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INDIAN FAIRY TALES
COLLECTED AND TRANSLATED
BY
MAIVE STOKES.
_WITH NOTES BY MARY STOKES,_
_AND AN INTRODUCTION BY W. R. S. RALSTON, M.A._
London:
ELLIS & WHITE, NEW BOND STREET.
1880.
[_All Rights reserved._]
To my dear Grannie, Susan Bazely.
[Decoration]
PREFACE.
The first twenty-five stories in this book were told me at Calcutta
and Simla by two Ayahs, Dunkní and Múniyá, and by Karím, a Khidmatgar.
The last five were told Mother by Múniyá. At first the servants would
only tell their stories to me, because I was a child and would not
laugh at them, but afterwards the Ayahs lost their shyness and told
almost all their stories over again to Mother when they were passing
through the press. Karím would never tell his to her or before her.
The stories were all told in Hindústání, which is the only language
that these servants know.
Dunkní is a young woman, and was born and brought up in Calcutta. She
got the stories, she told me, from her husband, Mochí, who was born in
Calcutta and brought up at Benares.
Múniyá is a very old, white-haired woman. She has
great-grandchildren. She was born at Patna, but when she was seven
years old she was taken to Calcutta, where she was brought up and
married. She and Dunkní are both Hindús.
Karím is a Muhammadan and was born at Lucknow. He says that "The
Mouse" and "The Wonderful Story" are both Lucknow tales.
The notes to this book were written by Mother, and Father helped her
to spell the Native names and words. He also made the Index.
Dr. George King helped us in the Botany; Mr. Tawney and Mr. Campbell
of Islay, who saw many of the stories in manuscript, have given us
several remarks. So has my uncle, John Boxwell.
M. S. H. STOKES.
CALCUTTA,
_March 24th, 1879_.
[Decoration]
INTRODUCTION.
In almost every part of Europe the tales current among the common
people have been of late years diligently sought out, and carefully
collected. Variants of them pour in profusely every year. But it does
not seem probable that any entirely new stories will be discovered in
any European land. Nor is it likely that in fresh variants of the
longer and apparently more artificial tales, any quite new incidents,
or even any unquestionably novel features, will be found. The harvest
has been abundant, its chief fruits are now stored, and the work which
is still going on among the gleaners, although in itself good and
praiseworthy, may be regarded without the excitement of eager hope.
The task of the present seems to be, not so much the garnering of
European folk-tales, as their comparison and elucidation, and, so far
as possible, their explanation. But in many cases they do not appear
to contain in themselves the ingredients which are necessary for their
resolution into their primary elements. Nor do the records of the
lands in which they exist always supply what is wanted. The "fairy
tales" of Europe throw very little light upon, are but slightly
illuminated by, the histories of the widely differing lands in which
they so closely resemble each other. And the most interesting among
them, those which appear most clearly to bear witness to their being
embodiments of mythological ideas, or expansions of moral precepts,
seem to be but little in keeping with what we know of the sentiments
and beliefs of the heathen ancestors of the villagers in whose
memories they have been for so many centuries retained. Among such
tales of this kind, for instance, as linger on in our own islands,
there is but little to be found which can be looked upon as a
specially characteristic deposit left by the waves of Iberian, Celtic,
and Teutonic population which have successively passed over the face
of the land. This statement does not, of course, hold good in the case
of such legends about national heroes as Mr. J. F. Campbell has found
thriving in Ireland and the West Highlands of Scotland, and which he
justly believes to be "bardic recitations, fast disappearing, and
changing into prose." They belong to a different section of popular
fiction from that to which reference is now made. It is often
difficult to draw the line between these two classes of folk-tales.
But there is a striking difference between the typical representatives
of the two divisions, between cosmopolitan novelettes like Cinderella
or the Sleeping Beauty, on the one hand, and pseudo-historic legends
about local heroes on the other. It is unfortunate that we do not
possess a sufficiency of accurate designations for the numerous
species of the genus folk-tale. Their existence would prevent much
misapprehension. But in their absence, a discusser of popular tales
should take pains to define precisely to what tribe, family, or group
of stories his remarks are intended to apply.
There are to be found, in all European lands, certain tales which are
of a more complex structure than the rest, which appear to have been
constructed by a skilled workman, to be artificial productions rather
than natural growths. It is only with such stories as these that we
have at present to deal. These novelettes or comediettas, as they may
be called, of the European common people, differ but little in their
essential parts, whether they are recited in the cold north or the
balmy south, the rude east or the cultured west. Their openings, it is
true, vary with their localities; but in the main body of the tale,
not only does the same leading idea pervade all the variants, but also
the same sequence of events leads up in almost every case to the same
termination. To this class of stories belong nearly all the tales
which, under considerably modified forms, have naturalized themselves
in the nurseries of Europe. In it are comprised many popular fictions,
on the obscurer parts of which a quite insufficient light is thrown by
researches among the manners and mythologies of old European
heathenism.
