HINDOO, ARABIAN, AND PERSIAN FABLES.--PILPAY, LOCMAN.--THE 'GESTA
ROMANORUM.'
'When to my study I retire,
And from books of ancient sages
Glean fresh sparks of buried fire
Lurking in their ample pages--
While the task my mind engages
Let old words new truths inspire.'
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL.
The 'Panca Tantra' is a collection of Hindoo fables, the supposed
author of which was Vishnu Sarman, and this is believed to be the
source of 'The Fables of Pilpay' or _Bidpaī_, which are undoubtedly
of Indian origin. The transformation which these latter have
experienced in their progress down the ages, chiefly by reason of their
having been translated into the Arabic in the sixth century under the
name of the 'Book of Kalilah and Dimnah,' and afterwards into other
Eastern languages, has altered their Indian character, and caused them
to assume a Persian vesture and significance. They are rich in ripe
wisdom, and prove the insight of their author or authors into human
nature, which in those early days, and in those far countries, was much
as it is in more westerly communities and in our own times.
Taking the Æsopian fable as our model, the bulk of Pilpay's stories
are not fables _par excellence_. They are more of the nature of
_rencontres_ of adventures, fabulous, it is true, and containing
generally an excellent moral, but elaborated and complex for the
most part; they are wanting in the terseness, the crispness, and
concentration, as well as in the simplicity and spontaneity, of the
Greek. At the same time there is a freshness and vigour in these old
fables that is not sacrificed by translation, and they are sufficiently
striking and admirable as moral stories to justify the repute in which
they have always been held. _The Greedy and Ambitious Cat_ is one of
the stories in the Bidpaī collection.
'There was formerly an old woman in a village, extremely thin, half
starved, and meagre. She lived in a little cottage as dark and gloomy
as a fool's heart, and withal as close shut up as a miser's hand.[50]
This miserable creature had for the companion of her wretched
retirement a cat, meagre and lean as herself; the poor creature never
saw bread nor beheld the face of a stranger, and was forced to be
contented with only smelling the mice in their holes, or seeing the
prints of their feet in the dust. If by some extraordinary lucky chance
this miserable animal happened to catch a mouse, she was like a beggar
that discovers a treasure: her visage and her eyes were inflamed
with joy, and that booty served her for a whole week; and out of the
excess of her admiration, and distrust of her own happiness, she would
cry out to herself, "Heavens! is this a dream, or is it real?" One
day, however, ready to die for hunger, she got upon the ridge of her
enchanted castle, which had long been the mansion of famine for cats,
and spied from thence another cat, that was stalking upon a neighbour's
wall like a lion, walking along as if she were counting her steps, and
so fat that she could hardly go. The old woman's cat, astonished to see
a creature of her own species so plump and so large, with a loud voice
cries out to her pursy neighbour: "In the name of pity speak to me,
thou happiest of the cat kind! Why, you look as if you came from one of
the Khan of Kathais'[51] feasts; I conjure ye to tell me how or in what
region it is that you get your skin so well stuffed."
'"Where?" replied the fat one. "Why, where should one feed well but
at a king's table? I go to the house," continued she, "every day about
dinner-time, and there I lay my paws upon some delicious morsel or
other, which serves me till the next, and then leave enough for an army
of mice, which under me live in peace and tranquillity; for why should
I commit murder for a piece of tough and skinny mouse-flesh, when I can
live on venison at a much easier rate?"
'The lean cat, on this, eagerly inquired the way to this house of
plenty, and entreated her plump neighbour to carry her one day along
with her.
'"Most willingly," said the fat puss; "for thou seest I am naturally
charitable, and thou art so lean that I heartily pity thy condition."
'On this promise they parted, and the lean cat returned to the old
woman's chamber, where she told her dame the story of what had befallen
her.
'The old woman prudently endeavoured to dissuade her cat from
prosecuting her design, admonishing her withal to have a care of being
deceived.
'"For, believe me," said she, "the desires of the ambitious are never
to be satiated but when their mouths are stuffed with the dirt of
their graves. Sobriety and temperance are the only things that truly
enrich people. I must tell thee, poor silly cat, that they who travel
to satisfy their ambition have no knowledge of the good things they
possess, nor are they truly thankful to Heaven for what they enjoy, who
are not contented with their fortune."
