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 A, was "The Value of a Brother." There are a few reasons I liked this story in particular. First, however, a quick summary:  Three robbers plunder people living in a certain part of the forest near Kosala. The villagers then go to search them out, but find no one but three brothers ploughing a field. Frustrated, the villagers accuse the brothers of being the robbers (similar to some groundless accusations in the United States, as a community needs someone to hold responsible. I read Just Mercy in high school). The brothers are then unceremoniously arrested and imprisoned. A woman in the court of the king bewails their imprisonment, and the king allows her to demand one of them to be released to her after she tells him that they are her brother, husband, and son. The woman elects the brother, because he is the only irreplaceable one of the three. The king, impressed by

This week, for the Part A Reading, I read the first collection of jataka tales in Francis' collection, Jataka Tales . My favorite jataka tale in this part of the book was called "The Monkey and the Ogre." I really enjoyed this jataka tale, because it includes a supernatural element with the ogres and "water-ogres." Also, the part of the story where the water-ogre manifests itself as monster was pretty cool and fantastical. One thing I didn't like very much was that the dialogue was not offset. Instead, back and forth of dialogue was in the same compressed paragraph and it was hard to follow. The conclusion of the story was also fantastical and cool, as the Bodhisattva does a magical trick to create hollow reeds to suck up the water and avoid the wrath of the water-ogre. I also thought that the inclusion of 80,000 monkeys at the end was a cool hyperbole to underscore the point which the jataka tale is trying to make. Stay out of his swamp. Source