The story literature of India is in a large measure the outcome of the
moral revolution of the peninsula connected with the name of Gautama
Buddha. As the influence of his life and doctrines grew, a tendency
arose to connect all the popular stories of India round the great
teacher. This could be easily effected owing to the wide spread of the
belief in metempsychosis. All that was told of the sages of the past
could be interpreted of the Buddha by representing them as
pre-incarnations of him. Even with Fables, or beast-tales, this could
be done, for the Hindoos were Darwinists long before Darwin, and
regarded beasts as cousins of men and stages of development in the
progress of the soul through the ages. Thus, by identifying the Buddha
with the heroes of all folk-tales and the chief characters in the
beast-drolls, the Buddhists were enabled to incorporate the whole of
the story-store of Hindostan in their sacred books, and enlist on
their side the tale-telling instincts of men.
In making Buddha the centre figure of the popular literature of India,
his followers also invented the Frame as a method of literary art. The
idea of connecting a number of disconnected stories familiar to us
from _The Arabian Nights_, Boccaccio's _Decamerone_, Chaucer's
_Canterbury Tales_, or even _Pickwick_, is directly traceable to the
plan of making Buddha the central figure of India folk-literature.
Curiously enough, the earliest instance of this in Buddhist literature
was intended to be a Decameron, ten tales of Buddha's previous births,
told of each of the ten Perfections. Asvagosha, the earlier Boccaccio,
died when he had completed thirty-four of the Birth-Tales. But other
collections were made, and at last a corpus of the JATAKAS, or
Birth-Tales of the Buddha, was carried over to Ceylon, possibly as
early as the first introduction of Buddhism, 241 B.C. There they have
remained till the present day, and have at last been made accessible
in a complete edition in the original Pali by Prof. Fausböll.
These JATAKAS, as we now have them, are enshrined in a commentary on
the _gathas_, or moral verses, written in Ceylon by one of
Buddhaghosa's school in the fifth century A.D. They invariably begin
with a "Story of the Present," an incident in Buddha's life which
calls up to him a "Story of the Past," a folk-tale in which he had
played a part during one of his former incarnations. Thus the fable of
the Lion and the Crane, which opens the present collection, is
introduced by a "Story of the Present" in the following words:--
"A service have we done thee" [the opening words of the _gatha_ or
moral verse]. "This the Master told while living at Jetavana
concerning Devadatta's treachery. Not only now, O Bhickkus, but in a
former existence was Devadatta ungrateful. And having said this he
told a tale." Then follows the tale as given above (pp. 1, 2), and the
commentary concludes: "The Master, having given the lesson, summed up
the Jataka thus: 'At that time, the Lion was Devadatta, and the Crane
was I myself.'" Similarly, with each story of the past the Buddha
identifies himself, or is mentioned as identical with, the virtuous
hero of the folk-tale. These Jatakas are 550 in number, and have been
reckoned to include some 2000 tales. Some of these had been translated
by Mr. Rhys-Davids (_Buddhist Birth Stories, I._, Trübner's Oriental
Library, 1880), Prof. Fausböll (_Five Jatakas_, Copenhagen), and Dr.
R. Morris (_Folk-Lore Journal_, vols. ii.-v.). A few exist sculptured
on the earliest Buddhist Stupas. Thus several of the circular figure
designs on the reliefs from Amaravati, now on the grand staircase of
the British Museum, represent Jatakas, or previous births of the
Buddha.
Some of the Jatakas bear a remarkable resemblance to some of the most
familiar FABLES OF ÆSOP. So close is the resemblance, indeed, that it
is impossible not to surmise an historical relation between the two.
What this relation is I have discussed at considerable length in the
"History of the Æsopic Fable," which forms the introductory volume to
my edition of Caxton's _Esope_ (London, D. Nutt, "Bibliothèque de
Carabas," 1889). In this place I can only roughly summarise my
results. I conjecture that a collection of fables existed in India
before Buddha and independently of the Jatakas, and connected with the
name of Kasyapa, who was afterwards made by the Buddhists into the
latest of the twenty-seven pre-incarnations of the Buddha. This
collection of the Fables of Kasyapa was brought to Europe with a
deputation from the Cingalese King Chandra Muka Siwa (obiit 52 A.D.)
to the Emperor Claudius about 50 A.D., and was done into Greek as the
[Greek: Logoi Lybikoi] of "Kybises." These were utilised by
Babrius (from whom the Greek Æsop is derived) and Avian, and so came
into the European Æsop. I have discussed all those that are to be
found in the Jatakas in the "History" before mentioned, i. pp. 54-72
(see Notes i. xv. xx.). In these Notes henceforth I refer to this
"History" as my _Æsop_.
