WOMEN IN INDIAN MYTHS: A RE-INTERPRETATION BASED ON ANALYTICAL READING OF THE NOVELS OF SITA’S SISTER AND THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS (Pages 53-60) by Ms. Karthika P. Vijayan in THE ENGLISH INDIA / ISSN: 2321-1172 (Online); 2347-2634 (Print)

In its modern significance, myth is one story in a mythology which is a system of hereditary folk stories of ancient origin that were once believed to be true by a particular cultural group, which, though not scientifically, served to explain why the world is as it is and things happen as they do. Myths are mostly associated with rituals, but anthropologists disagree as to whether rituals generated myths or vice versa. The French structuralist Claude Levi Strauss treated the myths within each culture as signifying systems whose true meanings are unknown to their proponents. This paper is titled “Women in Indian Myths: A Re-interpretation Based on Analytical Reading of the Novels Sita’s Sister and The Palace of Illusions”. In Sita’s Sister, the novelist Kavita Kane builds the character and life of Urmila, the unsung heroine of the Ramayana. In the original epic only scant attention is delivered to Urmila. But Kane takes a unique portrayal on the life of Urmila who holds the fort when everything crumbles and everyone important has left. The Palace of Illusions written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the retelling of hyper masculine epic the Mahabharata from the perspective of Draupadi. She is also pictured as pining for the love of two incredible and powerful men, Karna and Krishna. The key objective of this article is to showcase how women were portrayed in the ancient Indian mythology by focusing on Urmila and Draupadi, and how the modern writers Kane and Divakaruni have restructured these two characters into women with their own voices. In the original epics, these two women were shown as ideal daughters, wives, sisters and mothers who had a submissive nature under the then patriarchal society. Kavita Kane and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni have not moulded their characters to defy the status quo; but as the personification of modern women with all their fortes and foibles. The present paper highlights how these two writers have been successful in transforming two mythical women characters, who were bestowed only with secondary importance, into women of self- identity and probity. Keywords: Myth, hereditary folk stories, anthropologists, original epic, unique portrayal, hyper masculine epic, ancient Indian mythology, ideal daughters, patriarchal society, fortes and foibles etc.