Chapter 16

_Remarks._--Prof. Krohn comes to the conclusion that the majority of the oral forms of the tale come from literary versions (p. 47), whereas the _Reynard_ form has only had influence on a single variant. He reduces the century of variants to three type forms. The first occurs in two Egyptian versions collected in the present day, as well as in Petrus Alphonsi in the twelfth century, and the _Fabulæ Extravagantes_ of the thirteenth or fourteenth: here the ingrate animal is a crocodile, which asks to be carried away from a river about to dry up, and there is only one judge. The second is that current in India and represented by the story in the present collection: here the judges are three. The third is that current among Western Europeans, which has spread to S. Africa and N. and S. America: also three judges. Prof. K. Krohn counts the first the original form, owing to the single judge and the naturalness of the opening, by which the critical situation is brought about. The further question arises, whether this form, though found in Egypt now, is indigenous there, and if so, how it got to the East. Prof. Krohn grants the possibility of the Egyptian form having been invented in India and carried to Egypt, and he allows that the European forms have been influenced by the Indian. The "Egyptian" form is found in Burmah (Smeaton, _l. c._, p. 128), as well as the Indian, a fact of which Prof. K. Krohn was unaware though it turns his whole argument. The evidence we have of other folk-tales of the beast-epic emanating from India improves the chances of this also coming from that source. One thing at least is certain: all these hundred variants come ultimately from one source. The incident "Inside again" of the _Arabian Nights_ (the Djinn and the bottle) and European tales is also a secondary derivate.

X. THE SOOTHSAYER'S SON.

_Source._--Mrs. Kingscote, _Tales of the Sun_ (p. 11 _seq._), from Pandit Natesa Sastri's _Folk-Lore of Southern India_, pt. ii., originally from _Ind. Antiquary_. I have considerably condensed and modified the somewhat Babu English of the original.

_Parallels._--See Benfey, _Pantschatantra_, § 71, i. pp. 193-222, who quotes the _Karma Jataka_ as the ultimate source: it also occurs in the _Saccankira Jataka_ (Fausböll, No. 73), trans. Rev. R. Morris, _Folk-Lore Jour._ iii. 348 _seq._ The story of the ingratitude of man compared with the gratitude of beasts came early to the West, where it occurs in the _Gesta Romanorum_, c. 119. It was possibly from an early form of this collection that Richard Coeur de Lion got the story, and used it to rebuke the ingratitude of the English nobles on his return in 1195. Matthew Paris tells the story, _sub anno_ (it is an addition of his to Ralph Disset), _Hist. Major_, ed. Luard, ii. 413-6, how a lion and a serpent and a Venetian named Vitalis were saved from a pit by a woodman, Vitalis promising him half his fortune, fifty talents. The lion brings his benefactor a leveret, the serpent "gemmam pretiosam," probably "the precious jewel in his head" to which Shakespeare alludes (_As You Like It_, ii. I., _cf._ Benfey, _l. c._, p. 214, _n._), but Vitalis refuses to have anything to do with him, and altogether repudiates the fifty talents. "Hæc referebat Rex Richardus munificus, ingratos redarguendo."

_Remarks._--Apart from the interest of its wide travels, and its appearance in the standard mediæval History of England by Matthew Paris, the modern story shows the remarkable persistence of folk-tales in the popular mind. Here we have collected from the Hindu peasant of to-day a tale which was probably told before Buddha, over two thousand years ago, and certainly included among the Jatakas before the Christian era. The same thing has occurred with _The Tiger, Brahman, and Jackal_ (No. ix. _supra_).

XI. HARISARMAN.

_Source._--Somadeva, _Katha-Sarit-Sagara_, trans. Tawney (Calcutta, 1880), i. pp. 272-4. I have slightly toned down the inflated style of the original.

