For my third project, I compared Hinduism and Christianity. I can personally relate to this project because I, myself, am a follower of Hinduism.
Art: For art, I created a nativity but instead of creating with the traditional characters, I recreated it using Hindu idols and symbols.
English: For english, I created a survey that asked the teenage audience what they thought about their personal religions. After getting the results, I did a reflection based on my personal opinions and research.
Social Studies: For social studies, I summarized the Mahabharata which is just one of the many variations of the Bhagavad Gita, or the Hindu version of the Bible. I compared the story of the family feud from the Mahabharata to that of the Hatfield-McCoy family.
Mahabharata today:
The Mahabharata is longer than the Iliad and Odyssey combined, so there’s no way to capture everything that happened in the original tales. The basic storyline is that there are two brothers, Dhritarashtra and Pandu who are feuding against each other over who should get to be king after the death of their father. A curse is put on Pandu that prevents him from fathering children and his wife Kunti asks the gods to father children in Pandu’s name. As a result, the god Dharma fathers Yudhishtira, the Wind fathers Bhima, Indra fathers Arjuna, and the Ashvins (twins) father Nakula and Sahadeva (also twins; born to Pandu’s second wife, Madri). The jealousy that develops between the cousins forces the Pandavas to leave the kingdom when their father dies. During their exile, the five marry Draupadi (who is born out of a sacrificial fire,Arjuna wins by shooting an arrow through a row of targets) and meet their cousin Krishna, who is their friend and companion thereafter.
When the Pandavas return to the kingdom, they are again exiled to the forest, this time for 12 years, when Yudhishthira loses everything in a game of dice with Duryodhana, the eldest of the Kauravas.The feud gets worse in a series of great fights on the field of Kurukshetra (north of Delhi, in Haryana state). All the Kauravas are killed, and, on the victorious side, only the five Pandava brothers and Krishna survive. Krishna dies when a hunter, who mistakes him for a deer, shoots him in his one vulnerable spot,his foot,and the five brothers, along with Draupadi and a dog who joins them (Dharma, Yudhisththira’s father, in disguise), set out for Indra’s heaven. One by one they fall on the way, and Yudhisthira alone reaches the gate of heaven. After further tests of his faithfulness and constancy, he is finally reunited with his brothers and Draupadi, as well as with his enemies, the Kauravas, to enjoy true peace.
If the Mahabharata story existed in a later time period , it would be of 2 families such as the Hatfield and McCoy families. The Hatfields, of West Virginia, were led by William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield. The McCoys, of Kentucky, were under the leadership of Randolph "Ole Ran’l" McCoy.The feud began after the killing of Asa Harmon McCoy, an ex-Union soldier who was shot and killed on January 6,1865, while hiding in cave. McCoy died at the hands of a group of Hatfield allies, and Confederate irregulars (named the "Logan Wildcats"), who had followed him to his hiding place. The conflict was reignited thirteen years later when two McCoy family members killed a witness (who was related to both families) and who had testified against them in a court case involving ownership of a stray pig.The heated feud gre larger soon afterward, when Roseanna McCoy began a courtship with Johnson "Johnse" Hatfield, Devil Anse’s son. Roseanna left her family to live with the Hatfields in West Virginia. In 1881, when Johnse abandoned the pregnant Roseanna, marrying her cousin instead, the bitterness between the two families grew. In 1882, Ellison Hatfield, brother of Devil Anse Hatfield, was killed in an election-day disagreement by three of Roseanna’s brothers, who themselves were killed by a Hatfield-led mob while in the custody of the law.Between 1880 and 1891, the feud claimed more than a dozen members of the two families, becoming headline news around the country.The feud reached its peak during the so-called 1888 New Years Night Massacre. Several of the Hatfield gang surrounded the McCoy cabin and opened fire on the sleeping family. The cabin was set on fire in an effort to drive Randolph McCoy into the open. He escaped by making a break, but two of his children were murdered, and his wife was beaten and left for dead.In 1888, Wall Hatfield and eight others were arrested and ordered to stand trial for the New Years Night murders.[5] Seven received life imprisonment, while the eighth, Ellison "Cottontop" Mounts, was executed by hanging.[6] Fighting between the families eased following the hanging of Mounts. Trials, however, continued for several years, with the trial of Johnse Hatfield the last, in 1901.
If the Mahabharata story existed today, I think that there are too many families or people in war against each to really pick one battle to focus on.I think that if I could think of feud, it would be the whole Trump vs Immigrants debacle. Even though this one doesn’t have to do with a family, I feel like America is one big family in a way, and this is a division of the country because not everyone agrees on the same things. I think that because of the division of people and where they stand, this is another feud that people don’t see as a family feud because people are going against their actual own families, in this case.