Indian Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs (best books to read for students TXT) 📕

were brought over on the first introduction of Buddhism into Ceylon, c. 241 BC This would give them an age of over two thousand years, nearly three hundred years earlier than Phaedrus, from whom comes our “Wolf and Crane.” II Princess Labam

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 taboo, as to a particular direction, occurs in other Indian stories as well as in European folktales (see notes on Stokes, p. 286). The grateful animals theme occurs in “The Soothsayer’s Son” (infra, No. X), and frequently in Indian folktales (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 Phaedrus, and may thus be Indian in origin (see Benfey, Pantschatantra, I 211, and the parallels given in my Aesop, Ro. III I p. 243). The theme is, however, equally frequent in European folktales: see my List of Incidents, Proc. Folklore 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 folktales (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 fairytales. The human mind may be the same everywhere, but it is not likely to hit upon the sequence of incidents, Direction taboo⁠—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.

III Lambikin

Source.⁠—Steel-Temple, Wideawake Stories, pp. 69⁠–⁠72, originally published in Indian Antiquary, XII 175. The droll is common throughout the Panjab.

Parallels.⁠—The similarity of the concluding episode with the finish of the “Three Little Pigs” (English Fairy Tales, No. XIV.) In my notes on that droll I have pointed out that the pigs were once goats or kids with “hair on their chinny chin chin.” This brings the tale a stage nearer to the Lambikin.

Remarks.⁠—The similarity of Pig No. 3 rolling down hill in the churn and the Lambikin in the Drumikin can scarcely be accidental, though, it must be confessed, the tale has undergone considerable modification before it reached England.

IV Punchkin

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 Folklore Journal, vol. II, “The Philosophy of Punchkin,” and still more elaborately in the section, “The External Soul in Folktales,” 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, Folktales of Bengal); in Russia (Ralston, p. 103 seq., “Koschkei the Deathless,” also in Mr. Lang’s Red Fairy Book); in Serbia (Mijatovics, Serbian Folklore, 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, Popular Tales, p. 55, “The Giant who had no Heart in his Body”); and finally, in the Hebrides (Campbell, Popular 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