Once upon a time there was a magnificent god named, Urvashi. Urvashi was a beautiful woman that was quite the gem to look at. One day, a hermit who goes by the name of Vibhandaka decided to stray out of his little hut and happened to see the beautiful Urvashi while she was bathing. He had never seen such a sight, and he wasn't quite sure what to think of it. He ejaculated into the lake at just the sight of her. Later on that day, a deer came to that same very lake to get a drink of water. It just so happened that the sperm from Vibhandaka was in the water that the deer drank. As a result of this, Rishyashringa was born. He was the son of Vibhandaka and the deer that had drinken the lake water. Since Rishyashringa was born from a man and a deer, he was born with a horn coming out of his forehead. This set him apart from the other children. His father, Vibhandada, felt he owed it to his son to keep him in isolation and away from others. He wanted to keep his son innocent from the worldly ways. He grew up in a hermitage, not even knowing what a female was. Since he had been kept in isolation his whole life, Rishyashringa had such a pure heart. This shows true because when the country of Agna was in a terrible drought, the only thing that could solve the problem and bring in rain was someone with a pure heart. The king's daughter was sent into the forest to get him in order to bring rain and save their country. The sight of her, was something Rishyashringa had never seen in his life. He was confused why this man had long hair and a strange voice. His father then had to explain to him what a female is.
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Author's Note: I decided to do my storytelling post for this week about the story of Rishyashringa because I had a whole section in my reading diary about it. I found it to be a really interesting story, so when I saw the prompt about it I knew right away that I wanted to do it. I thought it would add a little bit of humor if I turned it into a sex talk of some sort. I decided to change it a little bit in order to make it more simple and fun.
The Mahabharata by William Buck
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This is a great story, and I like that you chose to retell it. I think the whole sex talk opening is very fitting, and also kind of funny. It seems that there are a lot of weird stories about unusual conceptions in these epics and myths. I wonder how your narrative would have transitioned into the real sex talk... lol. As far as the story goes, it is a pretty straightforward retelling. You do a good job of summarizing the story and telling it in a simple way. One thing I would change would be to break it up so it's not just one huge paragraph. Other than that, good job.
ReplyDeleteI think you did a great job of retelling this story. Since I had not read this section in the book, it was not familiar to me beforehand. You were able to add enough backstory and information to effectively tell this story to an unknowing reader and I think that is a hard thing to accomplish sometimes in storytelling posts. The sex talk at the beginning was not expected but I can see where it would fit in to transitioning to telling the story of how Rishyasinga was born in the first place and why he did not know what a woman was or looked like. Great job!
ReplyDeleteOh goodness. If my dad had prompted "the talk" by telling a story about how a horned-boy was born to a deer, I might have been scarred for life. Maybe that was the point of the story? I don't think this story was in the version by Narayan, so that's interesting to see a difference between the two. I thought for a second that Rishsharyina seeing a female for the first time was going to cause him to get so excited that the reproduction cycle would have happened all over again.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting topic for a storytelling post. I actually don't remember how I learned, but it certainly wasn't from a story like this. You tried to add some humor to the story here, and definitely succeeded. I laughed out loud when thinking of the hermit 'Oh I've never seen anything like that before. I might as well ejaculate into the lake'
ReplyDeleteHi Alyssa, it had been a while since I read you posts and I also needed the extra credit so I chose to read one of your stories. And like usual I really enjoyed reading your stories and was not expecting the sex talk portion of the story. Overall good job on the story and I hope to be coming to read more in the future!
ReplyDeleteThis was such an interesting choice for your storytelling this week! I am not doing the book for the last half of class so it was really helpful to be able to read your reading diaries and learn what the story is about! I thought it was a very funny retelling and I actually found myself laughing out loud for some of it! So clever!
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