Chapter III: Introduction (2)

To European folk-tales the longer legends of the Kahgyur bear but little resemblance, though many of the fables about animals, and other short stories towards the end of the present volume, have their counterparts in the West. Here and there, however, even in the long narratives of the legendary class, certain features may be recognised as being common to both Europe and Asia. The moral of King Māndhātar’s story (No. 1), for instance, seems to be identical, different as is its machinery, with that of a story which is current in many Western lands. That monarch, after conquering the whole earth, ascends into the heavenly home of the thirty-three gods, and is allowed to share the throne of their chief, Śakra or Indra. But at last he wishes for too much. “He came to the conclusion that he must expel the king of the gods, Śakra, from his throne, and take into his own hands the government of both gods and men.” As soon as he had conceived this idea, “the great King Māndhātar came to the end of his good fortune,” and soon afterwards he died. The most familiar form of the European story, which inculcates a similar moral teaching, is the German tale of “The Fisherman and his Wife” (the 19th of Grimm’s Collection). In it, a grateful fish for a long time accedes to every desire expressed by the fisherman. He and his wife become first rich, then noble, and eventually royal. But the fisherman’s wife is not satisfied with being a queen. She wishes to be the Pope, and the fish fulfils her desire. Even then she is discontented, and at last she demands to be made God. When the fish is told this by her husband, it replies, “Go back, and you will find her in her hovel.” The fisherman’s good fortune has come to an end. He and his wife are poor folks once more. In a Hesse variant the husband’s final wish is, “Let me be God, and my wife the Mother of God.” [30]

A curious parallel to one of the incidents in King Māndhātar’s story is afforded by a Polynesian myth. On the crown of King Utposhadha’s head, according to the Tibetan tale, “there grew a very soft tumour, somewhat resembling a cushion of cotton or wool, without doing him any harm. When it had become quite ripe and had broken, there came forth from it a boy, shapely and handsome.” Mr. Gill tells us in his interesting “Myths and Songs from the South Pacific” (p. 10), that Tangaroa and Rongo were the children of Vātea, the father of gods and men, and his wife Papa. “Tangaroa should have been born first, but gave precedence to his brother Rongo. A few days after the birth of Rongo, his mother Papa suffered from a very large boil on her arm. She resolved to get rid of it by pressing it. The core accordingly flew out; it was Tangaroa! Another account, equally veracious, says that Tangaroa came right up through Papa’s head. The precise spot is indicated by ‘the crown’ with which all their descendants have since been born.” Professor Schiefner mentions that a suggestion has been made to the effect that “the name of Utposhadha may be a transformation of the Greek Hephæstus, though the part which the latter plays in the Greek myth at the birth of Athene is of a different nature.” But this seems to be going unnecessarily far.

The story of Kuśa, No. 2, may be linked with the numerous European variants of the tale which we know so well under the title of “Beauty and the Beast.” The principal feature of that tale is the union of a beautiful maiden with a monster of some kind, whose monstrosity is eventually cured by her love and devotion. The Beast with whom the Beauty is linked is generally a supernatural monster, and possesses the power of at times divesting itself of its monstrous or bestial envelope or husk, and appearing in its real form as a fairy prince or other brilliant being. It is, as a general rule, only at night in the dark that this transformation takes place. In some cases, as in the Cupid and Psyche story, the wife is forbidden to look upon her husband. He visits her only in utter darkness. But in many versions of the story she is allowed to see her pseudo-monster in all his brilliant beauty. He is often a deity, whom some superior divinity has degraded from the sky and compelled to live upon earth under a monstrous shape. One day the wife lays her hands on her husband’s monstrous envelope or husk and destroys it. The spell being thus broken, the husband either flies away to heaven or remains living on earth in uninterrupted beauty.

