Week 2 Reading Overview

I have chosen the PDE Ramayana. This semester I have a schedule where I have to work on my school assignments in different environments and only at certain times. A physical copy of a book is not that hard to carry but there is more likelihood I might forget it. With the PDE version being online, this is personally much more accessible to me for the sake of this course. I am interested in the Narayan version, but possibly at another time.

Comics:
The two comics I chose were Subhadra: Beloved Sister of Krishna and Balarama and The Lord of Lanka: The Rise and Fall of a Demon King. Whilst all the comic stories are loaded with various types of drama, I felt these were easy to follow. Not only was I better able to understand what was going on, but why characters' actions were significant within the story, an important aspect. I believe with time I could better interpret the other comics because of more familiarity with the background of these tales.

Some reasons I picked these stories in particular are because of the following. I enjoyed Subhadra story because on the quest for her love there are a lot of twists and elements that can be paralleled to today's love stories (jealousy, competition, etc). Reading it from a perspective that varies culturally (from Western media) and temporally would be intriguing. The Lord of Lanka interested me because we are hearing the story of a villain. Not just during the fight, but some insight to the way he is.

Videos:

One of the two I enjoyed was Indian and Greek Mythological Parallels. It's always interesting to see connections made between religions and even cultures. Before watching the video, I thought these comparisons would be interesting because both mythologies are so ancient. While Greek mythology isn't really practiced as a religion so much anymore, Indian mythology is (not to discredit people's personal and variant beliefs). The second was Moksha: Freedom from Life and Death. Moksha is a critical component to Hinduism. Understanding this is essential to the philosophy behind Hinduism, which ultimately this mythology and culture were bred from.

Narada and Vishnu

(obtained from course Images and PDE epics page, image can be found here)

I chose this image because it is beautiful. I feel all of its details capture His divine nature. From the multiple heads, elaborate yet simple (irony I know) clothing, and color scheme.