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Introduction
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.
ONCE upon a time, a rabbit dozing under a wood-apple tree woke with a start, and with this thought in his head: ‘What if the earth should suddenly crumble?’ At that moment a butter-fingered monkey in the branches above dropped a fruit. The shell smashed just behind the rabbit, who leapt into the air and bolted without a backward glance.
‘Why are you running?’ another rabbit called out after him. ‘Don’t you know?’ he replied breathlessly, ‘the earth is crumbling!’ and sped on, with the second rabbit close behind. Soon hundreds of rabbits were running for their lives. They shouted to the deer that the earth was crumbling, and the whole herd sprang away; the foxes heard the cries of the deer and bounded after them, stopping only to tell the elephants, who lumbered in their wake.
A lion heard the commotion, and standing on a hill he brought them all to a halt with three great roars. ‘Why’ he asked ‘are you all running?’
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