Week 11 Planning: The Great Oasis

Turtle That Wouldn't Stop Talking: Wikipedia


  • The story I will be doing from the Jataka Tales is The Wise and Foolish Merchant. It has enough detail in the story and enough substance to the story to make it a story in and of itself
  • Reading Notes:
    • In a certain country in a great city, a wise merchant and a foolish merchant were both buying goods to sell as they traveled through the country
    • As they got to the city's edge, the foolish merchant and wise merchant were debating who should go first into the desert
    • The foolish merchant said he would go first and thought to himself that his oxen would have grass to eat and he could set his own prices 
    • The wise merchant was pleased because there would be fresh grass for the oxen to eat and a paved road
    •  In the desert, there was a demon who saw the merchant and came up with a plan to capture him
    • He decided he would cover himself with water and convince the merchant that there was a stream nearby to get the merchant to dump out his water 
    • The demon came up to the merchant and the foolish merchant agreed to dump his water out 
    • When the merchant realized what he had done, it was too late and the demons captured the foolish merchant 
    • When the wise merchant came through, the demon could not convince him to dump out his water, and so he remained safe and went on his way to the city 
  • Extended reading notes
    • The Jataka Tales are body of literature relating to morals learned from each story. There are a lot of a Jataka Tales and it seems like each of them have their own moral
      • From the Wikipedia article, it seems as if that the Foolish and Wise Merchant is about not being gullible and easily convinced
        • I may write more into this because of the overall moral to the story 
    • There does not seem to be many outside sources for this story besides the Wikipedia article, so I will spend the remainder of the post writing out my story plan
  • Story Plan
    • For this story, I plan on keeping the two main characters: The wise merchant and the foolish merchant
    • I will go a different way with how the demon convinces them 
    • The demon will convince them not by himself in the desert, but by a rumor that the demon spreads in the city regarding an oasis in the desert
    • The non-existent oasis lies along the path through the desert, and he makes this rumor so that merchants believe they can travel with less water
    • The ending may be a bit different, but I still plan on having the foolish merchant dump out his water voluntarily
  • Bibliography: 
    • Author: Ellen C. Babbitt
    • Title: Jataka Tales
    • Source: Blog Spot
    • Author: Wikipedia 
    • Title: Jataka Tales
    • Source: Wikipedia


Comments

  1. UnknownApril 8, 2018 at 8:15 PM

    This sounds like a great story idea to me. I look forward to seeing how the demon convinces the merchants in your rendition of this jataka. It seems like you have this pretty well thought out to this point.

    ReplyDelete

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