Reading Notes: Seven Secrets of Hindu Calendar Art Part B

So I have continued on with the series "Seven Secrets of Hindu Calender Art" and I still enjoy it quite a bit. I think I'm finding that reading the notes in advance before watching the video itself is actually the best way to enjoy this series. Just like "Seven secrets of Vishnu", this series is extremely dense and I mean extremely dense. It's very hard to follow what's going on unless you already understand what is happening. Thus, I really reccomend reading the notes before you actually start watching the videos themselves. There is a massive trove of information within these videos and you'll get new information every few seconds and so using the wikipedia links while you watch is still reccomeded. Being able to have links to these new topics that pop up is really useful.

As for the actual information in the series, it's of very good quality and the explanation format works very well. I found it really interesting that the Greeks did not believe in rebirth. I guess I'd always known the Greeks believed in an afterlife but the separation between an actual rebirth and an afterlife is a very distinct point that I guess was clarified by this video series. The focus on rebirth in Hinduism is almost something entirely unique to it in its form.

Biblography: Seven Secrets of Hindu Calendar art, link

(Calendar art, wikimedia commons)

Reading Notes: Week 13 Seven Secrets from Hindu Calendar Art

So I decided to do another video series and honestly, this one is so much better than the series "The Seven secrets of Vishnu" that I watched for the past few weeks. Like I had no idea how much I was missing and I even tried to use Wikipedia in the last series and I still missed so much. This is so much better with the annotated notes that really show you what's going on and give the actual meaningful information behind the piece. I immensely appreciate all the work put into the notes so thank you Laura for making this stuff much more accessible. I actually am really glad to be able to access this material for once. I had been so discouraged with the last one I went through over three weeks.

Bibliography: Seven Secrets of Hindu Calendar art, link

(Hindu Calendar, wikimedia commons) 

Story: The Bumbling God Part 4

Krishna continued to live as a young man in the forest with the others of his former village. But he was not ever completely safe. Demons were constantly hunting for him but his location was never found for one key reason. Whenever a demon found him, the demon would somehow die before it could relate that information to the others like it. This happened so often that it become a bit of a great threat within the community of demons. They all spoke that if you entered the forest, you would be struck dead. None of them knew why though for everyone who went died.

Finally the demons heard what was happening. They pretended to be regular humans and they listened to the stories of the people that lived in the forest and the people spoke of a man who was immune to the threat of demons. Finally the boy had been found. The demons prepared a great force to send against him in order to finally end him. They assumed he must have been some kind of great warrior unlike any other that had lived before since he defeated so many demons already at such a young age. They armed themselves and prepared in great numbers for their assault. They assumed many of their kind would fall in the attack but they continued with their work.

The day of the attack came. The boy was known to be fishing out on the ocean and he would be an easy target. He wouldn’t have whatever powerful weapons he was using to fight the demons in the past, they assumed. Several of the demons took the form of fish and began swimming looking for the boat with the boy that had to be Krishna. The demons spotted a boat with two people on it - a sickly young man and a brawny, strong figure working with him. The demons did not know that the stronger man was Krishna’s cousin and not Krishna himself. The demons returned to the others like them and informed them that they had found the boy. The demos swarmed across the ocean, taking the form of giant serpents and great sea monsters. They rapidly approached the boat and the two young men on the boat spotted the horrible onslaught and grew horribly fearful for their lives and they ducked down and hid under their nets.

Just as the demons were about to fall on the boat and kill the two young men, suddenly a great storm swept up, sending fierce waves that crushed the demons. The boys assumed the monsters had seized the boat as it swayed viciously in the storm, but after several hours of horrible tossing, the boat stopped and sat in still waters. They had survived and the entire demon army had been killed in the storm. The boy Krishna had lived again. The rumors grew fierce that there was a boy who no one could harm and this word spread far and wide reaching a certain king with a certain grudge against the boy.

Author's note: I have continued the series that I started a few weeks ago and I'm still having fun with it. This is one of the few that I wrote completely from scratch without basing it on a specific story or instance in the epified piece. I had fun with it and though it's gotten a bit predictable, I think I'm going to spice it up in the next few iterations.

Bibliography: Epified Krishna, link

(Death of Krishna, wikimedia commons)

Reading Notes: The Seven Secrets of Vishnu Part F

I have finally come to part F of this video series and I will admit, it was very hard to stay focused on this while constantly checking for election updates throughout it. I'm still nervously glancing out updates and listening to it in the background. But back to the material at hand. I'll repeat that this isn't the best series for several reasons. It's very technical and gives little background info, it moves very quickly with little reason for transitions, and it's visuals could be slightly better. All that said, this isn't the worst series either. You will gain some information from this series. It is an extremely informative series but so much of the information is quite dense and hard to digest, that so much of it will go over the viewers head if they're not pausing to watch. I do recommend keeping Wikipedia open to search anytime something new or someone new is mentioned because otherwise, you'll get confused very quickly. Pause often and look things up if you want to follow along.

These final two videos are pretty good. It's very interesting how they discuss the role of thoughts behind actions and the background information behind that idea is very well done. There is a heavy focus on the weight given to every action that goes beyond just the results of the action. Everything behind it has weight as well. I also enjoyed that this part was on Krishna as I have been doing several stories about Krishna over the past few weeks.

bibliography: Seven secrets of vishnu, link

(Krishna shows Arjuna his universal form, wikimedia commons)

Reading Notes: Week 12: Seven Secrets of Vishnu Part E

So despite being very discouraged by my last two weeks with this material, I've decided to trudge on just to finish it at this point. I didn't want to not finish it considering I've already made it this far. I definitely kind of regret doing it. I was hoping against hope that this piece would be slightly more accessible. I know the Calandar art set has notes so I'll check those out next week. At this point, the series has been very informative, but it is extremely dense.