There were probably other Buddhist collections of a similar nature to
the Jatakas with a framework. When the Hindu reaction against Buddhism
came, the Brahmins adapted these, with the omission of Buddha as the
central figure. There is scarcely any doubt that the so-called FABLES
OF BIDPAI were thus derived from Buddhistic sources. In its Indian
form this is now extant as a _Panchatantra_ or Pentateuch, five books
of tales connected by a Frame. This collection is of special interest
to us in the present connection, as it has come to Europe in various
forms and shapes. I have edited Sir Thomas North's English version of
an Italian adaptation of a Spanish translation of a Latin version of a
Hebrew translation of an Arabic adaptation of the Pehlevi version of
the Indian original (_Fables of Bidpai_, London, D. Nutt,
"Bibliothèque de Carabas," 1888). In this I give a genealogical table
of the various versions, from which I calculate that the tales have
been translated into thirty-eight languages in 112 different versions,
twenty different ones in English alone. Their influence on European
folk-tales has been very great: it is probable that nearly one-tenth
of these can be traced to the Bidpai literature. (See Notes v. ix. x.
xiii. xv.)
Other collections of a similar character, arranged in a frame, and
derived ultimately from Buddhistic sources, also reached Europe and
formed popular reading in the Middle Ages. Among these may be
mentioned THE TALES OF SINDIBAD, known to Europe as _The Seven Sages
of Rome:_ from this we get the Gellert story (_cf. Celtic Fairy
Tales_), though it also occurs in the Bidpai. Another popular
collection was that associated with the life of St. Buddha, who has
been canonised as St. Josaphat: BARLAAM AND JOSAPHAT tells of his
conversion and much else besides, including the tale of the Three
Caskets, used by Shakespeare in the _Merchant of Venice_.
Some of the Indian tales reached Europe at the time of the Crusades,
either orally or in collections no longer extant. The earliest
selection of these was the _Disciplina Clericalis_ of Petrus Alphonsi,
a Spanish Jew converted about 1106: his tales were to be used as
seasoning for sermons, and strong seasoning they must have proved.
Another Spanish collection of considerably later date was entitled _El
Conde Lucanor_ (Eng. trans. by W. York): this contains the fable of
_The Man, his Son, and their Ass_, which they ride or carry as the
popular voice decides. But the most famous collection of this kind
was that known as GESTA ROMANORUM, much of which was certainly derived
from Oriental and ultimately Indian sources, and so might more
appropriately be termed _Gesta Indorum_.
All these collections, which reached Europe in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, became very popular, and were used by monks and
friars to enliven their sermons as EXEMPLA. Prof. Crane has given a
full account of this very curious phenomenon in his erudite edition of
the _Exempla of Jacques de Vitry_ (Folk Lore Society, 1890). The
Indian stories were also used by the Italian _Novellieri_, much of
Boccaccio and his school being derived from this source. As these
again gave material for the Elizabethan Drama, chiefly in W. Painter's
_Palace of Pleasure_, a collection of translated _Novelle_ which I
have edited (Lond., 3 vols. 1890), it is not surprising that we can at
times trace portions of Shakespeare back to India. It should also be
mentioned that one-half of La Fontaine's Fables (Bks. vii.-xii.) are
derived from Indian sources. (_See_ Note on No. v.)
In India itself the collection of stories in frames went on and still
goes on. Besides those already mentioned there are the stories of
_Vikram and the Vampire_ (Vetala), translated among others by the late
Sir Richard Burton, and the seventy stories of a parrot (_Suka
Saptati_). The whole of this literature was summed up by Somadeva, c.
1200 A.D. in a huge compilation entitled _Katha Sarit Sagara_ ("Ocean
of the Stream of Stories"). Of this work, written in very florid
style, Mr. Tawney has produced a translation in two volumes in the
_Bibliotheca Indica_. Unfortunately, there is a Divorce Court
atmosphere about the whole book, and my selections from it have been
accordingly restricted. (Notes, No. xi.)
