Extra Reading: Week 2 Jataka Anthology

Since I have some time now (and probably will not have so much time once the semester really starts...), I decided to do the extra credit reading for this week, choosing to read the Jataka Anthology from the Indian Epics class. I am really glad I got a chance to do that, since it re-familiarized me with the stories I picked out for that Anthology. I am curious now to see which stories people in that class will pick out to write about!

Plus, it turned out useful for the chain tale project I want to do in this class because that Anthology contains one of the most famous chain tales of all time: The Foolish, Timid Rabbit. Story source: Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt.

This is such a famous chain tale story; I am glad there is a chain tale that is part of the Jataka Anthology since India is one of the great sources for the chain tale tradition. I like the idea that in this version of the story, the monkeys apparently scare the poor rabbit on purpose. This would make such a great fake-news story too, so maybe I will find a way to include it in my project. The animals included in the sequence here are: rabbit-deer-fox-elephant-lion, and I've read versions that contain even longer lists of animals than that. Of course it would work with humans too. And instead of running, they would be retweeting ha ha.

Just for my own reference here, I'll include this link to the versions of the story I've found elsewhere: ATU 20C. Animals Flee in Fear of the End of the World (TMI Z43: it's one of the stories that used to have a Z chain-tale classification in the old TMI but which has been moved to the animal folktales classification instead in the ATU). Of course a HUGE difference with the jataka version is that unlike the fox who eats the animals up, this lion educates them instead!

I also really like the illustration for this story, trying to show all the animals, even the big elephant, in a single image. Illustration by Ellsworth Young.