Reading Notes: More Jataka Tales Part A

Hello VagaBuddies,

In this assignment, I read even more Jataka Tales! I am really enjoying these quick little fables! Here are the ones I read for this post:


Reading Part AThe Girl Monkey and the String of Pearls
The Three Fishes
The Tricky Wolf and the Rats
The Woodpecker, Turtle, and Deer
The Golden Goose
The Stupid Monkeys
The Cunning Wolf
The Penny-Wise Monkey
The Red-Bud Tree
The Woodpecker and the Lion
The Otters and the Wolf

One story that threw me off this week was the story of the Golden Goose. I felt like I knew what this story was going to be about, but instead the goose was a personified character and not just the possession of the woman like I had expected. However, it still ended in a way that I could predict, with the woman becoming too greedy and capturing the goose. Unfortunately for her, the goose's golden feathers stop being golden when they are plucked involuntarily, so the woman becomes poor again.

My favorite story this week was the The Tricky Wolf and the Rats, because it was filled with clever characters! As I have said before, I enjoy stories that center around clever (but not necessarily moral) characters. In this story, the wolf had a really good trick of pretending to be lame so that the rats would get close to him. He was capitalizing off of the rats' kindness, sure, but I really like this story because it ends with the rats winning. Although normally I wouldn't root for rats, the rats in this story were very kind to the wolf, and the king of the rats was able to figure out the wolf's trick. However, the rat just straight up kills the wolf, which I thought seemed a bit extreme but whatever. (To be fair, the wolf did kill several rats, soooo). Anyway, I am glad the rats won but figuring out the ruse.

The Tricky Wolf standing on his hind legs: Gateway to the Classics

Bibliography:
Babbit, Ellen. "More Jataka Tales." http://www.gatewaytotheclassics.com/browse/display.php?author=babbitt&book=morejataka&story=monkey