Week 12: Indian Fairy Tales (Reading Diary A)

For this week, I read the Indian Fairy Tales unit of the Un-Textbook.

The first story I'm going to talk about in this diary is the story of Harisarman, which was my favorite from this unit. The second story I'm going to briefly touch on is the Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal. 

I thought the story of Harisarman was really entertaining and fun to read. Stories about men like Harisarman who always get ahead by lying and getting really lucky are so different than most stories, but at the same time there are many stories like that (i.e. the story from the Myth-Folklore class about the archer who lied about his accomplishments but ended up accidentally scaring off an army, giving him even more fame and glory).

The Harisarman story was one of the best of these types of stories that I've read. I liked how the first time, his deceit was so well planned out but the next two, which cemented his power and wealth, were complete accidents. On both of the two occasions, the solution practically fell to him from the sky and his luck continued. Really, how many girls in India are named "tongue"? Stories like this are really fun to read because you can see the pieces coming together before and in the end, everyone usually lives happily as long as their luck holds out.

Storybook illustrations by John D. Batten

The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal was very much like the story from the Bidpai Folktales Unit, which I discussed in depth in the Week 11 Reading Diary B. However, I waned to mention the Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal because it was so similar but I loved the few differences in his story from the last I discussed. 

In other similar stories, the animal or creature trying to kill the person who saved them is tricked back into he cage by something, and usually quite quickly, but I thought this one was so much better because of the confusion the jackal caused in the tiger by pretending to be completely stupid and not mentally stable. I thought the tiger's furied response was so much better than just trying to prove he was locked up. Instead he was trying everything in his power to make, what he though, was an incredibly stupid creature understand a simple situation.