_Parallels _--Benfey has collected and discussed a number in _Orient and Occident_, i. 371 _seq._; see also Tawney, _ad loc_. The most remarkable of the parallels is that afforded by the Grimms' "Doctor Allwissend" (No. 98), which extends even to such a minute point as his exclamation, "Ach, ich armer Krebs," whereupon a crab is discovered under a dish. The usual form of discovery of the thieves is for the Dr. Knowall to have so many days given him to discover the thieves, and at the end of the first day he calls out, "There's one of them," meaning the days, just as one of the thieves peeps through at him. Hence the title and the plot of C. Lever's _One of Them_.

XII. THE CHARMED RING.

_Source._--Knowles, _Folk-Tales of Kashmir_, pp. 20-8.

_Parallels._--The incident of the Aiding Animals is frequent in folk-tales: see bibliographical references, _sub voce_, in my List of Incidents, _Trans. Folk-Lore Congress_, p. 88; also Knowles, 21, _n._; and Temple, _Wideawake Stories_, pp. 401, 412. The Magic Ring is also "common form" in folk-tales; _cf._ Köhler _ap._ Marie de France, _Lais_, ed. Warncke, p. lxxxiv. And the whole story is to be found very widely spread from India (_Wideawake Stories_, pp. 196-206) to England (_Eng. Fairy Tales_, No. xvii, "Jack and his Golden Snuff-box," _cf._ Notes, _ibid._), the most familiar form of it being "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp."

_Remarks._--M. Cosquin has pointed out (_Contes de Lorraine_, p. xi. _seq._) that the incident of the rat's-tail-up-nose to recover the ring from the stomach of an ogress, is found among Arabs, Albanians, Bretons, and Russians. It is impossible to imagine that incident--occurring in the same series of incidents--to have been invented more than once, and if that part of the story has been borrowed from India, there is no reason why the whole of it should not have arisen in India, and have been spread to the West. The English variant was derived from an English Gipsy, and suggests the possibility that for this particular story the medium of transmission has been the Gipsies. This contains the incident of the loss of the ring by the faithful animal, which again could not have been independently invented.

XIII. THE TALKATIVE TORTOISE.

_Source._--The _Kacchapa Jataka_, Fausböll, No. 215; also in his _Five Jatakas_, pp. 16, 41, tr. Rhys-Davids, pp. viii-x.

_Parallels._--It occurs also in the Bidpai literature, in nearly all its multitudinous offshoots. See Benfey, _Einleitung_, §84; also my _Bidpai_, E, 4 _a_; and North's text, pp. 170-5, where it is the taunts of the other birds that cause the catastrophe: "O here is a brave sight, looke, here is a goodly ieast, what bugge haue we here," said some. "See, see, she hangeth by the throte, and therefor she speaketh not," saide others; "and the beast flieth not like a beast;" so she opened her mouth and "pashte hir all to pieces."

_Remarks._--I have reproduced in my edition the original illustration of the first English Bidpai, itself derived from the Italian block. A replica of it here may serve to show that it could be used equally well to illustrate the Pali original as its English great-great-great-great-great-great grand-child.

XIV. LAC OF RUPEES.

_Source._--Knowles, _Folk-Tales of Kashmir_, pp. 32-41. I have reduced the pieces of advice to three, and curtailed somewhat.

_Parallels._--See _Celtic Fairy Tales_, No. xxii., "Tale of Ivan," from the old Cornish, now extinct, and notes _ibid._ Mr. Clouston points out (_Pop. Tales_, ii. 319) that it occurs in Buddhist literature, in "Buddaghoshas Parables," as "The Story of Kulla Pauthaka."

_Remarks._--It is indeed curious to find the story better told in Cornwall than in the land of its birth, but there can be little doubt that the Buddhist version is the earliest and original form of the story. The piece of advice was originally a charm, in which a youth was to say to himself, "Why are you busy? Why are you busy?" He does so when thieves are about, and so saves the king's treasures, of which he gets an appropriate share. It would perhaps be as well if many of us should say to ourselves "_Ghatesa, ghatesa, kim kárana?_"

XV. THE GOLD-GIVING SERPENT.

_Source._--_Pantschatantra_, III. v., tr. Benfey, ii. 244-7.

