A Few Inaccuracies with the War

While watching this week's episode, I couldn't help noticing that there were a few inaccurate things about the war. I will post the correct versions of the errors shown in the show.

Errors shown in the show....

1. After Dasarath gets injured, Kaikeyi treats him right then and there, in front of Ravan. Ravan stands there, and doesn't take the opportunity to kill Dasarath. All he does is laugh continuously.

2. On the opposite side, the only Kings that were present were Dasarath and Divodas.

3. Absence of Meghnad...

Now, here are the corrected versions of these errors:

1. During the war with Ravan, Dasarath gets severely injured. Also, one of the wheels on his chariot is about to come off. Kaikeyi holds the wheel, and prevents it from coming off. While holding the wheel, she steers Dasarath's chariot away from the battlefield and treats him in a secure place.

She doesn't treat him in the battlefield. If she had stayed in the battlefield, Ravan would've taken the opportunity and killed Dasarath right then and there. Ravan didn't abide by war ethics during a war.


2. The war that we saw in this week's episode was a Dev-Asur Sangram. This means that this was a war between gods and demons. On the anti-Demonic side, the Kings that were present were Dasarath, Divodas, and INDRA (THE KING OF GODS). In the show, they forget to show Indra, however, in reality, Indra, along with his army was present. Actually, almost all the warriors in heaven were present on Indra's side.

The third explanation, I will give in full detail, so I'll include it in the next post....

3. During the battle, there comes a point where Indra defeats Ravan and captures him. After capturing Ravan, Indra airs his chariot and starts flying to heaven. I guess he was was going to decide Ravan's punishment after reaching heaven (Indra's Kingdom).

Ravan's son, Meghnad, is also in the war. Even though they do not show his presence in the show, he is actually there. As soon as he sees that his father has been captured, Meghnad gets mad at Indra.

Thus, Meghnad uses his demonic powers to become invisible. While in invisible form, he flies towards Indra's chariot. After reaching Indra's chariot, he unties Ravan. Before Indra can do anything, Meghnad ties Indra, and captures him. Later, Meghnad brings him to Lanka, where Indra becomes a laughing stock for all of Lanka's citizens.

All of Lanka is proud of Meghnad, because he had turned a defeat into a victory, in a matter of minutes. Meghnad decides to keep Indra prisoner in Lanka.

Due to Indra's absence, things get out of control in heaven. Thus, Brahma appears in Lanka and asks Meghnad to return Indra. Meghnad says that he will definetely return Indra, but only if he gets something in return.

Brahma agrees and announces that he will grant Meghnad whatever he asks for. Meghnad asks for immortality, to which Brahma says that immortality cannot be given to a human. Alternatively, Brahma suggests to grant Meghnad the following boon:

Whenever Meghnad does Demon Goddess Nikumbula's yagna, the fires of the yagna will create a chariot. Also, Meghnad will gain more powers if he sacrifices ghosts after the yagna and uses them to do additional Nikumbula-worship.

As long as Meghnad rides on the fire-created chariot, he will be undefeatable. Even if all of creation (including Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh) fights against Meghnad while he's on the chariot, Meghnad would win.

However, Brahma also concluded that if someone destroys Meghnad's yagna before its finished, then Meghnad will definitely die in battle. Before leaving, Brahma pronounces Meghnad as Indrajeet, for having defeated Indra.

Then, Brahma vanishes.

Meghnad then starts laughing, and thinks to himself.....

"Not even Lanka's normal citizens can reach Nikumbula's mandir...How will my enemies ever reach there???"

However, when he tried to use this yagna to defeat Lakshman, the ape army destroyed his yagna, and Meghnad is then killed by Lakshman.......

At the show's current stage, Meghnad should already be 16 years old....because he goes to war right after he finishes his studies with Shukracharya....which he does at age 16...

Now, here are the corrected versions of these errors:

1. During the war with Ravan, Dasarath gets severely injured. Also, one of the wheels on his chariot is about to come off. Kaikeyi holds the wheel, and prevents it from coming off. While holding the wheel, she steers Dasarath's chariot away from the battlefield and treats him in a secure place. [/quote]

The specific detail about the chariot wheel coming off is not in the Valmiki Ramayan. Read the Ayodhya Kanda where the story is narrated by Manthara. It is found in the puranic versions of the Ramayana.

As for the rest, I have to see the episode first before making any further comments. In any case, they obviously do not follow the Valmiki and/or the puranic versions completely. Hence the inconsistencies.

Originally posted by: Kal El

Also, one of the wheels on his chariot is about to come off. Kaikeyi holds the wheel, and prevents it from coming off.

