Reading Diary B: Public Domain Twenty Jataka tales

For this week I began reading Twenty Jataka tales, retold by Noor Inayat.  This book is a collection of twenty short stories that tie in to Indian folklore as well as the epics themselves.  For this week, I began by reading the first short story in the book, titled "The Monkey Bridge".  It is about a monkey chief in the Himalayas who lives his followers so much that he makes a bridge out of his body in order to allow them to flee from the humans and save their lives.  In doing so, one careless monkey breaks his back and leaves him alone to die.  The human king is so moved by the chief's love for his followers that he comes over to check on him and comfort him in his final hours.  The monkey chief tells him to not be sad and that his death was for a good cause because it freed his followers and allowed them to once again live a happy life.  The monkey tells the king to listen to his words and rule his people only through love and treat them as your own children.  This was a very moving story for me and I absolutely loved reading it.  I enjoyed the imagery of the opening paragraph, depicting the beautiful tree near the river's edge up high in the valleys of the Himalayas where the monkeys lived. Talking about this tree and its amazing fruit definitely gave me a Garden of Eden sort of feeling to it and it was relaxing to read.  I enjoyed reading from this book so much that I want to read from it again for next week.  The fun thing about it is that its a collection of short stories so I can collect a bunch of different material to use as inspiration for my storytelling all from the same source.

Source: Twenty Jataka Tales, Retold by Noor Inayat

The Monkey Bridge