Śunaḥśepa (Devarāta)
A figure from the books
#Shunahshepa
Śunaḥśepa (Devarāta) · fl. c. 1150 BCE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Rigvedic seer-poet — by tradition the boy who composed his way off a sacrificial altar, and the most human story in the whole Vedic prose literature.
“The oldest full-length story in Indian prose is a child's claim against his own father, his king, and the ritual order itself — and the ritual order wrote it down, set it to music, and made its kings sit and listen.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“A starving father sold his son for a hundred cows to die in a king's sacrifice — then took two hundred more to bind him and kill him. Bound to the stake, the boy talked to the gods in verse until the ropes fell off; and the tradition kept his rescue-hymns as scripture and made his story required listening at every coronation.”
From the book
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