Reading Notes: Tibetan Folktales, Part B - A Rabbit Story

A Rabbit Story

So, since there is really only one main character in this story, I can't do the same character charting as I did with the last reading. Instead, let's look at the chain of events that led to the rabbit doing all these awful things to try and figure out how he ended up doing this.

1. The old mother bear, jealous because the rabbit's mother was able to dig up more roots than her, killed the mother rabbit and took her body, along with the roots she'd gathered, to eat with her son.
2. The rabbit has been waiting for his mother to come home, and when she doesn't, he goes over to the bear's house to see what's up. He sees the two of them eating his mother and freaks out (understandably) and vows revenge. He knows that it's the mother bear that has killed his own mother.
3. One day, while the mother bear is out, the rabbit shoots a red-hot arrow into the baby bear's ear and kills him, fleeing and taking his mother's sack of roots with him.
4. He runs into a tiger on the way up the mountain and asks him if he can hide in his ear, knowing the mother bear will come after him when she finds out her son is dead. The tiger agrees.
5. The mother bear discovers her son is dead, and goes looking for the rabbit, knowing he is the one who did it. She runs across the tiger and asks if he's seen the rabbit and threatens to kill him if he doesn't tell her the truth. The tiger says she shouldn't talk to him that way, because he could so easily kill her, and the bear moves on.
6. The rabbit, hiding in the tigers ear, begins to eat some roots. When the tiger asks what he's eating, the rabbit tells him he's eating his own eyeballs. The tiger asks to try one, and the rabbit gives him a root. The tiger suggests they take out his own eyeballs (gross) and eat them (also, gross), and if he ends up blind, the rabbit can help him navigate his way around, since he helped protect him from the bear. We're not going to talk about how the tiger thinks the rabbit can see if he's also eaten his own eyeballs. But the rabbit takes out the tiger's eyes and feeds him some roots to eat in place of them
7. The rabbit led the tiger to the edge of a steep cliff and told him to lie down and go to sleep. While he is sleeping, the rabbit builds a fire very close to the tiger. When he gets too hot, he moves away from the fire and falls off the cliff and dies.
8. The rabbit informs a shepherd of the tiger's corpse and tells him he can go and cut him up, which he does.
9. The rabbit tells a mother wolf that the shepherd is gone and now the wolf can go hunt sheep.
10. The rabbit then tells the raven that the baby wolves have been left alone, and they can go and peck out their eyes.
11. The rabbit runs away after realizing how much harm he has caused.

So, a lot of trickery here. I understand the initial harmful act; the bear had killed his mother, and he wanted revenge. But from there, I don't understand why the rabbit just kept sending other creatures off to their death. Maybe in the heat of revenge, the rabbit got caught up and just didn't know how to stop. Still seems like a poor excuse.

Woolly Hare (Source: As Kannan)

Story Source: Tibetan Folk Tales by A.L. Shelton with illustrations by Mildred Bryant (1925).