Storytelling for Week 6: The Himalayas

Arjuna decides to meet his brothers and reunite with them after many nights of being apart. Arjuna has been living in Indra’s celestial city, Amaravati, for many years while his brothers have been living in the forest of Kamyaka. The forest is located by the Kuru Kingdom. His brothers, Draupadi, and the priest Dhaumya have all been living together while Arjuna has been traveling the world. He has come in contact with the great sages, who are good friends of Yudhishthira and his brothers.

            The great sages have been friends with Yudhishthira and his brothers now for quite some time and during their time as friends they have played many dice games and for all of the experiences Arjuna has encountered, he wanted revenge. As the dice game went on it was clear that the sages were going to win again. The sages are not only playing partners for dice with Arjuna but they are mysterious religious figures throughout the city of Amaravati, where they happened to meet. The sages for many years have been considered religious figures in the holy city. 

            After the dice games the sages say, “It is time to cleanse ourselves of our sins.” The brothers gather around in the forest where they traveled to after the games. They sit in silence while the sages begin the process of releasing the brothers of any bad sins. Once the sages finish the process of the fire altar the brothers thank them and the sages are on their way.

            Arjuna says,"My brothers, the Himalayas is the most beautiful place that you will ever see and I beg of all to come with me." He begins to say that it is in the Himalayas and will take a couple of days to get there but if they go then it would change their lives forever. Of course they proceed to go with Arjuna because of the grave interest they have for seeing this region. The brothers began to talk in excitement and say," What are we going to see there? Whatever it is I cannot wait to see the beauty you speak of."Along the way Arjuna tells them of all the wonderful crystal and gold palaces and the high walls that are studded with jewels everywhere. Arjuna says," My brothers, you will fall in love with all of the crystals and gold; they surround the kingdom." Along the way he puts images in his brothers' heads that they are about to witness the most beautiful place on Earth but what they did not know is that Arjuna was leading them into a trap set by Kubera.

            The trap set by Kubera, the lord of treasure and king of yahshas, is in place to take Arjuna into captivity because Kubera found out that Arjuna has stolen from him recently. Arjuna specifically took many of the jewels around the castle. He was able to get the jewels by picking them off the walls. Over the years the wall has eroded leaving it easy to pick of the jewels. On the other hand, Kubera does not know that Arjuna’s brothers are with him but also Arjuna does not know that Kubera has made such a plan. This trap is set in the gardens with the bright blowers and the trap is a hole that has a blanket over it that looks like dirt. Once Arjuna steps onto this trap he and his brothers will be dropped into a hole until Kubera decides to take them out.

The brothers and Arjuna begin walking towards the trap. One step will cause a deep plunge and Arjuna's next step causes them to fall into the hole. Each one of them is knocked unconscious but that is not the bad part. Kubera does not mess around with thieves and he has put hundreds of poisonous snakes into the pit and the brothers suffer a gruesome death.

Kubera thinks he has killed the brothers until the great sages come form out of no where from the top of the Himalayas to save the brothers. There is a mighty battle between the sages and Kubera and the sages know that time is not on their side and one of sages is able to slip past Kubera while the others distract him. When one of the sages get to the trap, he tosses down a rope to lift them up to safety. When the other sages notice the brothers have reached safety, they all begin to retreat back to the top of the Himalayas. Kubera goes back and searches for the brothers in his trap but notice they have all been rescued. 

Author's Note: The story is about Arjuna and his brothers going to the forest of Kamyaka and meeting sages but then visiting a king named Kubera known as the god of treasure. They spent time looking around the kingdom in amazement about how beautiful it is. The brothers also spent a lot of time with Kubera and observed the treasures in the kingdom. Then Kubera walked towards them and spoke wisdom to Yudhishthira. The exiles after that wandered on and they sighed for Arjuna and they beheld the bright car of Indra. Then Indra came into the story and he also introduced apsaras and gandharvas. They are characters that hosted Indra and they adored him extremely. Since they adored him so much the god promised Yudhishthira that he would reign in splendor over all men. After this Arjuna appeared again and he was showered with praise and then all of the Pandavas returned. Markandeya, also known as the mighty sage, visited them. The mighty sages have endured many world ages and he told the brothers all the great stories about the beginning of his time. This story is so great because of the detail involved in this story and I am glad I picked it to write about. In my story I have altered the details of the story so that is why it might be different from the original. I also felt like I wanted to change up the role of Kubera. The trap set by him is also a twist to my story and I developed this to cause excitement in the story. 


