Reading Notes: The Man in the Moon and The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal

Photo of the moon by Omar Bariffi

Source: Flickr

In the story of the Man in the Moon:, there was a blacksmith who complained to a "wise man who had power over all things" about how hot his labor made him. Because of this, the wise man turned him into a stone but then the stone wasn't content with being a stone because he was being hurt by a man that was a stone-cutter. Then, the wise man turned him into a stone-cutter but the labor was too tiring for him once again. Because of this, he asked the wise man turned him into the sun after listening to the stone-cutter's grievances of how hard it was to work in the sun. Out of everything that the sun had previously been before, this was his hottest form and he just couldn't bear it so he asked the wise man to turn him into the moon. The wise man granted the sun his wish by turning him into the moon, but being the moon was even hotter than being the sun because the moon had to bask in the sun's heat. When the moon complained about the warmth, the wise man was not okay with the fact that the moon could not be satisfied and ultimately left him to be the moon to this day. 

This story shows how the moon, who was originally a blacksmith, always saw the negative side of his life, causing him to be blind to the advantages that he has over those people or things that he believes has a better life than him. I'm interested in natural resources and energy so I am going to rewrite this tale for my story this week as a fire that feels unfulfilled as an energy source and asks to be transformed into other forms of energy which all have their downsides. It will be very niche and specific to my own interests, but I feel like aligning what we learn with our own interests is what this class is about :)

In the story of The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal, the tiger, the antagonist of the story, was trapped in a cage and he was trying to do anything that he could to get out. Finally, a Brahman walked by and he begged the Brahman to let him out of the cage but the Brahman was skeptical because by being familiar with animal nature, he knew that the tiger would eat him. The tiger pleaded for his freedom and after seeing how desperate the tiger was, the Brahman sympathetically let him out of the cage and then the tiger immediately threatened to eat the Brahman who was foolish for letting him out.

Now the Brahman was at the mercy of the tiger and the tiger was about to eat him but then he gave the Brahman the chance to talk to three things that would decide if the tiger eating the Brahman was just. The Brahman first asked a buffalo and then a fish but they sympathized with the tiger instead. Then the Brahman met a jackal who he gave a run down of the situation to but the jackal just could not wrap his mind around what was going on even after explaining it multiple times. The tiger then randomly showed up and the Brahman begged the tiger to give him at least five minutes to just explain what was going on to the jackal. The Brahman continued to keep trying to explain why the tiger wanted to eat the Brahman after he let him out of the cage but the "dumb" jackal was really not understanding what happened. The tiger was getting really hungry and frustrated at this point so he  decided to just get the conversation with the jackal over with so he took the matter into his own hands by explaining the situation and the jackal really needed to see what physically happened so he asked the tiger to demonstrate. The tiger was over this drama and went ahead and stepped into the cage to show the jackal so he could eat his dinner already and the "foolish" jackal shut the door, locking the baffled tiger in, and he cackled as he walked away at the side of the Brahman.

Bibliography:
The Man in the Moon. Story source: Laos Folk-Lore by Katherine Neville Fleeson. 
The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal. Story source: Story source: Indian Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by John D. Batten.