_Source._--Miss Stokes, _Indian Fairy Tales_, No. xxii. pp. 153-63,
told by Múniyá, one of the ayahs. I have left it unaltered, except
that I have replaced "God" by "Khuda," the word originally used (see
Notes _l. c._, p. 237).
_Parallels._--The tabu, as to a particular direction, occurs in other
Indian stories as well as in European folk-tales (see notes on Stokes, p.
286). The _grateful animals_ theme occurs in "The Soothsayer's Son"
(_infra_, No. x.), and frequently in Indian folk-tales (see Temple's
Analysis, III. i. 5-7; _Wideawake Stories_, pp. 412-3). The thorn in the
tiger's foot is especially common (Temple, _l. c._, 6, 9), and recalls the
story of Androclus, which occurs in the derivates of Phædrus, and may thus
be Indian in origin (see Benfey, _Panschatantra_, i. 211, and the parallels
given in my _Æsop_, Ro. iii. I. p. 243). The theme is, however, equally
frequent in European folk-tales: see my List of Incidents, _Proc. Folk-Lore
Congress_, p. 91, s.v. "Grateful Animals" and "Gifts by Grateful Animals."
Similarly, the "Bride Wager" incident at the end is common to a large
number of Indian and European folk-tales (Temple, Analysis, p. 430; my
List, _l.c. sub voce_). The tasks are also equally common (_cf._ "Battle
of the Birds" in _Celtic Fairy Tales_), though the exact forms as given in
"Princess Labam" are not known in Europe.
_Remarks._--We have here a concrete instance of the relation of Indian
and European fairy-tales. The human mind may be the same everywhere,
but it is not likely to hit upon the sequence of incidents, _Direction
tabu_--_Grateful Animals_--_Bride-wager_--_Tasks_, by accident, or
independently: Europe must have borrowed from India, or India from
Europe. As this must have occurred within historic times, indeed
within the last thousand years, when even European peasants are not
likely to have _invented_, even if they believed, in the incident of
the grateful animals, the probability is in favour of borrowing from
India, possibly through the intermediation of Arabs at the time of
the Crusades. It is only a probability, but we cannot in any case
reach more than probability in this matter, just at present.