It is upon such stories as these that a kindly light beams with the
greatest advantage from Asia. Very similar stories have been preserved
in the memories of the common people in many parts of Asia, but
especially in India. And their leading ideas are perfectly in
accordance with the mythology or the moral teaching of the Asiatics
who, age after age, have delighted in telling or hearing them. In such
cases as these it seems to be not very unreasonable to suppose that
the story was originally, if not created, at all events shaped and
trimmed in Asia, and thence was afterwards conveyed from lip to lip
into Europe. Such universal favourites as Beauty and the Beast and
Puss in Boots may be confidently cited as oriental fictions which have
taken possession of European minds. There is a rich store of other
popular fictions, which may be left to be accounted for according to
the two principal methods of interpretation in vogue. They may be
explained as independent developments of mythological germs common to
the ancestors of the various Aryan peoples of Europe. Or they may be
regarded as embodiments of certain ideas common to savages of all
races. It will be sufficient to deal at present with the more
limited, but better known class, to which special attention has been
called.
Among the Asiatic folk-tales which seem likely to assist in their
explanation, none are more copious or more useful than those of India.
There the old religion has maintained itself with which so many of
these stories are linked, and there the moral teaching still prevails
which made its voice heard in other tales of the far-off time when
they first became current. Any collection of genuine Indian Fairy
Tales is therefore certain to be, not only of interest to the general
reader, but also of real value to the specialist who devotes himself
to the comparison of folk-tales. The collection now before us has
great merits of its own. The stories have been told in Hindústání to
the very young collector by two ayahs, who are both Hindús, and by a
Muhammadan man-servant. In this respect Miss Stokes's contribution to
our knowledge of India differs from the very similar, and very
charming, work by Miss Frere, "Old Deccan Days," the stories in which
were told by an ayah who was, as her father and grandfather had been,
a native Christian. The two books ought to be compared with each
other. No possessor of the one ought to be without the other. All the
stories contained in the present volume, as we learn from the notes,
have been read back by the young collector to the tellers in
Hindústání after they were told, and a second time by the annotator
before they were printed. "I never saw people more anxious to have
their tales retold exactly, than are Dunkní and Múniyá," the two
story-telling ayahs. Not till each tale was pronounced by them to be
exact was it sent to the press. The stories may be taken then as
faithful transcripts of Indian thought. The merits of the copious
Notes contributed by the late Mrs. Whitley Stokes, bearing witness to
a very wide range of reading, and to a most intelligent use of the
authorities referred to, will be fully acknowledged by all who have
had occasion to explore the regions from which she has gathered so
much valuable information. Throughout the whole of the work thus
conscientiously compiled and intelligently annotated, there will be
found scattered, in addition to its other merits, many a parallel with
our own popular tales, many an illustration or explanation of their
meaning--a ray of light shot here or there which illumines their dark
places, and may enable the explorers of their mystic domains to avoid
stumbles which are often somewhat mortifying. It remains only to point
out a few of the most important passages.
* * * * *
Some of the stories in this volume are so thoroughly oriental, so
little in accordance with western thought or feeling, that they have
not found an echo among ourselves; their counterparts are not to be
found naturalized in European lands. Of such a kind are the legends,
taken from literary sources, of "The Upright King," and of "Rájá
Harichand's Punishment," in which the patience of a religious monarch
is tried as was that of Job, and comes out from the trial equally
victorious. The sorrows of Patient Grissel have met with sympathy in
many lands, for meekness has ever been considered a womanly virtue.
But the heroism of a husband and father who sells his wife to a
merchant, and his son to a cowherd, in order that he may be able to
keep his promise to a holy mendicant, and bestow upon him two pounds
and a half of gold, can scarcely be expected to invest itself, to
western eyes, with the air of a manly virtue. In the same way, the
great sitting powers displayed by King Burtal, who never once moves
from his seat in the jungle for twelve whole years, during which space
of time he neither eats nor drinks, and thereby elevates himself to
the dignity of a fakír, are not of a kind to elicit the sympathies or
command the admiration of nations addicted to active exercise.
The explanation of Nánaksá's thrice repeated laugh, also, could
retain its vitality only in an atmosphere pervaded by a belief in the
transmigration of souls. Buddhistic apologues have sometimes passed
into legends of Christian Saints. But it would be difficult to perform
the operation in the case of an account of how a woman, who had
tormented to death her husband's sister, was justly punished by the
reappearance in the world of the ill-used sister-in-law, in the form
of that unkind woman's exceedingly peevish baby daughter. Numerous,
also, as are European stories about ogres, vampires, and other
demoniacal cannibals, we shall not readily find a western counterpart
of the terrible tale, in No. 24, of the "Rakshas" which sometimes
appears as a goat, and sometimes as a most beautiful young girl,
dressed in grand clothes and rich jewels, but at midnight turns into a
devouring demon with a craving for human flesh.
