Week 12: Khasi Folktales B (Extra Reading Diary)

For the extra reading diary assignment this week, I read the second half of the Khasi Folktales unit. 

The two stories that I liked the most from this half of the reading unit are the one's I'll talk about here. The first is the story of What Caused the Shadows in the Moon and the second is the story of How Cats Came to Live with Man.

One of the main reasons I liked the moon story is because earlier this week in the Indian Fairy Tales Unit, I read a different version of why the moon has a softer, more shadowy light and the two stories couldn't have been more different. 

In this story, the moon used to be as bright and brilliant as the sun, but because he didn't listen to his mother and disrespected his sister, the sun, he was burned, leaving him dimmer and scarred than he was before.  This is a much more depressing story than the one in the Indian Fairy Tales unit, where the moon was the only child to help her mother, so she was blessed with soft, beautiful light, where the sun was cursed to be harsh blinding. I personally like the Indian Fairy Tale version more, but I did like how this version also explained the shadows and markings that we can see on the moon.

Full Moon by Gregory H. Revera. Wikimedia.

I also thought that the story about how the cat came to live with humans was really cute and different from many of the other similar folktales. First I thought it was cool that they talked about how the cats were related to the tigers, and how the cats began hunting small animals because the tiger wouldn't share his food. I thought the story was really cute how the cat had been so abused by her family, especially the tiger, but when she went to the humans, she was welcomed and loved and played with. After that, she didn't take any more abuse from her brother and she began living with the humans permanently.

By Payman Sazesh. Wikimedia