Storytelling for Week 9: The Loving King

"Alright children, gather around the fire for one last story," Parashurama said to the young children who had been playing around the fire, awaiting their bed time story.

"This week we will learn about what being a great leader really means, as you will all see from this story about a king who values the lives of his people more than his own." 

There once was a small village established along a flowing river, based right off of the water's edge.  This village was ruled by a great leader, who loved his one hundred followers very much and would do anything for them.  The people of the village lived in peace for many years, eating the wonderful fruits of the land and fishing the near-by river, taking advantage of all that it had to offer.  Life was very good indeed for the people of this small village.

“I have but one thing to ask of you all, my children” said the tribal leader to the villagers.  “Make as many fires as you need for warmth and cooking purposes, but never fall asleep while the fire is burning and always make sure you put it out completely before walking away from it”.

His followers respected him very much so of course they held his statement with respect and agreed to oblige.  For the village leader’s birthday a great feast was to be held, noted by a large boar roasting over the fire.  Everyone danced and sang around the fire as the boar slowly cooked over the flaming coals and all one hundred villagers and their leader stuffed themselves with food throughout the course of the night.  Those in charge of cleaning up tended  the fire and made sure it was put out properly as the chief had requested of them and everyone went to bed happy for the night.

What the villagers had failed to notice was that one single ember from the fire had managed to escape from the water that doused the fire pit as a gust of wind had carried it off just before.  This tiny little ember, so insignificant in strength on its own, landed in a patch of very dry, tall grass and began to catch fire after a few hours of coaxing.  This small little fire then grew into a bigger and bigger fire that suddenly began surrounding the village on all sides.  Shear panic began to break out as villagers cried and feared for their lives.  They were trapped and didn’t know what to do; the river was flowing too fast for anyone to safely swim across and all of the other possible exits from the village were engulfed in flames.

“Everyone stay calm and do as I say” The chief yelled out to his people.  He then quickly began looking for logs or sticks along the river’s edge to make a bridge out of but couldn’t find anything. It seemed there was no hope.  Selflessly, the chief stretched his body out over the river with his arms on one side of the river and feet supporting him up on the other side.  Everyone ran across him to safely cross the other side and all went well until the last villager frantically trampled over his beloved king and in doing so, broke his back.  The chief had sacrificed his life for the love of his people, who did not come to his aid afterwards.  This meant little to the chief as he knew that giving up his life meant losing very little compared to how much he was able to give.  One of the surviving villagers saw this and respected the chief’s final, selfless act so much that he made a temple in his honor so that no one would ever forget this valuable lesson: Lead your people out of love and treat them as if they are your own children.

The monkey bridge 

Author’s note: I based this story off of the story called “The Monkey Bridge” in the book Twenty Jataka Tales.  In the original version, there is a monkey chief who has 80,000 followers and they live in a tree along the side of a river.  The king tells the monkeys to do as they please, just make sure not to drop any of the delicious fruit from the tree into the water or else humans will find it and come searching for their wonderful tree.  All of the monkeys obey this law but one time by accident, a piece of fruit falls into the water and makes its way to a nearby village and the king demands to find the source of this fruit. Once they find the tree they plan to wait until morning and kill all of the monkeys trapped in the tree and then take all of the fruit.  The monkeys hear about this and the monkey king plans to make a bridge across the water for all of the monkeys to escape to the other side.  He tries but to no avail as the cordage needed to make the bridge is just barely too short.  So instead, he uses his body as a bridge and all the monkeys run across and the last one ends up breaking his back.  The human king sees this noble act and decided to honor the monkey king and make a temple for him that teaches people to rule out of love and treat their people as their own children.  I thought this was a great message so I pretty much retold the same story, just in a different context and by changing up all of the details of the original story.  I also added the part at the beginning where the story is introduced by Parashurama in order to fit in with the theme of this portfolio.

Bibliography: Twenty Jataka Tales,Retold by Noor Inayat