Just as some of the themes of these stories do not seem to have
European counterparts, so portions of their machinery appear to be
without exact western equivalents. The stupendous transformations
which now and then take place (see pp. 5, 148, 244) can reconcile
themselves only to an oriental imagination. However much the
occidental mind may attempt to "make believe," it cannot credit such a
statement as that when the Bél-Princess died, her eyes turned into two
birds, her heart into "a great tank," and her body into "a splendid
palace and garden," her arms and legs becoming "the pillars that
supported the verandah roof," and her head "the dome on the top of the
palace." In almost all countries, when a fairy hero has been slain by
a demoniacal or otherwise villainous personage, he is recalled to life
by magic means. In European folk-lore the resuscitating remedy is
usually a Water of Life, or a Balsam, or some similar fluid. In these
Indian tales, it is blood streaming from the resuscitator's little
finger. Thus when Loving Lailí (p. 83) found her husband dead and
headless, she put his head back on his shoulders, and smeared his neck
with the blood which flowed "like healing medicine," when "she cut
her little finger inside her hand straight down from the top of her
nail to her palm." A power of becoming at will invisible is everywhere
often attributed to heroes of romance. But it is generally connected
with "a cap of darkness," or some similar magic article. But the
Prince of No. 21, when he seeks the Bél-Princess, becomes invisible to
the "demons and fairies" who surround her, when he blows from the palm
of his hand, "all along his fingers," the earth which a friendly fakír
has given him for that purpose. A "sleep-thorn," or other somniferous
piece of wood, is commonly employed in our fairy tales, in order to
throw a hero or heroine into a magic slumber. In these Indian stories
a state of catalepsy, or of death, is produced or relieved by a
peculiar application of a magic stick. Thus the Princess who was
called the Golden Rání, "because her teeth and her hair were made of
gold," and who was stolen by a demon, informed the Prince who found
her, motionless but not sleeping, that "the Rakshas who had carried
her off, and whom she called papa, had a great thick stick, and when
he laid this stick at her feet she could not stir, but when he laid it
at her head she could move again." In "The Demon and the King's Son"
(No. 24), the hero opens a "forbidden chamber," and there finds the
demon's daughter lying on a bed, apparently lifeless; for "every day,
before her father went out he used to make the girl lie on her bed,
and cover her with a sheet, and he placed a thick stick at her head,
and another at her feet; then she died, till he came home in the
evening and changed the sticks, putting the one at her head at her
feet, and the one at her feet at her head. This brought her to life
again." An interesting parallel to the "sleep-thorn" is afforded by
the pin which, while it remains in the head of the bird which had been
the wife of the Pomegranate King (No. 2), prevents her from resuming
her human shape. When the Rájá pulled out the pin, "his own dear
wife, the Pomegranate Rání, stood before him." Magic boxes are common
in fairy land. But there is something new in at least the name of the
"sun-jewel box," which was sent by the "Red Fairy," who lived at the
bottom of the well, to "The Princess who loved her father like salt"
(No. 23), and which contained "seven little dolls, who were all little
fairies."
* * * * *
Of more general interest than the few peculiarities of these tales are
the many points in which they resemble and illustrate some of the
familiar features of European folk-lore. As an example of the latter
may be taken a "husk-myth," which is a valuable contribution to the
literature of the "Beauty and the Beast" cycle. In all the stories
belonging to that group, the action turns upon the union of the human
hero or heroine with a spouse who is really or apparently an inferior
animal. In the modified version of the story with which our nurseries
have become acquainted through a French literary medium, the species
of Beast to which the Beauty is wedded is not stated, and its
transformation into a princely husband is attributed to her unaided
love. But in by far the greater part of the variants of the folk-tale
on which it seems to have been founded, as well as of the other
stories in which a similar transformation is the principal
feature--variants which have been gathered in abundance from all parts
of Europe, not to speak of Asia--the animal nature of the mysterious
spouse is clearly defined. In them the husband whom the Beauty is
induced by filial affection, fear, or compassion to wed, is an
unmistakable Beast--a pig in Sicily, a bear in Norway, a hedgehog in
Germany, a goat in Russia. Sometimes he is even of a lower type, often
a frog or a snake. And once, in Wallachia, he has been transferred
from the animal to the vegetable world, and figures as a pumpkin. In
every instance he is represented as being able to change at times his
repulsive appearance for one of beauty, and this he generally does by
doffing a kind of husk which when donned conceals his real form, and
invests him with that of an inferior being. If this husk be destroyed
during the temporary absence of its owner, he loses his transforming
power. The destruction of the husk is generally the work of the wife,
who is sometimes rewarded, her husband remaining with her constant to
his true nature; at other times she is punished, he being lost to her
for a time or for ever. These stories about a monster husband have
their exact counterparts in tales about a monster wife, the leading
idea being the same in both groups; the only difference being that it
is the wife who appears at times as a frog or other inferior creature,
and who continues to do so until her transforming power terminates
with the destruction of her disguising husk.
