Thursday, March 24, 2016

Week 9 Reading Diary: The Pandav Princes

The Pandav Princes by Wallace Gandy

For the last 8 weeks, I have read various versions of the great Indian epics, The Ramayana and The Mahabharata. I have read in depth about many different characters, including Sita, Rama, Krishna, and Draupadi. For this week's reading assignments, I have chosen to read The Pandav Princes by Wallace Gandy. This book is a version of the Mahabharata that mainly focuses on the five Pandava brothers. This book goes into detail about many stories about Yudhishtira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva. One story about Bhima stuck out to me. In this story, Duryodhan essentially poisoned Bhima and left him to be eaten by snakes in the Ganges. Fortunately, Bhima was able to survive the attacks of the Nagas. It would be fun to write a story based on this event. I would enjoy changing up the story and having Bhima realize he was being poisoned by Duryodhan. I would make it where Bhima showed his god-like power before Duryodhan was able to roll him into the sacred river, Ganges. I also really enjoyed reading more about Arjuna. He is easily my favorite Pandava brother. My favorite part of the section titled The Tournament was when Karna came and showed up Arjuna in all the tasks. After the fact, Karna challenged Arjuna. If I were to write about this competition between Karna and Arjuna, I would definitely highlight Pritha's role as mother of them both. I think it would be a good story where Pritha chooses one son over another. 


(The Battle between Karna and Arjuna. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Bibliography. The Pandav Princes, Wallace Gandy. (1915)

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