More Jataka Tales

More Jataka Tales

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Title: More Jataka Tales
Author: Re-told by Ellen C. Babbitt
Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7518] [This file was first posted on May 13, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, MORE JATAKA TALES ***

Juliet Sutherland, Tonya Allen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

MORE JATAKA TALES
Re-told by
Ellen C. Babbitt
With illustrations by
Ellsworth Young
[Illustration]
DEDICATED
to
RUDYARD KIPLING
in the name of all children who troop to his call

FORWORD
The continued success of the "Jataka Tales," as retold and published ten years ago, has led to this second and companion volume. Who that has read or told stories to children has not been lured on by the subtle flattery of their cry for "more"?
Dr. Felix Adler, in his Foreword to "Jataka Tales," says that long ago he was "captivated by the charm of the Jataka Tales." Little children have not only felt this charm, but they have discovered that they can read the stories to themselves. And so "More Jataka Tales" were found in the volume translated from the Sanskrit into English by a group of Cambridge scholars and published by the University Press.
The Jataka tales, regarded as historic in the Third Century B. C., are the oldest collection of folk-lore extant. They come down to us from that dim far-off time when our forebears told tales around the same hearth fire on the roof of the world. Professor Rhys Davids speaks of them as "a priceless record of the childhood of our race. The same stories are found in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian, and in most European languages. The Greek versions of the Jataka tales were adapted and ascribed to the famous storyteller, Aesop, and under his name handed down as a continual feast for the children in the West,--tales first invented to please and instruct our far-off cousins in the East." Here East, though East, meets West!
A "Guild of Jataka Translators," under Professor E. B. Cowell, professor of Sanskrit in the University of Cambridge, brought out the complete edition of the Jataka between 1895 and 1907. It is from this source that "Jataka Tales" and "More Jataka Tales" have been retold.
Of these stories, spread over Europe through literary channels, Professor Cowell says, "They are the stray waifs of literature, in the course of their long wanderings coming to be recognized under widely different aspects, as when they are used by Boccaccio, or Chaucer, or La Fontaine."

CONTENTS
I THE GIRL MONKEY AND THE STRING OF PEARLS
II THE THREE FISHES
III THE TRICKY WOLF AND THE RATS
IV THE WOODPECKER, TURTLE, AND DEER
V THE GOLDEN GOOSE
VI THE STUPID MONKEYS
VII THE CUNNING WOLF
VIII THE PENNY-WISE MONKEY
IX THE RED-BUD TREE
X THE WOODPECKER AND THE LION
XI THE OTTERS AND THE WOLF
XII HOW THE MONKEY SAVED HIS TROOP
XIII THE HAWKS AND THEIR FRIENDS
XIV THE BRAVE LITTLE BOWMAN
XV THE FOOLHARDY WOLF
XVI THE STOLEN PLOW
XVII THE LION IN BAD COMPANY
XVIII THE WISE GOAT AND THE WOLF
XIX PRINCE WICKED AND THE GRATEFUL ANIMALS
XX BEAUTY AND BROWNIE
XXI THE ELEPHANT AND THE DOG

I
THE GIRL MONKEY AND THE STRING OF PEARLS
One day the king went for a long walk in the woods. When he came back to his own garden, he sent for his family to come down to the lake for a swim.
When they were all ready to go into the water, the queen and her ladies left their jewels in charge of the servants, and then went down into the lake.
As the queen put her string of pearls away in a box, she was watched by a Girl Monkey who sat in the branches of a tree near-by. This Girl Monkey wanted to get the queen's string of pearls, so she sat still and watched, hoping that the servant in charge of the pearls would go to sleep.
At first the servant kept her eyes on the jewel-box. But by and by she began to nod, and then she fell fast asleep.
As soon as the Monkey saw this, quick as the wind she