Reading Notes: Kincaid's Krishna, part B

These notes are based off of Shri Krishna of Dwarka and Other Stories, by C. A. Kincaid, focusing on chapter 10, Naraka and Bana

Bana was a great Demon king, the king of his founded city Shonitpur. He worshipped shiva, and one day shiva came to him to offer a boon. Bana asked to rule the world. Thus, using his own prowess in combat, Bana took over the world. He had 1000 arms and held weapons in each. But when he conquered the world, he found it too easy so he prayed to shiva for many days. When shiva appeared again, he asked for a new boon. This time, he asked for a worthy foe, despite Shiva's warnings. Thus, the demon's daughter had a dream in which she fell in love with Krishna's grandson, Aniruddha. The daughter employed her witch friend to steal the boy away, and when Aniruddha woke up to the daughter, he immediately fell in love too. Thus, they were secretly married. However, one day, Bana saw Aniruddha running about the palace and threw him in the dungeon. Meanwhile, Krishna searched for the boy around Dwarka. Finally, the sage Narada told Krishna where the boy was. Krishna led an army to free the boy, but when challenged by the great demon king, Krishna easily defeated him. The king, in his last moments of life, pleaded with Shiva to spare him despite his foolish request. Shiva agreed, and convinced Krishna not to kill the king. Then, Bana released the boy, and his daughter went to live with the boy in Dwarka.


Although I couldn't find any images for Bana, I was simply curious what 1000 arms would even look like; I had enough of an issue imagining ravana's 10 sets of arms. A quick search revealed a chinese statue, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

Image Information
Thousand armed avalokitasvara bodhisattva - wikimedia

Reading Notes: Kincaid's Krishna part A

These notes are based off of Shri Krishna of Dwarka and Other Stories, by C. A. Kincaid, focusing on chapter 1, The Coming of Krishna

Long ago, demons inhabitted the earth once more, and the earth itself pleaded with Vishnu to destroy the demons again. Vishnu said he would come to earth as Krishna, and his great serpent would be born as Balarama. Before that, Kansa, the son of the demon king, was told that the eighth son of his cousin, Vasudeva, would kill him. Kansa freaked out and threw his cousin and his cousin's wife, Devaki, into prison, and overthrew his father, Ugrasena. 6 sons were born to them in the dungeon and were left unharmed, but the 7th son would be Balarma. Vishnu caused Balarma to be transported from Devaki's womb to Vasudeva's other wife, Rohini. The eighth son was clearly vishnu when he was born at midnight. The child spoke to his father and instructed him on what to do. The bolts on the door broke, and when they came to a great river, its waters parted for them. Across the river, Vasudeva swapped Krishna, the baby, with the newborn daughter of his third wife, Yashoda. Then he returned to his cell. When Kansa came to kill the baby, the baby acended to heaven at Vishnu's will, saying "Fool, did you hope to slay me? Your real enemy Krishna is born and is now in safety."

Image Information
Baby Krishna - wikimedia

Reading Notes: Epified Mahabharata Videos, part A

These notes are based off of Epified's free series on youtube, and focus on the 6th video, Episode 5 - Amba's Ruin

After Bhishma kidnapped three princesses to marry his half brother, the oldest of the three princesses rebelled. Amba said she loved another man and wanted to live with him. Bhishma apologized as he didn't know she was in love and let her go, but when she arrived, her beloved rejected her because she had lived in the house of another man. Heartbroken, she returned to Bhishma and demanded that he marry her so that she could have purpose. However, Bhishma had already sworn to never marry, and rejected her demand. Amba blamed Bhishma for ruining her life, and swore to get vengeance. She asked many kings to enact her revenge, but all of them knew of Bhishma's prowess as a warrior and refused to help her. She finally found a great sage who had previously taught Bhishma who swore he would confince Bhishma to marry Amba. However, Bhishma refused even at the advice of the sage. The sage challenged Bhishma to a fight to the death, but neither warrior was able to kill the other for days. The sage finally gave up, and Amba swore to one day be the reason for Bhishma's death.

I didn't remember reading about the sage Parshuram in the original version, so I thought that story was interesting. Here is Parshuram with his axe.

