Reading Notes: Jataka Tales Part B

White elephant helping out the carpenters 

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Some of the stories that interested me were the king's white elephant and the ox who never envied the pig. On both of the stories I wish there were a little more context to it to show us the moral. In the first one, elephant's parent goes and helps out the carpenters in return for food and so she also teaches son to go help out the carpenters so they can feed her in return. Then one day king comes and visits the forest and see the white elephant and falls in love with her. The king pays the prices to carpenters in return for the elephant, which they all happily agree. That's the end of the story and I was not really a big fan of it so I would change the way, where carpenters feels sorry for doing it and learn their lesson on not taking things for greed. In the second story, the ox is jealous of farmer feeding the pig his choices of food but his mom tells him that the ox is eating food for his death. The daughter of the farmer is about to get married so the farmer was trying to fatten the pig up for a big feast. The ox becomes more appreciative of eating just grass to live longer. I thought the story was a little short and blend so maybe I could recreated it by adding more details of the ox getting mad and test his limits to later regret his decision.



Bibliography: Jataka Tales by Ellen Babbitt

Reading Notes: Jataka Tales Part A

One of the stories that interested me the most was "The Sandy Road." It not only had a moral at the end but also a happy ending. I like the context of the story of the merchants going to city to sell their goods, but could only travel at night as the sun would heat up the sand extremely hot. They all rested during the day and travels at night. They used water, fire and sun to cook food during the daylight. They way of trailing was by following stars patterns and one of the head, who takes care of ox falls asleep and looses the right path. He was so sure of reaching the city next day that he makes other merchants throw away all the water and food, but since they are lost they were in desperate need for water. They had to feed the ox to keep going. They did not loose any hope of finding water, so they go around the desert and look for plants. They find one and dig it up, right as one of the merchant was about to give up because they hit the rock, one of the other merchant saves not to give up and he goes and keep digging until they find water. It was nice to see to never give up theme and also to be cautious of where you are going.

Bibliography: Jataka Tales by Ellen Babbitt

Ox wagon in the dessert 

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