So much for a short sketch of Indian folk-tales so far as they have
been reduced to writing in the native literature.[2] The Jatakas are
probably the oldest collection of such tales in literature, and the
greater part of the rest are demonstrably more than a thousand years
old. It is certain that much (perhaps one-fifth) of the popular
literature of modern Europe is derived from those portions of this
large bulk which came west with the Crusades through the medium of
Arabs and Jews. In his elaborate _Einleitung_ to the _Pantschatantra_,
the Indian version of the Fables of Bidpai, Prof. Benfey contended
with enormous erudition that the majority of folk-tale incidents were
to be found in the Bidpai literature. His introduction consisted of
over 200 monographs on the spread of Indian tales to Europe. He wrote
in 1859, before the great outburst of folk-tale collection in Europe,
and he had not thus adequate materials to go about in determining the
extent of Indian influence on the popular mind of Europe. But he made
it clear that for beast-tales and for drolls, the majority of those
current in the mouths of occidental people were derived from Eastern
and mainly Indian sources. He was not successful, in my opinion, in
tracing the serious fairy tale to India. Few of the tales in the
Indian literary collections could be dignified by the name of fairy
tales, and it was clear that if these were to be traced to India, an
examination of the contemporary folk-tales of the peninsula would have
to be attempted.
[Footnote 2: An admirable and full account of this literature was
given by M. A. Barth in _Mélusine_, t. iv. No. 12, and t. v. No. 1.
See also Table i. of Prof. Rhys-Davids' _Birth Stories_.]
The collection of current Indian folk-tales has been the work of the
last quarter of a century, a work, even after what has been achieved,
still in its initial stages. The credit of having begun the process is
due to Miss Frere, who, while her father was Governor of the Bombay
Presidency, took down from the lips of her _ayah_, Anna de Souza, one
of a Lingaet family from Goa who had been Christian for three
generations, the tales she afterwards published with Mr. Murray in
1868, under the title, "_Old Deccan Days, or, Indian Fairy Legends
current in Southern India, collected from oral tradition by M. Frere,
with an introduction and notes by Sir Bartle Frere_." Her example was
followed by Miss Stokes in her _Indian Fairy Tales_ (London, Ellis &
White, 1880), who took down her tales from two _ayahs_ and a
_Khitmatgar_, all of them Bengalese--the _ayahs_ Hindus, and the man a
Mohammedan. Mr. Ralston introduced the volume with some remarks which
dealt too much with sun-myths for present-day taste. Another
collection from Bengal was that of Lal Behari Day, a Hindu gentleman,
in his _Folk-Tales of Bengal_ (London, Macmillan, 1883). The Panjab
and the Kashmir then had their turn: Mrs. Steel collected, and Captain
(now Major) Temple edited and annotated, their _Wideawake Stories_
(London, Trübner, 1884), stories capitally told and admirably
annotated. Captain Temple increased the value of this collection by a
remarkable analysis of all the incidents contained in the two hundred
Indian folk-tales collected up to this date. It is not too much to say
that this analysis marks an onward step in the scientific study of the
folk-tale: there is such a thing, derided as it may be. I have
throughout the Notes been able to draw attention to Indian parallels
by a simple reference to Major Temple's Analysis.
Major Temple has not alone himself collected: he has been the cause
that many others have collected. In the pages of the _Indian
Antiquary_, edited by him, there have appeared from time to time
folk-tales collected from all parts of India. Some of these have been
issued separately. Sets of tales from Southern India, collected by the
Pandit Natesa Sastri, have been issued under the title _Folk-Lore of
Southern India_, three fascicules of which have been recently
re-issued by Mrs. Kingscote under the title, _Tales of the Sun_ (W. H.
Allen, 1891): it would have been well if the identity of the two works
had been clearly explained. The largest addition to our knowledge of
the Indian folk-tale that has been made since _Wideawake Stories_ is
that contained in Mr. Knowles' _Folk-Tales of Kashmir_ (Trübner's
Oriental Library, 1887), sixty-three stories, some of great length.
These, with Mr. Campbell's _Santal Tales_ (1892); Ramaswami Raju's
_Indian Fables_ (London, Sonnenschein, n.d.); M. Thornhill, _Indian
Fairy Tales_ (London, 1889); and E. J. Robinson, _Tales of S. India_
(1885), together with those contained in books of travel like
Thornton's _Bannu_ or Smeaton's _Karens of Burmah_ bring up the list
of printed Indian folk-tales to over 350--a respectable total indeed,
but a mere drop in the ocean of the stream of stories that must exist
in such a huge population as that of India: the Central Provinces in
particular are practically unexplored. There are doubtless many
collections still unpublished. Col. Lewin has large numbers, besides
the few published in his _Lushai Grammar_; and Mr. M. L. Dames has a
number of Baluchi tales which I have been privileged to use.