Now these temporary transformations, though common to the folk-tales
of all parts of Europe, are not in accordance with the European
superstitions of the present day, nor with those, so far as we are
acquainted with them, of old European heathenism. The nearest approach
to them is afforded by the wehr-wolf superstition, but that is an
isolated belief, and appears to be based upon altogether different
ideas. As to the metamorphoses of classical literature, they are of a
nature quite alien to that of the voluntary eclipse, under a degrading
form, of a Frog Princess or a Pig Prince. It may be said with
confidence that European "husk-myths" do not explain themselves; the
peasants among whom they are current, cannot explain them; and the
knowledge we have of ancient European paganism throws no light on
their meaning. But in India, where countless variants of such tales
exist--many of them preserved in ancient as well as in modern
literature, but by far the greater part still current among the
common people--the transformations in question are frequently, if not
generally, explained in the stories themselves, and explained in a
manner perfectly in accordance with the Indian thought of the present
as well as of the past. To Indian minds there is nothing monstrous in
the belief that a celestial being may have been condemned, in
consequence of the wrath of a superior divinity, or even of the magic
words pronounced by an offended sage, to assume for a time the
inferior form of a mere man or woman, or even to wear the shape of an
inferior animal--a monkey or a frog; and that this transformation is
to continue chronic, though not constant, until the destruction of the
disguising skin or husk, by the donning of which it is from time to
time brought about, deprives the curse of its power, and enables
earth's celestial visitor to return to heaven. The whole story is
closely connected with Indian religious beliefs, and may fairly be
looked upon, when found in India, as an expansion of a Hindu myth. Its
existence in other parts of Asia may, at least frequently, be
attributed to the natural spread of Hindu tales among the various
tribes and nations which accepted Buddhism from India.
If all this be true, and the "husk-myth" stories which are current all
over Europe may justly be supposed to have drifted westwards from
India, then all Indian variants of these tales naturally become
invested with special importance. The specimen in the present volume,
the "Monkey Prince" (No. 10), belongs to a remarkably interesting
class--that in which the story-teller gives an explanation of the
hero's transformation. A childless king is told by a fakír to give
some mangoes to his seven wives. Six of them eat up the fruit, and
each of the six gives birth to a prince of the usual kind. But the
seventh wife, who has been able to obtain as her share only the stone
of one of the mangoes, "had a monkey, who was called in consequence
Bandarsábásá, or Prince Monkey." In reality, the story-teller goes on
to explain, "he was a boy, but no one knew it, for he had a
monkey-skin covering him." And this monkey-skin he takes off when he
wishes to appear in true princely form, as when he woos and wins the
Princess Jahúran. Finding out what his real nature is, she insists
upon marrying him, in spite of her vexed father's natural question:
"Who ever heard of any one marrying a nasty monkey?" When he is alone
with his wife he takes off his monkey-skin, and reveals himself in all
his beauty, replying to her questions as to its use, "I wear it as a
protection, because my brothers are naughty, and would kill me if they
knew what I really am." On one occasion, when he has gone in state to
a nautch, after taking off his monkey skin, folding it up, and laying
it under his wife's pillow, she reveals her husband's secret to his
mother, who, "though she was very glad her monkey-son had such a wife,
could never understand how it was that her daughter-in-law was so
happy with him." Taking the monkey-skin from under her pillow, "See,"
she says, "when your son puts this on, then he is a monkey; when he
takes it off he is a beautiful man. And now I think I will burn this
skin, and then he must always be a man." So she throws it into the
fire. Prince Monkey's heart instantly tells him his wife has burnt his
skin, and he returns home in a rage. It passes off, however, and all
goes well. He now appears always as a beautiful prince, "with his hair
all gold." "Why did you wear that monkey-skin?" naturally asks his
father. "Because," he replies, "my mother ate the mango-stone instead
of eating the mango, and so I was born with this skin, and God ordered
me to wear it till I had found a wife." The story has evidently been
considerably altered in the course of time from its original form, but
it still keeps true to its ancient lines. In it, as in many other
specimens of the same class, the idea of the degradation of a divine
or semi-divine being has been lost, and the sufferer is merely a human
being cased in a disfiguring hide. It is noteworthy that, as we are
informed at p. 259, Dunkní, the narrator of the tale, "in telling this
husk-story, just as often called the monkey-skin a husk, as she called
it a skin."
Another of the apparently mythological European folk-tales,
instructive parallels to which are contained in the present volume, is
that which may be designated as the Golden-locks myth. It relates the
fortunes of a brilliant being, usually a radiant prince, who, often
without any apparent reason, submits himself to a voluntary eclipse,
hides from sight his grandeur and his good looks, and assumes an
appearance of squalor and misery. Like Cinderella, whose male
counterpart he is, he at times arises from his low estate, becomes
again a brilliant prince, but always capriciously eludes those who
wish to retain him in that shape. At last he is always detected, and
then he has to remain constant to his true and magnificent form. His
temporary eclipse is somewhat similar to that of the hero of a
husk-myth; but no special power is attached to the wrappings under
which his brilliance is concealed, nor is his change of form imposed
upon him against his will. The meaning of the Golden-locks story, in
its original form, still remains to be discovered, as also does that
of the sister tale of Cinderella. That they both refer to the
temporary eclipse, seclusion, or obscuration of a brilliant being, is
evident. But what that brilliant being represents is a problem of
which several solutions have been confidently offered, but which does
not seem to have been as yet certainly solved. In the story of "The
Boy who had a Moon on his forehead and a Star on his chin" (No. 20),
the self-eclipsing process is brought about by a twist of his right
ear; "when the boy had twisted it, he was no longer a handsome prince,
but a poor, common-looking, ugly man; and his moon and star were
hidden." And so, after he has been chosen out of a number of suitors
by a princess whose heart he has won by the beauty of his singing, he
restores himself to his true form by twisting his left ear; after
which operation "he stood no longer a poor, common, ugly man, but a
grand young prince, with a moon on his forehead and a star on his
chin."