'The poor starved cat, however, had conceived so fair an idea of
the king's table, that the old woman's good morals and judicious
remonstrances entered in at one ear and went out at the other; in
short, she departed the next day with the fat puss to go to the king's
house; but, alas! before she got thither her destiny had laid a snare
for her. For, being a house of good cheer, it was so haunted with cats
that the servants had, just at this time, orders to kill all the cats
that came near it, by reason of a great robbery committed the night
before in the king's larder by several grimalkins. The old woman's cat,
however, pushed on by hunger, entered the house, and no sooner saw a
dish of meat unobserved by the cooks, but she made a seizure of it,
and was doing what for many years she had not done before, that is,
heartily filling her belly; but as she was enjoying herself under the
dresser-board, and feeding heartily upon her stolen morsels, one of the
testy officers of the kitchen, missing his breakfast, and seeing where
the poor cat was solacing herself with it, threw his knife at her with
such an unlucky hand that it struck her full in the breast. However,
as it has been the providence of Nature to give this creature nine
lives instead of one, poor puss made a shift to crawl away, after she
had for some time shammed dead; but in her flight, observing the blood
come streaming from her wound--"Well," said she, "let me but escape
this accident, and if ever I quit my old home and my own mice for all
the rarities in the king's kitchen, may I lose all my nine lives at
once!"'
The moral of the story is, that it is better to be contented with what
one has than to travel in search of what ambition prompts us to seek
for.
In the Escurial, near Madrid, the library of which is rich in ancient
literary treasures, is a work by Ebn Arabscah, a collection of Arabian
fables. Arabia may with truth be designated the very fountain-head
of fabulous story. It was in that country that the venerable Locman
flourished, during, it is believed, the reigns of the Jewish kings
David and Solomon. Berington, in his essay on 'The Arabian or Saracenic
Learning,' remarks that Locman is said to have been an Ethiopian or
Nubian, extremely deformed in his person, but so famed for wisdom as to
have acquired the appellation of the Sage. His fables and moral maxims,
written for the instruction of mankind, were in the estimation of the
Eastern people a gift from heaven, and they received them as its
inspired dictates. 'Heretofore,' says the Divine being in the Koran,
'we gave wisdom to Locman.' The same writer suggests whether Locman and
Æsop may not be the same person. 'The history of the two sages is so
perfectly similar in their characters and the incidents of their lives,
that one must have been borrowed from the other. But the chronological
difficulties,' he adds, 'are sufficiently perplexing.'
We have already seen that the alleged similarity in character and
bodily appearance was due to the invention or misconception of
Planudes, whose story of Æsop was written in the fourteenth century,
and therefore the seeming identity of the sages falls to the ground.
Moreover, the fables of Æsop have a mobility about them which we do not
find in those of other fabulists; they are essentially Attic in their
diction, exhibiting all the marks of that compressed wit and wisdom for
which the ancient Greek mind was distinguished. Eastern fable, on the
other hand, is ornate and florid, and wanting in the Grecian clear-cut
directness and point. It is idle to assume that the ideas, if not the
diction, may have been borrowed and clothed in a new dress, unless it
can be shown that the substance or subject-matter of the fables of the
two sages is alike or similar in character. Granted that a few--about a
dozen in number[52]--of the Æsopian fables find their counterpart in
the fables of a more remote antiquity and in more Eastern countries,
this circumstance might be expected; ideas dating from the very advent
of the human race are current amongst us in this day, but surely even
we of the nineteenth century have a sufficient stock of original
conceptions to justify our claims to be considered inventors, and so
with Æsop and the race of fabulists in all ages.
Mrs. Jameson says,[53] with great force and truth, that 'the fables
which appeal to our higher moral sympathies may sometimes do as much
for us as the truths of science,' and she paraphrases from Sir William
Jones's Persian Grammar a fable embodying one of those traditions of
our Lord which are preserved in the East.
'Jesus,' says the story, 'arrived one evening at the gates of a certain
city, and He sent His disciples forward to prepare supper, while He
Himself, intent on doing good, walked through the streets into the
market place.
'And He saw at the corner of the market some people gathered together
looking at an object on the ground; and He drew near to see what it
might be. It was a dead dog with a halter round his neck, by which
he appeared to have been dragged through the dirt; and a viler, more
abject, a more unclean thing never met the eyes of man.
'And those who stood by looked on with abhorrence.
'"Faugh!" said one, stopping his nose, "it pollutes the air." "How
long," said another, "shall this foul beast offend our sight?" "Look
at his torn hide," said a third; "one could not even cut a shoe out of
it." "And his ears," said a fourth, "all draggled and bleeding!" "No
doubt," said a fifth, "he hath been hanged for thieving!"
