Myths, Fairytales and Legends
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Myths, Fairytales and Legends’
A mouse’s delight at seeing his old enemy caught in a trap proves short-lived.
Yaugandharayana, minister of Udayana, King of Vatsa (roughly Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh), has made a casual assertion that even animals go to each other for protection. Yogeshvara challenges him to provide an example, so the wise minister tells him about a mouse that once lived at the bottom of a banyan tree.
In an enduring fable from the Kathasaritsagara, an Indian merchant explains how he acquired his nickname.
Gunadhya, sixth-century narrator of this tale from the Kathasaritsagara, was in Pratisthana (Paithan) watching little knots of men in the city conducting their business. They included bookies promising treasure to gamblers, but among the merchants was a man who had a better way to become rich.
The lovely Shakuntala is wooed by a great King, but almost at once he forgets her.
‘The Recognition of Shakuntala’ is a play by fifth-century Indian dramatist Kalidasa, derived from the ancient Mahabharata, and made popular in Georgian England by Calcutta judge William Jones. It tells of a shy young woman who is wooed and wedded by a great King, who afterwards cannot remember her at all.
The Rivers Son and Narmada rise together in the hills of Amarkantak, but because of Johilla they never meet again.
William Sleeman, after whom the little village of Sleemanabad in Madhya Pradesh is named, retold a classic Indian fable in an open letter to his sister. It is a love story of three rivers, the Narmada (Nerbudda), the Son and the Johila, and explains why the Narmada and the Son rise in the same place in central India, but flow in opposite directions.
A wily predator dons a sheepskin so he can help himself to the whole flock.
The wolf in sheep’s clothing is a metaphor used by Jesus Christ to warn against those who pretend to be Christians so they can prey on them. Nikephoros Basilakes, a twelfth-century teacher of rhetoric at the Patriarchal School in Constantinople, penned this little ‘Aesop’s Fable’ with a twist to the tale.