STORY: One day Dashagriva was riding along when he approached a mountain, the name of this mountain was Mount Kailasha. He had heard the stories of the god Shiva and Nandi, the bull he used as his transportation, but being the overly-confident person that he was, Dashagriva was not concerned with running into either of them. As he got closer to Mount Kailasha a Bull appeared in front of him. “Turn around now, Dahagriva. This is the territory of Shiva and he wishes to have no visitors at this time.” said the Bull. Dashagriva was unbothered by this bull, who clearly was Nandi, so he continued to the mountain with a grin saying “and who is going to stop me?”, then using all of his 20 arms he lifted the mountain high above his head, “because it won’t be you, Nandi” Dashigriva continued. Shiva had been watching the altercation from above the mountain, and once Dashagriva lifted the mountain Shiva saw an opportunity to put Dahagriva in his place. So Shiva used his big toe to push down the mountain trapping Dashagriva. When doing this Dashagriva began to scream, the scream sounded like the roar of a mighty lion. This scream had impressed Shiva, for he had never heard such a mighty roar from anyone before. Shiva looked down before him and said I will let you go from this mountain but you must change your name to Ravana, He-Who-Roars. Dashagriva agreed eagerly and was released, henceforth becoming Ravana, a name that will later instil fear to all those around him. He was so grateful for the second chance that Shiva had given him that he became a loyal follower and never underestimated Shiva again.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I used the Tiny Tale "Ravana confronts Shiva" for the source of this story. I did not change any of the plot, but I did embellish some of the lines to make them my own and also added some details to make the story longer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Laura Gibbs, Tiny Tales from The Ramayana
Hi Brooklynn! I think expanding stories is a great idea, especially from the Tiny Tales version (which I also read) but I also think it would be great for you to give more of a backstory for Nandi. I do not think Nandi is in any other stories in the Tiny Tales version (as far as I can remember), so it would be so cool to see where Nandi came from or what happened to Nandi after the events between Shiva and Ravana. Just some food for thought!
ReplyDeleteHello Brooklyn! This story actually was very interesting to read and kept me engaged the whole time. I really liked how I didn't understand exactly why these events were happening but I didn't need to as the plot was carried along extremely well. I love these types of stories that are filled with powerful beings such as Shiva, they are an attention magnet because the stories are usually so intriguing. I wonder why exactly dashagriva was going up the mountain to confront Shiva in the first place. Was dashagriva seeking Shiva's power or did he just want to confront him about something prior to the story? Something else that caught my eye was how Nandi only tried to ward off dashagriva. Is Nandi only a messanger for Shiva or did he not want to intervine with the conflict that had arrisen between the two? Even thought Shiva put dashagriva in his place, what if dashagriva defeated Shiva? Would dashagriva abuse his newly profound power or would he be a better god that Shiva was?
ReplyDelete