'And Jesus heard them, and looking down compassionately on the dead
creature, He said, "Pearls are not equal to the whiteness of his teeth!"
'Then the people turned towards Him with amazement, and said among
themselves, "Who is this? this must be Jesus of Nazareth, for only _He_
could find something to pity and approve even in a dead dog!" And being
ashamed, they bowed their heads before Him, and went each on his way.'
'I can recall,' continues Mrs. Jameson, 'at this hour, the vivid,
yet softening and pathetic, impression left on my fancy by this old
Eastern story. It struck me as exquisitely humorous, as well as
exquisitely beautiful. It gave me a pain in my conscience, for it
seemed thenceforward so easy and so vulgar to say satirical things,
and so much nobler to be benign and merciful; and I took the lesson so
home that I was in great danger of falling into the opposite extreme;
of seeking the beautiful even in the midst of the corrupt and the
repulsive. Pity, a large element in my composition, might have easily
degenerated into weakness, threatening to subvert hatred of evil in
trying to find excuses for it; and whether my mind has ever completely
righted itself, I am not sure.'
Our remarks on the fables of Pilpay are equally applicable to the
'Gesta Romanorum' or 'Entertaining Moral Stories' invented by the monks
as a fireside recreation in the Middle Ages. Most of them are recitals
of adventures rather than fables. They are believed to be of English
origin, though a similar 'Gesta,' composed of stories in imitation of
them, appeared in Germany about the same time. The taste displayed in
many of them is of a questionable kind, and an outrageous twist is
often given to their application; though doubtless they are a truthful
reflex of the ideas and manners of the age in which they were composed
and rehearsed, and in that respect they are of the utmost interest and
value. Most of the fables or tales in the 'Gesta' begin well, and
with a promise of interest. This interest, it must be said, is rarely
maintained, for, as a rule, their conclusion is insipid, and sometimes
inane. This notwithstanding, they are valuable by reason of their
suggestiveness. The two examples we quote, translated from the Latin
by the Rev. Charles Swan, are not faultless, but they are coherent
throughout, and have a rounded literary finish in which many of the
others are wanting. The first is entitled _Of Perfect Life_:
'When Titus was Emperor of Rome, he made a decree that the natal
day of his first-born son should be held sacred, and that whosoever
violated it by any kind of labour should be put to death. This edict
being promulgated, he called Virgil, the learned man, to him, and
said, "Good friend, I have established a certain law, but as offences
may frequently be committed without being discovered by the ministers
of justice, I desire you to frame some curious piece of art which may
reveal to me every transgressor of the law." Virgil replied, "Sire,
your will shall be accomplished." He straightway constructed a magic
statue, and caused it to be erected in the midst of the city. By virtue
of the secret powers with which it was invested, it communicated to the
Emperor whatever offences were committed in secret on that day. And
thus, by the accusation of the statue, an infinite number of persons
were convicted.
'Now, there was a certain carpenter, called Focus, who pursued his
occupation every day alike. Once, as he lay in his bed, his thoughts
turned upon the accusations of the statue, and the multitudes which it
had caused to perish. In the morning he clothed himself, and proceeded
to the statue, which he addressed in the following manner: "O statue!
statue! because of thy informations, many of our citizens have been
apprehended and slain. I vow to my God that, if thou accusest me, I
will break thy head." Having so said, he returned home. About the first
hour, the Emperor, as he was wont, despatched sundry messengers to the
statue to inquire if the edict had been strictly complied with. After
they had arrived and delivered the Emperor's pleasure, the statue
exclaimed, "Friends, look up: what see ye written upon my forehead?"
They looked, and beheld three sentences, which ran thus: "Times are
altered. Men grow worse. He who speaks truth will have his head
broken." "Go," said the statue; "declare to his majesty what you have
seen and read." The messengers obeyed, and detailed the circumstances
as they had happened.
