Part 5

In No. 10, also, we are taken away from the region of folk-tales, but this time into that of such literary fictions as form a part of the “Thousand and One Nights.” It, also, is not of a very edifying nature; but it is valuable as showing what utter nonsense many of the corrupted Buddhistic legends contain, and illustrating the custom prevalent among literary Buddhists (one in which they were perhaps surpassed by the Christian compilers of such works as the “Gesta Romanorum”) of appending an unexceptionable moral to a tale of an unsavoury nature. The rapidity with which the narrator, at the close of the story of Utpalavarṇā, passes from the record of her dissoluteness to the account of her conversion is somewhat startling. The same remark applies also to the close of the history of Kṛiśā Gautamī (No. 11). That narrative is as little edifying, for the most part, as the legend which precedes it. One of the tricks resorted to in it, the lengthening at will, by means of some magical substance, of the nose of an obnoxious individual, frequently figures in popular tales. In one of the stories from Central Asia (Jülg, “Mongolische Märchen,” No. 14), the fairies elongate an intruder’s nose to such an extent that they are able to tie seven knots in it. But they perform that operation by sheer force. In European folk-tales the abnormal growth of the nose, or the sudden appearance of horns or the like, is generally caused by the magical properties of some fruit or other apparently harmless substance (Grimm, No. 122, iii., 204, Hahn, No. 44). In the present case, the means employed for the lengthening of the nose is a piece of wood, and a piece of another kind of wood reverses the operation. In the folk-tales the magical substance which produces the wished-for result is generally discovered by accident. In the Tibetan legend its discovery is due to its employer’s observation of a raven, which lengthened its beak by rubbing it on a piece of wood when it wanted to get at a corpse otherwise out of its reach, and afterwards reduced it to its normal proportions when it had finished its meal. The magic lute which plays so important a part in the story of Suśroṇī (No. 12) is of course closely related to all the musical instruments of magic power which both literature and folk-lore have rendered familiar, from the harp or lyre of Orpheus or Amphion to the pipe of the Piper of Hameln, the dance-inspiring fiddle of the German tales of “Roland” and “The Jew in Thorns” (Grimm, Nos. 56 and 110), the magic flute which an angel gives to the strong fool of the modern Greek story of Bakala (Hahn, No. 34), and a number of similar instruments capable of making trees and rocks reel and men and women wildly skip. In these dance-compelling instruments many mythologists recognise symbols of the wind. [50] One of the most interesting of the European folk-tales in which such instruments occur is the Esthonian story of “Pikne’s Bagpipes,” of which a full account is given by A. de Gubernatis in his “Zoological Mythology” (i. 159–161), taken from Dr. Löwe’s excellent translation of Kreutzwald’s collection (“Ehstnische Märchen,” No. 9). In it the thunder-god is robbed of his bagpipes (toru-pil, “Röhreninstrument”) by the devil, who hides it away in hell, keeping it in an iron chamber guarded by seven locks. The consequence is that the clouds no longer yield a drop of rain. The thunder-god, under the form of a boy, obtains access to hell, and persuades the devil to let him play on the magic bagpipes. Thereupon “the walls of hell quaked, and the devil and his associates fainted away and fell to the ground as though dead.” Returning home, the thunder-god “blew into his thunder-instrument till the rain-gates opened and gave the earth to drink.” The termination of the history of Suśroṇī is closely akin to that with which all complete variants of the “Puss in Boots” story should end. They ought always to conclude with the ingratitude of the hero or heroine of the tale to the cat or fox or other animal which has made itself useful. The Marquis de Carabas ought to have proved ungrateful to the Booted Cat, just as Suśroṇī neglected to give her benefactor, the jackal, the daily meat which she had promised it. The asseverations of the king’s wives in this story, and those of the hero and heroine of No. 18, may be compared with the similar affirmations of the heroine of the 26th of M. Legrand’s “Contes Populaires Grecs.” In it a king suffers from a strange malady, three branches having grown over his heart. His disguised sister tells him her story, and adds, “If I tell the truth, O my king, may one of the branches break which is over your heart!” By three such asseverations she breaks all three branches.

