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| Lord Rama, with brother, wife, and devotee. http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch05d-ind.htm |
Research:
While this article did not specifically identify Rama, the Divine Archer, it did shed some light on other epics of other divine archers from the Chinese and other cultures and people groups. We learn that the sky and sun are too a huge part of the story in defeating evil and monsters. Yi, the Chinese divine archer, was also a king. He saves his people and defeats dragons. A huge difference is how Yi met his wife. She was actually so grateful that he did not kill her that she wanted to marry him! So Yi and the goddess Chang O got married out of escaping death.
"Ramayana translates as the Story of Rama. It is believed to have been written by a Brahmin named Valmiki, a man whose style of poetry was new and a style to be copied thereafter. It is said to have appeared between 400 and 200 BCE. The story takes place centuries earlier, when Aryans were expanding their influence over Dravidians in southern India, the Aryans engaging in missionary endeavors supported by military power and a strategy of divide and conquer. In its seven books and 24,000 verses the Ramayanapraises the heroism and virtues of Aryan warrior-princes: the Kshatriyas. The Ramayana has as its main hero a prince called Rama, whose life the Ramayana describes from birth to death. Rama and his brothers are depicted as embodying the ideals of Aryan culture: men of loyalty and honor, faithful and dutiful sons, affectionate brothers and loving husbands, men who speak the truth, who are stern, who persevere but are ready and willing to make sacrifices for the sake of virtue against the evils of greed, lust and deceit."
I really enjoyed the simplistic overview of the story of Rama. Though this article also did not specifically correlate with the Divine Archer, it holds a lot of solid background to what is to come in the Divine Archer. One of the main themes in the book is the brothers and their integrity and character. I enjoyed this more than any other themes, and would love to hear even more about the loving way they lived their lives. Nothing about them was selfish, but instead all about others and the people they were defending. Their love was never inward, but sacrificially outward.
3. https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5903
"Because the Iliad and Odyssey and the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata are all culturally representative works that seek to appeal to broad audiences, these epic dyads highlight both mastery models and coping models. More precisely, within each pair of poems, one poem presents a hero who masters what he needs in order to demonstrate his society’s existential ideal, while the other poem proffers a hero who has to cope with difficulties in order to attain this ideal. The contrast between the mastery and coping models of these coupled epics takes symbolic shape in the disparity between their human heroes’ capacities to embody divinity."
This article does an excellent job capturing the comparison between the Iliad, Odyssey, Ramayana, and Mahabharata and how they all tie into society and the heroic ideals. This article proposes that the shape is all to capture divinity across cultures and the attainment of certain goals is very similar.
"The mortal battle that results from this abduction occasions Rāma’s very existence, for the prince actually incarnates half of Viṣṇu. This god agreed to assume human form as Rāma and his three brothers in order to defeat the overweening Rāvaṇa (whose great-great-grandfather, the divine creator Brahmā, had rewarded Rāvaṇa’s austerities by making this demon invincible to all supernatural beings and vulnerable only to humans and other mammals).Yet, even though Rāma bests Rāvaṇa with the help of an army of monkeys and even though Rāma knows that Sītā has remained faithful to him during her captivity, he nonetheless insists that she prove her purity twice. The first time she does so, she undergoes and is unscathed by a fire ordeal.Still, despite her acceptance by her husband and their subsequent engendering of twin sons while reigning together as Ayodhyā’s king and queen, Rāma decides to banish Sītā to the forest to quiet the rumors of her infidelity that have continued to spread among the Ayodhyans. The couple then lives apart for more than twelve years, during which Sītā is sheltered by Vālmīki at his hermitage, where—early on—she gives birth to Rāma’s and her boys."
I found this super interesting. Rama gets banished by his father, and his wife is kidnapped. He, knowing all, knows she is still pure but still makes her prove it (why?) and then she is proven that she is pure. After a while, he banishes her anyway for twelve years and she is protected the entire time. This is the aftermath of the Divine Archer and gives some light on what happened afterwards.
Bibliography:
Gould, F. J., & Banker, A. (1911). The divine archer, founded on the Indian epic of the Ramayana, with two stories from the Mahabharata. London: J.M. Dent & Sons.
MYTHOLOGY: THE NEGLECTED EPIC MYTH OF YI THE DIVINE ARCHER. (2016, September 15). Retrieved February 16, 2018, from https://glitternight.com/2012/03/17/mythology-the-neglected-epic-myth-of-yi-the-divine-archer/
(n.d.). Retrieved February 16, 2018, from http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch05d-ind.htm
Why People Need Epics: Terming and Learning from the Divine Yet Human. (n.d.). Retrieved February 16, 2018, from https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5903
3. https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5903
"Because the Iliad and Odyssey and the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata are all culturally representative works that seek to appeal to broad audiences, these epic dyads highlight both mastery models and coping models. More precisely, within each pair of poems, one poem presents a hero who masters what he needs in order to demonstrate his society’s existential ideal, while the other poem proffers a hero who has to cope with difficulties in order to attain this ideal. The contrast between the mastery and coping models of these coupled epics takes symbolic shape in the disparity between their human heroes’ capacities to embody divinity."
This article does an excellent job capturing the comparison between the Iliad, Odyssey, Ramayana, and Mahabharata and how they all tie into society and the heroic ideals. This article proposes that the shape is all to capture divinity across cultures and the attainment of certain goals is very similar.
"The mortal battle that results from this abduction occasions Rāma’s very existence, for the prince actually incarnates half of Viṣṇu. This god agreed to assume human form as Rāma and his three brothers in order to defeat the overweening Rāvaṇa (whose great-great-grandfather, the divine creator Brahmā, had rewarded Rāvaṇa’s austerities by making this demon invincible to all supernatural beings and vulnerable only to humans and other mammals).Yet, even though Rāma bests Rāvaṇa with the help of an army of monkeys and even though Rāma knows that Sītā has remained faithful to him during her captivity, he nonetheless insists that she prove her purity twice. The first time she does so, she undergoes and is unscathed by a fire ordeal.Still, despite her acceptance by her husband and their subsequent engendering of twin sons while reigning together as Ayodhyā’s king and queen, Rāma decides to banish Sītā to the forest to quiet the rumors of her infidelity that have continued to spread among the Ayodhyans. The couple then lives apart for more than twelve years, during which Sītā is sheltered by Vālmīki at his hermitage, where—early on—she gives birth to Rāma’s and her boys."
I found this super interesting. Rama gets banished by his father, and his wife is kidnapped. He, knowing all, knows she is still pure but still makes her prove it (why?) and then she is proven that she is pure. After a while, he banishes her anyway for twelve years and she is protected the entire time. This is the aftermath of the Divine Archer and gives some light on what happened afterwards.
Bibliography:
Gould, F. J., & Banker, A. (1911). The divine archer, founded on the Indian epic of the Ramayana, with two stories from the Mahabharata. London: J.M. Dent & Sons.
MYTHOLOGY: THE NEGLECTED EPIC MYTH OF YI THE DIVINE ARCHER. (2016, September 15). Retrieved February 16, 2018, from https://glitternight.com/2012/03/17/mythology-the-neglected-epic-myth-of-yi-the-divine-archer/
(n.d.). Retrieved February 16, 2018, from http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch05d-ind.htm
Why People Need Epics: Terming and Learning from the Divine Yet Human. (n.d.). Retrieved February 16, 2018, from https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5903
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