Indian Fairy Tales

by Joseph Jacobs

  XV. THE GOLD-GIVING SERPENT.

  Source.—Pantschatantra, III. v., tr. Benfey, ii. 244-7.

  Parallels given in my Aesop, Ro. ii. 10, p. 40. The chief points about them are—(1) though the tale does not exist in either Phaedrus or Babrius, it occurs in prose derivates from the Latin by Ademar, 65, and "Romulus," ii. 10, and from Greek, in Gabrias, 45, and the prose Aesop, ed. Halm, 96; Gitlbauer has restored the Babrian form in his edition of Babrius, No. 160. (2) The fable occurs among folk-tales, Grimm, 105; Woycicki, Poln. Mähr. 105; Gering, Islensk. Aevent 59, possibly derived from La Fontaine, x. 12.

  Remarks.—Benfey has proved most ingeniously and conclusively (Einl.) that the Indian fable is the source of both Latin and Greek fables. I may borrow from my Aesop, p. 93, parallel abstracts of the three versions, putting Benfey's results in a graphic form, series of bars indicating the passages where the classical fables have failed to preserve the original.

  BIDPAI.

  A Brahmin once observed a snake in his field, and thinking it the tutelary spirit of the field, he offered it a libation of milk in a bowl. Next day he finds a piece of gold in the bowl, and he receives this each day after offering the libation. One day he had to go elsewhere, and he sent his son with the libation. The son sees the gold, and thinking the serpent's hole full of treasure determines to slay the snake. He strikes at its head with a cudgel, and the enraged serpent stings him to death. The Brahmin mourns his son's death, but next morning as usual brings the libation of milk (in the hope of getting the gold as before). The serpent appears after a long delay at the mouth of its lair, and declares their friendship at an end, as it could not forget the blow of the Brahmin's son, nor the Brahmin his son's death from the bite of the snake.

  Pants. III. v. (Benf. 244-7).

  PHAEDRINE.

  —-A good man had become friendly with the snake, who came into his house and brought luck with it, so that the man became rich through it.—-One day he struck the serpent, which disappeared, and with it the man's riches. The good man tries to make it up, but the serpent declares their friendship at an end, as it could not forget the blow.—-

  Phaed. Dressl. VII. 28 (Rom. II. xi.)

  BABRIAN.

  —————-A serpent stung a farmer's son to death. The father pursued the serpent with an axe, and struck off part of its tail. Afterwards fearing its vengeance he brought food and honey to its lair, and begged reconciliation. The serpent, however, declares friendship impossible, as it could not forget the blow—nor the farmer his son's death from the bite of the snake.

  Aesop; Halm 96b (Babrius-Gitlb. 160).

  In the Indian fable every step of the action is thoroughly justified, whereas the Latin form does not explain why the snake was friendly in the first instance, or why the good man was enraged afterwards; and the Greek form starts abruptly, without explaining why the serpent had killed the farmer's son. Make a composite of the Phaedrine and Babrian forms, and you get the Indian one, which is thus shown to be the original of both.

  XVI. THE SON OF SEVEN QUEENS.

  Source.—Steel Temple, Wideawake Stories, pp. 98-110, originally published in Ind. Antiq. x. 147 seq.

  Parallels.—A long variant follows in Ind. Antiq., l. c. M. Cosquin refers to several Oriental variants, l. c. p. xxx. n. For the direction tabu, see Note on Princess Labam, supra, No. ii. The "letter to kill bearer" and "letter substituted" are frequent in both European (see my List s. v.) and Indian Folk-Tales (Temple, Analysis, II. iv. b, 6, p. 410). The idea of a son of seven mothers could only arise in a polygamous country. It occurs in "Punchkin," supra, No. iv.; Day, Folk-Tales of Bengal, 117 seq.; Ind. Antiq. i. 170 (Temple, l. c., 398).