Altogether, India now ranks among the best represented countries for
printed folk-tales, coming only after Russia (1500), Germany (1200),
Italy and France (1000 each.)[3] Counting the ancient with the modern,
India has probably some 600 to 700 folk-tales printed and translated
in accessible form. There should be enough material to determine the
vexed question of the relations between the European and the Indian
collections.
[Footnote 3: Finland boasts of 12,000, but most of these lie unprinted
among the archives of the Helsingfors Literary Society.]
This question has taken a new departure with the researches of M.
Emanuel Cosquin in his _Contes populaires de Lorraine_ (Paris, 1886,
2^e tirage, 1890), undoubtedly the most important contribution to the
scientific study of the folk-tale since the Grimms. M. Cosquin gives
in the annotations to the eighty-four tales which he has collected in
Lorraine a mass of information as to the various forms which the tales
take in other countries of Europe and in the East. In my opinion, the
work he has done for the European folk-tale is even more valuable than
the conclusions he draws from it as to the relations with India. He
has taken up the work which Wilhelm Grimm dropped in 1859, and shown
from the huge accumulations of folk-tales that have appeared during
the last thirty years that there is a common fund of folk-tales which
every country of Europe without exception possesses, though this does
not of course preclude them from possessing others that are not shared
by the rest. M. Cosquin further contends that the whole of these have
come from the East, ultimately from India, not by literary
transmission, as Benfey contended, but by oral transmission. He has
certainly shown that very many of the most striking incidents common
to European folk-tales are also to be found in Eastern _mährchen_.
What, however, he has failed to show is that some of these may not
have been carried out to the Eastern world by Europeans. Borrowing
tales is a mutual process, and when Indian meets European, European
meets Indian; which borrowed from which, is a question which we have
very few criteria to decide. It should be added that Mr W. A. Clouston
has in England collected with exemplary industry a large number of
parallels between Indian and European folk-tale incidents in his
_Popular Tales and Fictions_ (Edinburgh, 2 vols., 1887) and _Book of
Noodles_ (London, 1888). Mr Clouston has not openly expressed his
conviction that all folk-tales are Indian in origin: he prefers to
convince us _non vi sed sæpe cadendo_. He has certainly made out a
good case for tracing all European drolls, or comic folk-tales, from
the East.
With the fairy tale strictly so called--_i.e._, the serious folk-tale
of romantic adventure--I am more doubtful. It is mainly a modern
product in India as in Europe, so far as literary evidence goes. The
vast bulk of the Jatakas does not contain a single example worthy the
name, nor does the Bidpai literature. Some of Somadeva's tales,
however, approach the nature of fairy tales, but there are several
Celtic tales which can be traced to an earlier date than his (1200
A.D.) and are equally near to fairy tales. Yet it is dangerous to
trust to mere non-appearance in literature as proof of non-existence
among the folk. To take our own tales here in England, there is not a
single instance of a reference to _Jack and the Beanstalk_ for the
last three hundred years, yet it is undoubtedly a true folk-tale. And
it is indeed remarkable how many of the _formulæ_ of fairy tales have
been found of recent years in India. Thus, the _Magic Fiddle_, found
among the Santals by Mr. Campbell in two variants (see Notes on vi.),
contains the germ idea of the wide-spread story represented in Great
Britain by the ballad of _Binnorie_ (see _English Fairy Tales_, No.
ix.). Similarly, Mr. Knowles' collection has added considerably to the
number of Indian variants of European "formulæ" beyond those noted by
M. Cosquin.
It is still more striking as regards _incidents_. In a paper read
before the Folk-Lore Congress of 1891, and reprinted in the
_Transactions_, pp. 76 _seq._, I have drawn up a list of some 630
incidents found in common among European folk-tales (including
drolls). Of these, I reckon that about 250 have been already found
among Indian folk-tales, and the number is increased by each new
collection that is made or printed. The moral of this is, that India
belongs to a group of peoples who have a common store of stories;
India belongs to Europe for purposes of comparative folk-tales.
