Watching over what I've read in The Mahabharata, I'm starting to find it humorous how really abnormal things are treated as perfectly normal in the world of the epic. It's stated so straightforwardly that Karna was found as a baby, floating in a basket in the river, complete with armor and jewelry that grew to fit him as he aged. Or how a passing sage conveniently knew Draupadi's past-life story. Perfectly normal, right?
One again, I'm appreciating the details in this series that aren't mentioned in great depth in Narayan's version. I think some of them were at least glanced over, but I didn't get much sense of the backstory. One episode went into Karna's teacher killing all the Kshatriyas, over twenty times. It's a good reminder to me that Narayan is giving a very much abridged version of the epic, and also that stories about characters in The Mahabharata and other epics extend past only a single text and are found in multiple sources.
Arjuna draws the bow, from the Epified Mahabharata, episode 20
Then there's the bow test again. Is there any other way to decide royal marriages in these tales?? On the other hand, it makes it much simpler to find the perfect match by taking any question out of it! If only life were so simple now... Characters dealing with fate is an interesting recurring theme across these tales, like I've noted before. This time, what struck me is that major characters will insist on going into exile, even when those also involved with the rules beg them not to, because they personally feel like they must abide by the rules. That's dedication to proper behavior.
Hi Susanna!
ReplyDeleteI was looking for something to catch my attention to comment on and I saw the images from Epified. I loved that part of this option to watch the videos so much! I badly wanted to print screen some shots and print them out and color them in with my Sharpie markers. I think they were super informative and fun. It really helped me understand the Epics a lot more too.