Indian Fairy Tales Part 27

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 _Bhagavata Purana_, the _Gul Bakaoli_ 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_ (Fausboll, No. 73), trans. Rev. R. Morris, _Folk-Lore Jour._ iii. 348 _seq._ The story of the ingrat.i.tude of man compared with the grat.i.tude 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 Cur de Lion got the story, and used it to rebuke the ingrat.i.tude of the English n.o.bles 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. "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 t.i.tle 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._ Kohler _ap._ Marie de France, _Lais_, ed. Warncke, p. lx.x.xiv. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration:]

_Source._--The _Kacchapa Jataka_, Fausboll, 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 mult.i.tudinous 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 karana?_"

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. Mahr._ 105; Gering, _Islensk. aevent._ 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 _aesop_, p. 93, parallel abstracts of the three versions, putting Benfey's results in a graphic form, series of bars indicating the pa.s.sages where the cla.s.sical fables have failed to preserve the original.

BIDPAI. | PHaeDRINE.

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 |Phaed. 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). |aesop, 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 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. x.x.x. _n._ For the direction tabu, see Note on Princess Labam, _supra_, No. ii. The "letter to kill bearer" and "letter subst.i.tuted" are frequent in both European (see my List _s. v._) and Indian Folk-Tales (Temple, a.n.a.lysis, 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. x.x.x.) points out how, in a Sicilian story, Gonzenbach (_Sizil. Mahr._ 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_, Fausboll, No. 151, tr.