Reading Notes: The Giant Crab and Other Tales from Old India

The Banyan Deer (Image Source).

The story that I chose to read for part one of this week comes from The Giant Crab and Other Tales from Old India. The story that I chose to read is The Banyan Deer, which is yet again another animal story. Below I am going to list in bullet points my favorite parts of the story below.

• I have not read any stories about deers thus far so I was extremely excited to read about deers in a traditional Indian story. 
• First of all the story is extremely descriptive giving good detail as to what the deer looks like. I think that this descriptive element makes the story extremely appealing and makes the story start off really strong. 
• There is king who likes to hunt and eat deer, this really struck me. I have not yet read a Jakata Tale that was this dark. I thought that these stories were supposed to be written for children to read but this seemed to be very forward and heavy. 
• The towns people set a trap to keep the deer all in one place, which I also did not like. I think that this is not fair the poor deer never did anything to the people. 
• The king grants the deer kings their lives which I thought was extremely interesting. 
• There was a mother deer whose turn it once to sacrifice herself who had a young baby deer that would not be able to make it on its own without her. The king of the Banyan deer sacrificed himself in her place, which was very noble and so nice of him. 
• This caused the king who was eating and hunting the deer to realize what he was doing and he granted the Banyan deer king and the other deers their lives and vowed to never hunt another deer again. The sacrifice of a noble deer is what it took for the king to realize what he was wrong. 
• I still do not like that the deer were being hunted in a trapped park by the king.