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Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Characters of Ramayana in Mahabharat

Some characters of Ramayana have references in the Mahabharata.
There is a part of the Mahabharata which narrates its version of the Ramayana.
Apart from this, Hanumana makes an appearance and meets Bhima.

While trying to find out more, I came across this one instance where Vibhishana, the king of Lanka and the monkey Nila, are mentioned.

This is in the second book of Mahabharata, the sabha parva.The sub parva is called Jarasandha Badh Parva.

Here, when Yudhistira is to be crowned emperor, he sends out his brothers in all directions to get acceptance of the kings. Either the kings accept the supremacy of Yudhistira as the emperor, or they fight a war.

In the 30th chapter, Sahadeva goes southwards. His objective was to get acceptance of the kings. He defeats the king of Matsya, king of Adhirajas, He then goes to the Nishada kingdom and gets the acceptance. He has a battle with the monkey kings of Kishkindha, who at that time were Mainda and Dwividha. In the battle that follows, Sahadeva is not able to defeat them. The kings, pleased with Sahadeva's valor, let him go and accept Yudhistira. He then encountered, the monkey Nila, who also accepted Sahadeva.

Marching southwards, Sahadeva then met Vibhishana in Lanka. Vibhishana, willingly accepted Yudhistira as the emperor.

After this, Sahadeva returned back to Yudhistira. 

3 comments:

  1. :D Yes, there are many overlaps. Maybe when I read more, I will find some interesting things

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  2. Incidentally there are two more characters that appear. Jamvan, the bear king who fought along with Rama has a role. He fights Krishna and later Krishna marries his daughter, Jambavati. It is the son of Jambavati who brings the downfall of the Yadava race. Another character is Maya, the asura who builds the palace in Indraprastha for Yudhistira. This is probably the same person, who was the father in law of Ravana.

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