In some of the European variants, the original idea having apparently been forgotten, the transformation appears not only grotesque but unreasonable. Thus in a Wallachian tale (Schott, No. 23), a princess is married to “a pumpkin,” or at least to a youth who is a pumpkin by day. Wishing to improve her husband, she one day puts him in the oven and bakes him, whereupon he disappears for ever. In a German story (Grimm, No. 127), a princess who has lost her way in a wood is induced to marry an iron stove. But the disfiguring “husk” is in most cases the hide or skin of some inferior animal, an ass, a monkey, a frog, or the like, or else the outside of a hideous man. Sometimes it is a brilliant female being who is after this fashion “translated.” Thus an Indian story [31] tells of a prince who was obliged to take a monkey as his wife. But when she liked she could slip out of her monkey skin and appear as a beautiful woman arrayed in the most magnificent apparel. She adjured her husband to take great care of her “husk” during her absence from it. But one day he burnt it, hoping to force her to be always beautiful. She shrieked “I burn!” and disappeared. In a Russian variant of the same story a prince is compelled to marry a frog, which is “held in a bowl” while the marriage service is being performed. But when it so pleases her, his frog-wife “flings off her skin and becomes a fair maiden.” One day he burns her “husk,” and she disappears. In the Tibetan story of Kuśa, the “Beast” is merely an ugly man disfigured by “the eighteen signs of uncomeliness.” [32] On that account it was decided that “he must never be allowed to approach his wife by daylight.” But she caught sight of him one day, and her suspicions were aroused. So she hid away a lighted lamp in her room, uncovered it suddenly when her husband was with her, shrieked out that he was a demon, and fled away. After a time, however, won by his military reputation, she said to herself, “As this youth Kuśa is excellently endowed with boldness and courage, why should I dislike him?” And straightway “she took a liking for him,” just as the Beauty of the fairy-tale did for the Beast. It may be worth noticing that the conch-shell which Kuśa sounds with such force that the ears of his enemies are shattered, and they are either killed or put to flight, finds a Russian parallel in the whistle employed by the brigand Solovei, or Nightingale, whom Ilya of Murom overcomes. In the builmas, or Russian metrical romances, he often figures; and when he sounds his whistle his enemies fall to the ground, nearly or quite dead.

No. 3, which chronicles some of the wise judgments of King Ādarśamukha, comprises two different stories—the first narrating the ingenuity with which the king satisfied the demands of a number of complainants without injuring the man who had involuntarily given rise to their complaints; the second describing a journey made by a traveller who was commissioned by various persons, animals, or other objects, passed by him on his way, to ask certain questions on his arrival at his destination. The latter story is one which is familiar to Eastern Europe. In one of its Russian variants a peasant hospitably receives an old beggar, who adopts him as his brother, and invites him to pay him a visit. On his way to the beggar’s home, he is appealed to by children, who say, “Christ’s brother, ask Christ whether we must suffer here long.” Later on, girls engaged in ladling water from one well into another beg him to ask the same question on their account. When he arrives at his journey’s end he becomes aware that his beggar friend is Christ himself; and he is informed that the children he had passed on the way had been cursed by their mothers while still unborn, and so were unable to enter Paradise; and the girls had, while they were alive, adulterated the milk they sold with water, and were therefore condemned to an eternal punishment resembling that of the Danaides (Afanasief, “Legendui,” No. 8). The judgments attributed in the Tibetan tale to King Ādarśamukha, and in another Tibetan work, the “Dsanglun” (as Professor Schiefner has remarked) to King Mdges-pa, form the subject of a story well known in Russia under the title of “Shemyakin Sud,” or “Shemyaka’s Judgment.” It exists there as a folk-tale, but it belongs to what may be called the chap-book literature of the country, and it is derived from literary sources. A variant given by Afanasief (“Skazki,” v., No. 19) closely resembles part of the Tibetan tale. A poor man borrowed from his rich brother a pair of oxen, with which he ploughed his plot of ground. Coming away from the field he met an old man, who asked to whom the oxen belonged. “To my brother,” was the reply. “Your brother is rich and stingy,” said the old man; “choose which you will, either his son shall die or his oxen.” The poor man thought and thought. He was sorry both for the oxen and for his brother’s son. At last he said, “Better let the oxen die.” “Be it as you wish,” said the old man. When the poor man reached his home the oxen suddenly fell down dead. The rich brother accused him of having worked them to death, and carried him off to the king. On his way to the king’s court the poor man, according to the chap-book version (“Skazki,” viii. p. 325), accidentally sat down upon a baby and killed it, and tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge, but only succeeded in crushing an old man whose son was taking him into the river for a bath. He had also had the misfortune to pull off a horse’s tail without meaning it. When summoned into court for all these involuntary offences, he took a stone in his pocket tied up in a handkerchief, and stealthily produced it when he was had up before the judge, saying to himself, “If the judge goes against me I will kill him with this.” The judge fancied that the stone was a bribe of a hundred roubles which the defendant wished to offer him; so he gave judgment in his favour in each case. The poor man was to keep his brother’s horse until its tail grew again, and to marry the woman whose child he had crushed, and to stand under the bridge from which he had jumped and allow the son of the man he had killed to jump off the bridge on to him. The owner of the horse, the husband of the woman, and the son of the crushed man were all glad to buy off the culprit whom they had brought up for judgment. The satirical turn of the story and the allusion to bribe-taking are characteristic features of the Russian variants of this well-known Eastern tale. The Russian story takes its title from the notorious injustice and oppression of Prince Demetrius Shemyaka, who blinded his cousin, Vasily II., Grand Prince of Moscow, and for a time usurped his throne. To this day an unjust legal decision is known as a Shemyaka judgment. But in the Eastern versions of the story, which are numerous, there is no mention of injustice; stupidity, however, is sometimes attributed by them to the judge. Thus in the Kathá Sarit Ságara [33] the story of Devabhúti tells how the excellent wife of the learned Brahman of that name “went into the kitchen garden to get vegetables, and saw a donkey belonging to a washerman eating them. So she took up a stick and ran after the donkey, and the animal fell into a pit as it was trying to escape and broke its hoof. When its master heard of that, he came in a passion and beat with a stick and kicked the Brahman woman. Accordingly she, being pregnant, had a miscarriage, but the washerman returned home with his donkey. Then her husband, hearing of it, came home after bathing, and, after seeing his wife, went in his distress and complained to the chief magistrate of the town. The foolish man immediately had the washerman, whose name was Balásura, brought before him, and, after hearing the pleadings of both parties, delivered this judgment: ‘Since the donkey’s hoof is broken, let the Bráhman carry the donkey’s load for the washerman until the donkey is again fit for work, and let the washerman make the Bráhman’s wife pregnant again, since he made her miscarry. Let this be the punishment of the two parties respectively.’ When the Bráhman heard this, he and his wife in their despair took poison and died. And when the king heard of it, he put to death that inconsiderate judge.”

