Indian Epics

100 Word Story  Duryodhana was very much jealous of Bhima's victories and strength. Thus he developed a plan. One night he poisoned Bhima's food and threw Bhima's now passed-out body into the jungle.  What Duryodhana did not know was that the Khan, the great king of the tiger, had seen his dirty actions and rescued Bhima. He called upon his fellow tigers to bring Bhima to their kingdom so they could save him.   The tigers gathered and prayed to Parvati to return Bhima. Soon Bhima woke up, but this time with the strength of a 1000 tigers.  He returned victoriously back to the kingdom. 6 Word Story Tigers saved Bhima from Duryodhana's jealousy.  Source:    Indian Myth and Legend  by Donald A. Mackenzie (1913)  Author's Note: For this story, I decided to incorporate another classic Indian tale, The Jungle Book. Although Khan was the villain in that story, I decided to make him the savior in this story and thus instead of having snakes save Bhima...

For Part B of the Jataka Tales I chose another animal story. As you may know if you are reading this post or blog, I am a big fan of animal folktales and stories. I chose to read The King's White Elephant. I have always known elephants as being very prominent in Indian culture from the god Ganesha to elephants in India. Sometimes I have even seen grooms come on top of an elephant to their wedding! Thus, I wanted to see how the elephant was portrayed in the short story. The story was very simple and did not really have many lessons that I could derive. Perhaps you could see some themes such as helping others or doing ones duty, but that may be too complicated for a short and children story such as this one. To be perfectly honest, I was kind of unsure of how the story would end when the king came towards the end to purchase the elephant. I thought he would injure the elephant or treat it in some way that the carpenters disapproved. This may be from seeing how kings acted int he Indi...

 For this week I chose to read the Jataka tales. Last year taking Mythology and Folklore, I really enjoyed reading short stories and folktales with clever endings and animal characters. The first story I read for Indian Epics was about the Goblins in Lanka another example of a fun short story. Thus, I wanted to pursue more of these stories through the Jataka tales. In particular I read The Monkey and the Crocodile. It was interesting to see in the note that the Jataka tales were actually folktales told by Buddha about his previous lives. Regarding the story I read, I could see why Buddha told the tale as there are some interesting lessons that can come from the monkey's actions. Like most animal short stories, there always seems to be a smart animal that is seemingly not that powerful but always overcomes the dangerous but dumb animal. I do wonder why there are so similarities between these animal stories and perhaps its just that many cultures had a tremendous emphasis on brains v...