watching this playlist, I learned things that I realized I missed out on in my previous readings about Krishna.  For instance, in the very first episode about Krishna it mentions that Arjuna and Krishna were born at the same time.  I never knew these two heroes were the same age! I always thought Krishna was older and more experienced than the Pandavas, as he always seemed to be guiding them or assisting them.  I also missed out on the idea that King Kansa was Krishna's uncle! Not that killing babies wasn't bad enough, but it made me realize that King Kansa was killing his nephews and nieces prior to the arrival of Krishna. What a jerk! I also feel like it would be a weird predicament if Devaki continued to have children while her brother was killing them...she didn't NEED to have eight children! I also didn't recall that the child before Krishna, the seventh one, was transported to a new mother's womb.  I figured before now that they all had suff...

I really enjoyed the story about the Syamantaka jewel.  It was neat to see a treasure like that passed around, either cursing or blessing whoever owns it.  It reminded me of Harry Potter--how everyone coveted the elder wand, and whomever had it was generally killed before too long.  This is one of the first and maybe only stories that I can remember where people were suspicious of Krishna and he was suspected of being a murderer.  It would be interesting to write a version of this story where Krishna did kill Satrajit.  I wonder how that story could have played out? It's really just pretty hard to see Krishna in a negative light, though.  One of my favorite stories from this part of the reading was Naraka and Bana.  I always love getting to see heroes fight, and Krishna is the best of the best.  A favorite scene of mine is where Krishna dries up the moat of Muru with his fiery discus, revealing that Muru was under the water.  Krishna is able ...

The story of Krishna's youth made me think about some stories from the bible that I remember.  King Kansa reminded me of the king who tried to kill all of the Hebrew baby boys in the story of Moses.  He also reminded me of King Herod when he attempted to kill the baby boys after finding out a new king was born.  When I was researching on what topic I wanted to write about for my topic, I remember doing some research on Krishna.  I found the story about Krishna sucking the life out of the demon Putana's breast, so it was really neat to hear that story again though this time with some context.  I like the idea of King Kansa as a villain--it would be interesting to write a story about a king that feels threatened enough to kill babies.  This particular story, using King Kansa, Putana and Krishna,  is one that I feel I could put a twist on and write about.  It must have been super intimidating for King Kansa to receive the news that his demoness had d...

   The Wise and the Foolish Merchant tale seemed different from the other Jataka stories I've read--it was very thorough.  I like that the smart merchant was able to see past the trick of the demon unlike his foolish counterpart.  The clever characters in all of these stories always find a way to intellectually maneuver around their opposition.  In this case, the smart merchant was able to tell that the traveler he saw was a demon because he had no shadow.  I think this concept would be fun to carry over into one of my own stories.  The next tale that stuck out to me was The Princes and the Water Sprite.  The story sounded familiar to me at first, and I realized it reminded me of the Ramayana.  In the story, the queen wanted her youngest son to take the thrown over his older siblings.  She had been rewarded a boon and her wish was for her son, the Sun Prince, to be king.  The king didn't respond the same as the king from the Ramayan...

     The Merchant of Seri was one of my favorite tales from part A of this reading.  For some reason, it reminded me of the turtle and the hare story.  One of the characters is cocky, and talented in the case of the hare.  The other character is hardworking and more honest.  The greed of the greedy merchant was clearly incomprehensible! He could have gotten a surge of wealth from doing a simple trade for the bowl but instead wanted it for free.  In the end, hiding his true intentions cost the greedy merchant a great deal.  The other merchant had a good show of character, being honest about the true value of the bowl even when the grandmother didn't know its worth all these years.  I like this story because it has two very different characters, in the same job, juxtaposed to one another.  It turned out to be a happy ending for the honest character, and I appreciated that as well.  I can definitely see myself writing a story base...

One thing that stood out to me in this part of the story was a scene from Chapter XV: The Great Battle.  Yudhisthira had just received the news that his uncle would not give him and his brothers five villages so that they could live at peace and not have war, though King Dhritarashtra, under the influence of his son, tells them that they cannot have five villages or even one village.  The dialogue that ensues from the Pandavas stuck out to me.  Yudhisthira seemed thoughtful and perplexed, while Arjuna was very fired up.  He claimed he would not stay in exile, and would take out his uncle's entire army with his bow.  Bhima was on the same page, claiming that he had to fulfill the promises and threats he had made against those that had wronged him and his family.  On this note, Yudhisthira decided that they will go to war.  He sent heralds to all the Indian kings in attempt to gain their allegiance.  He was able to acquire the soldiers from King Vir...

