Reading Notes: Tibetan Folk Tales, Part B

(Tsamba, roasted barley flour, blended with yak butter tea; source: Wikipedia)

The most interesting of this selection of tales was the story of How the Wolf, the Fox and the Rabbit Committed a Crime. In many of these stories, the perpetrator of a crime receives payback in the form of karma, but here the rabbit, who proposed the crime, gets away unscathed while his co-conspirators are punished.

Plot:

• A rabbit, a wolf, and a fox are walking along a path when they spot a wizard carrying a large pack of goods.
• The rabbit proposes a plan to the others: he will limp in front of the wizard and upon seeing him, the wizard will set down his pack and chase after him. The wolf and fox would then steal the wizard's belongings.
• They carry out the plan successfully and once they have escaped, they open up the pack to discover a pair of thick Tibetan boots, a cymbal, and an idol of tsamba and bread.
• The rabbit proposes that the wolf take the boots because he walked a lot and that the fox take the cymbals to entertain his many children. The rabbit would take the food.
• The wolf decided to wear the boots and hunt some sheep. Due to the boots being too heavy, he fell on ice and the shepherd caught and killed him.
• The fox rang the cymbal loudly as he went to see his children but instead of them being happy, they died in fear.
• The rabbit ate the food happily and was the only one who survived of the three criminals.

Characters:

• Wizard - chased after the rabbit presumably for food, ended up losing his belongings due to carelessness
• Rabbit - clever for coming up with the initial plan, unknown whether he planned for the doom of the wolf and fox, escapes consequences of his actions
• Wolf - rabbit's co-conspirator, took the boots, ended up dying
• Fox - rabbit's co-conspirator, took the cymbal, ended up killing all his children

Style:

• Like the other folk tales in this collection, this one begins with a proverb: When an evil man gets mad at his enemy, he beats his horse on the head.
• Similar to the proverb I encountered in Part A of the reading, this one doesn't seem to have a direct correlation to the story at hand.

Bibliography. Tibetan Folk Tales by A.L. Shelton with illustrations by Mildred Bryant (1925).