Skip to main content

Reading Notes: The Indian Story Book by Richard Wilson Part A

Visvametra refusing to give up his asceticism, despite a beautiful goddess being sent to try and convince him to enjoy life. The gods feared that his determination would eventually give him power over them.



The first of the stories for this reading was "Sabala, The Sacred Cow." Not to start out too critically, but the story begins with a very generous and successful king being unhappy because his life and kingdom were too peaceful, and he didn't have anyone to fight with. Of all the silly things. And then when he tries to put together an army, everyone flocks to his side and he actually has to go and try to find someone to pick a fight with.
I really liked one piece of wisdom from this story, said by the stage with whom the cow lives:
"There is no credit in virtue which is not assaulted by temptation." While it is said in the context of the king trying to come up with reasons for the sage to give up his holy cow, it still holds a lot of wisdom.

Another piece of wisdom from the story of the surprisingly foolish king is: "Laughter which never ceases can become as wearisome as woe."

Overall, I thought the story was good. He was a man determined to fight, and his strength of will was no match for the internal virtue of the brahmin he encountered. In wanting to get strong enough to fight the brahmin, he fought himself his whole life, and finally achieved true wisdom by learning to expel all of his own vices. I thought this was similar to the Christian saying "remove the log from your own eye before you point out the speck in your brother's", which more simply put means that you have to get all of your own stuff taken care of before you can try and criticize someone else.

The second story is titled "The Great Drought". I liked this one a lot as well, but it ended more abruptly. I liked the more poetic tone of this one.



Citations:

  • Sabala, The Sacred Cow: https://archive.org/stream/indianstorybook015651mbp#page/n191/mode/2up
  • The Great Drought: https://archive.org/stream/indianstorybook015651mbp#page/n244/mode/1up
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction to a Nonprofit Enthusiast

I am studying Nonprofit Administration, and graduating in May. I come from St. Louis, MO, where I've spent just over half of my life. I have two siblings, a 9 year-old brother and a 2 year-old sister, both the best little humans to grace this earth. I've enjoyed my time at OU, during which I spent a semester at Kyungpook National University in Daegu, South Korea. During my time there, I was able to hike many of the mountains surrounding Daegu, visit some gorgeous temples and sites of historical significance, and also hop over to Japan for a little less than a week. I've also been to Frankfurt, Heidelberg, and surrounding towns in Germany. I love both places.     My most recent international travel took me to Monterrey, Mexico, with my fiancé and his mother. He was born there, and still has a large part of his family living there. It was lovely to meet them, and they were kind enough to take me all over the city, visiting museums and parks, and eating lots of amazing foo...
27 comments
Read more

Reading Notes: Nine Ideal Women Part E

This will be the last of my reading notes on Nine Ideal Indian Women, so I'll be going over the last stories about Damayanti and Uttara, but mostly just talking about the book as a whole and wrapping up my thoughts about it. Damayanti was the miracle daughter of a maharajah who had not had children for most of his life. A phrase that I really loved in the beginning of the story that described his happiness all blighted by this one sorrow of being childless:      "A crumpled leaf lay in his bed of roses, and whichever way he turned he felt it, for no child had come to bless his manhood and his whole being yearned for the joy of hearing the name of father fall from baby lips" (page 175). I loved that quote because it was the most poetic and graceful way of showing the sorrow of being childless I had seen out of all of the multiple instances in the stories I've read throughout the semester.  This story was also more poetic than most of the others throughout. It remin...
Post a Comment
Read more