Reading Diary B: Twenty-Two Goblins

Type of Underwater City

Image from Wikipedia

Notes on Twenty-Two Goblins by Arthur W. Ryder.

Fourth Goblin
A man named Hero sacrifices his son to save the king.  Then his daughter dies so he and his wife kill themselves.  When the king discovers them, he decides to kill himself too.  It's pretty cruel to sacrifice his own son, but it shows a lot of devotion.  However, I don't understand why he decided to kill himself.  I really don't understand why the king decides to kill himself.  An entire family just died to save the king's skin, so the king thinks it is a good idea to die too?  I seems like the king's death would just make the other's deaths pointless.

Fifth Goblin
A brave man, a wise man, and a clever man are all promised to a princess.  The three combine their talents to rescue the girl from a giant.  If Draupadi was able to have five husbands, than surely this girl can have three husbands too.  The king, however, thinks that the brave man should marry the girl.

Sixth Goblin
A woman, her husband, and her brother come to a temple to worship a goddess.  The brother gets the bright idea to cut off his head as a sacrifice.  Should we all just go to a temple and cut off our heads?  The husband cuts off his head when he sees what happened.  Seems like a healthy response to the loss of a loved-one.  Fortunately, the woman decides that she needs to hang herself instead of cutting her own head off.  This gives the goddess time to give the two men their lives back, except with their heads switched.  On a side note, it seems like it would be very difficult to cut off your own head.

Seventh Goblin
A king helps a prince who saved his life win two underwater cities and marry the princess of those cities. It sounds like Atlantis.

Reading Diary A: Twenty-Two Goblins

Graveyard

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Notes on Twenty-Two Goblins by Arthur W. Ryder.

Introduction
King receives fruits with gemstones inside from monk.  What a reward!  However, the monk asks to meet the king in the graveyard.  The monk wants the king to bring him a hanging body.  Already, this story is sounding a little creepy.  I wonder why the monk needs the body.  The body becomes possessed by a goblin that tells him the first story.

First Goblin
A prince sees a beautiful girl and falls in love with her.  However, she only speaks to him through signs that only the prince's counselor can understand.  When the prince sends am old woman to ask of the girl, the girl rejects the price, but the signs say he must wait for several days.  Already this sounds like a complicated relationship.  I don't understand why the girl only uses signs.  Then, when she weds the prince and finds that the counselor is the one who interpreted the signs, she tries to have him killed.  The counselor and prince execute a plan to get the girl banished from the city, and her parents die from grief.  Seems like all this trouble could have been spared.

Second Goblin
Mother threw son into fire for crying.  How harsh!  She sounds like a terrible mother.  But he was brought back to life by a spell.  The man who witnessed this used the magic to bring a dead girl to life.

Third Goblin
A parrot and thrush get into an argument over whether men or women are worse.  The King decides that "women are usually bad."  What a terrible statement!  Saying this would get many people's blood to boil in today's Western society.

Week 12 Review

I thought video from Friday's announcements about becoming a noun was very funny.

Week 12 Storytelling: The Mouse and the Elephant

Elephant by the Water

Image from Wikipedia

Maximilian sat by the lake, grooming his whiskers in the reflection of the pristine waters.  The sun had just set and it was quiet for the watering hole.  Usually all sorts of animals came for a drink.  The lake was arguably Maximilian's favorite place, especially when it was quiet.  However, when there were others about, he had the pleasure of animal watching.  It appeared that he would have both tonight; there was a herd of elephants approaching from the distance.

When the elephants arrived, they nosily slurped up the water until they had their fill.  One by one, as they finished drinking, they meandered off to a patch of grass where they gossiped and ate the vegetation.  Finally, there was just one elephant left drinking water.

On the other side of the lake were a group of hares that had shown up around the same time as the elephants had.  Maximilian could see that they were growing increasingly perturbed by the elephants.  With such large ears, the elephants' ruckus was particularly disturbing for the rabbits.  Finally, one of the hares decided to get rid of the elephants.  He hopped over to the lone elephant.