The story (No. 13) of the actor who dramatises the life of Buddha, and is punished for his audacity in making fun of the Six Bhikshus, soars high above the region of folk-lore. And there is but little in European popular fiction which can be likened to the legend of “The Dumb Cripple” (No. 14), who pretended to be unable to speak or walk, in order that he might not be made a king, reflecting that, “if he were to be invested with sovereign power, this would not be a good thing, seeing that in consequence of a sixty years’ reign which he had accomplished in a previous state of existence, he had been born again in hell, and that he now ran the risk of going to hell a second time.” The same remark holds good of the not very edifying history of Ṛshyaśringa or Gazelle Horn (No. 15), the ascetic who, out of spite, prevents rain from falling until his asceticism and his magic power collapse together.

The story of Viśvaṇtara (No. 16), the princely Bodisat, who not only gives away all his property and retires into the forest of penance, but even surrenders his two children to a cruel slave-owner, and finally hands over his wife to a stranger who demands her, has been already told by Mr. Spence Hardy in his “Manual of Buddhism” (pp. 116–124), under the title of “The Wessantara Játaka;” but as it is one of the most touching of the class of legends to which it belongs, having in it more of human interest than such narratives generally contain, and as the Tibetan variant is the more poetic and pathetic of the two renderings of the tale, Professor Schiefner has done good service by translating it. Such acts of renunciation as the princely Bodisat accomplished do not commend themselves to the Western mind. An Oriental story-teller can describe a self-sacrificing monarch as cutting slices of flesh off his own arms and plunging them into the fire in honour of a deity, and yet not be afraid of exciting anything but a religious thrill among his audience. To European minds such a deed would probably appear grotesque. And so the Eastern tales in praise of self-sacrifice do not seem to have impressed the lay mind of Europe. On ecclesiastical literature they probably exerted considerable influence. But folk-tales do not often deal with such heroic operations as were performed by Prince Viśvaṇtara in cutting himself loose from all worldly ties in order that nothing might prevent him from becoming the consummate Buddha. The sorrows of Madrī, the princely ascetic’s wife, who is reduced by her husband’s passion for giving everything away first to exile and poverty, then to bitter grief on account of the loss of her dearly loved little children, and finally to slavery, but who submits to all her husband’s commands, may be compared with those of the patient Grisildes whose praises Chaucer has sung in “The Clerke’s Tale.” The Clerk states in his prologue that the story was one which he “lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk,” whose name was “Fraunces Petrark, the laureat poete;” Petrarch having freely translated it in the year 1373 from Boccaccio’s “Decamerone.” This story, however, appears to have been current in Italy for some time before. In folk-tales the similar sorrows of a wife who is condemned to a series of humiliations by a harsh husband are often described; but the husband’s conduct is generally accounted for by the fact that his wife had at first rejected him with contumely, and he had made up his mind to retaliate. Patient Grissel’s husband had absolutely no excuse to plead for his cruelty, nor can much be said in extenuation of that of such a husband as the German “King Thrushbeard” (Grimm, No. 52), the Norwegian “Hacon Grizzlebeard” (“Tales from the Norse,” No. 6), or the Italian “King of Fairland,” the husband of the proud Cintiella (Basile’s “Pentamerone,” No. 40). The Russian variant of “Patient Grissel’s Story” (Afanasief, v. No. 29) seems worthy of mention, as not being likely to be familiar to Western Europe. A king marries a peasant’s daughter on condition that she shall never find fault with anything he says or does. She makes him an excellent wife, and never opposes his will, even when he takes her children from her, pretending that they are to be put to death, in order that his neighbours might not laugh at them as being sprung from a peasant mother; or when he sends her back to her father’s hut, and then recalls her from it as a servant, and orders her to get ready the room intended for his new bride. But the Russian story, as it stands alone (with the exception of the opening), is probably an echo from abroad. [51]