A third class of stories for which an Asiatic origin may fairly be
claimed, contains those in which figures a monster or demon who cannot
be killed until some external object with which his life is
mysteriously linked has been destroyed. Such a being occurs at times
in European folk-tales, especially in those of the east and north of
Europe. The most familiar instance is that of "The Giant who had no
Heart in his body" of the "Tales from the Norse." Some of the best
specimens of this kind of monster are to be found in the Russian tales
about Koshchei the Deathless. But these remarkably abnormal beings
scarcely seem at home in western folk-lore. They are but little in
keeping with their European surroundings, and never seem to divest
themselves of their alien air. In oriental stories, on the other hand,
they figure frequently, and they seem to occupy a familiar and an
appropriate place. The oldest of the world's tales of wonder, the
Egyptian story of the Two Brothers, contains an heroic being whose
life comes to an end when his heart falls to the ground from the tree
upon which he has hung it. And in the modern folk-tales of India,
demons of this kind play their part without exciting any more than
usual surprise. Miss Frere's Deccan stories make us well acquainted
with one of these personages, "a wicked magician named Punchkin,"
whose name serves as a convenient designation for the long-lived
monsters in question. The present collection contains several
specimens. In "Brave Hírálálbásá" (No. 11) we meet with a Rakshas, who
is induced, as usual by female wiles, to reveal the secret of his
life. "Sixteen miles away from this place," he says, "is a tree. Round
the tree are tigers, and bears, and scorpions, and snakes; on the top
of the tree is a very great flat snake; on his head is a little cage;
in the cage is a bird; and my soul is in that bird." When the bird is
seized by the hero of the story, the Rakshas feels that something
terrible has occurred. When the bird's legs and wings are pulled off,
the Rakshas becomes a mere head and torso; and when the bird's neck is
wrung, down falls the Rakshas dead. In like manner, in the tale of
"The Demon and the King's Son" (No. 24), the demon dies when the
prince has killed a certain bird, the lives of the bird and of the
demon being conterminable. According to the narrator Dunkní, "all
Rakshases keep their souls in birds;" but another authority asserts
(p. 261) that "a whole tribe of Rakshases, dwelling in Ceylon, kept
theirs in one and the same lemon."
The tale of "The Voracious Frog" (No. 6) is a valuable contribution to
the store we already possess of what appear to be myths relating to
apparent destruction, but ultimate resuscitation. To this class seem
to belong the stories on which Little Red Riding Hood was probably
based, describing how a wolf or other monster swallowed various
innocent beings, but was at last forced to restore them uninjured to
the light of day. In its original form the tale may have been a nature
myth, illustrating the apparent annihilation brought about by the
darkness of night or the cold of winter, and the revival which
accompanies the return of the day or of spring; or, perhaps, a moral
apologue, intended to suggest that death may not be a lasting
annihilation. In its modern forms, whether in the east or the west, it
often assumes a grotesque air. A good illustration of this fact is
afforded by the well-known Norse tale of "The Greedy Cat," of which
"The Voracious Frog" (No. 6) is an Indian counterpart. The cat, after
devouring all that comes in its way, is at last split in half by a
goat, whereupon all its victims come forth unhurt. The frog, after
similar feats of gluttony, is cut open by a barber, who, while shaving
it, thinks that it looks very fat; and its victims also emerge
uninjured.
There are many tales now current in different parts of Europe, but
chiefly in the south and east, which turn upon the relations existing
between human beings and their fates: each person being supposed to
have a special fate or fortune, a species of guardian demon, upon
whose good will all his or her success in life depends. It is very
doubtful whether such stories are products of European fancy, their
leading ideas seeming to be little in keeping with the religious
beliefs--whether of classic times, or of Teutonic, Slavic, or Celtic
antiquity--respecting either an overruling destiny, or a triad of
Fates or Norns. But in India a belief in a personal "luck" has
prevailed from very early times; and such stories as "The Man who went
to seek his Fate" (No. 12), appear there to be as indigenous as in
Europe they seem to be exotic. The Servian story, for instance, of the
man who sets out to look for his fate, and the Sicilian account of how
the unfortunate Caterina is persecuted by hers until she discovers its
hiding-place, and propitiates it by cakes (see Notes, p. 263), have a
foreign air about them, which does not manifest itself in the Indian
tale. The likeness between the Servian and the Indian variants of the
narrative, especially as regards the questions which the fate-seeker
is requested by the beings he meets on the way to ask when he arrives
at his destination, is too great to allow it to be supposed that they
have been independently developed from a common germ. They are
manifestly, so far as the journey is concerned, copies of the same
model, differing but slightly from each other. But the embodiment of
the wayfarer's destiny is quite differently represented in the two
stories. The Servian pilgrim first discovers his fortune, or rather
misfortune, in the person of a hag, who tells him she has been given
to him as his luck by Fate. Then he seeks out Fate, who appears in
human form. But in the Indian tale, "the fates are stones, some
standing, and others lying on the ground." One of the prostrate
stones, the traveller felt sure, must belong to him. "This must be
mine," he said; "it is lying on the ground, that's why I am so poor."
