Reading Notes—Week 2: Jatakas

The Cunning Crane and the Crab 
The Giant Crab, and Other Tales from Old India by W. H. D. Rouse. Find it here

This story is about a crane that tricks fish into leaving their home pond to get to a bigger one, only to be eaten by the crane before they reach their final destination.

The crane eats up the fish one by one until the old pond is rid of all the fish. He gets hungry, and ends up trying to further is deceitfulness by trying to convince the crab to leave. The crab agrees on the condition that he hangs onto the cranes neck, and insurance policy.

Quick Notes:

• In middle school, we were read a story from Aesop's fables every morning. These Jatakas brought me back to that time
• The fish are sort of driven out of their home one by one
• the driving force seems to be the idea of getting to live in a better place.
• Definitely wasn't expecting the crane to DIE
• I'm sort of glad that he did though, his death was sort of poetic. The crab convinced the crane that it would live if the crab were to be set in the lake, but the minute they get there, the crab snips the cranes neck—a taste of it's own medicine
• A part of the story that really resonated was that the fish worked to convince the old, one-eyed fish to be the first to go and see if the crane was really telling the truth
• maybe they thought this fish had less to live for? Either way, not cool.

I really enjoyed this story and I'm seeing a lot of parallels with modern issues. I'm looking forward to playing with it and seeing where it takes me

Source: National Geographic