In the Nidānakathā or “The Three Epochs” (translated in Mr. Rhys Davids’s “Buddhist Birth-Stories,” p. 33), there is an account of the great generosity of Mangala Buddha. “The story is, that when he was performing the duties of a Bodhisatta, being in an existence corresponding to the Vessentara existence, [52] he dwelt with his wife and children on a mountain.” One day a demon named “Sharp-fang,” hearing of his readiness to bestow gifts, “approached him in the guise of a Brahmin, and asked the Bodhisatta for his two children. The Bodhisatta, exclaiming, “I give my children to the Brahmin,” cheerfully and joyfully gave up both the children, thereby causing the ocean-girt earth to quake. The demon, standing by the bench at the end of the cloistered walk, while the Bodhisatta looked on, devoured the children like a bunch of roots. Not a particle of sorrow arose in the Bodhisatta as he looked on the demon, and saw his mouth as soon as he opened it disgorging streams of blood like flames of fire; nay, a great joy and satisfaction welled within him as he thought, ‘My gift was well given,’ and he put up the prayer, ‘By the merit of this deed may rays of light one day issue from me in this very way.’ In consequence of this prayer of his it was that the rays emitted from his body when he became Buddha filled so vast a sphere.” Another strange Indian story about self-sacrifice is that of the Dānava or Titan Namuchi, [53] who “did not refuse to give anything to anybody that asked, even if he were his enemy.” Having practised asceticism for ten thousand years “as a drinker of smoke,” he was allowed by Brahmā to become, like Balder, proof against all the ordinary forces of nature. After that he frequently made war against Indra, and often overcame him. When the gods and the Asuras churned the ocean of milk with the mountain Mandara, Namuchi received, as his share in the products of the churning, a horse which had the power of restoring to life, by a sniff, any Asura whom the gods had killed. This gave him great power. At length Indra went to Namuchi and asked for that horse as a gift. Namuchi gave it, and Indra, “as he could not be slain by any other weapon, killed him with foam of the Ganges, in which he had placed a thunderbolt.” However, he was born again as “an Asura composed all of jewels,” and he conquered Indra a hundred times. “Then the gods took counsel together, and came to him, and said to him, ‘By all means give us your body for a human sacrifice.’ When he heard that, he gave them his own body, although they were his enemies: noble men do not turn their backs on a suppliant, but bestow on him even their lives.”

The story of a charitable monarch, whose uprightness and generosity are put to a severe test by a deity, occurs as a folk-tale in Miss Maive Stokes’s “Indian Fairy Tales” (No. 13). It properly belongs to literature, in which it has assumed various forms, one of which has been made known to English readers by the late Sir Mutu Coomāra Swāmy in his “Arichandra, or the Martyr of Truth; a Drama translated from the Tamil.” The story as told by an Indian ayah takes this form. There was a king named Harchand, who “used to pray a great deal to God, and God was very fond of him,” but thought fit to test his goodness. So one day, when he had promised an ascetic “two pounds and a half of gold,” all his wealth was turned into charcoal. In order to keep his word, Harchand was obliged to sell his wife and child for a pound and a half of gold, and then he sold himself for the other pound. Having become the property of “a Dom, that is, a man of a very low caste, who kept a tank into which it was his business to throw the bodies of those who died,” he was charged with the care of the tank, and ordered to take a rupee in payment for each adult corpse, eight annas for a dead child, or a piece of cloth, in case the bearers of the body had no money. One day his wife arrived, bearing the corpse of his son, who had died. She had no money, but she said to herself, “I know that man is my husband, so he will not take any money for throwing his child into the water.” But he was so honest, in the interests of his master, that he insisted upon a fee, which had to be paid at the expense of his wife’s single covering. Eventually all went well, the dead boy was restored to life, and when the reunited royal family returned home, “the garden was in splendid beauty; the charcoal was turned back into gold, and silver, and jewels; the servants were in waiting as usual, and they went into the palace and lived happily for evermore.”

