Transcript India

Agenda, 17 March 2009
Ramayana, Jataka, BhagavadGita
leading into folklore motifs
Valmiki – like“Homer” – narrating
oral epic, ca 400 BC
Valmiki lived a simple life as a poet and holy man in a hut in the forests of
northern India. Valmiki was inspired to compose his verse after visits from
the Gods Narada and Brahma. Valmiki had a burning question and asked
Narada: who was the greatest person in the world – the most
accomplished, wise and compassionate? Narada replied that the ideal
human being was a famous king called Rama. Inspired, Valmiki created….
Desai on Ramayana
Ramayana as vehicle for diffusion of Hindu culture
from India throughout Asia; as are Buddhist Pali
Canon and Sanskrit Sutras
Goes westward into China (162AD? where it
shows up as 2 Buddhist tales where Rama is a
Buddhist) and into Tibet (where it’s also a
Buddhist tale), but also incorporates the Valmiki
epic.
Goes eastward into Burma, Thailand and Laos; by
sea into Indonesia, Malaysia: adapted into each
culture – in Malaysia, it includes many Muslim
legends
Desai on Valmiki values
Each culture, each Asian country selects, adopts
and adapts various values about what are ideal
relationships between father and sons, brothers,
and husbands and wives – but many, such as
China, do not internalize the caste system or
assume Rama to be an incarnation of God
The life of righteousness acc. to Hindu values is to
endure sufferings and trials with grace and
integrity
Rama
• The Ramayana is
perhaps one of India’s
greatest reflections on
what the ideal man
and woman, brother
and sister, wife and
husband, and friend
and king should be
• Rama is an
incarnation of Vishnu
A pair of Animated videos
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6HSpR
Jqh3c&feature=related Sita in the forest
• This site lists English, Hindi and Marathi
animations
http://www.rajshri.com/animation/mytholog
y/index.asp?page=1
Rama and Sita in the forest
http://www.bhagavad-gita.us/
From the Hindu pantheon
1. Brahma : the god of Creation : He is usually depicted
as a four faced, hoary, old man with a flowing white
beard seated on a lotus flower. He is one deity you
won't find anybody worshipping or any temples built
for.
2. Vishnu : the god of Sustenance, the Preserver : He is
usually depicted as reclining on a huge coiled serpent
with his consort serving him at his feet. He is also a
four handed deity with a mace in one hand a conch in
another and a spinning disc on a finger of yet another.
3. Shiva is the destroyer of the world, following Brahma
the creator and Vishnu the preserver, after which
Brahma again creates the world and so on. Shiva is
responsible for change both in the form of death and
destruction and in the positive sense of the shedding
of old habits.
Incarnations: Rama
One of the 10 incarnations of Lord
Vishnu, Rama is an epic hero. His
life story forms the epic Ramayana,
written by Sage Valmiki. He is the
embodiment of virtue : the Perfect
Man, the Perfect husband, the
Perfect brother, the Perfect king,
the obedient son. He is believed to
have taken birth to kill the demon
king Ravana.. This Perfect One is
depicted usually with his wife Sita
and his obedient brother
Lakshmana and his great devotee,
the monkey Hanuman at his feet.
Hanuman, devotee of Rama
The deathless one, hs
is a bachelor.
Worshipping him is
said to give one the
strength to fight off
evil. There are many
traditional style
gymnasiums in India
which are named
after him, where the
practitioners also
worship him.
Krishna the beloved
Krishna is another
incarnation of Lord
Vishnu and is the key
figure in another epic of
India, the Mahabharata.
He performed many
miracles and is also
regarded as the person
who created the
Bhagavad Gita (the
Divine Song). Here is
the Baby Krishna,
found on the lotus leaf
Useful website
Gibbs on Tales from India
The Tales from India include three different
kinds of stories: jatakas or "birth stories" of
the Buddha; animal stories from the
Panchatantra tradition; and Indian fairy
tales - which you will probably find to be
amazingly similar to European fairy tales
(there are scholars who have argued that
many popular fairy tales of Europe have
their origins in India)
Jataka tales
• Jataka tales were a major source for inculcating in
people a deep sense of moral values. The Jataka tales
date back to the third century BC and are considered the
oldest form of story-narrating practice. Lack of literacy in
those days necessitated the appointment of Jataka
storytellers known as Jataka bhanakas.
