Week 6 Reading Diary A: Monkey Madness

 The story is starting to pick up now. This is more familiar narrative, and less of random visits to ashrams. Still, there is a lot of new material added in this version, as well as some flat out differences. At times, it's hard to tell if the narratives seem so different just because Narayan summarized so much, or if there were really two opposing versions of certain stories. For example, in Narayan, as I recall, it seemed as if Hanuman just grew to a great size and stepped across the pond to Lanka, easy-peasy. Here, even with his powers, it's a whole ordeal.

This also started off what I found to be a prevailing theme of increased violence in Buck. Hanuman is eaten by a sea monster rakshasa, and then makes a graphic escape from inside its body. This reminded me of the story I commented on from last week's reading about Agastya and Vatapi - there is a similar grisly picture of a character being eaten and then bursting out, killing his attacker. I wonder why this seems to be such a popular story.

Later on, Buck said a lot more about the trouble Hanuman caused in Lanka. He even kills a couple of people - well, rakshasas I suppose - but still, it seemed as if they weren't causing any trouble, and Hanuman just attacked them - and that's not to mention any casualties that might have resulted from the stampedes or other destruction Hanuman caused. This monkey rampage seemed pretty unprovoked - I mean sure, Ravana kidnapped Sita, but Hanuman just goes to town on the whole city. It made me see a darker, murkier picture of Hanuman in this version. In Narayan, he was just a nice little hero, swooping in to save Sita, not doing anything particularly violent (yet). Here, though, he seems unnecessarily violent. Even the whole thing with setting his tail on fire - in Narayan, this was told in an almost comical way. And, if I remember correctly, Ravana ordered that Hanuman's tail be set fire AND that Hanuman be set free. This makes the resulting destruction seem like Ravana's fault entirely for that poor bit of planning. In Buck, Hanuman escapes and then proceeds to burn the city. In general, I have been surprised by the increased amount of wanton violence displayed by the characters who are supposed to be the heroes in Buck's Ramayana. I don't know how Hindus think about this, but to me it seems a bit troubling and is definitely not what I expect from a hero character.