Sanskrit Dramas

An ancient depiction of the battle between the
monkey warriors and Ravana's men.

In the Sanskrit scriptures there are two great dramas, The Ramayana, and The Mahabharata.  The Ramayana is fantasy, and The Mahabharata is believed to be a real, historical account.  The Ramayana is a story about a king, Rama, who is kicked out of his throne unfairly and banished to the forest.  He is joined by his wife Sita and his brother Lakshmana.  They ironically end up living happily in the forest.  Their happiness ends abruptly when Ravana, king of the man-eater race, or Rakshasa race, hears about Sita’s beauty and decides to kidnap her.  Rama, full of both grief and anger, decides to rescue his wife.  He forms an alliance with a race of Varnaras, or monkey people.  The Varnara general, Hanuman, eventually finds Sita on the isle of Lanka.  Rama ordered his army to throw boulders into the ocean, and the miraculously floated.  The monkey warriors then built a bridge out of the floating rocks.  The armies then met outside the city gates and waged war on Ravana’s men.  Rama’s army recieved the upper hand and slayed many of Ravana’s sons.  At the end of the battle, Rama kills Ravana and is reunited with Sita.  They return to Ravana’s capital, led by the light of the Divali, and free everyone from Ravana’s misery.

A Kuru attempting to strip Draupadi

The Mahabharata is a much longer, 110,000 verses, and more realistic story than The Ramayana.  The Mahabharata is about the struggle for the throne between the five sons of the previous king, Pandu, and their cousins, the Kauravas.  Pandu was the second oldest of three princes.  The oldest, Dhritarashtra, is blind and unfit for the throne, and the youngest was the son of a maidservant and was not royal enough to be king.  Therefore Pandu was crowned king.  But Pandu died of a curse while his sons were still young.  Due to the traditional rules of succession, the throne should have been passed to Pandu’s sons, lead by Yudhisthira.  Since they were still minors, Dhritarashtra acted as a regent.  However, as the sons and Kauravas grew up, the Kauravas grew resentful.  They felt that it was their throne, for their father was acting as king and was oldest of the three princes.  So the Kauravas, also known as Kurus, planned to kill the Pandavas, along with their widow mother Kunti, by burning them alive.  The Pandavas were however tipped of their plan and escaped the burning palace through a tunnel.  Now, since the Pandavas were aware of their traitorous thoughts, sought refuge in the forest.  The blind king, feeling sorry for his sons’ actions, gave the Pandavas half of their kingdom.  This half was by far the worst, but with the help of Krishna they turned it into a flourishing kingdom.  Jealous of Yudhisthira’s fame, Duryodhana (leader of the Kurus) forced his father to arrange a gambling match between the Pandavas and the Kurus.  Duryodhana rigged the dice.  Yudhisthira lost everything.  Then, one of the Kurus tried to strip Draupadi, wife of the five brothers.  Luckily Krishna protected her by supplying an endless supply of sari.  None of the warriors attempted to help the girl, which gave them bad karma and lead to their future failure.  However, even after this mistreatment, the Pandavas were faced with their defeat and banished to the forest for thirteen years.  They were supposed to remain incognito on the final year.  If they were discovered, they had to remain for another twelve years; if they remained hidden, they were allowed to reclaim their kingdom.  The Pandavas remained in the forest for the alloted time and remained incognito.  They went to reclaim their kingdom, but the Kurus refused.  So the two groups of cousins fought for eighteen days.  The Pandavas were victorious, but had very few soldiers left.  Yudhisthira was crowned emperor, and his empire flourished for thirty years until the Pandavas retired into the Himalayas and left the throne to their grandson.

Krishna and Yudhisthira riding into battle in the
Mahabharta.

These two stories, while very different in content, both have the same significance in Hinduism.  While neither of them are religious texts, they both enforce Hindu beliefs.  In the Ramayana, dharma and the classic victory of good over evil play an important part in the story.  The Mahabharta, since it is a longer and more complex peice, has many different values intertwined.  These include: good over evil, karma, dharma, and reincarnations.  Both of these stories use fantastic tales of tragedy and betrayal to enforce the Hindu beliefs.  They but the idea of a belief into a real life (to some extent) situation.