As they deal with the subject of wise judgment, the seventh and eighth stories may be spoken of next. One of them describes the cleverness of a girl, the other that of a lad. Each of them is very popular in the East, and both of them find more or less complete counterparts in the West. There is a well-known group of folk-tales familiar to most European and Asiatic lands, the theme of which is the sharpness of a woman’s wits. Just as there thrive among the common people of all countries many jeers and flouts against women, such as the proverbs “A woman’s hair is long, but her mind is short,” and “A woman is worse than a dog, for it does not bark at its master,” or stories illustrative of a wife’s obstinacy, folly, or perfidy, so there flourish by their side numerous popular arguments in favour of women, generally conveyed in the form of stories. In the Perso-Turkish story-book of “The Forty Viziers,” a tale accusing women frequently alternates with one told in their defence. The framework of the collection is as follows:—A wicked queen calumniates her stepson as Phædra calumniated Hippolytus. His father sentences him to death. But the forty ministers intercede for him, each of them daily telling a tale of which the aim generally is to show how little reliance can be placed on a woman. Each night the queen tells a story which is usually of quite the opposite tendency, pointing out that men are miserable creatures, and that they are morally inferior to women. At the end of the forty days and nights, the prince is allowed to speak in his own defence (having been during that period prohibited by the astrologers from opening his lips), and all goes well. Among encomiums upon women, the story of Viśākhā (forming No. 7 of the present collection and a part of No. 8) is entitled to rank high. Her discretion, intelligence, and thoughtfulness for others, entitle her to an honourable place among the heroines of popular fiction. One of her decisions of a knotty legal point is specially interesting, as it belongs to the cycle of which Solomon’s judgments in the case of the two disputing mothers is the best known example. The actual mother and the adopted mother of a boy dispute as to which is really his mother. The point is legally important, for with the possession of the boy goes that of his deceased father’s homestead. The case is referred to the king, whose ministers investigate it, but in vain. At length Viśākhā is consulted. She replies, “What need is there of investigation? Speak to the two women thus: ‘As we do not know to which of you two the boy belongs, let who is the strongest take the boy.’ When each of them has laid hold of one of the boy’s hands and he begins to cry out on account of the pain, the real mother will let go, being full of compassion for him, and knowing that if her child remains alive she will be able to see it again. But the other, who has no compassion for him, will not let go.” [34] Professor Schiefner has called attention in a note to the article in “Ausland” by the late Professor Benfey on the somewhat similar tale of “Die Kluge Dirne,” and to the variant of the Viśākhā story given in Mr. Spence Hardy’s “Manual of Buddhism.” There is a well-known folk-tale about a woman’s intelligence, of which the Russian variant may be cited here. It is the 6th of Khudyakoff’s collection of “Great Russian Popular Tales” (Moscow, 1860). A peasant girl was so intelligent that she solved all the problems proposed to her by a certain judge. Charmed by her cleverness, he married her. But he stipulated that if she ever found fault with any of his legal decisions she was to be divorced, and was bound to return at once to her father’s cottage. Only she was to be allowed to take away with her whatever thing she liked best in her husband’s house. All went well for some time with the judge and his clever wife. At length she heard him deliver a preposterous judgment in court, and she could not help protesting against it. Accordingly she was ordered to return to her father’s hut. She obeyed, but she took with her the judge, to whom she had administered so much liquor before leaving, that she was able to drive him in a cart tranquilly sleeping. When he awoke, and found himself in his father-in-law’s cottage, he naturally asked how he got there. “I brought you away with me,” replied the divorced wife. “You know I was entitled to take away whatever I liked best in your house, and I chose you.” [35] There is a very interesting story of the same kind in Radloff’s great collection of songs and tales from Central Asia (“Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen Stämme Sud-Sibiriens,” vol. iii. pp. 347–354). There was once a choleric khan who understood the language of birds. He ordered his vizier one day to find out what two geese had said to each other as they flew past, threatening to put him to death if he failed to do so. The vizier applied for help to the khan’s wise daughter, who gave him the information he required. He promised not to mention his informant, but he broke his promise. The khan was so angry with his daughter, when he found out that it was she who had told the vizier what the geese had said, that he gave her in marriage to the most miserable specimen of humanity he could find. She proved an excellent wife to her unsightly and poverty-stricken husband, and he and she prospered in consequence. [36]

