8 h 6 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when you rescue a trapped tiger—and the tiger sees you as its next meal?
Indian Fairy Tales, compiled by Joseph Jacobs, gathers several strands of Indian storytelling. Clever animals share its pages with dangerous magicians, royal families, and ordinary people in extraordinary trouble. Animal fables, magical adventures, and comic tales turn on choices that carry sharp consequences.
In The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal, a man's kindness meets a tiger's hunger, raising questions of gratitude and justice. Punchkin brings a powerful magician and the challenge of opposing him. The Broken Pot follows a poor man's dreams of wealth as one imagined gain leads to another.
What you’ll discover
- Kindness meets real danger Follow a dispute where helping a trapped animal puts a man's own life at risk.
- A magician's dangerous power Enter Punchkin's world, where breaking a powerful magician's hold presents a difficult task.
- Dreams balanced on a pot Watch imagined wealth grow as The Broken Pot turns hopeful thinking toward human foolishness.
- Many paths through wonder Move between short comic tales, animal fables, and longer journeys with princes and princesses.
- Choices with sharp consequences See wit, greed, and kindness take shape as characters bargain, boast, deceive, and risk.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy animal fables, magic rings and clever heroes, or if you like to follow one story from an Indian village fire to an English nursery.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Jacobs argues for Indian roots in shared tales
- Kindness to animals brings help when it is needed
- Quick wits can outsmart the strong
- Balna faces a cruel stepmother and a magician
- The Buddha speaks through animals, spirits and princes
- Fate and trust are tested in three tales
- Clever heirs outplay cruel and powerful rulers
- Disguise, loyal friends and riddles carry the longer tales
- The notes show how a story crosses the world
Who’s who
- BalnaThe cleverest of seven princesses, she distrusts her stepmother from the start and later must outwit a magician.
- GangazaraThe soothsayer's second son, who follows his father's horoscope and saves a tiger, a serpent, a rat and a goldsmith.
- GulizarThe fairy princess of Ivory City whose reflection in a drink of water makes a prince fall in love.
- HarisarmanA poor, foolish Brahman who pretends to know magic so that his rich master will respect him.
- The JackalA sly animal who appears in several tales, a hungry hunter in one and a pretend fool who judges a tiger in another.
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Read and hear Indian Fairy Tales in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Indian Fairy Tales
by Joseph Jacobs (compiler) · 1892
A prince crosses jungles to find a glowing princess, helped by grateful ants, a tiger and a flying bed.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
How do the same fairy tales reach India and Europe? Joseph Jacobs gathers twenty-nine stories and argues that many shared European tales may have Indian roots.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Jacobs argues for Indian roots in shared tales
Jacobs makes a bold claim. He argues that the tales European children share come from India, and that these make up more than a third of Europe's fairy tales. He is most sure about the comic tales and the jingles.
His best proof is the Jatakas, the Birth Stories of the Buddha. He calls them the oldest collection of folk tales in the world, gathered more than two thousand years before the brothers Grimm. He also draws on the Fables of Bidpai and on newer collections written down by Miss Frere, Miss Stokes, Major Temple and others from village storytellers. Medieval preachers and Italian storytellers, he says, carried many of these plots into Europe.
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What is Indian Fairy Tales about?
It is a collection of twenty-nine tales from India, gathered by Joseph Jacobs. They include animal fables, Buddhist Jataka stories, magic tales of princes and princesses, and comic stories. Notes at the end explore their sources and connections with other traditions.
Who was Joseph Jacobs and what did he do with these stories?
He chooses, retells and arranges tales from earlier collections of Indian stories. He wrote the preface arguing for an Indian origin of many fairy tales, and adds notes on the stories' sources and connections.
What are the Jatakas?
The Jatakas are Buddhist birth stories about the earlier lives of the Buddha, in which he appears as an animal, a spirit or a prince. The book includes several, such as The Lion and the Crane and The Talkative Tortoise.
The author
Joseph Jacobs
1854–1916 · Australian folklorist and historian
Joseph Jacobs was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1854. He moved to England in 1872 and to the United States in 1900. He was a folklorist, historian, and writer. He published English Fairy Tales in 1890 and More English Fairy Tales in 1894. He died in Yonkers, New York, in 1916.
More by Joseph Jacobs (compiler)
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