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In reply to:
Tsk, tsk, Jimthedog, you have been neglecting your Bulfinch's Mythology lately.
The Godess of Wisdom is Minerva. Her symbol is the owl.
wow
You are thinking of the Romans. Their god was Minerva. I will admit that the Romans changed very little in the gods, besides the names and maybe one or two other things.
jimthedog
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Carpal Tunnel
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Or, as computer nerds from the Southern USA would have it, "Beware of geeks bearing grits."Them's fightin' words, Geoff 
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Rapunzel - do you know whether the Thoth can fly?I've never seen Thoth depicted with wings, so I would guess that he can't. However, since he's a god, he can probably do whatever he pleases.  I find it odd that your writing desk shows Thoth with wings--does he have the body of a bird, or just wings? The only pictures of Thoth that I've ever seen show him with a human body and an ibis head.
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Avy-- do tell us more about Mahabharata-- there was, almost 10 years ago a wonderful 10 hour production on PBS of the Mahabharata-- until that time, i had know very little about (i don't want to say it---(vedas?) there is a term for the epic poems/legends of india-- ) and to be honest, i still know almost nothing-- i wish they would rebroadcast it. Most of the Indian television in NY is "the indian movie channel" with hours of the big, brash, musical movies that are at once popular, and mocked. Most don't have subtitles, so i just flip by them.
I remember very little of the Mahabharata-- (there were some many new idea, concepts, people--) It was about an epic battle, and one side could have all the resources in the world-- and the other could have Vishnu-- a wise, but gentle god for council... and of course, in the end the good guys won. (4000 lines of poetry in a nutshell--in the same way the Iliad is about a pretty girl that get fought over-- for years, by thousand.)
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Jimthedog:
My apology. You are right.
wow
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old hand
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Avy-- do tell us more about Mahabharata
I should probably let Avy do this, even though the Mahabharata is one of my favourite works of Hindu mythology - alas I only read versions in English (C Rajagopalachari's translations being the standards when we were kids).
Very roughly:
Pandu and Dhritarashtra - two brothers, sharing the kingdom. Pandu's sons - the five Pandavas - Yudhishtra, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva. Dhritarashtra's sons - one hundred of them, colectively called the Kauravas, eldest being Duryodhana.
What's sibling rivalry between cousins called? Anyway, whatever it was, they had it. After many years of bickering and not quite successfully sharing the kingdom between them, Duryodhana plots with his evil uncle Shakuni to cheat/beat Yudhishtra in a game of 'dice (played with cowrie shells, if I remember rightly), first humiliatingf the eldest Pandava, his family and their colective wife Draupadi. Then, upon, all being reset to zero by the old king Dhritarashtra, playing once a again and sending the Pandavas into exile for twelve plus one years. Many adventures ensure during exile. After the exile is over Duryodhana tells the Pandavas he will not give them back their kingdom. So war! Seventeen bloody days at Kurukshetra, at the end of which internecine slaughter, all the Kauravas are dead. All the Pandavas friends and relatives (including sons) are dead. Only the five Pandavas are left standing, as it were, and Arjuna's son's (Abhimanyu's) widow is pregnant with Arjuna's grandson - who eventually rules the kingdom when the Pandavas retire.
For what it's worth they all end up in heaven - including the 'evil' Kauravas.
The tale takes many, many, many, many, verses to tell, and until the discovery of some ultra-long Ukrainian saga recently, was considered the longest poem ever written - about four times as long as the Iliad and the Odyseey put together (correct me someone?)
There are too many interesting stories, characters and ideas in the work for it to be adequately summarised, though, and I pity anyone who tries.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Thank you Shanks-- One of the things that made it hard to remember all the detail of the story was keeping track of all the names... Most are not not common names in US -- and tracking relations-- who was part of which family. but as i watched it, ( in one 10 hour long marathon!) I was swept away to a mystical world.. and this was just snippets of the poem, being recited, as naration to the actions that was being portrayed.
at points, they recited in (hindu? sanskrit?) with the english as an overlay-- so you could hear the rythm and flow of the original..
