"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.
"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.
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.
