Desire To Think

Tag: ramayan

  • The Ring in Indo-European literature

    The Ring in Indo-European literature

    One criticism sometimes made against JRR Tolkien is that he somehow imitated the ring-based plot of Richard Wagner’s opera cycle ‘The Ring of the Nibelung’ in his own master work ‘The Lord of the Rings’.  Prof. Tolkien expressly disclaimed any similarity between his own work and that of Wagner, once comparing his Lord of the…

  • Conflicting norms of behaviour: in Greek drama and Indian epic

    Conflicting norms of behaviour: in Greek drama and Indian epic

    Polyneices a proper burial.  Polyneices has been killed in a battle against his brother and fellow citizens, and, as he is considered a traitor to the kingdom, the king decrees that no-one is to bury him or mourn him.  As his sister, however, Antigone feels that she is under an obligation to give him some…

  • Bear-king Jāmbavān and animal symbolism

    Bear-king Jāmbavān and animal symbolism

    We can perhaps identify some similar themes of cultural centrality of the bear in Indian culture, especially in its earliest phases.  Similarly to Western mythic taxonomy, the seven stars of Ursa Major are called ‘the bears’ (ṛkṣa) in the Rig Veda (1.24.10), and in fact the Pleiades are their seven wives according to Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa…

  • Ethics of exile in the Ramayana

    Ethics of exile in the Ramayana

    Themes of exile, quest and wandering are prominent in epic literature, at least of the Indo-European tradition.

  • The Setubandha of Pravarasena

    Monkey Army building a stone bridge to cross sea on way to Lanka — Wikimedia Commons (Ms Sarah Welch) The Prakrit languages have a very rich and complex literary history dating back to at least the early centuries AD. As Prof. Andrew Ollett explains – “Like Sanskrit, [Prakrit] was a language of literary intellectual culture, and cut across…