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Hey Helen
Assuming that it was perhaps the Peter Hall version you saw - about nine or ten hours long, with Mrinalini Sarabhai (??) in the role of Draupadi?
Never got to see it myself, but heard it was very good. As an alternative, a truly awful version screened on Indian television in the early '90s - exploitative (of Indian reverence for the work), shoddily made, badly acted, and in general more like a sub-Bollywood film than a respectful, creative or original rendition of one of the world's major literary artefacts. Many more than 10 hours long - runs to tens and twenties of video cassettes (every pious Hindu must have a full set!)...
The original, as with all the 'old' Indian classics, is in Sanskrit.
And, oh yes, the old Hindu texts are often given the collective title the 'Puranas' - meaning the old ones.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Helen, yes - getting the Mahabharata into a nutshell is quite tough.
Ravi has said what it is about - rivalry between two sets of cousins for the throne of Hastinapur. I thought the best way to tell you something more about this is to write down a bit from the introduction of the book "Yuganta" by Irawati Karve in which are essays on events and characters of the Mahabharata. (Sorry - this next is bit long for a post - but I thought it would be interesting for you - it was for me.)
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"Mahabharata" is the name of a book in the Sanskrit language telling in very simple verse form the story of a family quarrel ending in a fierce battle. To the Indians in general, this is not an imaginary made up story, but represents a real event which took place about 1000BC. In the course of this narration, stories of the ancestors of the heroes who fought the battle are given. The heroes were princes who ruled a city called Hastinapur, situated somewhere near modern Delhi. The most illustrious amongst these ancestors was Bharata. From the name Bharata is derived the word Bharata which might mean any descendent of Baharata or any other aspect of Bharat, as for example a poem. "Maha" means great. The word Mahabharata lets us recognise stages in the making of this poem. Perhaps there was a simpler and less extensive story called Bharata and then by century long accretions, it became a Maha (the great) Bharata (book about the descendents of Bharata)
In the story as it is preserved, the chief narrators are different bards called "Sutas". A class of people called Sutas, representing the illegitimate progeny of the Kshatriyas (the warrior caste), performed various functions at the courts. They were counsellors and friends of kings, charioteers and also bards. Some of them moved from place to place, where ever they knew people were likely to assemble and told their stories which were mainly exploits of love and adventure of ancient and ruling kings and princes. A book in many respects like the Mahabharata was the Ramayana a narrative sung from place to place. Out of these grew a later type of literature called the "Puranas" (Purana = ancient = the story of the past). These besides the stories of barious Kshatriya dynasties, contianed cosmologies, cosmogonies and a lot of didactic matter. The narrators of the Puranas were also Sutas. The Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Puranas have been given a special name by a Dr. S.V Ketkar, who called it the Sauta literature, that is literature belonging to the Sutas, preserved and sung by the sutas and perhaps largely composed by them.
This literature embodied the secular and political traditions of Sanskrit literature as against another branch which is called Mantra. Mantra in Sanskrit means a hymn or magical formula. Mantra literature embodied hymns to gods, magical verses (as in the Rigveda and Atharvaveda), descriptions of rituals and the uses of hymns in ritual in addition to minute details of various sacrifices(as in the Yajurveda). There was also philosophical and esoteric discourse (as in the Upanishads and Aranyakas)
The gist of the rest in Avy's words : The Mahabharata later went from the Sutas into the hands of the Brahmans (priestly caste), who became jealous custodians of the literature and added to the originals as they pleased. But the additions (in Mahabharata) are so crude and out of context to the original story they can be detected easily. The mode of narration of the Mahabharata became the standard for some kinds of story literature in Sanskrit. This mode consists of stories within stories and the thread of the main story is taken up after many such narrations (rather like AWAD). Sometimes the main story seems almost forgotten or lost but then is taken up again. Readers of Arabian nights know this form which was apparently borrowed from the Mahabharata model.
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