It has often struck all lovers of Folklore and National Legends with
wonder, that so many countries should have reproduced in different
imagery and language the same tales. Persia, Arabia, and India give
us the same fables as Italy, France, Norway, and Iceland, except
for slight variations principally arising from difference of custom,
distance of time, idiom and nationality.
Able writers have explained this to us by a theory worthy of
consideration, and admirable in its origin, but nevertheless wholly
their own. They would have us believe that a certain group of
tales belonged to a certain nation, and that through emigration and
immigration, through wars and dispersions, these same tales have been
carried backwards and forwards and dragged from country to country
borrowing the language and peculiarities of the lands they passed
through, just as the seed of some rare plant is borne on the breeze
and bears fruit coarse or more refined according to the soil in which
it at last takes root.
In Germany we have Goedeck, Koehler, Sichecht, and a host of others who
tell us that these tales are Oriental, and that all fable originates
in the East, others again that they are transmitted to us by the
same channel as the Aryan languages from Aryan tradition. I cannot
see why one nation or one country alone should have the intelligence
of producing fables which as a rule are next to religion in their
teaching and intentions. If proverbs are the wisdom of nations, what
are fables and legends but developed proverbs. What is the meaning of
fable? It means an intent to convey moral instruction in a narrative
in which the characters are represented by birds, beasts, or fishes;
and often plants.
Practically a parable is the same thing, and folklore and fairy-tales
are the attempts of intelligent people to inculcate in their children
or other ignorant people the great truths of religion or wisdom, by
means of word-pictures that would bring these truths within the easy
grasp of undeveloped minds, it is the old repeated tale? The Struggle
between Right and Wrong. "Faust and Marguerite." The Wicked Punished,
The Virtuous Rewarded.
Disguise them as you will, there are certain tendons which run
through the world from age to age; cords which no human hand has yet
severed--which no decree of God's has changed--these are love and
death, hate and vengeance, virtue and vice, right and wrong, suffering
and joy; and as long as there is a world, as long as children are
born, parents will invent fables with which to bring these facts
before their offsprings' eyes in an intelligible manner.
In the fables of the East, and especially of India, there is one
peculiarity, namely, that craft and cunning are more generally
rewarded than virtue, and stupidity condemned. This is the national
characteristic. The tales of Southern India are as varied as any
others, either Eastern or European. Magic and supernatural phenomena
play a great part, but are usually assisted by the powers of the
gods. This is again a national Hindoo characteristic. The Hindoo
would shrink from any undertaking that is not under the patronage of
the gods; yet here is a very noticeable feature, namely, that the
divinities are treated as entirely secondary in power, interwoven
only into a man's daily affairs as a sort of backbone or support in
time of need, but to be despised and trampled upon at other times with
impunity. This is a natural feature in a nation which has a deity to
represent every vice and sin, and lends a certain character to the
tales of Southern India different to the folklore of other countries.
Probably further research will lay bare many still hidden treasures
of Hindoo folklore; but this small collection of tales will doubtless
suffice to throw light on Indian tradition, and to bring forward the
natural peculiarities of the Hindoos as well as the assimilation of
the folklore of different nations, an assimilation which I maintain
results from the teaching propensities of each country and not from
appropriation.
Georgiana Kingscote.