I really enjoyed reading the translators notes before the Introduction, and I think she had some really interesting insights on what it means for us to read a translated text. Not only are would we be reading the text in a different language from the original, but we are removed from the text and in a completely different time. While we can still read translated stories and find significance in them, it is not ever going to convey the same message that it would have in its original context. She likens this to looking through a window, saying "we cannot jump through the window and appropriate or participate in the world beyond ourselves, but we can appreciate it in out own terms and from our position in time and space" (xiv).
I am super interested in the relationship between the major players of the Ramayana and their forest creature counterparts. I think their connection is brilliant storytelling: allowing Rāma and Sītā to embody ideal human character while also having an avenue through which their truer impulses and desires may be showcased.
How the story necessitates Rāma's divinity is also very interesting (of course I thought it was cool, there is a neat parallel here between Rāma as being a god-man and Jesus as being fully divine and fully human). But the way it works out perfectly for him to be strong enough to ultimately kill Rāvana, but still be human so as to bypass the limitations on how Rāvana could be killed shows divine intentionality, which I really enjoyed.
Questions:
1. In the Introduction, there is a quote from Kathleen M. Erndl stating that the distinctions between good vs. bad women are much more pronounced than the same distinctions between men, and that the determinant of this for women is almost solely based on sexuality. Is this common in other Indian literature and religious texts? What implications has this had on women in Hindu society?
2. On page 25, it says that the Vālmīki likely wrote his text between 750-500 BCE, though the oldest manuscript of it we have only dates back to the eleventh century CE. How do we know that Vālmīki composed his text so long before that? Why is there such a long gap? Are there accounts of other manuscripts?