  Remarks.—M. Cosquin (Contes de Lorraine, p. xxx.) points out how, in a Sicilian story, Gonzenbach (Sizil. Mähr. No. 80), the seven co-queens are transformed into seven step-daughters of the envious witch who causes their eyes to be taken out. It is thus probable, though M. Cosquin does not point this out, that the "envious step-mother" of folk-tales (see my List, s. v.) was originally an envious co-wife. But there can be little doubt of what M. Cosquin does point out—viz., that the Sicilian story is derived from the Indian one.

  XVII. A LESSON FOR KINGS.

  Source.—Rajovada Jataka, Fausböll, No. 151, tr. Rhys-Davids, pp. xxii.-vi.

  Remarks.—This is one of the earliest of moral allegories in existence. The moralising tone of the Jatakas must be conspicuous to all reading them. Why, they can moralise even the Tar Baby (see infra, Note on "Demon with the Matted Hair," No. xxv.).

  XVIII. PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL.

  Source.—Kingscote, Tales of the Sun. I have changed the Indian mercantile numerals into those of English "back-slang," which make a very good parallel.

  XIX. RAJA RASALU.

  Source.—Steel-Temple, Wideawake Stories, pp. 247-80, omitting "How Raja Rasalu was Born," "How Raja Rasalu's Friends Forsook Him," "How Raja Rasalu Killed the Giants," and "How Raja Rasalu became a Jogi." A further version in Temple, Legends of Panjab, vol. i. Chaupur, I should explain, is a game played by two players with eight men, each on a board in the shape of a cross, four men to each cross covered with squares. The moves of the men are decided by the throws of a long form of dice. The object of the game is to see which of the players can first move all his men into the black centre square of the cross (Temple, l. c., p. 344, and Legends of Panjab, i. 243-5) It is sometimes said to be the origin of chess.

  Parallels.—Rev. C. Swynnerton, "Four Legends about Raja Rasalu," in Folk-Lore Journal, p. 158 seq., also in separate book much enlarged, The Adventures of Raja Rasalu, Calcutta, 1884. Curiously enough, the real interest of the story comes after the end of our part of it, for Kokilan, when she grows up, is married to Raja Rasalu, and behaves as sometimes youthful wives behave to elderly husbands. He gives her her lover's heart to eat, à la Decameron, and she dashes herself over the rocks. For the parallels of this part of the legend see my edition of Painter's Palace of Pleasure, tom. i. Tale 39, or, better, the Programm of H. Patzig, Zur Geschichte der Herzmäre (Berlin, 1891). Gambling for life occurs in Celtic and other folk-tales; cf. my List of Incidents, s. v. "Gambling for Magic Objects."

  Remarks.—Raja Rasalu is possibly a historic personage, according to Capt. Temple, Calcutta Review, 1884, p. 397, flourishing in the eighth or ninth century. There is a place called Sirikap ka-kila in the neighbourhood of Sialkot, the traditional seat of Rasalu on the Indus, not far from Atlock.

  Herr Patzig is strongly for the Eastern origin of the romance, and finds its earliest appearance in the West in the Anglo-Norman troubadour, Thomas' Lai Guirun, where it becomes part of the Tristan cycle. There is, so far as I know, no proof of the earliest part of the Rasalu legend (our part) coming to Europe, except the existence of the gambling incidents of the same kind in Celtic and other folk-tales.

  XX. THE ASS IN THE LION'S SKIN.

  Source.—The Siha Camma Jataka, Fausböll, No. 189, trans. Rhys-Davids, pp. v. vi.

  Parallels.—It also occurs in Somadeva, Katha Sarit Sagara, ed. Tawney, ii. 65, and n. For Aesopic parallels cf. my Aesop, Av. iv. It is in Babrius, ed. Gitlbaur, 218 (from Greek prose Aesop, ed. Halm, No. 323), and Avian, ed. Ellis, 5, whence it came into the modern Aesop.

