Reading Notes: The Divine Archer, Part A

 The Divine Archer is one of the reading for week 5. This is a retelling of the Ramayana that differs a decent amount from R.K. Narayan's version that I read these past two weeks.  One of the main differences is the length. It is about half the length of Narayan's version of the story. It achieves the reduction in length by reduces the steps required to reach the main plot points. Another difference is that some of the names lost the "a" at the end.

The story starts with King Dasaratha and the city of Ayodhya celebrating the birth of his sons Rama, Bharat, Lakshman, and Shatrughna.  Rama is the son of Kausalya. Bharat is the son of Kaikeyi. Lakshman and Shatrughna are sons of Sumitra. Rama is an incarnation of Vishnu and is marked with signs on his feet. 

The first big plot point is when Visva-mitra goes to Dasaratha and asks that he have his son Rama help him ward off the furies and demons that are molesting him. Lakshman also goes with him and they fight the demons attacking the holy man.

They story hits many of teh same plot points. for instance, Rama breaks Shiva's bow and marries Sita. The story lacks much of the description of the previous version, but it still serve an important purpose. 

Because the book is shorter it seems to take far less serious tone when describing what happens.  When Panchavati approaches Rama and asks him to be her husband, Rama, after telling her that he is married, sends here to Lakshman, who had no wife, whereupon she was rejected. She then morphed into he demonic self and Lakshman cut off her ears and nose. This story is far more straightforward. There is little to no exposition. Instead it hits all the main story points and tries for brevity.

The Divine Archer. Source






Bibliography
F. J. Gould. The Divine Archer. Link

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