Reading Notes Week 6: The Mahabharata- Maya's Palace

• Here, Maya, the architect of the demons and the son of a rishi, builds a palace for the Pandavas as a repayment to Arjuna for saving his life from the burning of the Khandava forest. Being the architect of the demons, Maya had great stores of gold and gems. The palace took 14 months to built, but it was like no other palace on earth. The story described it as so brilliant with gems that it appeared to be on fire. Maya brought 8 rakshasas to guard the castle. The next part is where it gets humorous. The story then goes to describe King Duryodhana mistaking things in the castle for other things (basically a series of illusion). He got so embarrassed. This story honestly confused me a little. I never really new what was going on and why the house was playing tricks on the king. Is that the way Maya designed it? Was it intended to be an illusion all along? I want to expand on some of these ideas and maybe give some background info on the house. I think it would be interesting to put it in Maya's perspective. Maybe we can learn why he built the castle this way. Was he just pure evil? Did he have a feud against the king? Another thing I want to do is describe the palace more. This was done very briefly in the beginning, but for someone to compare it to that of the gods, I feel like it was not described in enough detail.
• Bibliography: "Maya's Palace" from The Mahabharata, A Summary by John Mandeville Macfie.

  

  Duryodhana falls into water
  Source: Wikipedia