Portfolio Guide

The Golden Bow
This story tells of the mighty Parashurama and why his bow was broken by Rama.

Rakshasa Busters
This story tells of Rama and his brother Lakshmana fighting evil Rakshasas with the help of Parashurama when things get tough.

The Awakening of the Dead
This story tells of a strange little town in Connecticut, where once a year the dead come back to life and visit current inhabitants of the town.

The Loving Goose
This story tells of a loving husband who wished for too much for his family, and a wife that was too greedy in taking the gifts that he bestowed upon her.

The Loving King
This story tells of the brave king who has so much love for his people, he is willing to do just about anything for them, even if it means giving up his own life.

Storytelling for Week 9: The Loving King

"Alright children, gather around the fire for one last story," Parashurama said to the young children who had been playing around the fire, awaiting their bed time story.

"This week we will learn about what being a great leader really means, as you will all see from this story about a king who values the lives of his people more than his own." 

There once was a small village established along a flowing river, based right off of the water's edge.  This village was ruled by a great leader, who loved his one hundred followers very much and would do anything for them.  The people of the village lived in peace for many years, eating the wonderful fruits of the land and fishing the near-by river, taking advantage of all that it had to offer.  Life was very good indeed for the people of this small village.

“I have but one thing to ask of you all, my children” said the tribal leader to the villagers.  “Make as many fires as you need for warmth and cooking purposes, but never fall asleep while the fire is burning and always make sure you put it out completely before walking away from it”.

His followers respected him very much so of course they held his statement with respect and agreed to oblige.  For the village leader’s birthday a great feast was to be held, noted by a large boar roasting over the fire.  Everyone danced and sang around the fire as the boar slowly cooked over the flaming coals and all one hundred villagers and their leader stuffed themselves with food throughout the course of the night.  Those in charge of cleaning up tended  the fire and made sure it was put out properly as the chief had requested of them and everyone went to bed happy for the night.

What the villagers had failed to notice was that one single ember from the fire had managed to escape from the water that doused the fire pit as a gust of wind had carried it off just before.  This tiny little ember, so insignificant in strength on its own, landed in a patch of very dry, tall grass and began to catch fire after a few hours of coaxing.  This small little fire then grew into a bigger and bigger fire that suddenly began surrounding the village on all sides.  Shear panic began to break out as villagers cried and feared for their lives.  They were trapped and didn’t know what to do; the river was flowing too fast for anyone to safely swim across and all of the other possible exits from the village were engulfed in flames.

“Everyone stay calm and do as I say” The chief yelled out to his people.  He then quickly began looking for logs or sticks along the river’s edge to make a bridge out of but couldn’t find anything. It seemed there was no hope.  Selflessly, the chief stretched his body out over the river with his arms on one side of the river and feet supporting him up on the other side.  Everyone ran across him to safely cross the other side and all went well until the last villager frantically trampled over his beloved king and in doing so, broke his back.  The chief had sacrificed his life for the love of his people, who did not come to his aid afterwards.  This meant little to the chief as he knew that giving up his life meant losing very little compared to how much he was able to give.  One of the surviving villagers saw this and respected the chief’s final, selfless act so much that he made a temple in his honor so that no one would ever forget this valuable lesson: Lead your people out of love and treat them as if they are your own children.

The monkey bridge 

Author’s note: I based this story off of the story called “The Monkey Bridge” in the book Twenty Jataka Tales.  In the original version, there is a monkey chief who has 80,000 followers and they live in a tree along the side of a river.  The king tells the monkeys to do as they please, just make sure not to drop any of the delicious fruit from the tree into the water or else humans will find it and come searching for their wonderful tree.  All of the monkeys obey this law but one time by accident, a piece of fruit falls into the water and makes its way to a nearby village and the king demands to find the source of this fruit. Once they find the tree they plan to wait until morning and kill all of the monkeys trapped in the tree and then take all of the fruit.  The monkeys hear about this and the monkey king plans to make a bridge across the water for all of the monkeys to escape to the other side.  He tries but to no avail as the cordage needed to make the bridge is just barely too short.  So instead, he uses his body as a bridge and all the monkeys run across and the last one ends up breaking his back.  The human king sees this noble act and decided to honor the monkey king and make a temple for him that teaches people to rule out of love and treat their people as their own children.  I thought this was a great message so I pretty much retold the same story, just in a different context and by changing up all of the details of the original story.  I also added the part at the beginning where the story is introduced by Parashurama in order to fit in with the theme of this portfolio.

Bibliography: Twenty Jataka Tales,Retold by Noor Inayat

Week 13 Review

Vishnu's Bedtime Stories

I liked this link in the most recent list of course activities.  I love classic fairy tales, especially some of the ones that the Disney classics are based off of.  That made this post really stand out for me compared to the others.

