Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mr. Hutchinson.

And welcome to our lesson on RE, where we're learning all about Hinduism.

We've already learned so much about this ancient religion and in today's lesson, we're going to be finding out a little bit more about some of the Holy texts of Hinduism and some of the stories and belief systems that are contained within them.

I can't wait to get started.

The first thing we're doing in today's lesson, before we do that, you need to make sure that you are properly prepared.

Make sure that you've got your paper, make sure you've got your exercise book, make sure you've got something to write with.

We will be drawing again in today's lesson, we'll be drawing out the story map.

So if you've got some colouring pencils or some artistic materials that you have, that you'd like to use to create beautiful pictures for the story map, then you can pause the video and go and grab those now.

But it's not necessary if you just got a pencil, you can sketch out the pictures with a pencil as well.

Make sure your brain is ready to learn.

Take a few deep breaths focus on today's lesson, all distractions away please, so that you can really learn about all of these different ancient texts and stories contained within them.

In today's lesson, we will first of all, be learning about a text called "The Ramayana".

Then we will learn about another important holy text within the Hinduism called "The Mahabharata".

And finally, we will learn all about "The Puranas".

Now we've already learned about some of the holy texts, the scripture that is contained within Hinduism and how, although this religion began as an old tradition, sages passing down from generation to generation, their beliefs from about 1200 to about 200 BCE.

All of this wisdom starts to become written down.

Written down in what are known as "The Vedas".

A Veda is a kind of like a knowledge of existence.

That's why they're called "The Vedas" cause they collected knowledge.

Scripture remember just refers to any sacred writings of a religion so within Hinduism, which is a name we give to all of those different belief systems from the Indus Valley region from thousands of years ago, where the Vedas act as that scripture and they were passed on and discovered by sages.

So their own profits within Hinduism, as there are in some other religions many, many different sages or wise people through meditation and other means come to know about the universe, reality, God.

And one of those ancient texts is known as "The Ramayana".

So some of these holy scriptures, they're called "Smriti".

Smriti means to be remembered because these texts it's believed that they are the sages.

They don't sort of discover them or they don't make them up.

What they're doing is they're remembering.

Through that meditation they're remembering these sort of stories that happened a long time ago and three of the most popular and therefore important Smriti text are "The Ramayana", "The Mahabharata" and "The Puranas".

And in "The Ramayana", there is a very famous and important story, which we're going to be learning all about today.

It's written in Sanskrit.

Sanskrit is an ancient language from the region and it's about two people called Rama and Sita.

And it's probably one of the most important ancient epics within.

So an Epic is an incredible tale that lasts a long time, that goes over a long amount of time with, heroes and heroines and demons and overcoming evil.

And this is probably the most important epic, one of the most important epics and it's contained within "The Ramayana".

"The Ramayana" has over 96,000 verses, it's divided into seven different parts.

It's a huge collection of texts.

And we've already talked about how dates are really sort of controversial within Hinduism within the ancient Hindu tradition.

So "The Ramayana" for example, some people believe it was written two and a half thousand years ago.

Other people believe maybe not so long ago, maybe it was written 1800 years ago perhaps, but everybody agrees it's a very ancient book.

It's a very, very old book.

And the story that's been told the oral tradition goes back many, many thousands of years.

So it's all about Rama and Sita.

And the story goes a little something like this.

So long, long ago in a kingdom called Ayodhya, there was a King.

The King was called Dasharatha and this King had four different sons.

He had three wives and by these wives, he had four sons.

So Rama, he was the oldest and Rama is often depicted as being blue in colour.

Then he also had some twins all called Lakshmana and Shatrughna and then there was the youngest son called Bharata.

At one point Rama who was the oldest needed a wife.

And so they travelled around until a beautiful princess called Sita from another nearby kingdom was found.

And the father of Sita said "for Rama to be worthy of my daughter Rama needs to show his strength".

And so he said the only person that will be able to marry my daughter Sita has to string the bow of Shiva.

We've met Shiva before the God.

And so Rama took this bow, so bow, like a bow and arrow and you have to string the bow so put the string on.

It's very difficult to do because it's obviously very tight.

Now Rama not only was able to string the bow, but once you put the bow in, he was able to fire the bow with such power that he actually was given the bow by Shiva and not only the bow, his magic bow and he had infinite arrows with this bow and arrows.

He was given this amazing, magical bow and arrow and proved to Sita's father, you are definitely worthy, you're powerful enough, you're worthy to marry my daughter Sita.

And so they were to be married and Rama's father said, you can be, you're ready to be King.

You'll be able to take over from me because you've got this beautiful princess wife, Sita who's really wise and you've shown that you're powerful and holy, so you will be the next King.

And he made plans the King to step down and said that Rama could take over.

But guess what? Rama had a stepmother so, another wife of the King, and she was granted a wish by the King.

So the King Dasharatha had promised a wish to Rama's stepmother.

And Rama's stepmother said, "you should ask for Rama to be banished".

