出版社：Estonian Literary Museum and Estonian Folklore Institute
摘要：It was a June evening in Bhubaneswar in 1993. My children asked me to tell them a story, so I started narrating the well-known story “The Old Tiger and the Golden Bangle” about how an old tiger could not catch prey, so he cleverly promised to give golden bangles to anyone who would take a dip in the nearby pond. None but the greedy Brahmin believed it, and when he was taking a dip, the tiger ate him. No sooner was the story completed than my grandmother told me, “Don’t you know, my boy, that if the Brahmin had made the tiger to take a vow before entering the pond, it would not have eaten him up.” I was a bit puzzled to hear this misrepresentation of a wellstructured Sanskrit tale. Why should the Brahmin have taken a vow from the tiger? My grandmother explained that tigers like any other creatures follow the truth. To this point, she in turn related the story of “Baula the Cow”:
