Reading Notes, Jataka Tales: Beauty and Brownie

A herd of deer.

(Source: Wikimedia Commons) 

There were once two deer named Beauty and Brownie that lived with their father and mother and great herds of other deer in a forest. One day their father their father called out to them and told them that the deer in the forest were always in danger when the corn was ripening in the fields. He suggested that they all went away, each taking a herd to deer with them. They asked what the danger was and said said, "When the deer go into the fields to eat the corn they get caught in the traps the men set there."


Brownie asked if her father would go with them and he said that he and their mother would stay in the forest with some of the other old deer because there would be enough food enough for them but not enough for them and the other herds of deer. He told them to lead their herds up into the high hills where there was plenty of food and stay there until the crops are all cut. He said they could then bring the herds back at night, but only in the day and away from the village so the hunters wouldn't see them.

Beauty and Brownie set out with their herds. Beauty traveled at night and did not go near any villages and got all of her herd safely to the top of the hill. Brownie forgot what his father had said and started off with his herd in the morning, traveling through the day, right past the village where the hunters lived. The hunters saw the herd and killed many of the deer in Brownie's herd.


When crops had been cut, the herds started back to the forest. Beauty led all his herd back at night, but stupid Brownie traveled in the daytime and he took his herd past the villages. When they got back to the forest, most of the deer in Brownie's herd had died.

Part of the Jataka Tales unit. Story source: More Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt, illustrated by Ellsworth Young (1922). Beauty and Brownie.