Reading Notes: Reading B: Jatakas Anthology

In Another Life. 

For this first week's reading, I was happy to get to read the Jataka Anthology stories. A common theme in most of the stories was Buddha or the Bodhisatta talking about a lesson that was learned from one of his previous lives when he was an animal. It seems that the Buddha could have been any animal in a previous life, but the most common animal used in the stories is a monkey. In the tales of The Crocodile in the River and The Monkey Who Gathered Lotuses, both of the monkeys are Buddha in a past life. The monkeys are very intelligent and always outwit the "bad guy". I could keep along with this theme of using the Buddha monkey as the main character but in a new story. The Buddha monkey will be able to outwit another animal in the predator family like a lion. I will need to look up the predators of a monkey to try and keep the story true to Indian culture. Another possibility for a story is changing the animal; there are stories where Buddha is not a monkey. In the story, The Self-Willed Deer, Buddha is a deer in his previous life. The story is explained by Buddha about how his nephew deer would not learn the rules of being a deer and therefore gets trapped in a snare and dies. The story is told from the perspective of the Buddha deer, but the young nephew deer's side of the story is not explained. I could create a story that is told from the point of view of the nephew deer who is more concerned about playing with other young deer or finding the best food then attending his lesson. The final story in the reading was called Goblin City. This story was completely different than the other tales but had some good information about Indian fairytales. I learned about she-goblins and that they have magical powers but are terrified of water. I also learned that Indian culture had created a Pegasus, "flying horse" creature to help rescue the sailors from the she-goblins. This could help information could help with possible rewrites on stories, where I bring in a Pegasus to help save someone.

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Image: Monkey in India. Source: Pexels by Pritha Ganguly