And that way her son Bharata, the youngest son will be able to become King.

Now the King Dasharatha didn't have a choice.

He promised I will grant you this wish and so reluctantly, he said, "okay, I'm going to have to banish, Rama and Sita".

And so they were sent out into the woods for 14 years.

While they were there, and by the way, they didn't go completely alone because actually Lakshmana came to join them.

And the three of them lived a peaceful life in the forest.

They would go hunting and lived a great life.

So there are different versions of this story and some versions of this story, they go on lots of different adventures and defeating different demons, Rama gains a magical bow and arrow.

But one day everything changes because one day, while they're in the woods, a demon King called Ravana who had 10 heads and many, many arms saw Sita and thought I would like to kidnap Sita.

Now Rivana with his 20 arms and 10 terrible heads, he also was said to have had two eyes on each of his head and rows and rows of sharp yellow teeth wanted to kidnap Sita and so he set a trap.

He made a beautiful golden deer and set it out near to where Sita was.

And Sita thought wow, I love that deer so much.

I would like it to be my Pet I want to go out and catch it.

Now Rama said, "I'm not really happy with you going out into the woods by yourself" and so Rama said, "I'll make this magic circle for you to be in and that will protect you from any danger".

However, as soon as Sita went out in her magic circle to look for the demon, Ravana tricked her, he pretended just to be an old man.

And when she was going to find that deer, Ravana in the avatar, in the form of an old man tricked her.

So he appeared to be a hermit, they're sometimes called hermits.

They sort of don't really come out very much.

And he tricked her out of the circle, captured her and took her away in his flying chariot.

And off Rivana the demon flew with Sita.

Now Sita couldn't escape.

But as she was flying over the woods, she took off pieces of her jewellery and dropped them to leave a trail for hopefully, her to be found by Rama.

Rama looked everywhere for Sita and couldn't find her.

And as he was looking around the woods, he met the King of the monkeys and the King of the monkeys was called Hanuman.

So eventually, he discovered the trail and Hanuman said, "hey, listen, Rama, we don't like that Sita's being kidnapped, so we're going to help you.

We'll help you find these pieces of jewellery for the trail.

And I'll get all of the animals within the jungle, within the woods to help you".

And so Hanuman and Rama and Lakshmana go looking for Sita by following that trail.

Eventually, Hanuman discovered where Sita was being kept.

Hanuman discovered that she was being kept on an Island in the middle of the sea.

Oh no, an Island on the middle of the sea.

How will they get there? Well, something I didn't tell you is that Hanuman was not just any old monkey Hanuman was the King of the monkeys and the son of the wind.

And because he was the son of the wind, he was able to fly through the air just like the wind.

And so he flew through the air onto the Island to see if he could find Sita.

Sita, when she saw Hanuman gave him her last piece of jewellery, which was a kind of pearl and Hanuman took that back to Rama who was still in the jungle, who knew that that's where his wife Sita was.

Now Rama and Lakshmana and all of their armies wanted to go and get Sita back.

But they were still on this Island.

So Hanuman with the rest of the monkeys said, "we will throw rocks and sticks and trees and all sorts of things into the sea".

So many that it caused a bridge to form, which meant that Rama and Lakshmana and their warriors could travel over the bridge, find Sita and battle away the evil demon King Ravana.

Eventually, Rama saw Rivana in the middle of the battlefield and taking his magical bow, he nocked an arrow and fired it straight through the heart of Ravana, killing him and banishing him forever.

And so Sita was saved by Rama.

There were all sorts of celebrations, lots of candles were lit, so when the people saw Rama and Sita returning from this great battle unharmed, so wise and well light the people put a candle in their window to welcome them back.

And today the festival of lights, Diwali is still celebrated and that's still celebrated by candles being lit.

And those candles represent the light of truth, the light of goodness will always banish the darkness just as Rama banished the evil demon Ravana.

That is the story of Rama and Sita.

I put all of the pictures here in a story map but what I'd like you to do is see if you can draw out this story for yourself.

So I'm going to take the pictures away and just leave the notes for you and looking at those notes, remember what part of the story it was and see if you can sketch a picture that will help to prompt you and this will help to lock the story in your memory.

And what you could even do is you could try and retell the story yourself.

Maybe you could retell it to somebody in your home or to a friend, or even just, a cuddly toy or something that you got nearby maybe you got a pet or something.

You could retell the story because it would be great for you to have committed to memory this Epic ancient tale of Rama and Sita.

So pause the video and sketch out all of your pictures of the story of Rama and Sita now.

Great work, I'm sure you've got some amazing pictures and I'd love to see your different story maps.

I know that there are some of you who are amazing artists out there.

And so I'd love to see the different sketches that you've drawn to portray each of the parts of the story.

And maybe you've also tried to learn that story.

You can always have a peek back at that story map later to try and learn it off by heart.

That would be a cool thing to do.

