Reading Notes: Jataka Tales by Francis and Thomas

These are notes over the Jataka Tales by Francis and Thomas. While I did not like how the daughters were treated as objects to be given to any person, I did like how, in the Choice of Husband jataka, the father dismissed beauty as an unreliable to assess the quality of potential match for his daughters. The virtue of a man was the most important thing. I think this is especially true for women in the world today; beauty seems to be the greatest attribute a woman can have the present, which is completely irrelevant to the quality of a person. This is essentially saying that something you are born with is your main source of worth not your kindness, ethics, or intelligence.
I like the jataka tales because they make me stop and think about the deeper meaning behind them. In the Judas-Tree story, the brothers all think the tree is something different because they only saw one condition of the tree and did not consider how the tree changes throughout the year. I think there is a lot of wisdom in this; extending the scope of what you look at can be very helpful to gain clarity. When you are too close to something, you cannot understand what it is. This is also illustrated in the story with the mice who are very small and keep feeling parts of the elephant and guessing that it is the wrong thing because they are too small to comprehend the entire elephant. Also, there is the analogy of putting your hand very close to your face and realizing that you can no longer see that it is a hand. Similarly, the brothers did not back away enough from what they were looking at the understand the true nature of the tree.

Chinese Judas Tree by Michael Gaida on Pixabay