The story of the cleverness of Mahaushadha (No. 8) forms the counterpart of that of Viśākhā, who herself plays a part in the tale, which is told at somewhat tedious length. Some of its incidents will be familiar to readers of Western folk-tales. Professor Schiefner has called attention (in a footnote to page 129) to several variants of the story of the mystic fowl—sometimes a cock, sometimes a hen or goose, a layer of golden eggs—the eater of which is destined to become a king. It forms the opening of the German story of “The Two Brothers” (Grimm, No. 60, vol. iii. pp. 102–107); but in it the peculiarity of the bird is stated to be that the eating of its heart and liver enables the eater to become rich. Three Russian variants of the story are given by Afanasief in his collection of “Russian Popular Tales” (v., No. 53, viii., No. 26, and pp. 464–7). In all of them the eater of the bird or a part of it becomes a king. Many mythologists [37] recognise in the golden egg the Sun, which may be looked upon as a gleaming egg laid every morning by the brooding Night. But the king-making power attributed to the bird’s eaten flesh remains a mystery. In the story of Mahaushadha, the boy Bahvannapāna, who has eaten the head of the mystic cock, is elected king by the ministers at a certain court on account of his good looks. Having gone forth in search of some successor to their deceased monarch, they find him sleeping under a tree, “the shadow of which never moved from his body,” and they exclaim, “As he is extremely handsome, and is well provided with signs, we will invest him with the sovereignty.” In the East-European variants the fortunate youth is frequently chosen as king because his taper, when he takes one to church, kindles of its own accord. One of the tasks which Mahaushadha is called upon to execute by way of proving his cleverness is “to supply some rice which had not been crushed with a pestle, and yet was not uncrushed, and which had been cooked neither in the house nor out of the house, neither with fire nor yet without fire,” and to send it “neither along the road nor yet away from the road, without its being shone upon by the daylight, but yet not in the shade,” by a messenger who should be “not riding, but also not on foot” (page 139). Similar tests frequently appear in European folk-tales. Thus, in one of the Lithuanian Tales (Schleicher, No. 1), a gentleman promises to marry a village maiden if she can fulfil certain conditions, saying, “If you come to me neither clothed nor bare, not riding nor driving nor walking, not along the road, nor beside the road, nor on the footpath, in summer and likewise in winter, then will I marry you.” The abduction of the mule which was watched by five men (page 142), one of whom sat on its back while the others held its four legs, is evidently a reminiscence of an ingenious theft commemorated in many such stories as “The Master Thief” (Grimm, No. 192). But Mahaushadha’s contrivances for making the dog talk and for keeping the sheep thin (page 175) are novel. The latter, as a plan of working on the body through the eye, may be compared with Jacob’s use of the rods which he placed “in the watering-troughs when the flocks came to drink” (Genesis xxx. 38).