The principal theme of “The Fulfilled Prophecy” (No. 17) is one that often occurs in popular tales, many of which are devoted to proving how impossible it is for a man, whatever crimes he may commit, to escape from his destiny. The “Two Brothers” (No. 18) is one of the great cycle of moral tales in which goodness is contrasted with badness, to the temporary advantage but eventual discomfiture of the latter. The blinding of the good brother by the bad is an incident suggestive of the opening of the well-known folk-tales of “True and Untrue” (“Tales from the Norse,” No. 1), the “Two Wanderers” (Grimm, No. 107), and a great number of similar stories, to many of which references are given in vol. iii. p. 189, of Grimm’s collection.

Stories about ungrateful wives are popular in Asia. In No. 21, “How a woman requites love,” a husband twice saves his wife’s life, once by rescuing her from his brothers, who proposed to feed upon her when destitute of other food in a desert, and again by supplying her with food and drink, much to his own inconvenience, when she was faint from hunger and thirst. “He sliced some flesh off his thighs,” says the narrator, “and gave it to her to eat; and then he opened the veins of both his arms and gave her the blood to drink.” In spite of which, she conspired against him with a handless and footless cripple. In one of the Indian variants of the story (“Panchatantra,” iv. 5), the husband’s self-sacrifice takes a more poetic form. In the midst of a forest a wife suffered intensely from thirst. Her husband went to seek water. When he came back with some his wife was dead. A voice was heard saying that if he would give up half of his own life hers would be renewed. He immediately pronounced a formula by which he surrendered half of his life, and his wife was thereby resuscitated. Soon afterwards, being in a garden one day during the absence of her husband, she heard a cripple singing so beautifully that she fell in love with him at once. So she took an early opportunity of pushing her husband into a well. After which she led a wandering life, carrying about the cripple in a basket on her head. But her husband, who had not been killed by his fall, escaped from the well, and at length confronted her one day in the presence of a king, and demanded back the half of his life which he had given her. She uttered formal words of surrender and fell dead. The Indian variant of the story in the Daśakumāracharita is closely akin to the Tibetan, the husband assuaging his wife’s hunger and thirst by means of his own flesh and blood, and being rewarded by being pushed into a well by his wife, who had fallen in love with a cripple whose hands, feet, nose, and ears had been cut off by robbers. [54] This story appears to be the original of a singular Mongol tale (Jülg’s “Mongolische Märchen,” p. 105). A man and his wife were walking along near a cliff, when they heard so lovely a voice resounding that the woman said to herself, “I should like to belong to the man who possesses so charming a voice,” and she proceeded to push her husband into a well. Then she set off in search of the possessor of the voice. When she found him, he turned out to be a loathsome invalid, whose groans had been rendered melodious by the echoing cliff. Full of remorse, she tried to make up for the murder of her husband by carrying away the invalid, under whose disagreeable weight she pined away and eventually died (Benfey, “Panchatantra,” i. pp. 436–444). The form assumed by the story in the Kathā Sarit Sāgara [55] is almost identical with that in the Kah-gyur. The end, however, is more savage in the Indian than in the Tibetan variant. After the ungratefulness of the wife had been exposed, the king’s ministers “cut off her nose and ears and branded her, and banished her from the country with the maimed man. And in this matter Fate showed a becoming combination, for it united a woman without nose and ears with a man without hands and feet.” In the “Three Snake Leaves” (Grimm, No. 16), a wife who has been resuscitated after her death by her husband conspires against him with a ship-captain and has him flung into the sea. He is saved, however, and she and her accomplice are ultimately discovered and sentenced to be drowned.

