Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Reading Notes: Tibetan Folk Tales Reading B

These are from the Tibetan Folk Tales by A.L. Shelton

How the Rabbit Killed the Lion: There is a lion who is king of all beasts. A rabbit decides not to go kowtow (what I am guessing means something like praise) the lion because he was too comfy in the grass. The lion sees him and asks why he did not come. The rabbit makes up a lie so that he is not killed and says that a she-devil came and scared her silly and that the lion should go down to the water to talk to her. He does so with much pride; when he looks into the water and sees his reflection, the rabbit exclaims that the reflection is the she-devil. The lion freaks out and pounces into the water and eventually drowns himself. This shows an important message about pride and ego. The rabbit is very clever and outwits the lion.


The Three Hunters: This is a very gruesome and brutal story. Basically, there are three hunters, their three wives, and their one sister. The wives are jealous of the sister so the older two wives kill her. Her soul is transformed into a bird and the brothers find out. The younger wife eventually tells the hunters what happened and they end up killing the older two wives. I wrote about it because it was a very straightforward story and there was not a lot of interpretation to it which is different than most stories. Also this story contained no animals as characters which is different than a lot of the other Tibetan stories.


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