_Source._--Miss Frere, _Old Deccan Days_, pp. 1-16, from her ayah,
Anna de Souza, of a Lingaet family settled and Christianised at Goa
for three generations. I should perhaps add that a Prudhan is a Prime
Minister, or Vizier; Punts are the same, and Sirdars, nobles.
_Parallels._--The son of seven mothers is a characteristic Indian
conception, for which see Notes on "The Son of Seven Queens" in this
collection, No. xvi. The mother transformed, envious stepmother, ring
recognition, are all incidents common to East and West;
bibliographical references for parallels may be found under these
titles in my List of Incidents. The external soul of the ogre has been
studied by Mr. E. Clodd in _Folk-Lore Journal_, vol. ii., "The
Philosophy of Punchkin," and still more elaborately in the section,
"The External Soul in Folk-tales," in Mr. Frazer's _Golden Bough_, ii.
pp. 296-326. See also Major Temple's Analysis, II. iii., _Wideawake
Stories_, pp. 404-5, who there gives the Indian parallels.
_Remarks._--Both Mr. Clodd and Mr. Frazer regard the essence of the
tale to consist in the conception of an external soul or "life-index,"
and they both trace in this a "survival" of savage philosophy, which
they consider occurs among all men at a certain stage of culture. But
the most cursory examination of the sets of tales containing these
incidents in Mr. Frazer's analyses shows that many, indeed the
majority, of these tales cannot be independent of one another; for
they contain not alone the incident of an external materialised soul,
but the further point that this is contained in something else, which
is enclosed in another thing, which is again surrounded by a wrapper.
This Chinese ball arrangement is found in the Deccan ("Punchkin"); in
Bengal (Day, _Folk-Tales of Bengal_); in Russia (Ralston, p. 103
_seq._, "Koschkei the Deathless," also in Mr. Lang's _Red Fairy
Book_); in Servia (Mijatovics, _Servian Folk-Lore_, p. 172); in South
Slavonia (Wratislaw, p. 225); in Rome (Miss Busk, p. 164); in Albania
(Dozon, p. 132 _seq._); in Transylvania (Haltrich, No. 34); in
Schleswig-Holstein (Müllenhoff, p. 404); in Norway (Asbjörnsen, No.
36, _ap._ Dasent, _Pop. Tales_, p. 55, "The Giant who had no Heart in
his Body"); and finally, in the Hebrides (Campbell, _Pop. Tales_, p.
10, _cf. Celtic Fairy Tales_, No. xvii., "Sea Maiden"). Here we have
the track of this remarkable idea of an external soul enclosed in a
succession of wrappings, which we can trace from Hindostan to the
Hebrides.
It is difficult to imagine that we have not here the actual migration
of the tale from East to West. In Bengal we have the soul "in a
necklace, in a box, in the heart of a _boal_ fish, in a tank"; in
Albania "it is in a pigeon, in a hare, in the silver tusk of a wild
boar"; in Rome it is "in a stone, in the head of a bird, in the head
of a leveret, in the middle head of a seven-headed hydra"; in Russia
"it is in an egg, in a duck, in a hare, in a casket, in an oak"; in
Servia it is "in a board, in the heart of a fox, in a mountain"; in
Transylvania "it is in a light, in an egg, in a duck, in a pond, in a
mountain"; in Norway it is "in an egg, in a duck, in a well, in a
church, on an island, in a lake"; in the Hebrides it is "in an egg, in
the belly of a duck, in the belly of a wether, under a flagstone on
the threshold." It is impossible to imagine the human mind
independently imagining such bizarre convolutions. They were borrowed
from one nation to the other, and till we have reason shown to the
contrary, the original lender was a Hindu. I should add that the mere
conception of an external soul occurs in the oldest Egyptian tale of
"The Two Brothers," but the wrappings are absent.