Tibetan Tales — Part 1
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Part one — the premiere of a new shelf. Three tales from Tibetan Tales Derived from Indian Sources, Anton Schiefner's translation of the Tibetan Kah-gyur rendered into English by W. R. S. Ralston (1882) — read as printed. In The Magician's Pupil, a Brahman youth serves a Chandala magician for the spell that fetches out-of-season fruit from the Gandhamadana mountain; one night of devotion earns him the teaching early, he spends the gift the moment he has it — and ingratitude costs him everything. In The Flight of the Beasts, a vilva tree falls into a lake, six hares flee the noise, and every beast in the forest flees the rumour of it, each stronger than the last, until one lion walks the story back to its empty source. And in The Virtuous Animals, a partridge, a hare, a monkey and an elephant take the five vows beneath a fig-tree — not to kill, not to steal, no unlawful unions, no falsehood, no intoxication — and their quiet example converts a kingdom. The episode opens and closes with its theme, Bandoneo Street Romance, heard also briefly between the stories.
Chapters:
0:39 — The Magician's Pupil
5:23 — The Flight of the Beasts
10:53 — The Virtuous Animals
Three more of the book's tales stand held for a later ruling and are not read here: Viśvantara · The Gazelle and the Hunter · The Dumb Cripple. The book's remaining tales stand excluded by name in the shelf register after a full reading, and no claim of completeness for the book is made. Schiefner's own introduction says plainly that these are Indian tales preserved in the Tibetan Kah-gyur, with little specially Tibetan about them beyond their language — the shelf bills them exactly so.
From Tibetan Tales Derived from Indian Sources, from the Tibetan of Anton Schiefner by W. R. S. Ralston (Trübner, 1882), public domain — Ralston's English text, read as printed. Narrated by Amos. Theme: Bandoneo Street Romance.
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