What Other Story Should Be Made Into A Mythology? - Page 2

Originally posted by: BrhannadaArmour

Clarification: I wrote, "Droṇa, who had taken over his ancestral city of Ahicchatrā and forced his father Drupada to relocate to Kāmpilya."

After Drupada lost northern Pañcāla (his ancestral territory) to Droṇa and was left with only southern Pañcāla (which had belonged to the descendants of Brahmadatta until it was annexed by Drupada's father Pṛṣata), Śikhaṇḍin and Dhṛṣṭadyumna both studied under Droṇa. I have not found any evidence of a rocky relationship between Śikhaṇḍin and Drupada, even when Śikhaṇḍin runs away from home to starve to death in Sthūṇākarṇa's house. If you want to imagine tension to create a story, you may.

Ah, forgive me and my sleepy brain. That makes more sense since I never read about Shikhandi fighting his/her dad.

I have also never found an outright passage/something that says their relationship was rocky. I always felt like it would be, given Drona wasn't exactly a gem of a person. But, yes tension does make a more dramatic story from Shikhandi's perspective. 😆

I know the discussion is about mythological shows but I'd also like to see dandin's dashkumarcharitam be made into a series someday

Originally posted by: RisingPhoenix

I know the discussion is about mythological shows but I'd also like to see dandin's dashkumarcharitam be made into a series someday

Daśakumāracarita is actually a simplified version of the story that Daṇḍin wrote. The original story, called Avantisundarī, is lost, but the surviving portion from the beginning has a mythological component: Viṣṇu and his two sons, Kāma and Dharma, took birth as Kṛṣṇa and his two sons, Pradyumna and Sāmba, respectively, and then as King Rājahaṃsa and his two sons, Haṃsavāhana and Rājavāhana, respectively.

Rājahaṃsa's father was Ripuṃjaya, the temporarily retired last king of the Bārhadratha dynasty of Magadha, beginning with Jarāsaṃdha's father Bṛhadratha, one of the brothers of Satyavatī from Mahābhārata.

The heroine Avantisundarī is the reincarnation of Sāmba's wife Yajñavatī who was the daughter of Naraka Asura.

Daṇḍin's story tied in several earlier romances as previous lifetimes of minor characters. Rājavāhana meets Yajñavatī's friend Mandākinī who is the daughter of Namuci Asura, and she tells him the story of Mahāśvetā and Kādambarī.

Avantisundarī and Daśakumāracarita belong to a genre called parikathā (story in turns), in which the story develops as conquering heroes listen to the stories of several other characters while asking, "How have you been?"

paryāyeṇa bahūnāṃ yatra pratiyogināṃ kathāḥ kuśalaiḥ

śrūyante Śūdraka-vaj jigīṣubhiḥ parikathā sā tu

The classic example of this was Śūdrakakathā (at least three versions totally lost, including a Tamiḻ version by Lalitālaya who met Daṇḍin), the story of King Śūdraka and his friends like Bandhudatta and Niṣṭhuraka. A later example of parikathā is the story of Mṛgāṅkadatta and his ten friends, preserved in Śaśāṅkavatī-lambaka of Kṣemendra's Bṛhatkathāmañjarī and Somadeva's Kathāsaritsāgara.

Daśakumāracarita and the story of Mṛgāṅkadatta would make entertaining TV, even if we can't reconstruct the originals.