Week 5 Reading Diary A: Bharata's Return and Forest Life

Just as I was with Narayan’s version, I am very impressed by Bharata’s character in Buck’s version of the Ramayana. I like the way that Guha described his loyalty to Rama: “They call you a true man, a real friend, they wonder if there is anyone else like you on Earth, who would give back a kingdom…” (120). He truly seems to have not a single trace of greed, and for that, he is for sure one of my favorite characters.

I really liked some of the origin stories in the reading for this week. One in particular was the story about Agastya and how powerful he was, that he was able to bring the Vindhya Hills back down to size, as well as put an end to the demons Vatapi and Ilwala’s slaughter. Each of those was an interesting tale itself, and I might look at retelling one of them for the Storytelling assignment this week.

(Vishnu on Garuda)

I also enjoyed the story about Garuda. We didn’t hear about him a lot in Narayan’s version, so it was neat to read about his origins here. It was interesting to me that he was born from an egg along with Aruna, the charioteer of the sun god. I wrote about Aruna some in my story about Sampathi and Jatayu a couple of weeks ago, so I was happy to know how he came to be the sun’s charioteer. I noticed, too, that a lot of the stories within Rama’s story even have stories within themselves. The tale of Indra and Dadhicha told as an aside during the tale of Garuda is an example of this. Buck writes these stories in quite a deep frame.