Reading Notes: Jatakas!

When reading this anthology, I decided to focus my notes on The Cunning Crane and The Crab. Before this course, I never enjoyed trickster tales, because I always felt so bad for the victims. However, I enjoyed the tricksters of Aesop, and I enjoyed the twist ending of this trickster getting his due!

Here are my notes:

Author: KALX999 Source: Wikimedia

• There is a dry pool and a cool, full pool
• The crane offers to carry dying fish to the better pool
• He has to convince them first! (uses older, one eyed fish)
• The fish knows he eats their kind, but they are willing to trust him so they don't die in that pool. Perhaps they know that either way, they will die. 
• They agree to be carried. Crane eats them one by one, leaving bones beneath tree.
• He isn't ashamed of his treachery, and doesn't feel the need to hide what he's done/ He leaves the bones where anyone can see.
• Out of fish, he turns to a crab. 
• Was he hungry, or at this point, just greedy? Could have eaten somewhere else?
• Crab agrees to hold on to him with claws
• Sees bones of fish, snaps the cranes neck
• Before he does so, the crane asks for mercy. 
• Crab lies and says he won't kill him. Kills him once he is safe on the ground.
• No one here acts very courageously. Except perhaps the one-eyes fish who went first.