Doubts and Discussions from the Ramayan - Page 117

Don't be offended by this question, but I am curious:

Did Mohini & Lakshmi ever meet, face to face? And if they were to, would Lakshmi regard Mohini as her husband?

Originally posted by: akhl

During churning of ocean, Vishnu was present as Kurma. He was there on the side of the gods holding the rope (the serpent). He was also holding the mountain from the top. All these three simultaneously.

I thought the devas were holding the tail, the asuras the heads of Vasuki and Kurma was at the bottom preventing it from sinking. It would seem to me that holding it from the top would be redundant, no? Incidentally, did the mountain sink after Kurma withdrew, or did Garuda come back and return it to its original location?

And all that churning released Vasuki's venom, which poisoned the churning parties, which was why Shiva needed to come down and drink all that venom, thereby earning him the name Nilkantha.

Vibs

Thanks for all this info - particularly the one about rishi Kashyap's wives. As far as the question by Appaya Dikshitar goes, it's comforting to know that I'm not the only wierd one who thinks that way😆😆😆

Actually, another thing I was always curious about was whether Buddha's advent was foretold in the Puranas (say Vishnu Puranas) or something done way after his passing. B'cos nothing else follows - I've never seen it claimed that Siddhartha's wife Yashodhara was Lakshmi or so on.

Re: Mohini, did Ayyappa's birth happen around the same time frame as the Samudra Manthan? Or did Vishnu take the Mohini rup whenever he felt like it? Was Mohini then the 9th avatar, or 3rd, or somewhere else in between?

Originally posted by: Vibhishna

In the carved statues and paintings of many temples of Ayyappa, Devi Lakshmi is depicted sad when Lord Vishnu went with Lord Shiva for a while.

She should have hooked up with Devi Parvati or Sati, depending on the timeframe in question

Incidentally, Sati would then have been the sister to all these 13 wives?

In Krishna's case, since he knew that he was Vishnu and retained all his celestial perks, there was nothing to miss - whenever he liked, he was in Gokul, Vrindavan, Mathura, Dwaraka, Indraprastha, Devalok, Vaikuntha, et al. So unlike with Rama where it had to be a secret, everybody openly worshipped Krishna like he was no different from Vishnu - in fact, for the war with Narakasura, Indra directly approached him and asked him to go to war with him.

I thought the Gopis and Radha all happened in Gokul/Vrindavan. There was one rakshasha sent by Kamsa to kill him whom he and Balarama fought in heaven. Other than that, his entire childhood, afaik, was on earth.

Steering back to the Ramayan, I considered it interesting that for a team that relied entirely on Tulsidas, the Kaagbhushandi story was completely dropped. I'm happy at this, since I thought it a complete distraction from Valmiki, but I'm not sure what I think of Karkati replacing it.

Originally posted by: Chandraketu

She should have hooked up with Devi Parvati or Sati, depending on the timeframe in question

Incidentally, Sati would then have been the sister to all these 13 wives?