The “Clever Thief” (No. 4) is one of the numerous variants of the well-known story which we generally associate with the treasure of Rhampsinitos. [38] As Professor Schiefner has pointed out some of its Western parallels (pp. 37 and 43), it is not necessary to do more here than to add a few references to those which he has given. Professor Schiefner has himself written on the subject. [39] The most recent commentator is Professor G. Maspero, who has devoted to it four pages of the Introduction to his collection of ancient Egyptian tales. [40] The name of Rhampsinitos, he says, is a Greek form of the Egyptian name Ram-sis-si-nit, or Ramses the son of Nit. Two objections, he remarks, have been made to the supposition that the story is of Egyptian origin. One is the nature of the masonry employed by the builders of the treasury, which has been stated not to be in keeping with Egyptian architectural practice. The other is the shaving of the beards of the drunken soldiers who had been set to watch the corpse of the clever thief’s comrade. This has been said to be an incident evidently not of Egyptian origin, seeing that in Egypt only barbarians wore beards. But Professor Maspero impugns both objections. He shows that some Egyptian temples did actually possess hiding-places resembling that described in the story; and as regards the shaving, he points out that in the first place Egyptians could wear beards, and did wear them when they felt inclined, and that in the second place the soldiers who guarded the corpse would belong “to a tribe of Lybian origin of the name of Matiou,” and therefore be fully entitled, in their capacity of foreigners, to wear their beards. A modern Greek variant of the story has been lately discovered in Cyprus, [41] and Mr. Tawney has recently translated an Indian variant, [42] which offers a striking resemblance to the Gaelic tale of “The Shifty Lad.” [43] The Tibetan tale, however, is more nearly akin to the Egyptian form of the story than to that which it takes in this Indian variant.

The story of Prince Sudhana (No. 5) has several points in common with Western folk-tales. One of these is the capture by the hunter Phalaka of the celestial maiden, the Kinnarī Manoharā, who becomes Sudhana’s bride. This is effected by means of a “fast-binding chain” which the hunter throws around her when she is bathing in a lake. Her companions fly away heavenward, leaving her a captive on earth. This incident will at once remind the reader of the captures of “swan-maidens” and other supernatural nymphs, which so frequently occur in popular romance. It is usually the swan’s feather-dress or bird-husk on which the liberty of the captured maiden depends. While she is deprived of it she must live on earth as a mortal’s wife. But if she can recover it, she becomes a bird once more, and soars heavenward. Manoharā is captured by means of a magic chain. But her power of flying through the air depends upon her possession of a jewel. So long as she is without that, she remains a slave; when she recovers it, she becomes free and flies aloft. [44] Sudhana’s visit to the palace of his supernatural wife’s father, and the task which is set him of recognising her amid her ladies, bear a strong resemblance to the adventures which befall the heroes of many tales current in Europe. A mortal youth often obtains, and then for a time loses, a supernatural wife, generally represented as the daughter of a malignant demon. He makes his way, like Sudhana, to the demon’s abode. There tasks are set him, which he accomplishes by means of his wife’s help. One of these is that he shall recognise her when surrounded by her numerous sisters, each of whom is exactly like her in appearance and dress. He calls upon her to step forth from among them; she does so, and the recognition takes place.