_Parallels_ given in my _Æsop_, Ro. ii. 10, p. 40. The chief points about them are--(1) though the tale does not exist in either Phædrus or Babrius, it occurs in prose derivates from the Latin by Ademar, 65, and "Romulus," ii. 10, and from Greek, in Gabrias, 45, and the prose _Æsop_, ed. Halm, 96; Gitlbauer has restored the Babrian form in his edition of Babrius, No. 160. (2) The fable occurs among folk-tales, Grimm, 105; Woycicki, _Poln. Mähr._ 105; Gering, _Islensk. Ævent._ 59, possibly derived from La Fontaine, x. 12.

_Remarks._--Benfey has proved most ingeniously and conclusively (_Einl._ i. 359) that the Indian fable is the source of both Latin and Greek fables. I may borrow from my _Æsop_, p. 93, parallel abstracts of the three versions, putting Benfey's results in a graphic form, series of bars indicating the passages where the classical fables have failed to preserve the original.

BIDPAI. | PHÆDRINE.

A Brahmin once observed a snake |----A good man had become in his field, and thinking it |friendly with the snake, who the tutelary spirit of the |came into his house and brought field, he offered it a libation |luck with it, so that the man of milk in a bowl. Next day he |became rich through it.----One finds a piece of gold in the |day he struck the serpent, which bowl, and he receives this each |disappeared, and with it the day after offering the libation. |man's riches. The good man tries One day he had to go elsewhere, |to make it up, but the serpent and he sent his son with the |declares their friendship at an libation. The son sees the gold, |end, as it could not forget the and thinking the serpent's hole |blow.---- full of treasure determines to | slay the snake. He strikes at |Phæd. Dressl. VII. 28 (Rom. II. xi.) its head with a cudgel, and the | enraged serpent stings him to | BABRIAN. death. The Brahmin mourns his |A serpent stung a farmer's son son's death, but next morning as |to death. The father pursued the usual brings the libation of |serpent with an axe, and struck milk (in the hope of getting the |off part of its tail. Afterwards gold as before). The serpent |fearing its vengeance he brought appears after a long delay at |food and honey to its lair, and the mouth of its lair, and |begged reconciliation. The declares their friendship at an |serpent, however, declares end, as it could not forget the |friendship impossible, as it blow of the Brahmin's son, nor |could not forget the blow----nor the Brahmin his son's death from |the farmer his son's death from the bite of the snake. |the bite of the snake. | _Pants._ III. v. (Benf. 244-7). |Æsop, Halm 96^b (Babrius-Gitlb. 160). |

In the Indian fable every step of the action is thoroughly justified, whereas the Latin form does not explain why the snake was friendly in the first instance, or why the good man was enraged afterwards; and the Greek form starts abruptly, without explaining why the serpent had killed the farmer's son. Make a composite of the Phædrine and Babrian forms, and you get the Indian one, which is thus shown to be the original of both.

XVI. THE SON OF SEVEN QUEENS.

_Source._--Steel-Temple, _Wideawake Stories_, pp. 98-110, originally published in _Ind. Antiq._ x. 147 _seq._

_Parallels._--A long variant follows in _Ind. Antiq._, _l. c._ M. Cosquin refers to several Oriental variants, _l. c._ p. xxx. _n._ For the direction tabu, see Note on Princess Labam, _supra_, No. ii. The "letter to kill bearer" and "letter substituted" are frequent in both European (see my List _s. v._) and Indian Folk-Tales (Temple, Analysis, II. iv. _b_, 6, p. 410). The idea of a son of seven mothers could only arise in a polygamous country. It occurs in "Punchkin," _supra_, No. iv.; Day, _Folk-Tales of Bengal_, 117 _seq._; _Ind. Antiq._ i. 170 (Temple, _l. c._, 398).