"Listen to me oh Elephant, I am the hare in the moon, and I have come to warn you against disturbing the moon.  Leave here at once!"

Since the moon was behind the clouds, the elephant did not pay much attention to the hare.

"The moon's wrath will destroy you!"

The hare dipped his toe into the water as the moon appeared from behind the clouds.  The elephant looked up and saw the moon reflecting up at him.  Suddenly, because of the waves caused by the hare, there were multiple reflections of the moon in the water.  When he saw the moon split into multiple pieces to attack him, the elephant rumbled backwards and retreated as fast as he could.

Maximilian felt sorry for the poor elephant and he went over to comfort him and invite the beast to a luncheon he was planning for tomorrow.  When he reached the elephant his fur shimmered in the moonlight.  The elephant thought that Maximilian was a piece of the moon that had come to attack him.  But when he saw how little the shimmering mouse was, he decided that he could easily squash the tiny piece of moon.

Just before Maximilian was about to speak and invite the elephant to his party, the giant beast tried to squash him.  Goodness! thought Maximilian.  He scrambled behind the elephant and leapt up on his back.  The other elephants, saw the tiny mouse and thought that he was holding the great elephant to the ground by some magical force.  With this realization, they became afraid and stampeded off as fast as they could go.  Even today, elephants are still afraid of mice.

Author's Note: This story is a combination of The Hare in the Moon and The Elephant-Fighting Hare, both from Devi's Fables and Folklore.  The first part of the story, when the hare uses the moon to scare off the elephant, is very similar to the original Hare in the Moon story.  However, for the second part of the story, I wanted to explain why elephants are afraid of mice.  Instead of a hare that sits atop the elephant, as in The Elephant-Fighting Hare, I had the mouse sit on the elephant's back.

Bibliography:
"The Hare in the Moon" by Shovona Devi, from Fables and Folklore (1919). Web source: Indian Epics Reading Guides.

"The Elephant-Fighting Hare" by Shovona Devi, from Fables and Folklore (1919). Web source: Indian Epics Reading Guides.

Tech Tip Quotemakers

I made the following image with Canva.  This quote is from Adam Ruins Everything, one of my new favorite TV shows.

Made with Canva

Image from Allen

Tech Tip Site Navigation

I cleaned up the navigation sidebar on my storybook website, Badri and the Dashavatara, so that it only shows the list of stories.

Reading Diary B: Indian Fables and Folklore

Notes on Indian Fables and Folklore by Devi

Shibi sacrificed the weight of a pigeon in his own flesh to a hawk so that the pigeon might live.

Kshupa brags of his superiority over sages.  Dadhichi boxed Kshupa's ears, and Kshupa killed Dadhichi.  When Dadhichi was revived, he asked to be as hard as diamond so that he could fight Kshupa.  After much fighting, the two reconciled.

Mira is married to a Krishna toy.

The arrogant King Krishna challenged the God Krishna to fight.  The King and his follower's heads were removed with a discus.  It seems very foolish to challenge a god to fight.

Avikshita goes to the swayamvara of Vaishalini and captures her to be his bride.  The other princes fight and defeat him.  After Avikshita's father wages war to get his son back, Avikshita refuses to marry since he was defeated in combat.  This all seems like a lot of trouble for finding a wife.  How many people died in the war trying to retrive Avikshita?

Ishvarvarman lost all his money to a cunning inn keeper.  He later went back with a monkey that seemingly makes gold.  The innkeeper traded everything she owned for the monkey.  It sounds like Ishvarvarman learned his lesson.  He used a creative way to get his money back.

The "logical pupil" was sent to find a cat for his master.  Instead he brings back a boy that matches his masters description of a cat.

A poor man gets a magical pitcher that gives food.  He breaks the pitcher when he is drunk with his friends.

Bir-Vadra killed a nearly invincible giant and a dragon.

Banker monkey

Image from Tore Bustad