As a specimen of an European variant of the tale may be taken the Russian story of “The Water-King” (“Russian Folk-Tales,” No. 19). In it a prince steals the dress of one of the water-king’s twelve daughters while they are bathing. Her sisters become spoonbills and fly away, but she remains in his power till he restores her dress. Then she also flies away in spoonbill form. When he arrives after a time at her father’s palace, she aids him to accomplish the tasks which are set him. At last the water-king says, “Choose yourself a bride from among my twelve daughters. They are all exactly alike in face, in hair, and in dress. If you can pick out the same one three times running, she shall be your wife; if you fail to do so, I shall have you put to death.” The maiden whose dress he had stolen and restored enables him to succeed in this task also. The recognition of Sudhana by his wife, brought about by means of a ring, is an incident of which frequent use is made in folk-tales. When a demon’s daughter, or a princess who has been enslaved by a demon, has enabled a hero to escape along with her from that demon’s power, she often warns him that he will forget her if he, on his return home, kisses his mother (as in “Two Kings’ Children,” Grimm, No. 113), or does something else which he has been forbidden to do. He always neglects the warning and forgets his wife. But eventually she manages to remind him of her existence, usually by means of a ring. In the similar story of “The Mastermaid” (“Tales from the Norse,” No. 11), the recognition is due to a golden apple and two golden fowls which the hero and heroine had carried off from a giant’s palace. In “The Battle of the Birds” (Campbell’s “West Highland Tales,” No. 2), the prince forgets the giant’s daughter after being kissed by “an old greyhound,” but remembers her when he hears a conversation between a golden pigeon and a silver pigeon which spring out of a glass offered to his forgotten love. Similar parallels to this story will be found in most of the large collections of European folk-tales.

A curious feature in the story is the ablution to which Manoharā is subjected after her stay among mortals (p. 71), in order that “the smell of humanity” may be “washed off her.” In a similar story in the “Kathā Sarit Sāgara,” [45] a hero who has been deserted by his celestial spouse, Bhadrā, wanders long in search of her. At length he reaches a mountain lake to which come “to draw water many beautiful women with golden pitchers in their hands.” He asks them why they are drawing water, and they reply, “A Vidyádharí of the name of Bhadrá is dwelling on this mountain; this water is for her to bathe in.” Whereupon he slips into one of the pitchers the jewelled ring which his wife had given him. And so it comes to pass that when “the water of ablution” is poured over her, the ring falls into her lap. She recognises it, and all goes well.

The long history of “Prince Jīvaka, the King of Physicians” (No. 6), has little in common with Western folk-lore. The cures he performs, by either opening the skull and removing from the brain headache-producing centipedes, or else eliminating such similar intruders by a less heroic operation, may, however, be likened to somewhat similar kinds of surgical treatment mentioned in European folk-tales. Thus in a modern Greek story [46] a girl is relieved from the presence of a number of snakes which had taken up their abode within her by being suspended from a branch of a tree above a caldron of boiling milk, the vapour arising from which induced the reptiles to come forth. There is an English story also of a country clergy-man who could obtain no rest from headaches, till at last he induced the village blacksmith to hit him on the head with his largest hammer. The ecclesiastic’s skull cracked beneath the blow, and out came sufficient swarms of earwigs to account for his complaint. But this story requires verification. The cure effected at p. 103, to which no parallel is found in the variant of the legend in Mr. Spence Hardy’s “Manual of Buddhism,” though the skull-opening incident occurs in it (p. 242), resembles that brought about by Kīrtisenā in the case of King Vasudatta’s headache in the Kathā Sarit Sāgara. [47] She learnt how to treat the malady from a Rākshasī, who gave the following instructions as to how the king might be cured, unaware that a human being was listening:—“First his head must be anointed by rubbing warm butter on it, and then it must be placed for a long time in the heat of the sun, intensified by noonday. And a hollow cane-tube must be inserted into the aperture of his ear, which must communicate with a hole in a plate, and this plate must be placed above a pitcher of cool water. Accordingly the centipedes will be annoyed by heat and perspiration, and will come out of his head, and will enter that cane-tube from the aperture of the ear, and, desiring coolness, will fall into the pitcher.” Kīrtisenā carried out these instructions, and the result was that she “extracted from the head of that king, through the aperture of the ear, one hundred and fifty centipedes.”