Image Information

Parshuram - wikimedia

Reading Notes: The Mahabharata part D

These reading notes come from a public domain edition of Mahabharata, which contains the story Bhishma Falls

In Bhishma Falls, Bhishma dies in battle. The war between the Kauvra Brothers and the Pandava brothers rages on. Bhishma still leads the might of the Kauvra forces. After heavy losses, Krishna tells Yudhishthra that Bhishma swore not to kill anyone who was born a female. Yudhishthra sends Shikhandin, who was born a female but turned male by the gods, to help Arjuna fight Bhishma. Arjuna protests because Bhishma was like a father to him, but Krishna says "it is fated." Arjuna battled Bhishma for a while, but as things got bleak, Shikhandin jumped into the fight. Bhishma refused to fight, and Arjuna begrudgingly attacks him. Bhishma doesn't immediately die, but takes a fatal wound and can no longer fight. He lies on the battlefield on a bed of arrows for months and then passes.

I didn't really imagine Bhishma as lying on an actual bed of arrows, but it turns out it is exactly as described

Bhishma - Wikipedia

Week 8 Progress

I’m pretty happy with my progress so far. I enjoy writing posts the most, but I do enjoy reading (even if I don’t necessarily enjoy taking the notes on the readings). I haven’t taken advantage of the extra credit assignments other than one time when I forgot to do my reading and needed to catch back up.

No, I don’t really want to make any changes! I may end up doing a couple extra credit assignments so I can finish before dead week, but other than that, I have been enjoying my current setup and methods.

This is my image to help push me through to the end.  I know Indian Epics doesn't necessarily have to do with rockets, but hopefully graduating will lead to me getting to work on launch vehicles, so that thought pushes me towards graduation. I'm ready to be done with school and start working on the real world!

Image Info
NASA's Space Launch System - wikimedia

Week 8 Comments and Feedback

I have been pretty happy with the level of feedback I’ve been receiving from my storybook! A lot of people found things I could improve on, or sentences that just didn’t make sense. In my second storybook post (the first real story), I actually asked people where they thought I could cut down on words, and this seemed to drastically increase the amount of feedback people would offer me, not just about the word count but about all elements of the story. I may ask readers for specific feedback in the future, and hopefully this will help me to get more feedback in the future.


I feel okay about my comments out, but I never really know if they help people. I sometimes find it difficult to balance praise and critique. I don’t really know if I need to change or not, so I don’t know how to change. When I see other people’s writing I like, I try my best to apply the things I like about it, but I don’t know if my feedback helps me with that.


I don’t really have a sense of knowing the people in the class (other than my friends who I knew beforehand). I do a much better job with faces than names, so although I can recognize a blog I’ve seen before, I don’t feel like I know the person when I read their content.


I currently don’t want to make any changes to my blog. I’m not super into blogging, so I’m pretty content with a barebones blog. I’m more interested in the writings. I may add some additional content to my storybook to help pull things along, but I haven’t fully decided if I’m going to do that or not.

This feedback cat is probably the one I relate to the most. 

Although I want to get feedback because I think it makes my stories better, I still feel bad when I actually do get it. I constantly have to tell myself that it's okay, and the feedback is helping. 

Image Info 

Discomfort Cat - Feedback Cats

Week 8 Reading and Writing

I think the reading and writing assignments have been working well for me! I struggle to keep a lot of my writings under 1000 words, but I usually enjoy doing the writings each week. I will be working on shortening my stories in the future. The reading notes have served me fine; other than the first week, I have never had to return to the source story for information. Usually just by writing the notes, I remember all of the details I need about the plot (usually I have to reference for name spelling though). My favorite reading was probably the Ramayana. I really enjoyed the first part of the story, before and leading up to Rama's exile. I still enjoyed the rest of the epic, but the first half was my favorite.

I am currently very happy with my project. I am enjoying the writing, even if it has already evolved into something I didn't expect. I kind of wrote myself into a corner; I don't want to tell all of the story's through Frederik's dialogue with the men in the tavern, so at least for the first story I went ahead and wrote it just normally from Frederik's perspective. I may do this differently in the future, I may not, but either way, I'm enjoying it, and I'm excited for future stories to go into it.

Reflecting on my favorite picture, I have to return to the modernized picture of Ravana.

After finishing the Ramayana and reading the Ravana graphic novel, Ravana really lived up to my expectations as an exceptional villain, and I think this portrayal captures the epicness of his battle with Rama. Thus, this image is one of my favorite little discoveries. I had a lot of issues imagining a scary looking person with 10 heads and 20 arms, and this allowed me to imagine him as the terrifying force he is.

Image info
Ravana - ghirish homepage