Power of Rumour Story

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Power of Rumour:

A very nice Jataka story which shows us that not to believe anything and anyone blindly. Once upon a time in a thick forest there lived many animals. They all lived together very happily.

One day as the hare was resting under a tree he got an intuition and thought “ what would happen if mother earth breaks?” At the same time a loud noise was heard in the forest. The hare got scared and thought that the earth is breaking. He ran as quickly as possible by shouting that the earth is breaking.

As he was running to go out of the forest another hare in the forest saw him running and asked him “what’s the matter?” “Why are you running so fast?” For which hare replied that “ The earth is breaking” you better save your life.

The second hare got even more scared and ran faster than the first hare. Both the hares were shouting that “ earth is breaking” run to save your lives. Many other animals who listened to these hares got scared and even they started to run along with the hares.

The news spread like a fire in the forest. All animals without really checking the authenticity of the words started running from the forest. All the animals, birds, ants, flies started running to save their lives.

Such a funny hare in the Power of rumour

A lion standing far away on the hills saw all the animals running out of the forest. At first the lion did not understand the reason for all the animals running. He came down from the hill and asked one of the animals “what's the matter?” Why are you all running like this? A parrot who was also flying as hard as possible yelled at the lion and said “ “The earth is breaking” you also run as fast as possible to save your life.

The lion was surprised to hear the news and asked who told the parrots. Then the parrots told that they heard it from the monkeys. When the lion asked monkeys they said they heard it from tigers and tigers heard it from elephants and elephants from buffaloes. Finally the lion got angry and understood the base of who started this story.

The lion understood that it was the hare who started all this story. Finally the lion caught hold of the hare and questioned him as to who gave such news to them. The hare who was very scared said “Your majesty i heard a huge sound with my own ears”.

The lion asked all the animals to stop running and explored the reason behind the cracking sound. It came to know that the sound was caused by the large coconut falling down from the tree. The coconut fell on a pile of rocks which caused the sound.

All the animals were relieved that the earth is not breaking. The lion asked all the animals to go home and said to check rumour before believing it.

Moral: Always check the legitimacy of the rumour before acting on it