Brad's Indian Epics Blog

Mustard Seeds, Wikicommons For this week I chose to do another planning post, because it will help prepare me for writing a new story, and I also learned a few things about my topic through the Jatakas that I read. For instance, in one story there is a woman who marries a rich merchant and has one child. The child eventually falls ill and dies. The mother is very distraught over the death of her child. She seeks the help of everyone in the village to aid her in possibly healing her child from the dead. She eventually gets directed to Buddha who tells her to bring him some mustard seeds that are from a home where no one has died. She spends a long time searching but does not find a home that fits the criteria, and it comes clear to her that death is imminent and a part of life. This little story can tie into my writing by changing it up a bit by having someone find mustard seed from a home that does fit the criteria and have the person come back to life, this would be a pretty eas...

The eight spoke Dharma wheel symbolizes the Noble Eightfold Path, Wikicommons THE CROW THAT THOUGHT IT KNEW: Bodhisatta in this version is a crow and he meets a man Viraka and Savitthaka. Savitthaka does not heed the warnings and dives deep into a pool of water and dies due to his hubris. THE JUDAS TREE: The king of Benares, Brahmadatta, had four sons. They were taken to see a Judas tree. They all had different descriptions of the tree. They failed to ask the charioteer who took them to see the tree, as he had see the tree year round. The moral of the story is that everyone has knowledge to share. THE RIVER FISH AND THE MONEY: Brahmadatta again is in this story as the king of Benares. There was a young brother who was thievish. They paid the river spirit and he grew. Eventually the river spirit was tricked by the thievish brother and had a fish swallow a thousand rupees. The fish was then sold to the owner of the thousand rupees but was charged the price minus the thousand he ...

Wreath, Wikicommons THE HAWK AND THE OSPREY: This story does not have an embodiment of Buddha like most of the other stories in this collection. It tells of a story of unlikely friends at the shores of a lake. The friends are a hawk, osprey, lion, and tortoise. The hawk is urged by his wife to make friends with the animals around the lake since he had no friends and was vulnerable. The hawk does and then comes a day where he needs his friends help. His friends help out and rescue his children multiple times. They all then talk about how friendship is good and die holding their bond. GRANDMOTHER'S GOLDEN DISH: This story returns to the almost standard of Bodisat as the main character of good will. In this story Bodisat is a merchant and he ends up helping a young girl and her grandmother when he happens upon their home. The two had been previously met with a unruly merchant that disregarded a gold pot they had claiming it was worthless. Bodisat being virtuous recognized the p...