The lord of Benares is so partial to venison that fields lie fallow and marketplaces stand empty while his people catch deer for him.
The following tale comes from the collection known as the Jataka, a series of fables setting out the wisdom of Siddhartha Gautama, the fifth- or fourth-century BC teacher of enlightenment. This particular story is set in the deer park near Varanasi (Benares) in Uttar Pradesh where tradition says that Gautama Buddha first taught.
A dozy rabbit gets an idea into his head and soon all the animals of India are running for their lives.
The following tale from the fourth-century BC Jataka Tales was told to illustrate how Hindu ascetics blindly copied one another’s eye-catching but useless mortifications; but it might just as well be applied to stock-market rumours or ‘project fear’ politics.
A warlike king sets out to bag another small kingdom for his realms, but a monkey gets him thinking.
The Jataka Tales are a collection of roughly fourth-century BC stories supposedly from the many previous lives of Gautama Buddha. Several tell, Aesop-like, how one may learn wisdom by observing the ways of the natural world around us. In this case, a belligerent monarch draws a timely lesson from the antics of a monkey.