Famous Last Words: Week 13

Looking back on this week, I did not get nearly as much done as I had originally planned.  I wanted to get all of my assignments done early and then do a good amount of extra credit points as well.  This way, I could finish the class early and get ahead in this class so I would have less to worry about during dead week when I begin studying for my finals.  I am kind of starting to stress out a little bit as the time to start studying draws near, so getting these assignments done early would have been really nice.  This week was busier for me than I originally thought it was going to be and on top of that, the football game was on Saturday so I ended up not getting very much work done that day due to all the excitement.  As far as my Indian Epics assignments go, I really enjoyed the reading I did this week.  It was a bit more difficult to read compared to all of the other story books, but overall very interesting.  The dialogue was in the form of a poem so the reading just seemed to flow really well and made the experience more enjoyable.  I did not end up writing a storytelling post for this week because I honestly just forgot about it and by the time I remembered, it was too late to do anything about it.  I liked that for this week’s project feedback, we got to vote on which stories written by our classmates we liked the best.  There was one storybook in particular that I thought was exceptionally well written, and by far the best in the class.  With that being said, there were a lot of very good story books and portfolios in this class and I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of them!

Pinterest College Meme

Reading Diary B: Legends of India, by Washburn Hopkins

This story is split up to be read over the course of two weeks, so after finishing Reading part B for this week, I am now half way done with the story.  For Part B of this week, the story begins with telling the tale of the Mahabharata from the perspective of the Kurus.  The reading begins with the Kurus speaking of killing the Pandu brothers and serves to show the hatred and anger the Kurus feel towards their cousins.  The dialogue and way the story is told definitely gives off the impression that the Kurus are much more evil than the Pandus and portrays them as the villains.  I personally do not feel that the Pandus are so virtuous and pure and I also do not believe that the Kurus are entirely bad either. Both sides have done wrong to one another and both sides have goodness within them as well.  The story then goes on to introduce Ulupi, one of Arjuna's wives, as well as Subhadra, the younger sister of Krishna.

Arjuna with Subhadra

Reading Diary A: Legends of India, by Washburn Hopkins

For this week, I thought I would read "Legends of India" as it sounded like an interesting title, and I decided to just jump into reading it without any background knowledge.  Through the reading, I learned that this story unfolds the events of the Mahabharata, but in a very different way than the online PDE version we read previously.  This format of the story feels much more proper and maybe traditional in a way, because of the language style used i the story.  The story isn't written in "pain english" like the PDE versions are, and at times it almost feels like the dialogue between characters is purely a poem.  This makes reading the story a little bit more difficult and turns it into a slower process, but also makes it enjoyable since it feels very different from the original copy and I don't feel like I'm reading the same thing over again.  For this week's reading, the first set of characters and their roles in the story are introduced starting with the Pandu brothers and then Krishna.  The reason for the fight between the Kurus and the Pandus is also explained.

Scene from Krishna's Wedding

Week 12 Review

My favorite item from this week's announcement is the post about the phrase "Achilles' Heel", originating from Greek mythology.  This is my favorite post because I have always loved Greek mythological stories and all of the characters and gods and goddesses that are involved.  Achilles was especially fascinating to me because of his expertise in fighting and his bravery.

Statue of the Dying Achilles

Reading Diary A: Gleanings from Indian Classics: Krishna and Kabir

For this week's reading, I have begun reading a book that introduces Krishna and the Buddha as wise and spiritual leaders.  I thought this book would be perfect for me to read this week since the theme of my portfolio is about Parashurama, the wise spiritual leader, and could greatly benefit from including other powerful spiritual leaders as well. The story begins by explaining the birth of Krishna, as his mother and father were held captive by the wife's evil brother, who is the tyrannical king of their village.  According to prophecy, the king's sister would give birth to eight children and the eighth and final son born would kill the king.  In order to prevent this, he locks up his sister and her husband in his palace and kills the first seven children born but they manage to get the eighth child out safely; this is Krishna.  Krishna eventually returns to this kingdom, knowing that the king wishes to kill him but once he arrives, slays the king on the spot and releases his father from prison to once again rule as a just leader.  This story is very interesting because the later part of Part A for this book merges Krishna with the 5 Pandava brothers from the Mahabharata.  It's like this book is from the same timeline of the Mahabharata, but starts with the point of view of Krishna and his back story, rather than from that of the 5 brothers.  I love this reading so far and can't wait to read more.

Krishna entertaining a maiden

Storytelling for Week 11: The Loving Goose

The young children of the village gathered around the fire as Parashurama settled in to tell his story of the night.  Every night, Parashurama tells a story to the younger children so that they may learn a valuable lesson to think about before going to bed.

There was once a very kind and loving man who had a wife and two daughters, which he loved very much.  He spent all of his days laboring out in the fields in front of their modest little cottage, gathering as much rice and grains as he possibly could as a means for providing for them.  

The problem was this type of lifestyle did not provide very much money or food for his family to live on and he wanted so much more for them. So, in hopes of finding a better life for his loved ones, this man set out into the forest late one night and headed towards the city of Lanka, where he had heard many riches await. 

On his way to Lanka, a little fairy of the forest approached from the distance.  This fairy had a bright yellow glow about her as she whizzed through the air, hopping from one tree branch to the other in quick little spurts. 