'The Emperor thereupon commanded his guard to arm, and march to the
place on which the statue was erected; and he further ordered that,
if any one presumed to molest it, they should bind him hand and foot
and drag him into his presence. The soldiers approached the statue,
and said: "Our Emperor wills you to declare who have broken the law,
and who they are that threatened you." The statue made answer, "Seize
Focus, the carpenter! Every day he violates the law, and, moreover,
menaces me." Immediately Focus was apprehended and conducted to the
Emperor, who said, "Friend, what do I hear of thee? Why dost thou break
my law?" "My lord," answered Focus, "I cannot keep it; for I am obliged
to obtain every day eight pennies, which, without incessant labour, I
have not the means of acquiring." "And why eight pennies?" said the
Emperor. "Every day through the year," returned the carpenter, "I am
bound to repay two pennies which I borrowed in my youth; two I lend;
two I lose; and two I spend." "You must make this more clear," said the
Emperor. "My lord," he replied, "listen to me. I am bound each day to
repay two pennies to my father; for when I was a boy my father expended
upon me daily the like sum. Now he is poor, and needs my assistance,
and therefore I return what I borrowed formerly. Two other pennies I
lend to my son, who is pursuing his studies, in order that, if by any
chance I should fall into poverty, he may restore the loan, just as I
have done to his grandfather. Again, I lose two pennies every day on my
wife; for she is contradictious, wilful, and passionate. Now, because
of this disposition, I account whatsoever is given to her entirely
lost. Lastly, two other pennies I expend upon myself in meat and drink,
I cannot do with less; nor can I obtain them without unremitting
labour. You now know the truth, and I pray you give a righteous
judgment." "Friend," said the Emperor, "thou hast answered well. Go,
and labour earnestly in thy calling." Soon after this the Emperor died,
and Focus the carpenter, on account of his singular wisdom, was elected
in his stead, by the unanimous choice of the whole nation. He governed
as wisely as he had lived; and at his death his picture, bearing on the
head eight pennies, was reposited among the effigies of the deceased
Emperors.
'Application: My beloved, the Emperor is God, who appointed Sunday
as a day of rest. By Virgil is typified the Holy Spirit, which
ordains a preacher to declare men's virtues and vices. Focus is any
good Christian who labours diligently in his vocation, and performs
faithfully every relative duty.'
The story has point and humour, but in the latter quality it is
surpassed by the next one, entitled _Confession_.
'A certain Emperor, named Asmodeus, established an ordinance, by
which every malefactor taken and brought before the judge should,
if he distinctly declared three truths, against which no exception
could be taken, obtain his life and property. It chanced that a
certain soldier transgressed the law and fled. He hid himself in a
forest, and there committed many atrocities, despoiling and slaying
whomsoever he could lay his hands upon. When the judge of the district
ascertained his haunt, he ordered the forest to be surrounded, and
the soldier to be seized and brought bound to the seat of judgment.
"You know the law," said the judge. "I do," returned the other: "If I
declare three unquestionable truths, I shall be free; but if not, I
must die." "True," replied the judge; "take, then, advantage of the
law's clemency, or this very day you shall not taste food until you
are hanged." "Cause silence to be kept," said the soldier. His wish
being complied with, he proceeded in the following manner. "The first
truth is this: I protest before ye all, that from my youth up I have
been a bad man." The judge, hearing this, said to the bystanders:
"He says true, else he had not now been in this situation. Go on,
then," continued the judge; "what is the second truth?" "I like not,"
exclaimed he, "the dangerous situation in which I stand." "Certainly,"
said the judge, "we may credit thee. Now then for the third truth,
and thou hast saved thy life." "Why," he replied, "if I once get out
of this confounded place, I will never willingly re-enter it." "Amen,"
said the judge, "thy wit hath preserved thee; go in peace." And thus he
was saved.
'Application: My beloved, the emperor is Christ. The soldier is any
sinner; the judge is a wise confessor. If the sinner confess the truth
in such a manner as not even demons can object, he shall be saved; that
is, if he confess and repent.'
The 'Gesta' is a rich storehouse from which many poets, including
Gower, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Parnell, and others, have
borrowed. Shakespeare's 'Pericles' has its source in the 'Gesta'; so
also Parnell's delightful poem, 'The Hermit,' and Dr. John Byrom's
'Three Black Crows' are from the same prolific treasure-house.
FOOTNOTES:
[50] In the whole range of literature there are no apter similes than
these: the darkness and gloom of the fool's heart and the closeness of
the miser's fist.
[51] A nobleman of the East, famous for his hospitality.
[52] 'About a dozen instances or so must stand for the present as
representing the contribution of the Jātakas to the question of the
origin of Æsop's fables.'--Jacobs: 'History of Fable.'
[53] In her 'Commonplace Book,' Longmans, 1854, pp. 142, 143.