The content here is very good though. The discussions on the various warring factions involved in Indian folklore is extremely interesting because they focus not on the most obvious elements that I'm used to seeing in literature. The narrator explains how the battles either vertically or horizontally for different groups. It's a very interesting dynamic that I hadn't really considered before and the way it's explained is actually one of the better pieces in this series.

Again, humanity is held as high above all other earthly creatures which makes sense for the time and place. It's a pretty common trope in religion and folklore - humanity is always the most powerful being on the planet excluding the occasional godly visits. It is interesting though that the focus here is how humans are held to a certain standard to try to maintain the more noble qualities of mankind and the earth itself. It's very interesting on how the battle between the more baser natures and higher natures is portrayed as an actual war.

Bibliography: Seven Secrets of Vishnu, link

(Valmiki Ramayana, wikimedia commons)

Story: The Bumbling God Part 3

The Bumbling God Part 3

As Krishna continued his life in the village, many of the villagers suddenly began to have dreams which urged them to leave the city and as these dreams continued for many nights, the families and people of the village finally packed up and moved. They wandered into a nearby forest where they decided to make their home. In this place, Krishna and his friends would play among the trees making music with flutes and other homemade instruments. They would do this every day, making beautiful and lighthearted music to raise the spirits of the forest. What they did not know was that there was a lake nearby that was home to an evil snake demon and the demon’s very presence made the water poisonous not only to drink but simply to the touch. If you even got any of the water on you, it would kill you within a few short minutes.

            One day Krishna was playing his flute in the woods and he suddenly realized that he didn’t hear the sounds of his friends singing or playing their instruments and so he wandered around looking for them. He found the poison lake surrounded by his dead friends. He fell to his knees and cried for them but suddenly a great snake sprang forth from the lake and rose into the air with the clear intent to eat Krishna. Krishna could not run very fast due to his clubfoot and so he was unable to flee and instead stared directly at the beast. It reared up and then sprang at him with its mouth wide open, prepared to eat the boy. All Krishna could think to do was throw his flute at the creature and he closed his eyes, lobbed the flute, and waited for death. But death did not come for him. He heard a horrible grinding sound and an angry roar and he opened his eyes to the sight of the snake with the flute stuck in its jaws forcing its mouth completely open so that it could not close its mouth. It writhed in agony clearly in pain but confused at what was preventing it from closing its mouth. Krishna hobbled away trying to get to the nearby trees where he could hide. The monster spotted him out of the corner of its eye and it tried to give chase but its vision was hampered by its open mouth and so it struggled to follow the boy. It glimpsed him out of the corner of its eye and lunged again with all its might but instead of hitting the boy, the snake found a tree and drove the flute into its brain, killing itself.

            This great commotion brought other villagers towards the sounds and when they found the boy Krishna next to the dead snake, they could not believe what had happened for clearly a boy with so many physical impairments could not defeat such a demon. The villagers found Krishna’s flute in the creature’s skull though and they came to believe that the boy had killed the snake even though he insisted he had not. He was too humble they said of him. The people would come to think of him as an avatar of one of the gods for no mere mortal would have such luck.

Author's Note: I've decided to continue this series I started two weeks ago. For those new to this piece, basically the idea is that Krishna in this story is still a god but only survives and succeeds through basically random chance. He's deformed and a little bit slow and somehow still always survives through something random happening. In the original source material, Krishna uses his divine powers to simply overcome the beast but here we see he simply lucks out completely but because he is so lucky, people begin to think he is something special. I got the idea for this series of stories mainly because in so many Indian tales that I've read for this class, the characters are all essentially godlike. When they have faults, they're often still fatal but they're still so far above regualr individuals that it made all the stories seem a bit too fantastical. I guess I'm kind of poking fun at it with a bit a flipped take. Now I have a character that is in no way fantastic. In fact, he's a bit slow and still he's able to survive essentially anything thrown at him, not through his won great abilities but because he is very lucky. If you liked this one, check out the others in the series!

bibliography: Epified Krishna, link

(Krishna statue, wikimedia commons)

Reading Notes: Seven Secrets of Vishnu Part D

Today I continued watching the series, the seven secrets of Vishnu and I still very much enjoy it. It's not the easiest story to follow. It's pretty hard to follow along and I find myself constantly checking things on wikipedia just to be able to understand what's going on, but at some points, I just let it roll and try to follow along. It breaks the flow too much if I'm pausing every ten seconds to go looking something up and then I lose track of what's actually being described. It is still very informative - almost too informative though as it tends to just shower you with new information. For example we start off hearing about the goddesses of wealth and learning and I as the viewer am following along generally at this point, the stage has been set, we have these two characters and so now let's see where we go with this. We get some good information about how they look and the images give us some basic information and we even get some personality information about them but as soon as the descriptive elements pass, we get into another word salad of information where new characters show up and actions are happening and it's not really clear where we are in space. I still feel like there's a ton of material there but I'm struggling so much to absorb it right now.

Bibliography:  Seven secrets of Vishnu, link

(Vamana statue, wikimedia commons)