Jatakas
One morning, he woke up anxious underneath a tree that the world would break. Then, some monkey dropped a coconut near him, so he thought the world was breaking. So, he reacted like a rabbit and started running. However, he created panic in other too because he saw another rabbit who asked what was wrong and he said, "The world is all breaking up." Together they gathered more rabbits attention and created a stampede of over 100 rabbits scared the world was ending because some monkeys dropped some coconuts. They recruited a deer, fox, and a elephant too. They continued running until they saw the King Lion. He stopped the commotion by roaring and asked who started the scare. The rabbit came forward and told his story and they went to the palm tree he was sleeping under and saw a coconut had fallen. The lion called him foolish and went and told the rest of the animals the world was fine and the rabbit was fine. The King of the Beasts stopped their running.
This story reminds me of Chicken Little, but Chicken Little actually saw aliens and no one believed him. It crazy how different cultures influence each other. I would never have thought Chicken Little had its roots in Buddhist stories, so I'm glad I had the chance to learn. It also says the story of Jatakas is the original so there is nothing better to read. I hope I read more stories where I see more instances of this. The prologue paragraph also references Henny-Penny, I don't know that story but I'm sure its similar.
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| Chicken Little Movie Poster |
I think it is quite interesting in the story how all the animals just took the rabbits word for the world breaking apart, until the lion stopped. I don't know of there are certain qualities usually attributed to rabbits but they seem foolish according to this story. No one questioned it-- not even the Elephant-- who I think of very smart because they have high IQs. I wonder if this was done intentionally to portray the lion as a leader. Like in the lion king, where they play down the other animals abilities except for the main characters to build up the qualities of the lions so the audience accepts them as the leaders.
Bibliography-
Ellen C. Babbitt, Jataka Tales
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