Reading Notes: Bidpai (A)

Title: The King, the Falcon and the Drinking Cup
Author: Maude Barrows Dutton
Link: Story link.

Plot:

• A king, overwhelmed by the size of his massive library, asks scholars to boil it down to just the important bits of info -- sort of like SparkNotes.
• Bidpai, his wiseman, present him a series of stories including this one:
• There is a king hunting in his lands.
• He spies a deer and gives chase, quickly becoming separated from his party. 
• The King tires and desires a drink.
• He stops and fills a cup from a slowly trickling stream
• A Falcon knocks the cup from the King's hand.
• The King refills the cup.
• This repeats twice before the King seizes the Falcon and kills it.
• A messenger tells the King that the water he has been attempting to drink has been poisoned by a dead dragon upstream.
• The King mourns the Falcon and wishes that he had not killed it in his ignorance.

Setting:

• India, in the kingdom of Dabshelim.
• The lands of the King within the story -- hunting grounds.

Characters:

• King Dabshelim: Lazy, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of volumes within his library.
• He asks for the scholars to give him a quick tour of the best information once they've read it all.
• Brahmans: Scholar-priests who read every book in the library and then compile a highlight reel.
• Bidpai is the illustrious "speaker" for the wisemen.
• The King (story): Rash, impatient, headstrong. He insists on drinking from the spring he has found and kills the Falcon when it upsets his cup.
• The Falcon: Knocks the cup out of the King's hand twice and (unknowingly/knowingly?) saves his life. The King kills him, not understanding that the water is poisoned.

Bidpai relays what he has learned to the king. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

Writing Style:

• I've got a real soft-spot for frame tales because of the sheer variety that they can bring to the table. This story's set-up is a perfect example of something you could borrow for yourself if you've got an anthology you want to put together: The old library-so-big-that-the-king-asks-for-a-highlight-reel-of-the-best-material maneuver. Arguably one of the oldest tricks in the book.
• The best anthologies are just this -- highlight reels of your best material. This is a fabulous way to string together tales that have literally nothing in common: Library ex machina.
• It's also nice to fit morals into stories -- they help otherwise short-and-sweet tales to feel like they packed more in.