Reading Notes: Indian Fairy Tales (Part B)

Indian Fairy Tales 

Bibliography: Indian Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs myth-folklore-unit-indian-fairy-tales.html

There was a king who was very talkative, he would not let anyone else get a word in. The future Buddha wanted to get rid of his talkativeness. There were two ducks who met a tortoise. They asked to take him to the palace where the king lived and he agreed to go. They were carrying him there with a stick and the tortoise let go, fell, and cracked in half. The king asked the future Buddha why the tortoise fell. The future Buddha said that the tortoise could not hold his tongue and wanted to speak so he opened his mouth and fell from the stick. 

Once there was a farmer but he did not get much from the farm. One day he was sleeping under a tree and saw a serpent and realized that he had not worshipped it to bless his farm yet. Both that day he left it milk and thanked it. The next morning he saw a gold Denar in the bowl and repeated this for days to come. One day the farmer was gone and asked his son to leave the milk. The son thought that there must be a lot of denars in the ant hill so he thought he would kill the snake and take them all. He tried the next day and the snake ended up killing him. the farmer came home and realized what his son had done and he was not happy. 

There were ten cloth merchants who were always together. They sold their belongings and came back with money. In the nearby forest there were three robbers, these robbers sole everything they had. The robbers did not think they had enough so they ordered them to dance as well. The ten men were much smarter than the robbers so they had planned to get their stuff back through song. In the midst o the song the ten men pounced on the robbers, their hands and feet together. They were able to get their stuff back. 

Here is a picture of a tortoise to represent the one the first story. 

Tortoise