Reading Options for The Ramayana

I decided to read the Narayan version of The Ramayana, primarily because I already bought the book, but also because I enjoy reading stories in a novel format. So, I think the Narayan format will really suit my literary interests. I am very interested in being able to draw connections between this literature and literature I have already read, or even movies or TV shows that I have seen. This class will be the first time I have ever really explored Indian culture. Although I learned about Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam in my AP World History class in high school, it has been a long time since I have explored a non-western culture and I am very excited to be exploring The Ramayana and The Mahabharata. In high school, I took Latin, which gave me a fairly in depth look at Roman and Greek mythology. I will be interested to see what kinds of similarities the stories in Greek and Roman mythology have compared to these Indian epics. I have read several epics, including The Odyssey, portions of The Illiad, portions of The Aeneid, portions of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Beowolf, portions of The Divine Comedy, and portions of The Canterbury Tales.

Image of Shiva and Parvati from Indian Epics: Images and PDE Editions; Original Source: British Museum, circa 1800

I chose a picture of Shiva and Parvati because the name Parvati reminded me of Parvati Patil from the Harry Potter series. I would like to further look into the story of Parvati and see if JK Rowling may have made any intentional connections to the name Parvati from The Ramayana and The Mahabharata.