Reading Notes, Jataka Tales, Part C: The Foolish, Timid Rabbit

A lion waiting in the grass

(Source: Wikipedia Commons)

There once was a rabbit that was sleeping under a palm tree. Randomly, he woke up and thought about what would happen if the world abruptly broke up. Above him in the palm tree were some monkeys and they jokingly dropped a coconut onto the ground next to the rabbit. The rabbit said, "Oh my gosh! The world actually is breaking up!" He jumped up and ran as fast as he could without looking back at what was happening. While he was running, another rabbit saw him running and the rabbit asked him why he was running. The rabbit said, "Don't ask me!" and he kept on running. The other rabbit got nervous and ran too, begging the other rabbit to tell him why he was running. The rabbit said, "I saw the world breaking up!" The rabbits had the same encounter with another rabbit and that rabbit started running too. Then they ran past a deer and the deer asked why they were running and they said they were running because the earth was breaking up. The deer called a fox to tell him the earth was breaking up and so the deer and the fox started running too with the rabbiers. While they were running, an elephant also got scared and started running with them. They passed a lion and the lion said, "Why are you guys running?" They told him the world was breaking up and they tried to found out where they got that idea. They traced the idea back to the rabbit and the rabbit told the lion about the sound of the earth breaking when he was sleeping under the tree. The lion made the rabit take him back to the tree and they saw that it was just a coconut that had fallen to the ground. The lion said "You foolish rabbit, it was just the sound of the coconut falling!" and went to go tell the rest of the animals about what had happened.

Story source: Jataka Tales by Ellen Babbitt, The Foolish Timid Rabbit