Indian Fairy Tales (27 page)

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.