Reading Notes: Reading B: Twenty Jataka Tales

For the second part of the reading of Twenty Jataka Tales by Noor Inayat, again I found a story, The Sarabha that was similar to Banyan from the first part of the reading. Both stories have a magnificent deer that that helps a King learn a lesson, and then the King vows to not hunt any more creatures. It seems that both stories, the author thinks of a deer as the wise creature in the forest and reiterates the common saying when a King would decree that no one could hunt creatures in their forest. Because of how much the deer is brought up in these stories and a King, I think trying to create one that would seem to flow with the stories would be easiest. Another story that is familiar is The Goblin Town. In the story, she-goblins are transformed into beautiful women and try to allure sailors to stay with them so that they can eat them. One sailor learns the truth and tries to tell everyone. Only some of the sailors believe him, and those that do can escape with the help of a flying horse. In this version just, a voice from the sea sends the horse that helps the men but what if it was a she-goblin who did not want to eat her husband. What if she had fallen in love with a human and knew the only way she could save him was to let him find out their goblin secret so that she could send a flying horse to keep him safe. The third story I enjoyed reading was The Golden Goose. At first, I thought it was going to be similar to the story, The Golden Feathers that was in reading A but they were pretty different. In The Golden Feathers, a husband is turned into a golden goose so that he can help his low-income family but his wife becomes greedy and tries to take all of his golden feathers. But in The Golden Goose, even though a King is obsessed with a golden goose and his wisdom he does not try and keep him in the palace but allows him to live his life as distance friends. I think the comparison of the two stories shows the separation of people that are greedy for money in life to those that are respectful and understand limits of others. I think the story of The Golden Goose could be combined with The Golden Feathers where the wife learns from the goose and her daughter how to be respectful of the golden goose.

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Image: A goose with a golden-ish color. Source: Wikimedia Commons by Thelostrobot89