Reading Notes: More Jataka Tales Part A

The first story I read was The Girl Monkey and the String of Pearls from More Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt. I liked these versions of the stories because the language it was written in is more simple so you get the moral of the story straight forward. I know these were written more for children, but to me, it seems easier to write these in my own version and expand on them from there.

In this story, it’s about a monkey that steals the pearls of the queen. The guard devises a plan to find out which monkey stole the pearls. He puts glass beads on the branches and each of the monkeys grabs up one…except the monkey that stole the pearls. When the other monkeys say it’s too bad she didn’t get any, she pulls out the strings of pearls she stole to show off to the others. The guard snatched her up and that was that.

I think this could easily be translated into a thief that wanted to show off their goods and that’s how they get caught. Surprisingly, a lot of criminals are shockingly dumb in that area.

Link to story here!

The next story I read was the Golden Goose. This was a story about a goose that, out of the kindness of his heart, wanted to help an old woman and her two daughters. He would give them golden feathers so they could sell them and live in comfort. The mother became greedy and wanted to pluck out all the feathers. But if the goose did not give them freely, then they would turn white instead of gold. This story is about greed. This could be rewritten easily to tell any number of stories of people wanting more than they are willing to work/wait for.

Link to story here!

The Stupid Monkeys is a story about a gardener who wanted to go into the city and party with all his friends. He trusted the monkeys that lived in the garden to water the trees for him. I’m not sure if he didn’t give them enough instruction or they just didn’t listen, but the chief monkey told his followers to pull all the trees up to find out how deep their roots were. This was so that they knew how much water to give them. The next day, all the trees were dead from being pulled out. The gardener in this story didn’t want to miss out on the festivities so slacked on his responsibilities. This happens a lot in real life. This could be something easily retold in modern terms. I see this happen a lot where I work. People pass the buck as much and as often as they can instead of doing their work first and then going out to play.

Link to story here!

Image Source

Title: Lazy Monkey

Although the last story is about the lazy gardener, I found this picture of the lazy monkey to be quite amusing. And since the majority of the stories I read this week involved monkeys, I figured why not! And he's super cute.