The story starts out by setting up what will happen in the rest of the story. We get some foreshadowing of characters from what their names mean. These names were originally in Sanskrit but were translated to English so they now tell the reader how the character will act. You have the king who is named Triple-Victory who is the son of King Victory. You also have a monk named Patience who everyday for the past 12 years has brought the king some fruit who he then gives to the treasurer to store for him. On a fatal day the king learns that the fruit contains expensive gems and so he asks the monk why he has been bringing it to him. The monk says he is doing it because he needs the king’s help. There we see why the monk is called Patience because for 12 years he has been doing the same thing in the hopes that one day the king will notice the gems inside and question him.
The monk asks the king to follow him to a spooky cemetery and then he asks him to cut down a dead body hanging from a noose and bring that body back to the monk. When the king gets over there he finds out that there is a goblin inside the corpse. Instead of being frightened the king does his job. To pass the time the goblin tells the king riddle stories that have a puzzle at the end the king must answer. If he answers correctly the goblin escapes and returns to the tree. If he does not answer but knows the question his head will explode. If he does not know the answer he can keep going. As the story plays out the king always knows the answer and so the goblin keeps returning to his tree. Instead of giving up the king just keeps going back and forth from walking towards the monk to returning to the tree to get the goblin.
I found that from the answers to the riddles that the stories were definitely written a long time ago where a woman’s opinion did not matter. Even with that in mind that fact did not really detract from the stories. They were still a fun read and it was enjoyable to stop reading at the end to try and guess what the answer would be to the riddle.
Bibliography: These stories in Twenty-Two Goblins come from Arthur Ryder’s translation of the Sanskrit Vetālapañcaviṃśati.
Comments
Post a Comment