Topic Research: Birth Stories

This is Bhishma on his deathbed of arrows.

(Source: Wikipedia Commons)

For my portfolio, I am going to focus on stories that have to do with water, but I am going to a little twist on them and portray the environmental conditions as the ones we live in today. Depending on how many stories that I find about water that I want to include in my portfolio, I would not be surprised if I later broadened my theme to include other elements in nature, but I am going to try my best to stick to water.


Bhagiratha and Ganga
This story tells of Ganga's descent to earth to wash over the 60,000 sons of Sagara so their spirits can go to heaven. I think I would be interested in rewriting this story to where Kapila did not burn the princes to ashes, but instead they perpetually burned as fires, harming the environment for all of those around them.

Source. The Great Indian Epics by John Campbell Oman (1894). 

The Pandavas and Bhishma

In this story, a character named Bhishma died and people in the story perform his rites of passage in the banks of the river Bhagirathi, which is a tributary of the Ganges. Ganga is the mother of Bhishma, and when she reacted to this water oblation by mourning, Krishna told her that she shouldn't cry over someone who has passed to a better place. I think it would be fun to take more time to set the scene in which Ganga emerged from the river and mourns her son, as well as learning how Bhishma was born.

Source. The Mahabharata, A Summary by John Mandeville Macfie (1921). 

Riddles at the Lake

In this story, the thirsty characters saw a lake and they heard a Voice say "Answer thou what I shall ask of thee before thou dost drink or draw water." They all ignored the Voice and everybody who drank it fell dead. I want to recreate this story to where the characters die because the water is polluted and provide a background story of how the river was polluted through human activity.

Source. Indian Myth and Legend by Donald A. Mackenzie (1913).