science in Traditional stories

Story 3: The lazy donkey 

In a village there lived a merchant who sold salt. He would load bags full of salt on his Donkey’s back every morning. Then they would go to the town to sell it. To reach the town, the merchant and his donkey had to cross a stream. One day the donkey accidentally fell into the stream. As a result the salt bags also fell into the water. The salt dissolved and the bags became light. This made the donkey happy. Then the donkey started purposely falling into the water daily. The merchant understood the donkey’s trickery. He decided to teach it a lesson. After a few days, he loaded a bag full of cotton on the donkey’s back. The donkey again fell into the stream thinking it would become light. However, the wet cotton became heavy and the donkey suffered a lot carrying it. But it learnt a lesson. It stopped playing tricks on the merchant. The merchant was happy.

Scientific Reason:
Salt dissolves in water and loses its weight while water when absorbed in cotton makes it heavy.

Story 4: The Emperor and the Seed

An emperor in the Far Eastern India was growing old and knew it was time to choose his successor. However, he had three sons and did not know whom to crown the king. Instead of choosing his eldest one as the next heir, He called his princes together one day. And said, "It is time for me to step down and choose the next emperor. I have decided to choose one of you." The emperor continued. "I am going to give each one of you a seed today. One very special seed. I want you to plant the seed, water it and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from this one seed. I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next emperor!"

The three received a seed each. Each of them took pot and planted the seed and watered it carefully. When the three princes met together before the emperor for inspection, the eldest one had brought with him a tall green plant laden with fruits; the second sibling had a smell tender plant while the youngest one came with an empty pot. The two brothers laughed at him.When the emperor arrived, he met his three sons and glanced their hard work throughout the year. He looked at him and then announced to the crowd, "Behold your new emperor! He is the one I have chosen. He crowned the youngest son as the new king.

Then the emperor said, "One year ago today, I gave everyone here a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds which would not grow. All of you, except my youngest son, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. He was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new emperor!"

Scientific Principle: Boiled seeds donot germinate. Germination can happen only with raw seeds with appropriate moisture and temperature conditions.

Narrator narrating the story 

     King announcing his idea of selecting next king 

King instructing the three sons