Chasing Sarabhas

One of the most enticing -- and often wasteful -- things about writing is the chasing after rainbows, strange creatures, unknown facts (which everyone else apparently knew all along, but not the less thrilling for that) and so on. I'm sure it was always this way, but today Google and Wikipedia have a lot to answer for. Anyway, here are some thrilling finds I've made so far about the Ramayana:
1. Kaikeyi's native home Kekeya was in present day Afghanistan. Would it be politically incorrect to say it explains a lot?!
2. Kekeya's neighbour to its east was the kingdom of Bahlika, modern Balkh. Zoroaster preached his first sermons (or whatever they called them) there, and made his first converts. So the Parsis of India were near neighbours of Kaikeyi too.
See map of Epic India showing these places here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Epi...
3. When Lava and Kusha first recited the Ramayana to a select audience of rishis, they were showered with gifts, including -- a water pot, the bark of a tree to be used as a loin cloth, the skin of a black deer (used for sitting on when doing tapas), a sacred thread, a girdle of Munba grass, a hatchet a piece of red cloth, a string for binding one’s matted hair, a cord for tying up bundles of wood, some firewood and a piece of Udumbara wood for sitting on. I LOVE these gifts! How easy life would be if we could give people such useful things.
4. There was an eight-legged deer called the Sarabha, which was stronger than a lion.