Originally posted by: gossipgirl21
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata
The medical profession often does not trust Wiki; However considering this text is pretty well referenced I would suggest a read...
Also, I too have had an interest in the MB and the Ramayan and I would gladly have a discussion with you on what I feel the MB by BRC distorted and left out.
For starters, Dhritrashtra was not as dedicated to Gandhari as that MB had us believe and Madri was not the innocent bystander that they made her out to be.
yeah a discussion would be nice; of course this isn't the proper place to do it, but I think there is a thread somewhere on here? Just to loop your other more recent posts together (and avoid the hassle of adding more space to each post, I'll just reply collectively here.
First off, I'm terribly sorry if you felt I was mocking you in any way. Definitely not my intention, but to be honest, you clearly know your stuff about the epic, which is quite fantastic to see.
That being said - I'm not sure how far you have followed along the journey Star Plus has taken us, but it's obvious that they are adding melodramatic "stuff" to make points. Some points are good, yet some points are bad.
For example - the whole Drupad hating his daughter scene ushered in some well thought out modern day points, but the way they did it annoyed me. Why? A) They don't state which sources they use. And this makes sense. This is entertainment, we don't need evidence of which sources they used, they can do whatever they wish to do. The thing is that we've grown up listening to the MB, we've grown accustomed to the virtuous nature of the Pandavas and the sinful action of the Kauravas. We've sympathized for the Pandavas, and great love has emerged for Krishna, and so on.
Now what this show is doing is sort of ruining that image we've grown up with. It's changing the story line and naturally (because it is human nature), we don't like it and we are raising our voices. A simple example, if you move the cookie jar from it's original location to a totally irrelevent place, I'm not going to keep quiet and not say anything. I'll be like "Hey Gossipgirl21, I think the cookie jar is better suited over there instead of here". Now yes, people do mock on these forums and I'm one of them, but that itself is a conflict. How do we define "mocking" in terms of what we are being shown. When I write my posts, I never have thought a single time that I'm mocking them. I've felt that I'm questioning them or I'm making a funny post. Maybe the latter is a form of mock, but again it's boil down to our individual perspective. What I think is mocking, may not be your definition, and so on.
Finally, since you did bring up the university, I honestly have to ask - modern day historians believe that the Gita was not written by one person. They also believe the same for other texts such as the Mahabharata and this is what's being taught. I took a college course on South Asian History and I learned just that. I took another course that entailed the entire course of history, and I learned a similar thing, I'm based in the US. So I'm actually a bit curious what your friend's dad would say about this.
And of course you're right in that we don't have the original and it's impossible to know the original, but I would bet anything that the original doesn't have Arjun kidnapping Rukmini for Krishna, that the original doesn't have weird tips of the future events built into the story line (Bhim marrying a rakshasi, etc), and the original doesn't have anything on such hatred for women. India may be a patriarchal society now, and it probably still was back then, but from my knowledge, they respected women infinitely more. We're always going to find each other's (not each other as in me and you, i mean generally speaking everybody) flaws and we are also going to add in our own bit of bias to make things work "our way"; that's life. We can never truly understand the past 100% because we don't live in that time and we can't go back in time. So what's left is that we each try to understand things to our own respective levels. And that's not a bad thing, it's our respective opinion. Maybe the manner we phrase it in is improper, but this is an online forum to discuss and we can never understand the tone from a post.
Now to end with a little twist - How do we know the Star Plus is not mocking the Mahabharata in it's own way? What else can we expect from the story line and it's plot? Sure there are times where they are trying to analyze things based on their interpretation, which is fine, but there are other times where they deviate so far from what I have heard as a child ... just food for thought :P
Again, I'm terribly sorry if if you feel I'm criticizing you in any way. Please do not take it in that way. But this is a very interesting discussion, thank you for bringing it up,.
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Jaane Anjaane Hum Mile
Tum Se Tum Tak
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Mannat Har Khushi Paane Ki
Vasudha