So I'm going to put up the story up again, just for you to check what you drew and see if it's similar to the pictures that I selected here to represent the different parts of the story.

And you can give yourself a little tick if your pictures look similar.

That's the story of Rama and Sita, which is contained within the ancient Indian script of "The Ramayana".

But now we're going to switch to a different ancient text.

We're going to switch and learn a little bit about "The Mahabharata".

So "The Mahabharata" is probably the most popular, sacred texts of Hinduism.

So it's probably the texts that most Hindus know and discuss and read and within the UK, I mean.

And one of the reasons is because it contains lots of guidance of how to live well, how to behave and how to attain moksha.

That concept we talked about in the last lesson the moksha of being released from the endless cycle of rebirths and being one with Brahman.

Now, one of the texts within "The Mahabharata" is one of the most famous texts in the UK in terms of the ancient Hindu text.

And that text is called "The Bhagavad Gita".

Now this text is said to contain teachings from Lord Krishna.

Now Lord Krishna is said to be one of the avatars of Vishnu.

So one of the key gods within Hinduism Vishnu, we know that God's take avatars or different forms within Hinduism.

And Lord Krishna was said to be the human form of Vishnu.

And Krishna gives different kinds of teachings to different people and one of them is there was this great battle and there was a King called Arjuna and Arjuna didn't want to go to battle, didn't want to go to war.

Lord Krishna said to Arjuna, "you must, this is your dharma, is your duty, is your cosmic duty, this is your role, this is your place to go to war.

And so you need to use to show bravery and lead your army into this battle".

And in the end, Arjuna listens to Lord Krishna.

And as a result of that, he said that "instead of him going into the underworld, he was then reborn".

So he was reincarnated because he fulfilled his dharma.

He fulfilled his duty.

So some of the key points about "The Mahabharata", it contains the Bhagavad Gita, it has teachings from Lord Krisha and it tells Hindus how they should live and how they should follow their dharma, their duty.

Let's see if we can write that out now in some text.

So complete the sentence for me.

Pause the video and finish with this.

"The Mahabharata" contains the.

Which contains the teachings from.

So what was that important book that was contained within it and who is said to teach within that book? Written out the sentence? Written and filled in the gaps? Let's see if you are right.

So "The Mahabharata" contains the Bhagavad Gita which contains the teachings from Lord Krishna.

Give yourself a tick if you got this right.

Don't forget that each of those needs capital letters, Cause that is the name of a book and it's the name of a person of a godly Shimon avatar of Lord Vishnu.

The last text that we're going to look at today called "The Puranas", so "The Puranas" are very important because they contain lots of hymns and prayers and rituals and ways of showing that you can adore, love the divine, worship the divine.

And so there are poems and stories about the main gods, including Gama and Vishnu and Shiva and Lord Krishna the human form of Vishnu and "The Puranas", they show how through Bhakti Hindus can express their love, express their adoration for the divine, through those different rituals.

So let's see.

I'm going to test you now, with a quick question on "The Puranas" and the importance of "The Puranas" and why they're important and their concept of Bhakti in terms of expressing love and the Moraine and love for the divine and the different gods through adoration and rituals, it's contained within "The Puranas" that's why they're read and written down.

Let's see how you do, so here's the question.

What does Bhakti mean? We just talked about it Bhakti.

What's this concept of Bhakti within Hinduism? Is it that for every action there's a reaction or consequence? Is it expressing love for the divine through adoration and rituals? Is it your livelihood, that job that you need to do survive? Or is it a spiritual realisation, freedom away from the endless cycles being at one with Rama? put your finger on what you think is the correct answer there.

Or you could even write it out if you'd like to.

Awesome work, if you said it was b, expressing love for the divine through adoration and rituals amazing work, you know a new term.

And in fact, as you're looking at these, you might've thought, I know some of those, they're also important descriptions of concepts within the Hindu tradition.

And so well done if you're spotting those and slowly building up your understanding of this very interesting, intricate, complex religion, awesome work.

You already know so much brilliant work.

So if you had some amazing, especially, some of those amazing pictures and the story map I'd love to see those, but also the rest of your work with neatly out some other notes that you might've taken throughout this lesson, I'd love to see them.

So please do ask your parents or carers to take a photo and share them on social media.

And if you use that #LearnwithOak, then I will be able to see them and I would love to read them and everybody else that follows those accounts, there are tens of thousands of them will be able to see your great work as well and praise you for working so hard.

There is still a quiz so don't forget to complete that and lock in the key facts that we learned about today, as well as that fascinating story of Rama and Sita.

And please do keep looking back at that and see if you learn it off by heart.

That would be a cool thing to do.

And a cool thing to be able to know and remember in terms of having an just in your head at any time, this ancient thousands year old, Epic of tail between good and evil demons and gods really cool thing to have just locked away in your head so keep revisiting that.

Well done for working so hard.

Well done for learning more about Hinduism, can't wait to see you in our next lesson.

We will continue our learning even more and I'll see you then.