  Remarks.—Avian wrote towards the end of the third century, and put into Latin mainly those portions of Babrius which are unparalleled by Phaedrus. Consequently, as I have shown, he has a much larger proportion of Eastern elements than Phaedrus. There can be little doubt that the Ass in the Lion's Skin is from India. As Prof. Rhys-Davids remarks, the Indian form gives a plausible motive for the masquerade which is wanting in the ordinary Aesopic version.

  XXI. THE FARMER AND THE MONEY-LENDER.

  Source.—Steel-Temple, Wideawake Stories, pp. 215-8.

  Parallels enumerated in my Aesop, Av. xvii. See also Jacques de Vitry, Exempla, ed. Crane, No. 196 (see notes, p. 212), and Bozon, Contes moralisés, No. 112. It occurs in Avian, ed. Ellis, No. 22. Mr. Kipling has a very similar tale in his
Life's Handicap.

  Remarks.—Here we have collected in modern India what one cannot help thinking is the Indian original of a fable of Avian. The preceding number showed one of his fables existing among the Jatakas, probably before the Christian era. This makes it likely that we shall find an earlier Indian original of the fable of the Avaricious and Envious, perhaps among the Jatakas still untranslated.

  XXII. THE BOY WITH MOON ON FOREHEAD.

  Source.—Miss Stokes' Indian Fairy Tales, No. 20, pp. 119-137.

  Parallels to heroes and heroines in European fairy tales, with stars on their foreheads, are given with some copiousness in Stokes, l. c., pp. 242-3. This is an essentially Indian trait; almost all Hindus have some tribal or caste mark on their bodies or faces. The choice of the hero disguised as a menial is also common property of Indian and European fairy tales: see Stokes, l. c., p. 231, and my List of Incidents (s. v. "Menial Disguise.")

  XXIII. THE PRINCE AND THE FAKIR.

  Source.—Kindly communicated by Mr. M. L. Dames from his unpublished collection of Baluchi tales.

  Remarks.—Unholy fakirs are rather rare. See Temple, Analysis, I. ii. a, p. 394.

  XXIV. WHY THE FISH LAUGHED.

  Source.—Knowles, Folk-Tales of Kashmir, pp. 484-90.

  Parallels.—The latter part is the formula of the Clever Lass who guesses riddles. She has been bibliographised by Prof. Child, Eng. and Scotch Ballads, i. 485; see also Benfey, Kl. Schr. ii. 156 seq. The sex test at the end is different from any of those enumerated by Prof. Köhler on Gonzenbach, Sezil. Mähr. ii. 216.

  Remarks.—Here we have a further example of a whole formula, or series of incidents, common to most European collections, found in India, and in a quarter, too, where European influence is little likely to penetrate. Prof. Benfey, in an elaborate dissertation ("Die Kluge Dirne," in Ausland, 1859, Nos. 20-25, now reprinted in Kl. Schr. ii. 156 seq.), has shown the wide spread of the theme both in early Indian literature (though probably there derived from the folk) and in modern European folk literature.

  XXV. THE DEMON WITH THE MATTED HAIR.

  Source.—The Pancavudha Jataka, Fausböll, No. 55, kindly translated for this book by Mr. W. H. D. Rouse, of Christ's College, Cambridge. There is a brief abstract of the Jataka in Prof. Estlin Carpenter's sermon, Three Ways of Salvation, 1884, p. 27, where my attention was first called to this Jataka.

