WRITTEN LITERATURE

It was a June evening in Bhubaneswar in 1993. My children asked me to tell them a story, so I started narrating the well-known story “The Old Tiger and the Golden Bangle ” about how an old tiger could not catch prey, so he cleverly promised to give golden bangles to anyone who would take a dip in the nearby pond. None but the greedy Brahmin believed it, and when he was taking a dip, the tiger ate him. No sooner was the story completed than my grandmother told me, “Don’t you know, my boy, that if the Brahmin had made the tiger to take a vow before entering the pond, it would not have eaten him up. ” I was a bit puzzled to hear this misrepresentation of a well-structured Sanskrit tale. Why should the Brahmin have taken a vow from the tiger? My grandmother explained that tigers like any other creatures follow the truth. To this point, she in turn related the story of “Baula the Cow”