_Remarks._--M. Cosquin (_Contes de Lorraine_, p. xxx.) points out how, in a Sicilian story, Gonzenbach (_Sizil. Mähr._ No. 80), the seven co-queens are transformed into seven step-daughters of the envious witch who causes their eyes to be taken out. It is thus probable, though M. Cosquin does not point this out, that the "envious step-mother" of folk-tales (see my List, _s. v._) was originally an envious co-wife. But there can be little doubt of what M. Cosquin _does_ point out--viz., that the Sicilian story is derived from the Indian one.

XVII. A LESSON FOR KINGS.

_Source._--_Rajovada Jataka_, Fausböll, No. 151, tr. Rhys-Davids, pp. xxii.-vi.

_Remarks._--This is one of the earliest of moral allegories in existence. The moralising tone of the Jatakas must be conspicuous to all reading them. Why, they can moralise even the Tar Baby (see _infra_, Note on "Demon with the Matted Hair," No. xxv.).

XVIII. PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL.

_Source._--Kingscote, _Tales of the Sun_. I have changed the Indian mercantile numerals into those of English "back-slang," which make a very good parallel.

XIX. RAJA RASALU.

_Source._--Steel-Temple, _Wideawake Stories_, pp. 247-80, omitting "How Raja Rasalu was Born," "How Raja Rasalu's Friends Forsook Him," "How Raja Rasalu Killed the Giants," and "How Raja Rasalu became a Jogi." A further version in Temple, _Legends of Panjab_, vol. i. _Chaupur_, I should explain, is a game played by two players with eight men, each on a board in the shape of a cross, four men to each cross covered with squares. The moves of the men are decided by the throws of a long form of dice. The object of the game is to see which of the players can first move all his men into the black centre square of the cross (Temple, _l. c._, p. 344, and _Legends of Panjab_, i. 243-5). It is sometimes said to be the origin of chess.

_Parallels._--Rev. C. Swynnerton, "Four Legends about Raja Rasalu," in _Folk-Lore Journal_, p. 158 _seq._, also in separate book much enlarged, _The Adventures of Raja Rasalu_, Calcutta, 1884. Curiously enough, the real interest of the story comes after the end of our part of it, for Kokilan, when she grows up, is married to Raja Rasalu, and behaves as sometimes youthful wives behave to elderly husbands. He gives her her lover's heart to eat, _à la_ Decameron, and she dashes herself over the rocks. For the parallels of this part of the legend see my edition of Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_, tom. i. Tale 39, or, better, the _Programm_ of H. Patzig, _Zur Geschichte der Herzmäre_ (Berlin, 1891). Gambling for life occurs in Celtic and other folk-tales; _cf._ my List of Incidents, _s. v._ "Gambling for Magic Objects."

_Remarks._--Raja Rasalu is possibly a historic personage, according to Capt. Temple, _Calcutta Review_, 1884, p. 397, flourishing in the eighth or ninth century. There is a place called Sirikap ka-kila in the neighbourhood of Sialkot, the traditional seat of Rasalu on the Indus, not far from Atlock.

Herr Patzig is strongly for the Eastern origin of the romance, and finds its earliest appearance in the West in the Anglo-Norman troubadour, Thomas' _Lai Guirun_, where it becomes part of the Tristan cycle. There is, so far as I know, no proof of the earliest part of the Rasalu legend (_our_ part) coming to Europe, except the existence of the gambling incidents of the same kind in Celtic and other folk-tales.

XX. THE ASS IN THE LION'S SKIN.

_Source._--The _Siha Camma Jataka_, Fausböll, No. 189, trans. Rhys-Davids, pp. v. vi.