  Parallels.—Most readers of these Notes will remember the central episode of Mr. J. C. Harris' Uncle Remus, in which Brer Fox, annoyed at Brer Rabbit's depredations, fits up "a contrapshun, what he calls a Tar Baby." Brer Rabbit, coming along that way, passes the time of day with Tar Baby, and, annoyed at its obstinate silence, hits it with right fist and with left, with left fist and with right, which successively stick to the "contrapshun," till at last he butts with his head, and that sticks too, whereupon Brer Fox, who all this time had "lain low," saunters out, and complains of Brer Rabbit that he is too stuck up. In the sequel Brer Rabbits begs Brer Fox that he may "drown me as deep ez you please, skin me, scratch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by the roots, en cut off my legs, but do don't fling me in dat brier patch;" which, of course, Brer Fox does, only to be informed by the cunning Brer Rabbit that he had been "bred en bawn in a brier patch." The story is a favourite one with the negroes: it occurs in Col. Jones' Negro Myths of the Georgia Coast (Uncle Remus is from S. Carolina), also among those of Brazil (Romero, Contos do Brazil), and in the West Indian Islands (Mr. Lang, "At the Sign of the Ship," Longman's Magazine, Feb. 1889). We can trace it to Africa, where it occurs in Cape Colony (South African Folk-Lore Journal, vol. i.).

  Remarks.—The five-fold attack on the Demon and the Tar Baby is so preposterously ludicrous that it cannot have been independently invented, and we must therefore assume that they are causally connected, and the existence of the variant in South Africa clinches the matter, and gives us a landing-stage between India and America. There can be little doubt that the Jataka of Prince Five-Weapons came to Africa, possibly by Buddhist missionaries, spread among the negroes, and then took ship in the holds of slavers for the New World, where it is to be found in fuller form than any yet discovered in the home of its birth. I say Buddhist missionaries, because there is a certain amount of evidence that the negroes have Buddhistic symbols among them, and we can only explain the identification of Brer Rabbit with Prince Five Weapons, and so with Buddha himself, by supposing the change to have originated among Buddhists, where it would be quite natural. For one of the most celebrated metempsychoses of Buddha is that detailed in the Sasa Jataka (Fausböll, No. 316, tr. R. Morris, Folk-Lore Journal, ii. 336), in which the Buddha, as a hare, performs a sublime piece of self-sacrifice, and as a reward is translated to the moon, where he can be seen to this day as "the hare in the moon." Every Buddhist is reminded of the virtue of self-sacrifice whenever the moon is full, and it is easy to understand how the Buddha became identified as the Hare or Rabbit. A striking confirmation of this, in connection with our immediate subject, is offered by Mr. Harris' sequel volume, Nights with Uncle Remus. Here there is a whole chapter (xxx.) on "Brer Rabbit and his famous Foot," and it is well known how the worship of Buddha's foot developed in later Buddhism. No wonder Brer Rabbit is so 'cute: he is nothing less than an incarnation of Buddha. Among the Karens of Burmah, where Buddhist influence is still active, the Hare holds exactly the same place in their folk-lore as Brer Rabbit among the negroes. The sixth chapter of Mr. Smeaton's book on them is devoted to "Fireside Stories," and is entirely taken up with adventures of the Hare, all of which can be paralleled from Uncle Remus.

  Curiously enough, the negro form of the five-fold attack—"fighting with five fists," Mr. Barr would call it—is probably nearer to the original legend than that preserved in the Jataka, though 2000 years older. For we may be sure that the thunderbolt of Knowledge did not exist in the original, but was introduced by some Buddhist Mr. Barlow, who, like Alice's Duchess, ended all his tales with: "And the moral of that is—-" For no well-bred demon would have been taken in by so simple a "sell" as that indulged in by Prince Five-Weapons in our Jataka, and it is probable, therefore, that Uncle Remus preserves a reminiscence of the original Indian reading of the tale. On the other hand, it is probable that Carlyle's Indian god with the fire in his belly was derived from Prince Five-Weapons.