The specific detail about the chariot wheel coming off is not in the Valmiki Ramayan. Read the Ayodhya Kanda where the story is narrated by Manthara. It is found in the puranic versions of the Ramayana. comments.

In any case, they obviously do not follow the Valmiki and/or the puranic versions completely. Hence the inconsistencies.

Yup.......you're right about that....In Valmiki Ramayan, they just mentioned that Kaikeyi steered his chariot away from the battlefield. They do not mention the wheel story.....

Ok I saw the episode and your second point is a little misplaced. The question of "error" does not arise because the Devas are mentioned but they simply don't go into much of any detail about the war at all. I don't know why but they rushed through the whole thing in a very uncomfortable way. Less than half the episode was actually spent on the battlefield. They basically focused on 3 things in the episode: the events before the war at Shambal's palace, Shambal's death and the Dasarath-Ravan encounter. After that they went straight to Ayodhya. Why couldn't they have gone a little slower? 😕

The devas weren't absent. It was mentioned that 36 Devas and Arya kings were representing Divodas. Shambal even mentioned Indra in one of the discussions. It's just that they didn't bother focusing on them at all. They rushed through the war to Shambal' death and then to Dasarath's encounter with Ravan. The Devas and the rest of the kings were in the battle off-screen.

I wonder if they are trying to end the serial quickly. I see no other explanation for rushing at such a pace. They should have begun the war in today's episode and ended it by the middle of next week's episode. That would have given them more time to focus on some of the details.

Dasarath giving the boons right then and there seemed strange. From the relevant versions I know about (where the boon story happens this way) Kaikeyi was supposed to drive the chariot away and treat Dasarath at the camp, instead of her getting the boons in the middle of the battlefield. 😆 As for Ravan following ethics: the Ravan in this show seems to be following some ethics and ignoring others. The writers and director really need to do more explaining on these details. 😉

As for Meghnad, they haven't even made it clear whether he actually exists yet or not. The last we saw of Mandodari was that she was pregnant and left for her father's place to deliver the baby. Mareech was sent to kill the child. And then what? They seem to have vanished from the story! We can spend time speculating on which version they might be adapting but they need to pick up that track again and show us what happened! They just can't forget Mandodari like that. At least show something on her side. The timeline, with Mandodari seemingly away delivering Sita and this war, just doesn't add up.

Also - and this has been bugging me for a long time now - when they started showing Ravan's story from the beginning, the adult Ravan used to show up at the beginning of the episodes talking to the audience. What happened with that? Why have someone else narrate it now in the third person perspective?! Have they forgotten that in this serial Ravan is narrating his own story? 😆

Is it me or do they seem to be in a rush to finish the serial? It'd be a shame to see it end prematurely.

[Quote] Is it me or do they seem to be in a rush to finish the serial? It'd be a shame to see it end prematurely. [/Quote]

Yup....that's exactly what it seems like.......The events do not agree with time at all.....and yes........It did seem like the war was kind of rushed over........Actually....this is the case for every war they show in the show........Like Ravan's 15-year world victory tour.........they showed that in like 10 minutes.......then they just showed him arriving in Lanka, and put the caption 15 years later underneath.......

In historic shows like Ravan, wars are a great way to draw the audience and make the show more interesting. By just briefly going over the wars, the director is personally destroying the interest level that his show is capable of reaching.

In Prithviraj Chauhan, wars are stretched probably a bit too much. The war with Gujarat covered like 2 month span.......and this Digvijay has been going on for quite a while too.........Actually, details on each kingdom conquered during Digvijay are being emphasized too.........Stuff like this makes the show very interesting..........

Because of the wars, the viewers (me at least) do not concentrate on other frustrations.......such as the long time its taking for prithvi and sanyogita to meet.......In other words.......the show just seems more interesting....

Wars should be shown more in detail in this show........A lot of things happened during this Dev-Asur Sangram....The war between Ravan and Dasarath wasn't that brief.........they were both powerful emperors........the war lasted for quite a while before Dasarath was injured........There were too many details to this war left out.......This war could've extended a good 2-3 weeks........and Ravan's world-victory tour should've been shown in more detail as well.......so the audience actually "feels" what is happening in the show.....

WOW! I would have never known about this if you didn't point this out!

I guess they need to re-read the Texts and then create the show.

well, the way I see it, there might be pressure from Zee TV to finish the show and they are just tryin to get it over with in any way possible, LOL.

i have noticed few points

* Ram, laxman, shatrughan and Bharat are birn on same date, but in this episode they are shown as different age groups

* they are suppose to be in Rishi's clothes and not royal clothes in Valmiki's ashram

* Sita / meghnad are nor yet born and Ram is 16 years old already.