Indian Fairy Tales (26 page)

Remarks
.—The white skin and blue eyes of Prince Majnun deserve
attention. They are possibly a relic of the days of Aryan conquest,
when the fair-skinned, fair-haired Aryan conquered the swarthier
aboriginals. The name for caste in Sanskrit is
varna
, "colour";
and one Hindu cannot insult another more effectually than by calling
him a black man.
Cf.
Stokes, pp. 238-9, who suggests that the
red hair is something solar, and derived from myths of the solar hero.

IX. THE TIGER, THE BRAHMAN, AND THE JACKAL.

Source
.—Steel-Temple,
Wideawake Stories
, pp. 116-20;
first published in
Indian Antiquary
, xii. p. 170
seq.

Parallels
.—No less than 94 parallels are given by Prof. K.
Krohn in his elaborate discussion of this fable in his dissertation,
Mann und Fuchs
, (Helsingfors, 1891), pp. 38-60; to which may be
added three Indian variants, omitted by him, but mentioned by Capt.
Temple,
l. c.
, p. 324, in the
Bhâgavata Purâna
, the
Gul
Bakâoli
and
Ind. Ant.
xii. 177; and a couple more in my
Aesop
,
p. 253: add Smeaton,
Karens
, p. 126.

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
Fabulae
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. 1., cf. Benfey,
l.c.
, p. 214,
n.
), but Vitalis
refuses to have anything to do with him, and altogether repudiates the
fifty talents. "Haec referebat Rex Richardus munificus, ingratos
redarguendo."

Remarks
.—Apart from the interest of its wide travels, and its
appearance in the standard mediaeval 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."

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 Aesop, Ro. ii. 10, p. 40. The chief points
about them are—(1) though the tale does not exist in either Phaedrus 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
Aesop
,
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. Aevent
59, possibly
derived from La Fontaine, x. 12.

Remarks
.—Benfey has proved most ingeniously and conclusively
(
Einl.
) that the Indian fable is the source of both Latin and
Greek fables. I may borrow from my
Aesop
, 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.

A Brahmin once observed a snake in his field, and thinking it the
tutelary spirit of the field, he offered it a libation of milk in a
bowl. Next day he finds a piece of gold in the bowl, and he receives
this each day after offering the libation. One day he had to go
elsewhere, and he sent his son with the libation. The son sees the
gold, and thinking the serpent's hole full of treasure determines to
slay the snake. He strikes at its head with a cudgel, and the enraged
serpent stings him to death. The Brahmin mourns his son's death, but
next morning as usual brings the libation of milk (in the hope of
getting the gold as before). The serpent appears after a long delay at
the mouth of its lair, and declares their friendship at an end, as it
could not forget the blow of the Brahmin's son, nor the Brahmin his
son's death from the bite of the snake.

Pants
. III. v. (Benf. 244-7).

PHAEDRINE.

—-A good man had become friendly with the snake, who came into his
house and brought luck with it, so that the man became rich through
it.—-One day he struck the serpent, which disappeared, and with it
the man's riches. The good man tries to make it up, but the serpent
declares their friendship at an end, as it could not forget the blow.—-

Phaed. Dressl. VII. 28 (Rom. II. xi.)

BABRIAN.

—————-A serpent stung a farmer's son to death. The father
pursued the serpent with an axe, and struck off part of its tail.
Afterwards fearing its vengeance he brought food and honey to its lair,
and begged reconciliation. The serpent, however, declares friendship
impossible, as it could not forget the blow—nor the farmer his son's
death from the bite of the snake.

Aesop; Halm 96b (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 Phaedrine 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).