The Cattle Thieves/Picking up Peas

Abstract

The web seems to be telling me that this is a large series, if not up to one hundred. Here is Volume 11, with two stories to offer. A statement from the editor at the rear of the book makes clear that these parables come from Buddha and speaks of forty stories in twenty volumes. A preface makes clear that these are "scriptural tales." The first story seems overly simple. People steal a cow, are apprehended, lie, and soon confess. The second story sounds to a person who knows the Aesopic tradition like a familiar tale, but this different tale has a monkey stealing peas, losing one, putting down all the others to find the one, In the meantime, chickens and ducks gobble up his other peas. He is still searching in vain for his one pea. Of course, he ends up losing all of his peas. Now I want to go after the whole twenty-book series! Will that be like an endless search the peas I have lost?