Bibliography: The Himalayas, The Public Mahabharta, Donald Mackenzie, 1913. Mahabharta

Kubera

Week 6 Reading Diary: The Himalayas

For my Diary Post, I just finished reading part C, the story about the Himalayas was pretty cool to me. It was my favorite during the part C reading. It was good because it introduced Arjuna and his brothers. It also talked about there travels to the Himalayas and then introduced the character Kubera. He was an interesting man because of all the treasures he had and it makes for any interest story to right about because I could work a lot with the king of treasure and make a twist with all the details I read about him. I could use his character but make my own story with him and describe how he got the treasures and if maybe something bad happened to him in the end because of how much treasure he has. The reason why they were in the Himalayas was because of their exile so I could link that to my story as well. I just have to think of ideas to make them tie together. I also enjoyed this story because it is very short and open ended so I could really turn this into any type of story I wanted. They author also told us about two more characters, which were Apsaras and Gandharvas. Toward the end of the story they return but they visit another character known as Markandeya. It has plenty of characters to work with in my story, so I could use these extra characters to make up a story.

Link: Himalayas  by D. Mackenzie 

Treasure of Kubera

Thoughts about Comments

I have just reviewed my comments from my storytelling and introduction posts. So far my comments have been great and I have a lot of positive feedback. I think that it is a good and bad thing. Of course I like hearing positive things about my stories but I do want to hear negative things about them. I would like to hear things I could of done better to please the reader or make the story more interesting for them. That is one of the down falls for my comments I have gotten, I just have not seen any criticism yet. I think people are too nice on their comments and it would make them more memorable if they helped me improve on my writings.

My comments so far are good in my opinion. I like to get to the point and not get to detailed about them. Which for me is positive because it does not make the writers read into the comments to much. One of the things I could improve on is giving more feedback on things I think the writers need to improve on but so far, I have read very good stories by everyone.

Storytelling for Week 5: Kunti and her Son

The setting of the story starts of in one of the most protected prison in the palace. Prince Vidura and his family have just been put in the prison for robbing Prince Duryodhana. They have been sent to prison for life for robbing one of the most important princes. In prison Prince Vidura has been devising a plan to escape with his family. To make sure he knows every step of the plan he has put secret images over his body. The guards of the prison have no idea what the images stand for but the plot is genius. The plan involves a skillful miner that they have found to dig a passageway from under the jail to the forest outside the palace. The tunnel took a couple days to make but time was running out because Prince Duryodhana has decided to send the family to hang. Vidura plan did not know this was going to happen but he finds a way to send a message to the miner to speed up the digging process. Once the miner saw the message he spent long nights digging the passageway before the family was set to hang. The day has come for the family to hang and when the guards begin to open the ceil door they are shocked. The guards say, “Where have they gone, what is this hole”. The family is long gone and has already made the escape to the forest. This is not the end of the Vidura’s plan. Before they escaped they set a trap for the guards when they close the ceil door and it will create a huge fire. The guards began to close the door and that’s when the fire explodes in their face and the prison begins to light up in flames. The flames are so powerful that it begins to set the palace on fire and it burns down the palace and Prince Duryodhana. The family has been in the forest waiting for their plan to succeed and when they see the fire burn down the palace they know everything has worked. The final part of the plan was to go back in the palace and go back to their normal lives without the evil prince leading the palace. Prince Vidura is happy to live his life in peace and without the fear that he and his family will be put back in prison.

Authors Note: The Story is mainly about a cruel plot by prince Duryodhana. Vidura and his brother Yudhishthira thought the plot was to burn his their family alive. Yudhishthira warned his family that the prince might try this awful act. Vidura sent a skillful miner to try and dig a hole under the house for their family’s safety. The miner was very sneaky with building the tunnel. Then a character named Purochana, the wicked captain, is the one in the plot that is suppose to burn the palace down. The very night the miner ended the work they entered the passageway and descended into it. Queen Kunti walked until they reached the mouth of the tunnel. A new character is presented called Prince Bhima. He was important because he set fire to the guardhouse where the wired captain lived. The captain was destroyed in the fire and then the fire was so big that it began to burn the lac palace. The Pandavas were all burned alive because of the drunken night and were all unconscious. The people of Varanavata awoke and went outside and saw the palace destroyed and nothing was left but ashes.

Bibliography: House of Fire, Mahabharata, C.A. Kincaid, 1921, Story Link

Vidura, Picture Link

Week 5 Reading Diary: House of Fire

For my second half of the reading for Wednesday, I decided to read about the House of Fire. This story is very interesting because of each characters role. The main character to me in this story is the prince Vidura. The story is about how Vidura came to find out about a cruel plot. The cruel plot was by Prince Duryodhana. The reason I have liked this reading and the one before is because of how many characters are involved. The good part of this story is how Vidura acts about the plot. It is interesting how he goes about the news of the plot and tells his family first. I like how the author starts to involve other characters. It makes me think about what I should be doing in my storytelling’s. He describes each character and how they are involved. I think each of my reading’s give me a better idea on how to introduce my characters and describe why they are apart of the story. Each story I have read goes into extreme detail about the plot and also goes into detail about the characters. I believe for me to be a better storyteller, I should be going into more detail about my plot and characters. What I notice about the details is that it makes for a better story and the readers also feel like they know what the author is talking about. I love seeing the story in my head and that’s what I need to be doing for my readers when I write my stories. I should be creating a vision for each reader.

Kunti

Link:House of Fire by Donald A. Mackenzie.