Why Sarus Cranes epitomize Karunarasa in the Ramayana
By correlating literary evidence, avian ethology and neurophysiology I will try to demonstrate why Valmiki chose a pair of Sarus Cranes, and not any other avian species, to epitomise grief and sorrow in the Ramayana. This choice illustrates the importance of personal experience of the living reality (behaviour of Sarus Cranes); but the grief, soka, as experienced by Valmiki, became in later critic