The videos were fun to list because of how the images are able to add lots of detail to the quick narration. They provide visual detail - and also sometimes informational, as with the list of authors - as the narrators move along. I found the drawing a little exhausting because it's so frenetic and constant, but with how fast the narrators speak, the images really help me keep up with the pace.
I noticed a lot of places where the video version of the epic differs from Narayan's adaptation that I'm reading. The narrators start with a deeper focus on meaning, talking about how the story relates to cycles of karma and similar concepts. The actions of characters in the tale will eventually come back to them, good or bad. In this same vein, there's a heavier focus on vengeance in this version. The eldest of the three sisters is eventually going to pop again, and there are other cases where characters that Narayan just kind of dropped will probably come back to get revenge.
So there's details in this version, possibly even whole storylines, that were not included in Narayan's novelized form. It's interesting to see more of the original story, but it also gets a little confusing. I start wondering if I just don't remember something from the reading or if it's left out by Narayan. Still, I'm enjoying watching the videos as a way to recap and remember what I read this week.
depiction of Vyasa narrating the epic to Ganesha
Murudeshwara temple, Karnataka
Hi Susanna! I am so glad you looked at those videos. It is going to take Epified a LONG time to do the whole Mahabharata, but they keep adding new videos. The Mahabharata itself is vast... and that's just the "standard" versions, without all the extra legends that are popular locally. If you would like to look at something that is kind of a reference book summary, this book by Macfie is very handy: Macfie's Mahabharata Summary. I put that up as a reading option; I doubt anybody would actually want to read it... but they could, and if you read this whole huge summary that would still not be the whole thing, but it would be close. And as a reference, it is super-useful. I pulled a couple of chapters from it for the Public Domain Mahabharata that some people in class are reading.
ReplyDelete