Below
is the link to my satirical article on Ramayana published on Nirmukta.com (A site engaged in Free Thought
activism)
If
one is able to look beyond the distractions of religious sensitivity and
sanctimony, I am hopeful that the humor and narrative style will be found
interesting, if not of a high order.
The
purpose was to drive home the following message about the Hindu Puranas:
“Puranas
take top honors in terms of being the most remote in terms of pretenses about
knowledge and wisdom, whether it be of the philosophic or the metaphysical
variety. The Puranas are really nothing but an anthology or collection of
absurd and nonsensical fantasies or fairy tales about a motley crowd of
supernatural creatures, their triumphs and travails and their interaction with
terrestrial beings. These texts are closer to the primitive Biblical and Hebrew
texts in their narrative style and their total contempt for logic and reason and it may not be out of place to
suspect them of plagiarizing Greek or Trojan mythology in parts. It is quite a
stretch of even the most liberal interpretation to posit that Puranas can share
any alignment or continuity with the Vedas or Upanishads and can illustrate
will-o-the-wisp theories of its more sanctimonious progenitors.”
What
better choice than one of the two Itihasa-Puranas (Historical Myths or
stories), which should be better described as Itihaasya-Puranas (Stories of
Laughable historicity) for making a complete hash of both history and myth.
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