The Jataka tales is a canonical book, comprising 547 poems with only the last 50 intended to be intelligible by themselves, that is according to Professor von Hinüber.Probably you have known too that this book is a voluminous body of folklore-like literature concerning the previous births of the Buddha. If you have read some of the Jataka tales, you would probably like some of them and find some other rather absurd; at least, that's my experience with these tales. And talking about absurd tales, they do happen in real life and in modern times too, like this story from The Star:
A 36-year-old housewife from Kampung Bukit Tok Beng in Seberang Takir, Terengganu, Malaysia, reportedly was caressed and awakened by a naked man who had laid beside her in her bed. The man had earlier broken into her house to steal. The woman had said that she was unaware that the man was not her husband because the latter had his face covered with a T-shirt. The man had tried to coax her into another room but it was only when he said that he was her husband that the woman start to realize that the man was an intruder! When she found her husband sleeping in another room, she started to scream and that must have scared off the man who then leapt out of the window with the loot!
Now, maybe it's high time that I give some of the absurd Jataka tales a serious thought!
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:)))
After a great alcohol drinking day a man writes in his diary:
"I feel very bad today. Everything I touch falls down. I wanted to take away my pygama -all the buttons falled down. I wanted to take my work-case the handle fall down...now I'm afraid to go in the toilet."