Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Reading Diary A: Twenty Jataka Tales

This week's reading started with the short story "The Guilty Dogs" in the book, Twenty Jataka Tales.  The story is about seven hundred city dogs that are wrongfully persecuted by the king for a crime they did not commit.  They were accused of chewing up the leather straps of the king's chariot one night when in reality, the royal dogs were the ones who committed the crime.  The city dogs feared for their lives but their noble leader and chief said he would take care of the situation and prove to the king that they were innocent.  He then walks through the city to the king's palace, all the while not being harmed by anyone that saw him out of love for the way he looked.  He then explained to the king that his methods of killing all the city dogs is not just and should be changed, saying that he can prove the royal dogs were the ones actually responsible.  He then proves to the king the city dogs' innocence when they royal dogs begin to throw up the leather straps.  The king develops a great respect for the city dog chief and declares that no city dog shall be harmed and only treated like royalty and served the finest of foods.  There seems to be a recurrent theme with every story I have read in this book so far that includes a group of animals that are going to be killed but have a noble leader that saves them.

2 comments:

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  2. I forgot to include the link! Here is the comment again, with a link to the guide you need to use:
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    Hi Tucker! I am glad you are liking the stories, although I am confused by how you are dividing up your diary entries. This book is reading for one week, with the two diary posts split up like it shows here, 10 stories in one post, and 10 stories in the next post for two posts total. It's fine to take notes on just a couple of stories (focus on your favorites!), but the idea is that you do the whole reading to figure out what your favorites are. It looks like you are really dragging that out; you should have finished the book already last week, right? So please make sure you finish the book for the reading diary today and use those guides to figure out just how the readings work each time.

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