_Parallels._--It also occurs in Somadeva, _Katha Sarit Sagara_, ed. Tawney, ii. 65, and _n_. For Æsopic parallels _cf._ my _Æsop_, Av. iv. It is in Babrius, ed. Gitlbaur, 218 (from Greek prose Æsop, ed. Halm, No. 323), and Avian, ed. Ellis, 5, whence it came into the modern Æsop.

_Remarks._--Avian wrote towards the end of the third century, and put into Latin mainly those portions of Babrius which are unparalleled by Phædrus. Consequently, as I have shown, he has a much larger proportion of Eastern elements than Phædrus. There can be little doubt that the Ass in the Lion's Skin is from India. As Prof. Rhys-Davids remarks, the Indian form gives a plausible motive for the masquerade which is wanting in the ordinary Æsopic version.

XXI. THE FARMER AND THE MONEY-LENDER.

_Source._--Steel-Temple, _Wideawake Stories_, pp. 215-8.

_Parallels_ enumerated in my _Æsop_, Av. xvii. See also Jacques de Vitry, _Exempla_, ed. Crane, No. 196 (see notes, p. 212), and Bozon, _Contes moralisés_, No. 112. It occurs in Avian, ed. Ellis, No. 22. Mr. Kipling has a very similar tale in his _Life's Handicap_.

_Remarks._--Here we have collected in modern India what one cannot help thinking is the Indian original of a fable of Avian. The preceding number showed one of his fables existing among the Jatakas, probably before the Christian era. This makes it likely that we shall find an earlier Indian original of the fable of the Avaricious and Envious, perhaps among the Jatakas still untranslated.

XXII. THE BOY WITH MOON ON FOREHEAD.

_Source._--Miss Stokes' _Indian Fairy Tales_, No. 20, pp. 119-137.

_Parallels_ to heroes and heroines in European fairy tales, with stars on their foreheads, are given with some copiousness in Stokes, _l. c._, pp. 242-3. This is an essentially Indian trait; almost all Hindus have some tribal or caste mark on their bodies or faces. The choice of the hero disguised as a menial is also common property of Indian and European fairy tales: see Stokes, _l. c._, p. 231, and my List of Incidents (_s. v._ "Menial Disguise.")

XXIII. THE PRINCE AND THE FAKIR.

_Source._--Kindly communicated by Mr. M. L. Dames from his unpublished collection of Baluchi tales.

_Remarks._--Unholy fakirs are rather rare. See Temple, Analysis, I. ii. _a_, p. 394.

XXIV. WHY THE FISH LAUGHED.

_Source._--Knowles, _Folk-Tales of Kashmir_, pp. 484-90.

_Parallels._--The latter part is the formula of the Clever Lass who guesses riddles. She has been bibliographised by Prof. Child, _Eng. and Scotch Ballads_, i. 485; see also Benfey, _Kl. Schr._ ii. 156 _seq._ The sex test at the end is different from any of those enumerated by Prof. Köhler on Gonzenbach, _Sezil. Mähr._ ii. 216.

_Remarks._--Here we have a further example of a whole formula, or series of incidents, common to most European collections, found in India, and in a quarter, too, where European influence is little likely to penetrate. Prof. Benfey, in an elaborate dissertation ("Die Kluge Dirne," in _Ausland_, 1859, Nos. 20-25, now reprinted in _Kl. Schr._ ii. 156 _seq._), has shown the wide spread of the theme both in early Indian literature (though probably there derived from the folk) and in modern European folk literature.

XXV. THE DEMON WITH THE MATTED HAIR.

_Source._--The _Pancavudha-Jataka_, Fausböll, No. 55, kindly translated for this book by Mr. W. H. D. Rouse, of Christ's College, Cambridge. There is a brief abstract of the Jataka in Prof. Estlin Carpenter's sermon, _Three Ways of Salvation_, 1884, p. 27, where my attention was first called to this Jataka.