The story of “The Grateful Animals and the Ungrateful Man” (No. 26) is one that is very widely spread throughout Asia, and has made its way into many parts of Europe. The merits of the lower animals were, in Eastern stories, frequently contrasted with the demerits of man, so far at least as gratitude is concerned, many centuries before such ideas as have in modern times led to the formation of societies for the protection of animals had exercised any influence over European thought. In the present instance a hunter, who draws out of a pit a lion, a snake, a mouse, a falcon, and a man, is rewarded by the two beasts, the bird, and the reptile, and by their aid is enabled to escape from prison, after having been thrown into it in consequence of the machinations of the man he had saved. In the “Panchatantra” (Appendix to Book i. story 2) a Brahman rescues a tiger, a monkey, a snake, and a man, with similar results. From the work of which the “Panchatantra” is the Sanskrit representative, the story made its way, about 750 A.D., into the Syriac “Kalilag and Damnag,” and the Arabic “Kalilah and Dimnah,” and thence, about 1080 A.D., into Symeon Seth’s Greek translation from the Arabic, and the Latin translation (through the Hebrew) by Joannes of Capua in the second half of the thirteenth century, and so into the Spanish, German, French, Italian, and English translations of different versions of the Arabic work. [56] It occurs also in other works of Buddhistic origin. In a story from the Rasavāhinī, quoted by Spiegel in his “Anecdota Pālica,” an inhabitant of Benares rescues from a hole a dog, a snake, and a man. The dog and the snake are grateful, and by their means their rescuer is enabled to escape the impalement to which he had been condemned in consequence of the malice of the ungrateful man he had rescued along with them. There can be little doubt that it was from Indian, and probably Buddhistic, sources that such grateful animals made their way into European folk-tales—as the ants, fish, and birds of the “White Snake” (Grimm, No. 17); the lions, bears, wolves, foxes, and hares of “The Two Brothers” (No. 60); the ants, ducks, and bees of “The Queen Bee” (No. 62); the horse, ducks, stork, and bees of “The Two Wanderers” (No. 107); and the bear, mouse, and monkey of “The Faithful Beasts” (Grimm, 104 of first edition, afterwards omitted); not to speak of the numberless counterparts of these grateful creatures in the folk-tales of every European land.

Of the rest of the stories, the greater part belong to the class of animal fables. Many of them are old acquaintances under a new guise. “The Ungrateful Lion” (No. 27), for instance, which tells how a woodpecker extracted a bone from a lion’s throat, and was supposed by the lion to be sufficiently paid for his trouble by its escape from his jaws, closely resembles the fable of the wolf which paid in similar coin its long-billed benefactor. “The Wolf and the Sheep” (No. 29) is the familiar fable of “The Wolf and the Lamb,” but the final argument of the wolf is different. The story of the ass which insists upon singing at the wrong time, and so is caught trespassing, and is punished (No. 32), has made its mark in European literature. The jackal which acts as arbiter between the two otters (No. 34), and takes as its share the main part of the fish they catch, leaving only the head and tail for them, closely resembles the well-known legal eater of the disputed oyster and presenter of the oyster-shells to the two claimants who had referred their dispute to his decision. The moral of the tale in which the lion is saved by the jackal (No. 35) is the same as that of the fable of the netted lion which the mouse rescued by gnawing its bonds. The blue-stained jackal (No. 36) is one of the disguised animals about which many fables are current in the West, such as the ass in the lion’s hide, or the cat which fell into a shoemaker’s tub, and afterwards played the part of a nun. And the monkeys which see the reflection of the moon in a well, and think that it has fallen out of the sky into the water, and form themselves into a chain whereby to draw it out (No. 45), are closely related to the foolish persons of the Wise Men of Gotham class, to whom various similar follies are attributed in many lands.

TIBETAN TALES.

I.

KING MĀNDHĀTAR. [57]

In olden days, when the life of man was of unlimited duration, lived King Utposhadha. On the crown of his head grew a very soft tumour, somewhat resembling a cushion of cotton or wool, without doing him any harm. When it had become quite ripe and had broken, there came forth from it a boy, shapely and handsome and gracious, perfect in every limb and joint, with a skin the colour of gold, a head like a canopy, long arms, a broad forehead, interlacing eyebrows, and a body provided with the thirty-two signs of a Mahāpurusha. [58] Immediately after his birth he was taken into the apartments of the women; and when King Utposhadha’s eighty thousand wives saw him, milk began to flow from their breasts, and each of the women cried out, “Let him suck me! let him suck me!” [59] Wherefore he received the name of Māndhātar. [60] Some of them thought that, as he came into life out of the crown of a head, he ought to receive the name of Mūrdhaja (crown-born); consequently the name Māndhātar is known to some, and that of Mūrdhaja to others.