Epics of India

Mr. and Mrs. Otter lived a quiet life in Huckleberry Lake, surrounded by clear blue waters and tall riverbanks covered with wildflowers. The calm of the lake had recently been disturbed by an uncharacteristic amount of squabbling, however. Mr. and Mrs. Otter having some marriage difficulties, and there were nights when the water never ceased rippling as they bickered back and forth. Mrs. Otter had decided that enough was enough, and asked her friend Patricia the hermit crab, who lived along the riverbank, what to do. "Well, when Albert and I were going through an especially crabby phase, we went to see Rudy the wolf. He's the top therapist in our ecosystem, 8 years running!" Mrs. Otter had made an appointment with Rudy wolf that very day. She combed her fur, gathered her purse and Mr. Otter, and set out on the trek to Rudy’s office. Rudy worked out of a hollowed tree in the forest that surrounded Huckleberry Lake. When Mr. and Mrs. Otter arrived, Mrs. Ot...

The Lion in Bad Company -A wolf tricks a young lion into letting him come back and live in the lion's den -The lion is flattered by the wolf and earns his trust -The wolf convinces the lion to kill ponies for horse meat -The lion's father is wise and warns his son that the ponies belong to the King, and that the thefts will not go unnoticed -The lion has developed an ego, and, encouraged by the wolf, disregards his father and continues to seek horse meat -The horses are moved by the King to try and protect them, but the lion is persistent -Ultimately, the King sends an archer, who slays the lion -The wolf is unharmed and returns quietly to his old life Wolves -The wolf characters in the Jataka tales are almost always painted as tricksters -While the wolf is clever and often gets others into trouble, he himself typically remains unharmed Beauty and Brownie -Mother and Father deer send their children, Beauty and Brownie, out of the forest during the corn ripening s...

The Girl Monkey and the String of Pearls I found this story very endearing; I love how the monkeys are personified. Humans and animals often interact in the Jataka tales as if all living creatures are equals sharing the earth, which is an intriguing dynamic. And who knew monkeys could love pearls as much as a human? - The palace royalty go down to the lake for a swim -The Queen leaves her jewels with a servant in the garden -A girl monkey waits until the servant has fallen asleep and steals the pearls -The chief guard plays a trick to find out which monkey stole the pearls -Hangs strings of glass beads in the garden -All the girl monkeys rush to get to the beads except for the monkey with the pearls -In the end, her ego gets the best of her -As she brags to the other girl monkeys about her pearls being more beautiful than their glass beads, she reveals herself as the thief The Otters and the Wolf -The animals in the title initially led me to believe that the wolf would be...