  The negro variant has also suggested to Mr. Batten an explanation of the whole story which is extremely plausible, though it introduces a method of folk-lore exegesis which has been overdriven to death. The Sasa Jataka identifies the Brer Rabbit Buddha with the hare in the moon. It is well known that Easterns explain an eclipse of the moon as due to its being swallowed up by a Dragon or Demon. May not, asks Mr. Batten, the Pancavudha Jataka be an idealised account of an eclipse of the moon? This suggestion receives strong confirmation from the Demon's reference to Rahu, who does, in Indian myth swallow the moon at times of eclipse. The Jataka accordingly contains the Buddhist explanation why the moon—i.e. the hare in the moon, i.e. Buddha—is not altogether swallowed up by the Demon of Eclipse, the Demon with the Matted Hair. Mr. Batten adds that in imagining what kind of Demon the Eclipse Demon was, the Jataka writer was probably aided by recollections of some giant octopus, who has saucer eyes and a kind of hawk's beak, knobs on its "tusks," and a very variegated belly (gastropod). It is obviously unfair of Mr. Batten both to illustrate and also to explain so well the Tar Baby Jataka—taking the scientific bread, so to speak, out of a poor folklorist's mouth—but his explanations seem to me so convincing that I cannot avoid including them in these Notes.

  I am, however, not so much concerned with the original explanation of the Jataka as to trace its travels across the continents of Asia, Africa, and America. I think I have done this satisfactorily, and will have thereby largely strengthened the case for less extensive travels of other tales. I have sufficient confidence of the method employed to venture on that most hazardous of employments, scientific prophecy. I venture to predict that the Tar Baby story will be found in Madag
ascar in a form nearer the Indian than Uncle Remus, and I will go further, and say that it will not be found in the grand Helsingfors collection of folk-tales, though this includes 12,000, of which 1000 are beast-tales.

  XXVI. THE IVORY PALACE.

  Source.—Knowles, Folk-Tales of Kashmir, pp. 211—25, with some slight omissions. Gulizar is Persian for rosy-cheeked.

  Parallels.—Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales, No. 27. "Panwpatti Rani," pp. 208-15, is the same story. Another version in the collection Baital Pachisi, No. 1.

  Remarks.—The themes of love by mirror, and the faithful friend, are common European, though the calm attempt at poisoning is perhaps characteristically Indian, and reads like a page from Mr. Kipling.

  XXVII. SUN, MOON, AND WIND.

  Source.—Miss Frere, Old Deccan Days, No. 10 pp. 153-5.

  Remarks.—Miss Frere observes that she has not altered the traditional mode of the Moon's conveyance of dinner to her mother the Star, though it must, she fears, impair the value of the story as a moral lesson in the eyes of all instructors of youth.

  XXVIII. HOW WICKED SONS WERE DUPED.

  Source.—Knowles, Folk-Tales of Kashmir, pp. 241-2.

  Parallels.—A Gaelic parallel was given by Campbell in Trans. Ethnol. Soc., ii. p. 336; an Anglo-Latin one from the Middle Ages by T. Wright in Latin Stories (Percy Soc.), No. 26; and for these and points of anthropological interest in the Celtic variant see Mr. Gomme's article in Folk-Lore, i. pp. 197-206, "A Highland Folk-Tale and its Origin in Custom."

  Remarks.—Mr. Gomme is of opinion that the tale arose from certain rhyming formulae occurring in the Gaelic and Latin tales as written on a mallet left by the old man in the box opened after his death. The rhymes are to the effect that a father who gives up his wealth to his children in his own lifetime deserves to be put to death with the mallet. Mr. Gomme gives evidence that it was an archaic custom to put oldsters to death after they had become helpless. He also points out that it was customary for estates to be divided and surrendered during the owners' lifetime, and generally he connects a good deal of primitive custom with our story. I have already pointed out in Folk- Lore, p. 403, that the existence of the tale in Kashmir without any reference to the mallet makes it impossible for the rhymes on the mallet to be the source of the story. As a matter of fact, it is a very embarrassing addition to it, since the rhyme tells against the parent, and the story is intended to tell against the ungrateful children. The existence of the tale in India renders it likely enough that it is not indigenous to the British Isles, but an Oriental importation. It is obvious, therefore, that it cannot be used as anthropological evidence of the existence of the primitive customs to be found in it. The whole incident, indeed, is a striking example of the dangers of the anthropological method of dealing with folk-tales before some attempt is made to settle the questions of origin and diffusion.