Reading Notes: PDE Mahabharata, Part C

For this week's reading notes, at least in this part, I decided to make notes in bullet-points. I wanted to try a new style of note-taking for this assignment, just to see if it helped me organize my thoughts any better. 

• First of all, similar to the Ramayana, they have to experience exile and life in the forest. I liked this because it seemed to be an overarching theme from Indian Epics, and I want to incorporate something like this in some of my future stories. 
• I really liked the character, Krishna. He was very powerful, but seemed to be benevolent, and had some slice of humanity despite being a godly figure. 
• I liked the section where the Pandavas needed to acquire special weapons. One of my favorite storylines was the one with the jealous brothers and Duryodhana. This is something that is seen in so many stories today as well, so it can be applied across time. 
• Another thing that I liked that was in both the Mahabharata as well as the Ramayana was the use of curses and the Rakshasas. This was very interesting to me because it adds an element of magic between the good and evil sides. Additionally, the Rakshashas seem to be neither good nor evil. They are very neutral. 
• I was very excited to see the appearance of Hanuman in the Mahabharata, as he was one of my favorite characters from the Ramayana. I liked that there was an overlap between these two stories, as it almost feels like they are connected. 
•  It was really cool how Karna was born in golden armor and had earrings of invisibility.
• I felt really bad for both Sita and Draupadi, as they both were very mistreated and had a lot of bad things happen to them in the stories. I think the women from these stories were treated very poorly, and I would like to talk about that in some of my stories. 
• Another random thought I had was that the riddle scene from this story reminded me of the one in the Hobbit. My dad and I read that story when I was a kid, so I immediately thought of that. 
• I liked that there weren't as many battle scenes as the Ramayana. It seemed as if they were more important since they weren't happening every other section. 

Krishna in the Court

Reference. PDE Mahabharata by Arnold, Besant, Devee, Dutt, Ganguli, Kincaid, Macfie, Mackenzie, Nivedita, Seeger, and Tagore., from SOURCE.