essay on mahabharata and ramayana
Answers
Explanation:
Importance of Ramayana and Mahabharata
India is a land of spiritualism. The monks and the sages declared long long ago before the people of this country that real happiness of life consists in renunciation, love and fellow feelings.
These two great books – the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have been the sources of inspiration to most of the Indians since their composition. These two great epics – the Ramayana and the Mahabharata speak highly of ideal way of life. They teach us what life ought to be.
The characters of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata breathe the sentiments of Indian people and the teachings of these two great epics are being handed down from generation to generation.
The festivals centering round the principal characters of the two epics – Rama and Krishna – exhibit the ideals upheld by the Hindus.
The Ramayana and The Mahabharata are not simply stories of heroism, but they embody the socio-religious ideals of millions of people of India known as Hindus. Rama and Krishna are thought to be incarnations of God and their ways are to the believing Hindu’s the ways of God. They are worshipped in temples and remember in time of stress and strain in national and personal life. The freedom movement of India received huge inspiration from the Gita. Its ideal of doing work without any expectation of result colors the dram of many Indians.
Answer:
According to the story of Mahabharata, King Shantanu, of the Lunar dynasty, ruled over Hastinapur, a territory lying between river Ganges and Jamuna. He had two sons Bhisma and Yichitravirya. As Bhishma remained unmarried, Vichitravirya became the king. Vichitravirya had two sons—Pandus and Dhritrashtra.
Since Dhritrashtra was blind by birth, Pandu became the king. Pandu had five sons who were known as Pandvas. Dhritrashtra on the other hand had 100 sons and they were known as Kurus. After the death of Pandu Dhritrashtra became the king.
He was a benign ruler and took good care of his nephews, and provided them good education. But the sons of Dhritrashtra, particularly his eldest son Daryodhan was jealous of them. He conspired and managed to exile the Pandavas, who settled down near Delhi and founded a new capital Indraprastha.
In the meanwhile Arjun, one of the Pandavas, won Draupadi, the princess of Panchal-Desha as a result of Swyamvara. Duryodhan, who was still jealous of the Pandavas, invited them to his kingdom to a game of dice.
In the course of the game Yudhisthra, the eldest Pandava, lost everything, including Draupadi, the wife of five Pandavas, in the game. As a result once again the Pandavas were sent on exile for 13 years. After completing the term of their exile the Pandavas claimed their kingdom.
However, Daryodhan refused to return the same and this ultimately resulted in the battle of Mahabharata, which lasted for eighteen days. It is said that at first Arjuna, one of the Pandavas, hesitated to fight against his own kith a
At this juncture Krishna, his ally, gave him the divine message which is contained in the Bhagavad Gita. As a result Arjuna took up arms and fought bravely. In this battle an unprecedented slaughter of men took place and all the Kurus were killed.
Then Yudhishtra became the king. After some time the five Pandvas retired to the Himalayas and handed over the kingdom to King Parikshit, the grandson of Arjuna. It may be noted that besides the main story mentioned above, the Mahabharata contains a number of other mythical and legendary stories as well.
Explanation:
According to the story of the Ramayana, King Dasaratha ruled over Kosala (northern Oudha) with Ayodhya as his capital. He had three wives, Kaushalya, the chief queen, Sumitra and Kaikayi. He had four sons—Rama, (the eldest son born of Kaushalya), Lakshmana and Shatrughana (born of Sumitra) and Bharat (son of the youngest queen Kaikayi).
When Dashratha grew old, he wished Rama to succeed him to the throne, and therefore, appointed him Yuvraj.
This was quite distasteful to Kaikayi, the youngest queen, who wanted her son Bharat to succeed Dashrath. Utilizing the two promises or vardans given by King Dashratha in the past, she demanded the exile of Rama for 14 years, and throne for her son Bharat.
Rama as a dutiful son proceeded on exile with his wife and Lakshman, his brother who loved him most. Bharat, who also loved Rama very much, also refused to accept the throne and followed him in jungles. However, on persuasion of Rama he returned to Ayodhya and continued to rule in the name of Rama during the period of his exile.
During the course of exile while Rama was living in the forest at Panchavati near Nasik, Ravana’s sister visited them and asked Laxman to marry her. Laxman not only refused to marry her but also insulted her. Ravana, the demon king, took revenge for the insult of his sister by abducting Sita to Lanka (Ceylon).
Rama and Laxman marched towards Lanka to rescue Sita. On the way Rama helped Sughriva to regain his lost kingdom from Bali. As a token of gratitude for this favour Sughriva offered the services of Hanuman, his able army general.
Ultimately as a result of the great battle between Rama and Ravana at Lanka, Ravana was defeated and killed. Sita was brought back. In the meanwhile the term of fourteen years of exile was over and Rama returned to Ayodhya and became the king. He continued to rule for a long time.
However, the troubles of Rama were not over and he was forced to send away Sita from his palace because her chastity was suspected by some of the subjects. Sita ultimately found shelter in the ashrama of Valmiki and gave birth to Lava and Kusha.
Rama discovered about the identity of these two sons only when he performed the Ashvamedha sacrifice and his horse was detained by these brave boys. These boys later on succeeded Rama.