It was cool reading this story after already having a good idea of the characters and plots within the Mahabharata.  This story seemed much more face-paced, to the point where I thought that some things may have been in a different order than in the PDE of the Mahabharata. For instance, I didn't remember the Pandavas helping their teacher Drona get vengeance on his old friend Drupada so soon in the story and in their training.  The boys in this story start off as prodigies.  Also, Duryodhan attempts to murder them so quickly! After reading the first few pages it was clear that this was a very condensed version.  I had a good refresher on Vidura as a character and his role in ultimately looking after his nephews.  The man eating demon in this story is called Hidimva.  The fight between Bhima and Hidimva is pretty much how I imagined it.  In this story, Arjuna teases Bhima about being tired thus prompting Bhima to end the fight and kill Hidimva.  I ...

     This sections has been the most exciting as I continue to read through it.  The battle continues from the previous section, and it's only getting more intense.  One of my favorite stories was where Abhimanyu fights seven warriors by himself.  Though he put up a great fight, he eventually perished.  Upon hearing that his son has died, Arjuna becomes passionate in a way that we haven't seen up until this point.  He was determined to avenge the death of his son.  I think writing a story about Abhimanyu's last moments would be cool.  I could maybe even change up the story so that he survives, or give it some other twist.  The battle scenes from this section have been incredible.  I would love to write a different version of Arjuna on his way through an army to avenge the death of his son.  You know that nothing was going to stop Arjuna from accomplishing this act of vengeance.  As the battle rages on, more and more m...

     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 bat...

     One of my favorite scenes from this section of the Mahabharata was the fight between Bhima and Hidimba.  I think this would be a fun scene to recreate in a story.  I liked how Hidimba was powerful enough to put up a good fight with Bhima for awhile.  If I remember correctly they were thundering through the forest as they wrestled each other.  It seemed like Bhima wasn't completely trying however, that is until he remembered that Hidimba would become more powerful at day-break.  At that point in the fight, Bhima decided he was done messing around and straight up broke Hidimba's back over his knee! That was a disgusting move to pull out--it reminded me of the Batman versus Bane fight from the Dark Knight Rises.  It seems like that knee to the back-break move would become Bhima's trademark move.  We see him use that on a couple of other powerful villains as the story progresses, including Baka the evil chieftain.  I noticed throug...

After reading through the Ramayana, I realized my favorite kinds of stories were ones that included epic heroes and epic battles.  So I as I began reading the Mahabharata, I looked out for characters and stories that I could rewrite with awesome battles.  One of the first characters that stood out to me was Bhishma.  I liked the comparison given about this being more Game of Thrones while the Ramayana was The Lord of the Rings; Bhishma stood out to me as a character like Varys or Little Finger--never really on the throne but pulling strings behind the scenes for his own agenda.  It was really cool to see him win over the three princesses with his archery ability, though.  After that, I don't recall any fighting scenes with him, at least in part A.  Obviously the Pandavas stood out as cool warriors to write about.  I think it's Duryodhana's bitterness, but the Pandavas seem much more likable to me compared to the Kauravas.  They just kind of come o...

     In this version of version of the Ramayana, Hanuman again stuck out as one of the most interesting characters and also my favorite!  I noticed some subtle differences in this version of the story, but I noticed some bigger differences when reading about Hanuman.  For instance, in this version it never mentioned the source of Hanuman's powers.  In the last one it mentioned that Hanuman was the son of wind god.  In this one it basically straight up said that Hanuman had magical powers, and thus could jump the 30 miles across the ocean to Lanka.  Besides from his jumping abilities, we see different magic that Hanuman is capable of.  For instance he's able to shrink himself to a minuscule size, and does this when interacting with the sea serpent.   I think he is a really awesome character, and vital in Rama's success in his siege on Lanka.  Another character which stuck out to me more in this version was Jatayu's brother the v...