_Parallels._--Most readers of these Notes will remember the central episode of Mr. J. C. Harris' _Uncle Remus_, in which Brer Fox, annoyed at Brer Rabbit's depredations, fits up "a contrapshun, what he calls a Tar Baby." Brer Rabbit, coming along that way, passes the time of day with Tar Baby, and, annoyed at its obstinate silence, hits it with right fist and with left, with left fist and with right, which successively stick to the "contrapshun," till at last he butts with his head, and that sticks too, whereupon Brer Fox, who all this time had "lain low," saunters out, and complains of Brer Rabbit that he is too stuck up. In the sequel Brer Rabbit begs Brer Fox that he may "drown me as deep ez you please, skin me, scratch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by the roots, en cut off my legs, but do don't fling me in dat brier patch;" which, of course, Brer Fox does, only to be informed by the cunning Brer Rabbit that he had been "bred en bawn in a brier patch." The story is a favourite one with the negroes: it occurs in Col. Jones' _Negro Myths of the Georgia Coast_ (Uncle Remus is from S. Carolina), also among those of Brazil (Romero, _Contos do Brazil_), and in the West Indian Islands (Mr. Lang, "At the Sign of the Ship," _Longman's Magazine_, Feb. 1889). We can trace it to Africa, where it occurs in Cape Colony (_South African Folk-Lore Journal_, vol. i.).

_Remarks._--The five-fold attack on the Demon and the Tar Baby is so preposterously ludicrous that it cannot have been independently invented, and we must therefore assume that they are causally connected, and the existence of the variant in South Africa clinches the matter, and gives us a landing-stage between India and America. There can be little doubt that the Jataka of Prince Five Weapons came to Africa, possibly by Buddhist missionaries, spread among the negroes, and then took ship in the holds of slavers for the New World, where it is to be found in fuller form than any yet discovered in the home of its birth. I say Buddhist missionaries, because there is a certain amount of evidence that the negroes have Buddhistic symbols among them, and we can only explain the identification of Brer Rabbit with Prince Five Weapons, and so with Buddha himself, by supposing the change to have originated among Buddhists, where it would be quite natural. For one of the most celebrated metempsychoses of Buddha is that detailed in the _Sasa Jataka_ (Fausböll, No. 316, tr. R. Morris, _Folk-Lore Journal_, ii. 336), in which the Buddha, as a hare, performs a sublime piece of self-sacrifice, and as a reward is translated to the moon, where he can be seen to this day as "the hare in the moon." Every Buddhist is reminded of the virtue of self-sacrifice whenever the moon is full, and it is easy to understand how the Buddha became identified as the Hare or Rabbit. A striking confirmation of this, in connection with our immediate subject, is offered by Mr. Harris' sequel volume, _Nights with Uncle Remus_. Here there is a whole chapter (xxx.) on "Brer Rabbit and his famous Foot," and it is well known how the worship of Buddha's foot developed in later Buddhism. No wonder Brer Rabbit is so 'cute: he is nothing less than an incarnation of Buddha. Among the Karens of Burmah, where Buddhist influence is still active, the Hare holds exactly the same place in their folk-lore as Brer Rabbit among the negroes. The sixth chapter of Mr. Smeaton's book on them is devoted to "Fireside Stories," and is entirely taken up with adventures of the Hare, all of which can be parallelled from _Uncle Remus_.

Curiously enough, the negro form of the five-fold attack--"fighting with _five_ fists," Mr. Barr would call it--is probably nearer to the original legend than that preserved in the Jataka, though 2000 years older. For we may be sure that the thunderbolt of Knowledge did not exist in the original, but was introduced by some Buddhist Mr. Barlow, who, like Alice's Duchess, ended all his tales with: "And the moral of that is----" For no well-bred demon would have been taken in by so simple a "sell" as that indulged in by Prince Five-Weapons in our Jataka, and it is probable, therefore, that _Uncle Remus_ preserves a reminiscence of the original Indian reading of the tale. On the other hand, it is probable that Carlyle's Indian god with the fire in his belly was derived from Prince Five-Weapons.