Narrative devices, such as humor and political themes, found in the retelling of the jātaka story of Prince Vessantara and the beggar Jujaka.

Bowie describes how her first reaction to the tale was to ignore it, given the questionable actions of Vessantara, who even went so far as to give his wife and children away to a beggar. However, upon further research, she discovered that the retelling of this tale in northern Thailand contained humor via political satire and antiroyalist themes. In this interview, Bowies relates the historical reasons for this type of retelling, the challenges it faced, and how it changed over the centuries.