- Kuru king of Hastinapura. Descendant of the race of Bharata.
- Falls in love with the beautiful Ganges river woman, although they agree to never question her actions. It is only after the 8th son is about to be drowned that he questions her.
- The children were "vasus" or cursed by Vasishtha. The first 7 were drowned to be freed from the mortal world into heaven, but the 8th was sentenced to living out life as a great man, but also must remain celibate.
- I know reincarnation is a thing, but punishing 7 babies for stealing a cow in another life seems harsh. I don''t care how beautiful my wife is, or how proper of a wife she is, you're not going to get away with drowning babies.
- It's unclear to me why some get "freed". Was their punishment only to live 1 year of life as a baby? Or did she feel bad about the terrible life they would live if they grew up?
- Shantanu loves those water ladies, now falling in love with the daughter of a fisherman
- I knew an Indian student at OU named Satya, although I'm pretty sure his full name had at least 3x as many characters as Satya. I think he was a computer science major, for what it's worth
Pandavas and Kauravas
- The moral of these stories should be "Don't mess with animals, because they could belong to gods or even be a god". If you can't go out and shoot a deer, in fear that it may be a celestial being, what can you do? People gotta eat.
- The gods in these stories can be so meddlesome and fickle. The celestial deer is clearly distraught over his own death and thus stops a man from ever being able to make love ever again. That's cruel.
- Our first encounter with a rakshasa. This demon falls in love with Bhima, much like Ravana's sister, but instead has a child with her. Ravana's sister would be so proud!
- I also just realized that Bhima kills one rakshasa, so he definitely knows how dangerous they are, and then he marries another. Sounds like a good plan.
Wow this is ridiculous - we got paired up again! I agree, it seems pretty messed up to drown newborn babies because of their past lives' karma or whatever. I mean, whether you take it literally or allegorically, still pretty messed up. And I feel like if you marry a woman only on the condition that you never question her actions, you're kind of just setting yourself up for some weird stuff to go down.
ReplyDeleteHa ha, I hadn't noticed that before, but it's true - how was he to know the deer was a god/spirit/whatever? I mean, surely people killed a lot of deer for food, can't blame him for not knowing. Crazy stuff.
I think you pretty much capture what a lot of us were thinking during this reading. The thought process of a lot of these characters and their moral code is crazy, drowning babies and cursed with celibacy for stealing or killing an animal...I just don't see the justification. Compared to the Ramayana, this epic is harder to follow in that respect. I like how you set up your reading diary, I may have to take note.
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