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Asterix and the Falling Sky,
the comic that Albert Underzo wrote and illustrated after the death of the
original writer Rene Goscinny, makes a controversial break with tradition.
Unlike earlier apolitical titles that were set against historical events,
the book ventures into fantasy with distinctly contemporary overtones. It
features, for example, a race of aliens from “Tadsilweny” (anagram of Walt
Disney) with a leader named “Hubs” (anagram of ‘Bush’). But the title theme
sticks to a motif that runs through the series: Chief Vital-statistix is a
brave man – the one thing that scares him is the prospect of the sky falling
down on his helmeted head. No amount of magic potion can cure that fear
because it is imaginary.
Curiously, that idea is
derived from a third century collection of Jataka tales. A certain
hare lived beneath a palm sapling, at the foot of a bilva tree. One day
after feeding as he lay down beneath the palm, the hare thought, “If the
earth should be destroyed, what would become of me?” just then a ripe bilva
fell on a palm leaf. The timid hare started up at the sound and thinking
that the earth was collapsing, fled blindly without so much as looking
behind him. Another hare saw him scampering in fright and asked the cause of
his panic. “Don’t ask me,” the first hare said without looking back. “The
earth is collapsing.”
At this, the second hare ran
even more furiously. Then another hare caught sight of them running and
joined in the fray till one hundred thousand hares were all fleeing
together. A deer, a boar, an elk, a buffalo, a wild ox, a rhinoceros, a
tiger, a lion, and an elephant saw them. And when they asked what it meant
and were told that the earth was breaking up, they too fled. Eventually
animals in the forest were fleeing for dear life. “They hastened not to view
the scene,” says a Victorian translation, “but lent a willing ear to idle
gossip, and were clean distraught with foolish feat.”
That’s when the Bodhisatva,
reborn as a wise lion, intervenes. He persuades the hapless beasts that
“they who to wisdom’s calm delight and virtue’s heights attain, disdain fear
and panic”. This can be interpreted to mean “do not believe everything you
are told”. Modern markets know the phenomenon all to well – acting without
thinking, merely on the basis of hearsay, is a recipe for mass hysteria,
which provides a golden opportunity to unscrupulous foxes. |
