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