Reading notes A: Ramayana

Suhgreeva was pretty cool this week. I find the story of Vali and Suhgreeva quite original. I don’t know of any other myths that involve this type of familial betrayal. One thing that stood out to me though was that Rama delayed shooting the arrow at Vali until Suhgreeva basically thought he was going to die. The whole scenario of Rama coming out as the savior in the final moments right before Vali’s death seems like a spiritual awakening moment part of the story. The scene is similar to how in Christian stories, God would usually test his believers in some manner before revealing that he was there the whole time. The theme of omnipresence and faith seems to revolve around the character of Rama since he is the avatar of the ‘protector’ Vishnu. Furthermore, after Vali’s death, I like how the book portrays the incident as a blessing and redeeming moment for Vali who was wrong the whole time about his brother purposely wanting to overthrow him for the kingdom. The story is overall very interesting and makes me think about the spiritual commonalities of faith in polytheistic cultures and monotheistic ones in that the gods or God always seems to ‘test’ his subjects in some way.



Image taken from Pinterest

Bibliography:

Narayan, R. K., and Kampar. The Ramayana: a Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Suggested by the Tamil Version of Kamban). Penguin Books, 2006.