     This section of the Ramayana was probably the most surprising to me in terms of its plot.  I also found a couple of really neat characters that I enjoyed reading about.  One of the most important characters from this section of the Ramayana was Indrajit--Ravana's son.  For not hearing about him very much in the first several sections, he really drives the plot in Part D and turns out to be a worthy adversary to Rama and Lakshmana.  I was shocked to see Rama and Lakshmana essentially perish at the hands of Indrajit.  It seemed that many characters saw Indrajit turning invisible and attacking Rama's army as cowardly and deceitful, but I don't really know what they expected from Ravana's demon son.  And as the saying goes, all is fair in love and war.  Indrajit turned out to be very powerful, taking out Rama's forces to the point that they needed magic to recover.  The first time this happened, a really awesome new character named...

     For Part C of the reading, my favorite characters overall were Sampati and Hanuman.  I really enjoyed the character of Jatayu, so I especially enjoyed meeting his brother Sampati.  You can really see the character of Sampati from the manner in which he protected his brother and ultimately severely hurt his wings. I noticed another repetition from the Ramayana that also occurred in Sampati's story.  He was told that he would be able to fly again if he would be patient with his grounded condition, and would serve someone as noble as him.  Upon  helping Hanuman's team in their quest to locate Sita, Sampati states that he hopes Rama was the noble he was meant to help.  There have been several other characters throughout the Ramayana who were waiting upon Rama to help them in some way.  By every way of the phrase, he is a king of prophecy.  As it turns out, Sampati does in fact begin to heal after he aids in the quest.  My over...

     In part B of the PDE Ramayana we start to see Rama's adventures out of his adolescence and youth.  I think for the first time we can start to get indications about how crazy powerful he really is.  I honestly was very perplexed by Rama's brother, Bharata, once he comes back to the kingdom.  For some reason, I assumed he would be spiteful such as his mother and his mother's servant, though this was far from the case.  It was heartwarming to see how hurt Bharata was by the passing of his father.  The exile of his brother clearly was just spit in the wound; he was going to make sure he played no part in the exile of Rama.  Then I started thinking about Bharata; I believe he too was an incarnation of a deity, even if it wasn't Vishnu's avatar like Rama is.  It makes sense that he would be a just person just like his two older brothers.  I really loved Bharata's character; he was insistent on bringing Rama back to be king. In fact, ...

     I did not know what to expect as we started the Ramayana, but quickly I became intrigued by the story of Prince Rama.  Originally from the start of the reading I thought the two kingdoms Kosala and Mithila were juxtaposed against one another to foreshadow some epic battle between the two kingdoms.  As the story wore on, I started to forget about Mithila.  The main focus was on Dasharatha and his sons, specifically Rama.  From his birth, it seemed like everyone knew that Rama was a special, special child.  Of course, it's pretty cool from the reader's perspective knowing that he is, in reality, an avatar of Vishnu.  It seemed to me like Rama's destiny was to eventually take on the demons, specifically the king of demons Ravana.  After all, isn't that why Vishnu decided to divide himself (through reincarnation) to Dasharatha's sons? From birth, Rama seemed destined for excellence.  I really enjoyed that Rama and his brother were ...

     This week I really enjoyed reading all of the stories, though some stuck out more than others.  In the end, I was able to narrow it down to three stories that stood out as my favorites.  A common theme in all of the stories that I enjoyed was deception.  It seemed like in all of the stories, someone was generally trying to trick someone else.  I noticed that in some stories, there was a moment when the protagonist had a light-bulb moment and they understood that they were being tricked.  One of the stories I picked was  The Cunning Crane and the Crab  by W.H.D. Rouse .  This story is one of those which had the aspect of deception.  In fact, that was one of the main parts of the plot--the crane tricks all these fish into thinking they will be going to a wonderful lake, when in fact they are really just going to be food for the crane.  The most important part in this story's plot was when the crab and the crane first in...

    For the next several weeks, I have chosen to read the online Ramayana: Public Domain Edition.  I picked this one for several reasons.  I honestly like the fact that it is free, though the novel version sounded interesting as well.  I also like that there will be old language and visuals to follow along with while reading.  Finally, I know I will most certainly take advantage of the audio version and follow along while reading the texts.  The first comic that caught my eye was  Harishchandra: The King Who Chose Rags Over Riches .  The title is what caught my attention when compared to other comics; it sounded like a very wholesome tale and I immediately wanted to learn more about this story.  The next comic that I am interested in is  Ganesha: The Remover of All Obstacles .  The name for this story sounded very familiar, and once I started reading more into it I realized I had heard of this story before.  Though reading...