Indian Fairy Tales Part 28

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, _a 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 Herzmare_ (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 a.s.s IN THE LION'S SKIN.

_Source._--The _Siha Camma Jataka_, Fausboll, No. 189, trans.

Rhys-Davids, pp. v. vi.

_Parallels._--It also occurs in Somadeva, _Katha Sarit Sagara_, ed.

Tawney, ii. 65, and _n_. For aesopic parallels _cf._ my _aesop_, Av. iv.

It is in Babrius, ed. Gitlbaur, 218 (from Greek prose aesop, ed. Halm, No. 323), and Avian, ed. Ellis, 5, whence it came into the modern aesop.

_Remarks._--Avian wrote towards the end of the third century, and put into Latin mainly those portions of Babrius which are unparalleled by Phaedrus. Consequently, as I have shown, he has a much larger proportion of Eastern elements than Phaedrus. There can be little doubt that the a.s.s 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 aesopic version.

XXI. THE FARMER AND THE MONEY-LENDER.

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

_Parallels_ enumerated in my _aesop_, Av. xvii. See also Jacques de Vitry, _Exempla_, ed. Crane, No. 196 (see notes, p. 212), and Bozon, _Contes moralises_, 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, a.n.a.lysis, 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 La.s.s 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 s.e.x test at the end is different from any of those enumerated by Prof. Kohler on Gonzenbach, _Sezil. Mahr._ 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_, Fausboll, 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, pa.s.ses 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 b.u.t.ts 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s, 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 a.s.sume 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_ (Fausboll, 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 (x.x.x.) 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 G.o.d with the fire in his belly was derived from Prince Five-Weapons.

The negro variant has also suggested to Mr. Batten an explanation of the whole story which is extremely plausible, though it introduces a method of folk-lore exegesis which has been overdriven to death. The _Sasa Jataka_ identifies the Brer Rabbit Buddha with the hare in the moon. It is well known that Easterns explain an eclipse of the moon as due to its being swallowed up by a Dragon or Demon. May not, asks Mr. Batten, the _Pancavudha Jataka_ be an idealised account of an eclipse of the moon? This suggestion receives strong confirmation from the Demon's reference to Rahu, who does, in Indian myth swallow the moon at times of eclipse. The Jataka accordingly contains the Buddhist explanation why the moon--_i.e._ the hare in the moon, _i.e._ Buddha--is not altogether swallowed up by the Demon of Eclipse, the Demon with the Matted Hair. Mr. Batten adds that in imagining what kind of Demon the Eclipse Demon was, the Jataka writer was probably aided by recollections of some giant octopus, who has saucer eyes and a kind of hawk's beak, k.n.o.bs on its "tusks," and a very variegated belly (gasteropod). It is obviously unfair of Mr. Batten both to ill.u.s.trate and also to explain so well the Tar Baby Jataka--taking the scientific bread, so to speak, out of a poor folk-lorist's mouth--but his explanations seem to me so convincing that I cannot avoid including them in these Notes.

I am, however, not so much concerned with the original explanation of the Jataka as to trace its travels across the continents of Asia, Africa, and America. I think I have done this satisfactorily, and will have thereby largely strengthened the case for less extensive travels of other tales. I have sufficient confidence of the method employed to venture on that most hazardous of employments, scientific prophecy. I venture to predict that the Tar Baby story will be found in Madagascar in a form nearer the Indian than Uncle Remus, and I will go further, and say that it will _not_ be found in the grand Helsingfors collection of folk-tales, though this includes 12,000, of which 1000 are beast-tales.

XXVI. THE IVORY PALACE.

_Source._--Knowles, _Folk-Tales of Kashmir_, pp. 211-25, with some slight omissions. Gulizar is Persian for rosy-cheeked.

_Parallels._--Stokes, _Indian Fairy Tales_, No. 27. "Panwpatti Rani,"

pp. 208-15, is the same story. Another version in the collection _Baital Pachisi_, No. 1.

_Remarks._--The themes of love by mirror, and the faithful friend, are common European, though the calm attempt at poisoning is perhaps characteristically Indian, and reads like a page from Mr. Kipling.