Whereupon he took to beating it, and continued to do so all day. When
night came, "God sent a soul into the poor man's fate, and it became a
man," who satisfied the wanderer's own wishes, and also answered the
questions which he had been requested to ask. Then "God withdrew the
soul, and the fate became a stone again, which stood up on the
ground."
There are two stories which enjoy a world-wide popularity in peasant
circles, but which have not been made familiar by modern literature to
cultured children. One of them may for the sake of convenience be
known by the name of the Substituted Bride, and the other by that of
the Calumniated Wife. The first relates the sorrows of a maiden who is
compelled to see an impostor seated in the place which she was
intended to fill, by the side of the princely husband whom she was
meant to wed. The second describes the sufferings long undergone by a
faithful wife and tender mother, who is falsely accused of some crime
by an envious rival, and is hastily punished by her angry lord. In
both of them the supernatural usually plays a part, but their main
interests are always human, and it is easier to sympathize with their
heroines than with most of the similar characters of popular fiction.
Yet those ill-used but patient princesses are but little known to the
thousands of story-readers who are familiar with the adventures of
Cinderella and the Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, and the
wives of Bluebeard and of the Beast. They have at various times
entered into literature, but not into that section of it which has
supplied our nursery fiction. They figure in most of the now so
numerous collections of folk-tales, but they have not been introduced
into society by the novelists or playwrights who have made their
sister-sufferers undying favourites. They are essentially moral tales,
their good characters bearing their unmerited misfortunes with
unvarying meekness and patience, and being ultimately rewarded, while
the envious and malicious rivals who have supplanted or slandered them
are punished in the end. But they have not taken a firm hold on the
west, where they are probably destined to become forgotten when the
progress of education has replaced folk-lore by literature, while they
are likely to go on living for ages in the east, which seems to have
been their original home.
In the present collection the story of the Substituted Princess occurs
several times. In "Phúlmati Rání" the heroine is a wife instead of a
bride, which makes the substitution more than usually improbable. As
she and her husband are resting beside a tank, a shoemaker's wife
comes up, and pushes her into the water, in which she is drowned. The
shoemaker's wife takes her place, though she is "very black and ugly,"
one-eyed, and exceedingly wicked. It may be remarked that the
substitution in question generally takes place by the side of water.
In the "Bél-Princess," the beautiful maiden who has come out of the
fruit which the prince opened by the side of a well, is pushed into
the water, while the prince is asleep, by a wicked woman, very ugly,
and with "something wrong with one of her eyes," who then assumes her
place. In tales like the story of "The Princess who loved her Father
like Salt," the transformation scene is of a different nature, though
the leading idea of the change is the same. It is not an ordinary
bride or wife who is supplanted, and the substitution need not take
place beside water. The heroine is a stranger who, generally after
long wanderings, finds a prince really or apparently dead, by patient
watching all but effects his cure, but is at the last moment
supplanted by a servant, who gives the final touch to the work, claims
its entire merit, and is made the wife of the grateful patient. In the
Indian tale the prince lies motionless, his body "stuck full of
needles." The heroine sits down by the side of his couch, and there
remains for a whole week "without eating, or drinking, or sleeping,
pulling out the needles." At the end of two weeks more the needles are
all extracted, except those in the eyes. She then goes away to bathe;
and while she is absent, a servant maid whom she has left in charge of
the body pulls out the remaining needles. The prince opens his eyes,
thanks God for bringing him to life again, and makes the servant maid
his wife. The substitution is similar to that which takes place in
such stories as the Norse "Bushy Bride;" but closer parallels are
supplied by some of the stories of southern Europe. Mrs. Stokes refers
in her Notes to the dead prince in one of Gonzenbach's Sicilian tales,
who is brought to life by a wandering princess, who for more than
seven years rubs his body with grass from Mount Calvary. Pitre's great
collection of Sicilian _Fiabe_ also offers several variants of the
substitution story, in some of which occurs the singular incident,
known also to Swedish and Finnish folk-tales, of the imprisonment of
the heroine, after she has been flung into the sea, by a submarine
supernatural being. In some instances it is not water which the
heroine has to dread, but light. The true bride must be conveyed to
the bridegroom's palace in a darkened vehicle. Her supplanter draws
aside a curtain. The sunlight shines in. The princess turns into a
lizard or some other animal, and the false bride takes her place.