• The Jataka bhanakas would travel far and wide to
propagate the message of kindness, compassion,
generosity, non-violence, self-sacrifice, charity,
refrainment from greed etc. through these stories. The
Buddha himself used jataka stories to explain concepts
like karma and rebirth and to emphasize the importance
of certain moral values.
Collections of teaching-stories
illustrating Buddhist virtues
They depict incidents during the
earlier lives of the Buddha
leading to his Enlightenment
through stories of these
incarnations, both human and
animal – particularly the virtues
of charity, compassion, and selfsacrifice. Jataka have been
performed, written, and
depicted in art since the earliest
years of Buddhism in India.
Some of the stories also
traveled along the trade routes
and influenced storytellers in
many other world areas.
Two Jataka tales, animated
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRwFs
YzPIkM Monkey and the Demon
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIfgcKD
yd14 Greed does not pay
• Children’s site with short clips
http://www.jatakkatha.com/
The turtle who couldn’t stop talking
…. The village children saw the
two Geese flying along with the
Turtle and cried out: "Oh, see the
Turtle up in the air! Look at the
Geese carrying a Turtle by a stick!
Did you ever see anything more
ridiculous in your life!"
The Turtle looked down and
began to say, "Well, and if my
friends carry me, what business is
that of yours?" when he let go,
and fell dead at the feet of the
children.
The Mogau caves: wallpaintings in
the Dunhuang oasis (China)
Cave 257, Northern Wei (439 – 534 CE)
Caves along the Silk Road, at the edge of the Gobi desert. They include
paintings of Jakarta tales. In the year 366 AD, a local monk set about
carving out a cave for solitary meditation. Over the next thousand years,
hundreds of similar caves were cut into the same rock face - to become not
bare monastic cells but richly endowed and adorned shrines. 492 caves
remain. See http://www.textile-art.com/dun1.html
Does this tale sound familiar?
• ONCE upon a time, a Rabbit was asleep under a
palm-tree. All at once he woke up-- He jumped
up and ran.
"What if the world should break up! What then
would become of me?"
• At that moment, some Monkeys dropped a
coconut. It fell down on the ground just back of
the Rabbit.
• Hearing the noise, the Rabbit said to himself:
"The earth is all breaking up! I must run and
tell…"
From Aesopfables.com
Surely you remember the Stork…
His modern version is truly
fearsome
With these fables,
In these Wisdom Tales, who
are
the narrators? The
tellers? The authors?
What are the roles of the
talking animal?
• Goffman analyzes the
speaker into 3 separate
functions: animator, author, and principal—the
one who utters, the one who selects the
sentiments that are expressed and drafts the
wording, and the one "who is committed to what
the words say" (1981:144). How can we use that?
In addition
to Fractured
Fairy Tales
and Shrek,
we now
have
Fables
We’ll work with this next week
“After the Brothers Grimm, European scholars
began collecting folktales from Europe and all
over the world. The 19th century witnessed an
explosion of publications containing folktales
and fairy tales from every possible corner of the
earth. Because European imperialism was
continually extending its reach, there were
anthropologists and "gentleman scholars" who
collected and published stories from many
different traditions in Africa and Asia and around
the world. They published these stories most
commonly in English, French or German
translation.
Thompson & Aarne-Thompson
In the early 20th century, scholars began to
realize that they needed a system for
organizing the massive quantity of
folktales that had been published in some
printed form. Unfortunately, the solution
they came up with is not a very organized
or efficient system, but it is still useful: the
system is called motif indexing.”
Motif index entries look like this
• D. Magic
There are many D motifs because magic is prominent in
both Märchen [fairy tales] and myths. These motifs may
refer to the types of magical transformation, to magical
objects, or to magic powers. A few examples of D motifs
are:
D174. Transformation: man to cuttlefish.
D711. Disenchantment by decapitation.
D1069.1. Magic handkerchief.
D1573.1. Much butter made from little
milk by power of saint.
D1964.1 Savage elephant lulled to sleep
by virgin.
D2143.1. Rain produced by magic.
D2197. Magic dominance over animals.
http://www.talesunlimited.com/STmotifsearchhelp.asp