There were a lot of interesting points in the readings today. The first thing I noticed was how often the stories used nature to describe scenery and people. The very first story that was descriptive of the story's background included a lot about lotus and animals like lions. It took awhile to really get into the story, but I quickly got hooked as I kept reading. The horse sacrifice was mentioned in two different stories and it was interesting to me that they would need to send a horse out for a year accompanied by warriors to protect it before killing it to beg for sons.
One of the new things I've learned through the stories was about the varna in Hinduism. Varna is the caste system used that was part of the story and there's 4 castes. There are kshatriyas like Vishvamitra who is a warrior. Brahmins that are priests that prey to the gods during things like the horse sacrifice. Shudras who are the lowest caste that are laborers and vaishas who are merchants and agriculturists (Source: Varna Wikipedia).
Back to the story, the most fascinating part for me was when Kaiyeki started her act to exile Rama. It was shocking to see how much importance was placed on integrity spoken by mouth with no contracts. The fact that a little deceit that could have easily been ignored created such a complicated situation that even led to the death of Dasharatha was shocking. I'm looking forward to Rama's adventures along with his wife and brother later this week.
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