The Calumniated Wife story which occurs in No. 20 of the present
collection, closely resembles many European variants. A king hears a
girl say that when she is married she will have a son with a moon on
his forehead and a star on his chin. So he marries her. She gives
birth to a boy who really is thus decorated. But the king's other
wives, naturally jealous of her, put a stone in her bed, and pretend
that it is the object which she has brought into the world, upon which
she is disgraced and turned into a servant maid. In other variants of
the story she is often accused of having murdered her children, and
even eaten them. In one instance her mortified husband is represented
as twice forgiving her, after remonstrating with her on her inordinate
appetite, but as thinking it necessary to take some precautions when
the possibility of her committing the crime for the third time makes
itself manifest. Sometimes all the innocent wives of a king are
accused of murderous habits by a guilty wife, who is in reality a
destroying and devouring demon. Such is the case in No. 20 of the
present collection, which ends with the restoration of the seven
calumniated wives, and the death by burning of the demon spouse.
* * * * *
Besides illustrating the themes or leading ideas of many groups of
European tales, these Indian stories frequently serve to throw light
upon some of their obscurer features, or at least to offer such
parallels to them as are useful contributions to our stock of
materials for a systematic classification. Among the strange
characters who figure in European folk tales, there are few more
puzzling than the fair maidens who are at times discovered inside
fruits, and who must be provided with water to drink the moment they
emerge into the light, or else they will die. They seem properly to
belong to the south and east of Europe, to such countries, for
instance, as Greece, Sicily, and Wallachia. When they are found
elsewhere, as in the Norse tale of "The Three Lemons," the very name
of which speaks of the sunny south, they seem out of keeping with
their surroundings. In these Indian stories, the enclosure of a
heroine in a fruit is an incident which does not appear to be more
than usually amazing. The need of immediate water drinking is not
referred to. But the hero is warned (p. 81) that he must not open the
fruit in public, because the enclosed maiden will be quite destitute
of clothes. In another story which is widely spread over Europe--but
which we know best in the form of the tale of "The Blue Bird," founded
upon the theme of "The Lay of Ywonec," by Marie de France--the
murderous means by which the bird-lover is all but done to death by
jealous hands, which set sharp knives in the narrow opening through
which he has to fly, or beset his path with some other instruments of
ill, find their counterpart in the powdered glass employed to injure
the hero of the "The Fan Prince" (No. 25). His wife's six sisters, who
"were angry at their youngest sister being married, while they who
were older were not married," insist upon making his bed, and cover
the spot on which he is to lie with the powder into which they have
ground a glass bottle. Whereupon the prince becomes very ill, from the
glass powder going into his flesh.
The ordinary opening of many familiar folk-tales, including the
"Beauty and the Beast" story, finds a parallel in the same Indian tale
(p. 195). In all of them a man, when starting on a journey, promises
his youngest daughter that he will bring her back some object. This he
forgets to obtain. On his homeward journey, his ship refuses to move
until he has acquired the object in question. The Indian parent
promised to bring home Sabr to his daughter, having no idea what Sabr
meant. Not having obtained it, he set out on his homeward journey.
"But the boat would not move, because he had forgotten one thing--the
thing his youngest daughter had asked for." Sabr turns out to be a
fairy prince. It is a common incident in Indian tales for a hero or
heroine to demand a spouse, generally of a more or less supernatural
nature, whose name is known but nothing more. Just as the Fan Prince
was demanded, under the apparently meaningless name of Sabr, so is the
hand of the Princess Labám longed for by the Rájá's son in No. 22,
although her existence was unknown to him till he heard a parrot
pronounce her name one day; and so is the acquisition of a
Bél-Princess resolved upon by the prince in No. 21, because his
sisters-in-law say to him, in a disagreeable manner, "We think that
you will marry a Bél-Princess." Múniyá, the narrator of the story,
"says that telling the prince he would marry a Bél-Princess was
equivalent to saying he would not marry at all; for these brothers'
wives knew she lived in the fairy country, and that it would be very
difficult, if not impossible, for the prince to find her, and take her
from it." But this seems to be merely a rationalistic view of the
matter. Some mystery seems to underlie these suggestions of, or
desires for, unions with unfamiliar beings. They occur not
unfrequently in Russian tales. In one of Afanasief's skazkas (vol.
vii., No. 6) a baby prince cries, and refuses to go to sleep, till his
royal father rocks his cradle, crooning the while, "Sleep, beloved
one! When you grow up you shall marry Never-enough-to-be-gazed-at
Beauty, daughter of three mothers, sister of nine brothers." Having
slept vigorously, the baby awakes, asks for the king's blessing, and
sets out in search of the unknown Beauty in question. In another (vol.
i., No. 14), Prince Ivan, having married his three sisters to the
Wind, the Hail, and the Thunder, wanders forth in search of a bride.
Finding the remains of two slaughtered armies, and discovering that
their slaughterer was named Anastasia the Fair, he resolves, though
knowing nothing else about her, to make her his wife. Among the
numerous minor incidents which are common to eastern and western
folk-tales, may be mentioned the aid lent to heroes in difficulties by
Magic Instruments, as in No. 22, or by Grateful Beasts, as in No. 24.
