Mythology and Folklore: Reading Notes: Tales of Bidpai Part A

This week I read a collection of stories from the Tales of Bidpai. All of these stories would be considered short stories and typically contained some sort of message or lesson in each one. Often some kind of animal taught a lesson, or each character of the story was an animal representing some character trait.

The Rustic and the Nightingale

This story takes place in a garden where the conflict occurs between a Rustic and a Nightingale
The Rustic enjoys the beauty of the rose bush in the garden and takes special care to make sure it stays alive and healthy everyday
The Nightingale bird plays in the rose tree and ruins a lot of the roses which angers the Rustic

it is never mentioned why the Nightingale enjoys plucking at the rose petals so that may be a story to elaborate on. Perhaps she must eat some to reverse a spell or to maintain equilibrium of the garden

The Rustic catches the Nightingale and plans to punish it, but has a change of heart and lets her go
The Rustic is rewarded with a pot of gold, by the Nightingale, for him to put towards his treasured garden

Be kind to those that bother you and your reward will be great

The King, the Falcon, and the Drinking-Cup

There is a great King who is very fond of his Falcon
He takes the falcon with him everywhere, especially to hunt
The king gets separated from his hunting party and must search the forest for water for he has been lost for some time
He tries to fill his cup from the stream but the Falcon keeps knocking the cup out of his hands and dumping the water each time he tries to fill it. The King becomes angry with the Falcon and kills it.
The King later finds out that the Falcon was saving him from drinking poison water every time he knocked away the cup

the King becomes distraught and realizes his mistake
This story was meant to make us realize that we should take steps to fully understand someone's actions before imparting punishment because we could be making a big mistake by making decisions while knowing only half of the story
This is one of the few stories where the animal does not have a voice. Perhaps in a different version the animal could have a voice, or choose to let the Kind die so they can speak in the spirit world for it was commonly believed that animals were linked to a spiritual realm.
The Falcon could impart wisdom on the King and then the King could become the new Falcon for the next King to try to share wisdom and guard the royalty.