Piece:

The Crows and the Serpent

This story is from the Panchatantra tales. In indian culture when the kids are going to bed, parents will read out of this book. All of the stories have morals to them. In that story pretty much what happens is there are a bunch of crows living in a tree. One day a family of snakes moves under the tree. So then obviously the crow family is really mad about that, because snakes eat crows. So the next day crow parents go out in the morning to search for food for their kids. They come back later and all their babies are gone–because the snakes ate them. So then they have more kids and decide to come up with a way for the snakes to not attack them. So then the mom decides to stay in the nest when while the dad searches for food–but because she’s alone, the snakes attack her and eat all their babies again. So they have to come up with a new plan to save their next babies. So they call their friends over who are foxes. They tell the foxes about how the snakes keep eating their babies. The fox tells them to use their brain. He says that all the royal families bathe really early in the morning, and leave their jewelry on plates. So he tells the crows to steal one of the necklaces and drop it into the snakes’ home. So the crows wake up really early the next day, before the snakes are awake, and steal a necklace from one of the royal families. Some guards are chasing them as they fly away, and then they drop the necklace into the snake hole. The guards then have to kill the snakes to get the jewelry out of the whole, which they do, and the crows stop having their babies eaten.

This moral of this story is to use intelligence over physical strength.

Informant & Context:

My informant for this story is an Indian-American student at the University of Southern California who grew up in Seattle, Washington. She grew up in a fairly culturally traditional Indian household. This story comes from a set of stories that many Indian parents read to their children.

Thoughts:

The thing that stands out to me the most about this story is that the crows are the heroes. In many stories in western culture, crows are often the antagonists—the same can be said for foxes.

The story has a very concise message: Use intelligence to solve your problems instead of strength.