“What’s this? What an odd little creature!” the man thought to himself.  “Who are you, little one, and why do you seek me?” he politely asked the fairy.

“I am the fairy that watches over this forest and I came to ask why you might be out traveling alone so late at night.  That’s very dangerous you know.”

“I seek riches and a better life for my family, as I have a wife and two young daughters and I do not have very much to provide for them in the rice fields outside our little cottage”, he then explained.

And with that, the fairy magically transformed the man into a goose!  But not just any goose.  She had transformed him into a goose covered in feathers of gold.

“Oh no, what have you done? Now I will never be able to make it to Lanka and obtain more money!” The man began to say in a distraught manner, before noticing his beautiful golden feathers reflected in a puddle on the ground.

He then realized that he could provide a limitless amount of money for his family and they would never have to worry about any of their troubles ever again.  He immediately flew home, excited to show his family their new-found fortune.  Without realizing that he was not able to speak like a human anymore, the beautiful golden goose approached his old door step and waited for his loving wife to greet him.

Suddenly, as she opened the door and noticed such a sight she thought to herself , “All of our prayers have been answered!  This golden goose’s feathers will provide us with all of the money we need and give us a delicious meal to eat tonight as well!  My husband will be so pleased.”

That was the end of the poor goose who only wanted more for his family.

"So you see, little ones, both the husband and the wife were wrong in their ways and for that, they were both punished."

"But I don't understand wise Parashurama?  I get why the wife was wrong but what ever did the husband do to deserve such an end?"

"Ah, you see, my children, both husband and wife wanted too much and were greedy in their ways.  The husband desired too much for his family and the wife was gluttonous, taking all that the goose had to offer and leaving behind nothing.  And this is why you should always be content with what you have and never desire more."

The Golden Goose

Twenty Jataka Tales

Author's Note: The idea for this story originally came from the old story "The Golden Feathers" in the book, Twenty Jataka Tales.  In the original version there is a man with a wife and two daughters that wants to make more money so he can buy jewels and other material objects for his family to have, so he sets out to the forest in hopes of finding something for them.  On the way he meets a fairy that turns him into a golden goose so that his family may sell his feathers and obtain riches that way.  In this original version, when he returns home, at first the wife takes one feather at a time and sells it and lives off of that money for a little while and then when it runs out, they sell another one.  After some time, though, the wife gets greedy and takes all the feathers at once and then they turn to normal goose feathers again and lose all of their value.  I didn't like this and was going to make my version happier, but then decided that it's more interesting with a dark ending and this way, a more valuable lesson can be taught to the reader.  I edited the end of the story to make the moral more clear to the reader, and I began the story this time with an explanation that Parashurama is telling this tale to young children in a small village.  This was done because not only does it make the story more interesting, but also fits in better to the theme of my portfolio as it is supposed to be related to Parashurama and his wise lessons he has to offer.

Bibliography: Twenty Jataka Tales, Retold by Noor Inayat

Reading Diary B: Twenty Jataka Tales

For part B of this week's reading, I finished reading the rest of Twenty Jataka tales.  The most notable theme throughout the readings of individual stories in this book was that of self sacrifice.  An overwhelming amount of the stories involve a king who sacrifices himself for the better of his followers, and ends with the person or thing putting his people in danger to begin with becoming so moved by the king's love and self sacrifice that he changes his mind and decides to do none of them any harm.  The king and his followers are generally a group of animals, ranging from a broad range of different types of animals, and the things putting them in danger are generally a group of humans acting out of selfish desires.  Other short stories read in this book include stories about self sacrifice for one's family or even for a stranger, as when the hare wishes to sacrifice himself into a fire in order to provide food for a mysterious stranger, or when the father gets turned into a golden goose in order to provide food for his family.  I liked these stories because they promoted good morals and doing the right thing.  The most important moral this book teaches, as mentioned earlier, is to be purely selfless and put all others, not just your loved ones, above yourself.

The Selfless Rabbit

Twenty Jataka Tales

Reading Diary A: Twenty Jataka Tales

This week's reading started with the short story "The Guilty Dogs" in the book, Twenty Jataka Tales.  The story is about seven hundred city dogs that are wrongfully persecuted by the king for a crime they did not commit.  They were accused of chewing up the leather straps of the king's chariot one night when in reality, the royal dogs were the ones who committed the crime.  The city dogs feared for their lives but their noble leader and chief said he would take care of the situation and prove to the king that they were innocent.  He then walks through the city to the king's palace, all the while not being harmed by anyone that saw him out of love for the way he looked.  He then explained to the king that his methods of killing all the city dogs is not just and should be changed, saying that he can prove the royal dogs were the ones actually responsible.  He then proves to the king the city dogs' innocence when they royal dogs begin to throw up the leather straps.  The king develops a great respect for the city dog chief and declares that no city dog shall be harmed and only treated like royalty and served the finest of foods.  There seems to be a recurrent theme with every story I have read in this book so far that includes a group of animals that are going to be killed but have a noble leader that saves them.

The Guilty Dog