Can we go further and say that India is the source of all the
incidents that are held in common by European children? I think we may
answer "Yes" as regards droll incidents, the travels of many of which
we can trace, and we have the curious result that European children
owe their earliest laughter to Hindu wags. As regards the serious
incidents further inquiry is needed. Thus, we find the incident of an
"external soul" (Life Index, Captain Temple very appropriately named
it) in Asbjornsen's _Norse Tales_ and in Miss Frere's _Old Deccan
Days_ (see Notes on _Punchkin_). Yet the latter is a very suspicious
source, since Miss Frere derived her tales from a Christian _ayah_
whose family had been in Portuguese Goa for a hundred years. May they
not have got the story of the giant with his soul outside his body
from some European sailor touching at Goa? This is to a certain extent
negatived by the fact of the frequent occurrence of the incident in
Indian folk-tales (Captain Temple gave a large number of instances in
_Wideawake Stories_, pp. 404-5). On the other hand, Mr. Frazer in his
_Golden Bough_ has shown the wide spread of the idea among all savage
or semi-savage tribes. (See Note on No. iv.)
In this particular case we may be doubtful; but in others, again--as
the incident of the rat's tail up nose (see Notes on _The Charmed
Ring_)--there can be little doubt of the Indian origin. And generally,
so far as the incidents are marvellous and of true fairy-tale
character, the presumption is in favour of India, because of the
vitality of animism or metempsychosis in India throughout all historic
time. No Hindu would doubt the fact of animals speaking or of men
transformed into plants and animals. The European may once have had
these beliefs, and may still hold them implicitly as "survivals"; but
in the "survival" stage they cannot afford material for artistic
creation, and the fact that the higher minds of Europe for the last
thousand years have discountenanced these beliefs has not been
entirely without influence. Of one thing there is practical certainty:
the fairy tales that are common to the Indo-European world were
invented once for all in a certain locality, and thence spread to all
the countries in culture contact with the original source. The mere
fact that contiguous countries have more similarities in their story
store than distant ones is sufficient to prove this: indeed, the fact
that any single country has spread throughout it a definite set of
folk-tales as distinctive as its flora and fauna, is sufficient to
prove it. It is equally certain that not all folk-tales have come from
one source, for each country has tales peculiar to itself. The
question is as to the source of the tales that are common to all
European children, and increasing evidence seems to show that this
common nucleus is derived from India and India alone. The Hindus have
been more successful than others, because of two facts: they have had
the appropriate "atmosphere" of metempsychosis, and they have also had
spread among the people sufficient literary training and mental grip
to invent plots. The Hindu tales have ousted the native European,
which undoubtedly existed independently; indeed, many still survive,
especially in Celtic lands. Exactly in the same way, Perrault's tales
have ousted the older English folk-tales, and it is with the utmost
difficulty that one can get true English fairy tales because _Red
Riding Hood_, _Cinderella_, _Blue Beard_, _Puss in Boots_ and the
rest, have survived in the struggle for existence among English
folk-tales. So far as Europe has a common store of fairy tales, it
owes this to India.
I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not hold with Benfey that all
European folk-tales are derived from the Bidpai literature and similar
literary products, nor with M. Cosquin that they are all derived from
India. The latter scholar has proved that there is a nucleus of
stories in every European land which is common to all. I calculate
that this includes from 30 to 50 per cent. of the whole, and it is
this common stock of Europe that I regard as coming from India mainly
at the time of the Crusades, and chiefly by oral transmission. It
includes all the beast tales and most of the drolls, but evidence is
still lacking about the more serious fairy tales, though it is
increasing with every fresh collection of folk-tales in India, the
great importance of which is obvious from the above considerations.
In the following Notes I give, as on the two previous occasions, the
_source_ whence I derived the tale, then _parallels_, and finally
_remarks_. For Indian _parallels_ I have been able to refer to Major
Temple's remarkable Analysis of Indian Folk-tale incidents at the end
of _Wideawake Stories_ (pp. 386-436), for European ones to my
alphabetical List of Incidents, with bibliographical references, in
_Transactions of Folk-Lore Congress_, 1892, pp. 87-98. My _remarks_
have been mainly devoted to tracing the relation between the Indian
and the European tales, with the object of showing that the latter
have been derived from the former. I have, however, to some extent
handicapped myself, as I have avoided giving again the Indian versions
of stories already given in _English Fairy Tales_ or _Celtic Fairy
Tales_.