Reading Notes: Tiny Tales Ramayana, Part A

 Character Focus: Sita

- I chose to focus on Sita because she makes an appearance in many of the Tiny Tales, and she has several interesting origin stories. Also, she is powerful enough to lift Shiva's bow by herself, which is unusual compared to the other depictions of women in Ramayana, where they seem to be mostly passive/weak compared to the men. I am glad Sita is described with superhuman/divine strength.

Origin Stories:

In all of the three origin stories described in Tiny Tales, there is one commonality: King Janaka finds Sita buried in the ground. However, how she gets there is different.

1. In "The Story of Sita," Janaka believes Sita is a gift from an earth goddess named Bhudevi

2. In "Another Story of Sita," her conception mechanism is slightly disturbing, so much so that it reminds me of Athena's conception in Greek mythology, which has her being born out of Zeus's cracked-open skull. For Sita, the evil being Ravana and his wife Mandodari create her, seeming by accident, when Mandodari drinks a mix of sacred milk and warrior blood. After giving birth to Sita, Mandodari then decides to abandon the girl for Janaka to later find.

3. In "Yet Another Story of Sita," Ravana's random killing of a king leads his daugher to commit suicide by jumping onto a funeral pyre, which causes her to morph into a jewel, which then becomes baby Sita. Baby Sita is very advanced and has revenge plans against Ravana, so he buries her.

(Image Info: Glass of milk by Santeri Viinamaki, no changes; Source: Wikimedia; License: here)

Adult Sita:

Adult Sita eventually meets Rama, and since Rama is able to lift Shiva's bow, they are to be married. It's really nice because it seems this is an actual love marriage, which was not always the case in India where women did not always have a lot of choice in the matter of their marriage. As an aside, it's really good that Ravana slipped because if he had not, he may have been Sita's husband.

Bibliography: Part A, Page 4 and Page 5 of Tiny Tales from the Ramayana by Laura Gibbs

(Since the stories are only 100 words each, I referenced the story pages instead so the range of stories related to Sita would be covered)