Indian Fables and Folklore by Shovona Devi
For week 11, I have decided to browse through the book, Indian Fables and Folklore. This collection of fables and short tales was compiled by Shovona Devi. I thought it was really cool that she was the niece of the well-known write, Rabindranath Tagore. In 1913, he was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. As I was reading the fables in this book, I picked out a few that I particularly enjoyed. I'm glad I chose this reading option this week, because it will give me great ideas to base my own storytelling off of for this week. The fables I liked most were The Elephant-Fighting Hare and A Rat's Swayamvara. The Elephant-Fighting Hare one was about a tiny hare that challenged a large elephant to a fight. The elephant ignored the hare and went on doing his own thing. But, when the hare called the elephant a coward, he got angry and tried to fight the hare. The hare, being small and agile, was able to dodge the elephant's many attacks. After a while, the elephant tried to squash the hare, but the hare got out of that too. As the elephant kept on squashing the ground, assuming the hare was there, the hare quietly ran up onto the elephant. This little fable basically talks about not underestimating someone because of their size. The Rat's Swayamvara was interesting too because it was based on the epic stories' concept of how a lady will find her husband. This rat became a girl and was raised until it was time for her to be married. Her father asked all the mightiest beings to marry her, but they all turned him down, stating that there was someone mightier out there. In the end, the girl ends up with a rat.
(Elephant. Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Bibliography. Indian Fables and Folklore, Shovona Devi. (1919)
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