Week 9 Reading Diary: Sacred Tales of India

For this week I decided to read the book Sacred Tales of India by Dwijendra Nath Neogi. For this portion of the reading there were three stories titled The Divine Brothers, Snatched From Death, and By Itu's Favor.

The Divine Brothers was my least favorite story, but it still had some interesting parts. I liked how the two snake brothers decided to try and make Lahana feel like she had a family with them and their mother, Manasa. The brothers were so pleased with how well they had been treated by Lahana that they eventually find a way to give her a mortal family. The snakes bit a prince and then returned as Brahmins that promised to cure the prince if the king permitted Lahana to be adopted by him. The king agreed and Lahana finally had a family of her own.

My favorite story of the three was Snatched From Death. I liked this story because it displayed how devoted Savitri was to her husband, Satyavan. I particularly liked how she found a way to deceive Yama into restoring her husbands life without specifically asking for it.

Image: Savitri, Satyavan, and Yama

(Calcutta, circa 1895)

The other story that I liked was By Itu's Favor. I liked this story because it showed how generous the god Itu was to his worshipers, but he also turned out to be extremely forgiving. I thought the Brahmin that deserted his daughters only because they ate some of his cakes deserved what he got in the end. The two daughters showed how kind they were to ask Itu to make their vengeful father prosperous even though he had just recently deserted them.