Chapter V: The Broken Pot

_Source._--_Pantschatantra_, V. ix., tr. Benfey, ii. 345-6.

_Parallels._--Benfey, in § 209 of his _Einleitung_, gives bibliographical references to most of those which are given at length in Prof. M. Müller's brilliant essay on "The Migration of Fables" (_Selected Essays_, i. 500-76), which is entirely devoted to the travels of the fable from India to La Fontaine. See also Mr. Clouston, _Pop. Tales_, ii. 432 _seq._ I have translated the Hebrew version in my essay, "Jewish Influence on the Diffusion of Folk-Tales," pp. 6-7. Our proverb, "Do not count your chickens before they are hatched," is ultimately to be derived from India.

_Remarks._--The stories of Alnaschar, the Barber's fifth brother in the _Arabian Nights_, and of La Perette, who counted her chickens before they were hatched, in La Fontaine, are demonstrably derived from the same Indian original from which our story was obtained. The travels of the "Fables of Bidpai" from India to Europe are well known and distinctly traceable. I have given a rough summary of the chief critical results in the introduction to my edition of the earliest English version of the _Fables of Bidpai_, by Sir Thomas North, of Plutarch fame (London, D. Nutt, "Bibliothèque de Carabas," 1888), where I have given an elaborate genealogical table of the multitudinous versions. La Fontaine's version, which has rendered the fable so familiar to us all, comes from Bonaventure des Periers, _Contes et Nouvelles_, who got it from the _Dialogus Creaturarum_ of Nicholaus Pergamenus, who derived it from the _Sermones_ of Jacques de Vitry (see Prof. Crane's edition, No. li.), who probably derived it from the _Directorium Humanæ Vitæ_ of John of Capua, a converted Jew, who translated it from the Hebrew version of the Arabic _Kalilah wa Dimnah_, which was itself derived from the old Syriac version of a Pehlevi translation of the original Indian work, probably called after Karataka and Damanaka, the names of two jackals who figure in the earlier stories of the book. Prof. Rhys-Davids informs me that these names are more akin to Pali than to Sanskrit, which makes it still more probable that the whole literature is ultimately to be derived from a Buddhist source.

The theme of La Perette is of interest as showing the _literary_ transmission of tales from Orient to Occident. It also shows the possibility of an influence of literary on oral tradition, as is shown by our proverb, and by the fact, which Benfey mentions, that La Fontaine's story has had influence on two of Grimm's tales, Nos. 164, 168.