A belief in magic is of course world-wide, but the particular
instruments referred to seem to have good reasons for claiming an
oriental extraction. The stories in which stress is laid upon the
gratitude of the inferior animals are almost always derivable from the
east; especially if, as in the correct versions of the tale on which
Puss in Boots is founded, their gratitude is contrasted with the
ingratitude of that superior animal, man. When we meet with so close a
resemblance as exists between the miracle wrought by Shekh Faríd (p.
97), who turns the lying carter's sugar into ashes, and that
attributed to St. Brigit, who turns the liar's salt into stones, we
need have little scruple about referring both stories to the same
source and, considering how much monastic legend-writers were indebted
to oriental fancy, in locating that source in the east.
The comic elements of eastern and western folk-lore are closely akin,
and the Lie-stories, or _Lügenmärchen_, in Nos. 4, 8, and 17 of these
Indian Tales find their parallels in most European collections. As an
example of the close kinship which prevails among the jests which make
merry the hearts of men far apart from each other, we may take the
Indian story of "Foolish Sachúlí," and compare it with the Russian
tale of "The Fool and the Birch Tree" (Afanasief, vol. v., No. 22).
Sachúlí kills a woman; his Russian counterpart kills a man. The corpse
of the woman is hidden away in a well, that of the man in a cellar. In
each case the fool's sensible relatives, knowing that he will be sure
to tell the truth if he is asked, withdraw the body during his
absence, and substitute for it that of an animal killed for the
purpose. When the seekers after the victim arrive at Sachúlí's home,
he at once conducts them to the well. Being let down into it, he asks,
"Has she got eyes?" "Of course, every one has eyes," is the reply.
"Has she a nose?" "Yes, she has a nose." But at last he inquires if
she has four feet; and the seekers after the dead woman find that the
body in the well is that of a sheep. In the same way, when the Russian
fool has confessed his guilt, and has gone into the cellar to look for
his victim's remains, he finds there the body of a goat. So he calls
out to the anxious inquirers, "Was your man dark-haired?" "He was."
"And had he a beard?" "Yes, he had a beard." "And had he horns?" "What
horns are you talking about, fool?" they reply. So he hands up the
goat's head, and the Russian tale comes to the same conclusion as the
Indian. The likeness here is too strong to be attributed to an
accidental coincidence.
* * * * *
It does not, of course, follow that, because a story is found both in
Europe and Asia, therefore the western version has been borrowed from
the east. Europe has, doubtless, sometimes lent a fancy to Asia. Greek
fables are supposed to have exercised an influence upon the Indian
mind. European missionaries may have sometimes rendered a Christian
legend current among Hindus. Professor Monier Williams was assured by
an intelligent native that the spread of railways had materially
diminished the number of malignant ghosts in India. Still, as a
general rule, the east is stubbornly conservative. The Japanese, it is
true, are abandoning their own costume and art for ours, not entirely
to their advantage. But the various peoples of India have never shown
any such tendencies towards change. In their popular fiction, at all
events, they have never shown an inclination to import foreign
manufactures in order to replace their home products. In their
thoughts and feelings they are now very much what they have been for
periods of time which it would be difficult to define. When we find
stories now current in all parts of India, which we know from their
occurrence in Sanskrit literature must have existed there very long
ago, and we see that the mythological element in those stories is in
accordance with religious ideas that have prevailed there for
countless centuries, we can have no doubt that these stories were
framed there at a very early period. Then if we find almost identical
stories current in all parts of Europe, many of their at least
apparently mythological features offering difficulties which cannot be
removed by a reference to the mythologies of the heathen ancestors of
the peasants who now repeat them, it seems not unreasonable to come to
the conclusion that such stories have been borrowed by the west from
the east. From mythological germs common to European and Asiatic
Aryans, it is quite true that legends might arise in Europe and in
Asia, independent of each other, but similar in their general tenor.
But it is not likely that out of any common germ could be
independently developed in several different countries as many
variants of the same tale, in each of which there is a similar
sequence of scenes or acts, and the dramatic action is brought to a
close by a termination that scarcely ever varies. Far more difficult
is it to believe in such a triumph of independent development, than to
place reliance upon a statement to the effect that the wave of
story-telling, as well as of empire, has wended its way westward.
W. R. S. RALSTON.
[Decoration]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. PHÚLMATI RÁNÍ, OR THE FLOWER LADY 1
II. THE POMEGRANATE KING 7
III. THE CAT AND THE DOG 15
IV. THE CAT WHICH COULD NOT BE KILLED 18
V. THE JACKAL AND THE KITE 21
VI. THE VORACIOUS FROG 24
VII. THE STORY OF FOOLISH SACHÚLÍ 27
VIII. BARBER HÍM AND THE TIGERS 35
IX. THE BULBUL AND THE COTTON-TREE 39
X. THE MONKEY PRINCE 41
XI. BRAVE HÍRÁLÁLBÁSÁ 51