Thank you so much for the confirmation!

My knowledge of the Ramayana mostly comes from seeing more than a few Indonesian dance performances when I was in Bali. Of the Mahabharata, from articles about it.

My Indonesian was at best B1 so I studied a little tiny bit before I saw them.

I didn't know any of these riddles though. Top-notch.

Christ's jokes are very much off-the-cuff, though pretty good. As far as I know, only the Buddha tells full-blown, actual jokes with a setup and a punchline that (IMHO) were obviously pre-prepared.

Walking through Borobudur and seeing some of these stories written out like stone comic strips a thousand years old merely confirmed my suspicions.

I think it's great. Robert Anton Wilson said, "It isn't true unless it makes you laugh, and you don't believe it until it makes you cry."

(You aren't by chance the Manish Patel I worked with for a short time at Google around 2004? I know it's a common name.)