Alex's Epics of India Blog

The jataka tale that I enjoyed the most from this collection, from the set which was assigned for part B, was "The Jackal Would A-Wooing Go." Such a fun title! There are a few reasons I liked this story in particular. First, a quick summary:  A jackal lives in a crystal cave near a family of lions -- three brothers and a sister -- and the jackal falls madly in love with the female lion. He goes to propose to her while her brothers are out hunting, and she does not say anything in response to his proposal, leading him to go home, very sad. The lioness tells her brothers what had happened and how she felt as though she should die because of how insulted she felt that a jackal would think himself worthy of her. Each brother, one by one, heads to the crystal cave in a rage, determined to kill the jackal. The eldest two brothers die when they arrive and crack their heads against the clear crystal wall of the jackal's home. The third and youngest brother recognizes the gl...

The jataka tale that I enjoyed the most from this collection, from the set which was assigned for part A, was "The Dishonest Friend." There are a few reasons I liked this story in particular. First, however, a quick summary:  A man asks his friend to watch his plough while he went away, and his friend acted decidedly un-friendly when he sold the plow and pocketed the money, cheating the man. When the man returned, the friend told him that a very large rat ate the plow. The man went along with this explanation, despite knowing it was false. He then took his friend's son for a walk and hid him at another person's house. The man told his friend that a hawk had swooped down and taken his son. When the friend took the man to court for murder, the man mentions that if a rat can eat a plow, a hawk can carry off a boy. The judge notices the trickery of the man, and tells the friend to find the plow in order to get his son back. The story ends with a moral that lying is ...

I really liked the "Advice to Writers" page. There was a lot of short, quippy, useful tips for me as a writer, and I hope to reference this page more in the future. I really liked the advice "Stop Dancing and Just Go for a Walk." This post mostly talked about eliminating fluff from stylistic parts of my writing, mostly with commas (which I use a lot). I liked the way that this little post presented the information. It described exactly the problem it was hoping to help fix -- a problem I have in my writing -- with it being too flowery a lot of the time. I tend to add a Falkneresque of Woolf-like feeling to the style of my writing, and I allow sentences to go on and on and on without forseeable end. A more Hemingway kind of sparsity of targeted language might be better, and I think that is what the post means by 'walking.' (Though I'm sure that Hemingway would argue that his writing definitely dances, just in its own way). How I feel when...

My favorite story from the Part A collection of Aryasura's The Gatakamala , or collection of translated Jataka tales, is "The Story of the Small Portion of Gruel." This story stood out to me the most when looking at the titles of the Jatakas in this section, because it seemed to me that this was a very realistic problem that could arouse disagreement and lead to a sort of moral lesson, instead of the fantastic or anthropomorphized stories which often make up Jataka tales. The story begins by extolling the virtues of the Buddha, which lay the groundwork for his motivations and actions later in the story -- the Buddha is pure and only can be pure, so that the misdeeds of others in the story are contrasted against the restraint of the Buddha. He begins the story as a king of Kosala. His wife asks him why he keeps reciting an odd phrase about gruel, which has made everyone around the town uncomfortable, so the king tells her that he, in a previous life, lived in the tow...