Hari om Parents,
We started with regular prayers.
We picked from Vedas and its divisions discussed by JCHKs previous class. We focussed on Ithihaasas this week. Ramayana and Mahabharata are itihaasas for us. We also know them as epics. We asked the students what these mean to them - Most of the students consider them mythological.
Itihaasas means "thus it happened". So, these are considered as history but in a different way from contemporary presentation of history.
History is about something that happened in the past. Contemporary history is based on an arbitrary definition of a calendar. If a spaceman came and asked when something happened in the past it is very difficult to explain the past. It could easily be interpreted as a fable.
Our itihaasas are large documents, Ramayana is 4 times the size of Odyssey and Illiad combined. Mahabharata, similarly, is 10 times the size of Odyssey and Illiad combined. It is also a poem and set to rhythm.
We discussed the influence of Ramayana across many countries around India. There are cultural influences of Ramayana in Nepal, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Russia. Why is it that the influence of Ramayana was so widespread? We asked the question how big do they think Rama's kingdom, Ayodhya was? It must have been really big to exert so much influence. The students thought that it may have been half of India or the whole of India. They were surprised to know that Ayodhya was not that big at all. It is written that Ayodhya was 12x3 yojanas. (1 yojana is 12-15 kms). Story of Sita, Rama, Laxmana and Hanuman resonated with many cultures and some versions of it continued on.
Mahabharata & Ramayana have a lot of astronomical observations - position of the moon, starts, comets etc. It also has a lot of climatological information. Some researchers have attempted to take this information and attempted to correlate these observations to a time period in the past. These observations are more accurate than cross referenced hear-say.
We saw a video of one such researcher who has attempted to suggest a timeline for Ramayana and Mahabharata. Dating of Ramayana and Mahabharata. We discussed some complex ideas related to constellations and earth's orbit.
So, in the end we asked the question - "Are Ramayana and Mahabharata mythologies?" again. The answer this time was that it could have been true. This shifts our understanding towards Itihaasas - "thus it happened".
---- Student's summary by Dia ----
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Please follow the class happenings in the chinmaya balvihar blog -
https://cmnjparentportal22-23.blogspot.com/search/label/Gr%209%20-%20Sunday%20AM
regards and pranams,
Sitaram Kuchibotla
Partha Turaga
