Epics of India

Figure 1: Depiction of the Ramayana  Wikipedia Alone in his temple, Indrajit sat and rested from his sacrificial rites. He recalled how many of his colleagues relied on the sacrifice of food and wine to maintain their strength. He on the other hand, had long realized that the most crucial sacrifice was not fine foodstuffs, but time and dedication to the art of combat. To Indrajit, the magic invoked from gods was worthless without the combative experience need to use it. Indrajit, though tired, prepared to practice his archery, but as he drew the arrow, he heard the familiar sound muted footsteps rushing behind him: it was a familiar sound, because Indrajit had been the target of many assassinations.  Indrajit calmly turned, arrow still nocked, and loosed his arrow at an his target. He did all this, just asa he had trained for hundreds of thousands of repetitions. He did it without thought, without the need to think, as he had long since ceased to need to think to ...

Figure 1:  Vibhishana  Wikipedia As the Ramayana is mostly plot focused, I will focus my notes on that. Rama finds allies in the monkey king Sugriva and the Monkey God Hanuman. Hanuman Finally Appears! Sugriva explains how his mistakened imprisoning of his brother resulted in a conflict that deposed him. Rama orchestrates a coup that reimposes Sugriva to the throne. A bit of a side-note here, Rama's coup is distinctly dishonorable, and Vali's frustration is entirely understandable. If I had to write a different story, it would be the story from Vali's perspective. I don't understand how Rama was the good guy at all here. With his new monkey allies, Rama begins to search more fruitfully for Sita. Encountering the brother of Jatayu, he learns that Sita is being held in Lanka. Hanuman recovers his godly powers and goes to infiltrate Lanka. He locates Sita and destroys much of Lanka. Hanuman returns to Rama and informs him of Lanka, and they prepare to march. La...