The lovely maiden Āmrapālī, the Dryad-like nymph who emerges (p. 85) from the kadalī tree in the āmra grove, closely resembles the tree-maidens who figure in some European popular tales. In the 21st of Hahn’s “Griechische Märchen,” the stem of a laurel opens and forth comes “a wondrously fair maiden.” In the sixth story of Basile’s “Pentamerone,” a fairy comes forth in the same way from a date spray, and in the second from a bilberry twig. The homes of the nymphs of this class are as often flowers as trees. In a Russian story (Afanasief, vi., No. 66), the heroine is transformed after death into a wondrous blossom. At midnight “the blossom begins to tremble, then it falls from its stem to the ground, and turns into a lovely maiden.” In the same way the heroine of the German story of “The Pink” (Grimm, No. 76) becomes a flower at her lover’s wish; and many other similar instances might be quoted. All such ideas as these appear to have been originally connected with the tree-worship which formed so important a part of the religion of our remote ancestors, and on which so excellent a work was written a few years ago by the late Wilhelm Mannhardt. [48]

Of special interest, as dealing with this kind of worship, is the opening of the Buddhistic legend of Mahākāśyapa and Bhadrā (No. 9). Tree-worship existed long before Buddhism was heard of, and it has succeeded in maintaining its existence in many lands up to the present day. There is no lack of stories relating to it; but it is not often that we obtain so clear an insight into the ideas of tree-worshippers, or are favoured with so detailed an account of the rites which they were wont to celebrate, as are afforded by the description of the childless Brahman’s appeal to the Nyagrodha tree (p. 187). It serves to illustrate the confusion existing in the minds of tree-worshippers between the material tree and its spiritual tenant. The Brahman Nyagrodha, the tree’s namesake, first caused the ground in its neighbourhood to be “sprinkled, cleansed, and adorned.” Then he set up flags and banners, and provided a profusion of perfumes, flowers, and incense. Finally, “he prayed to the tree-haunting deity,” promising to pay that divine being due honour if a son should be born to him, but threatening, in case he should remain childless, to cut down the tree and split it into chips, destined to be consumed with fire. In another passage of the Kah-gyur (vol. vi., p. 280) Professor Schiefner remarks in a note appended to this passage, “Bhagavant gives directions that, in case it is absolutely necessary to fell a tree, the work-masters of the Bhikshus shall draw a circle around it seven or eight days before felling it, offer up perfumes, flowers, and oblations, recite tantras and utter spells, proclaim abhorrence of the path of the ten vices, and moreover say, ‘Let the deity who inhabits this tree find another dwelling. With this tree shall a religious or ecclesiastical work be accomplished.’ Seven or eight days after this the tree may be felled. But if any change be perceptible, it must not be felled. If none is perceptible, then it may be cut down.”

One of the stories of the “Panchatantra” (the 8th of Book 5) may be compared with the opening of No. 9, so far as tree-worship is concerned, and with the already quoted (in illustration of No. 1) German story about a wife’s unreasonable wishes. A weaver, who wanted timber for a new loom, was about to fell a tree, when the spirit which resided in it protested against the operation, and promised, if the tree was spared, to fulfil any wish the weaver might express. The weaver assented, but before specifying his wish he went home and consulted his wife. She recommended him to ask for an additional pair of hands and another head, for by their means he would be able to keep two looms going instead of one. The weaver took his wife’s advice, and requested the tree-spirit to render him two-headed and four-armed. “No sooner said than done. In an instant he became equipped with a couple of heads and four arms, and returned home highly delighted with his new acquisitions. No sooner, however, did the villagers see him, than, greatly alarmed, they exclaimed ‘a goblin! a goblin!’ and between striking him with sticks and pelting him with stones speedily put an end to his existence.” [49]

The greater part of No. 9, the account of the ascetic life led by Bhadrā and her husband, belongs to a different world from that of folk-lore, but in the “Acta Sanctorum,” and in some popular legends derived from that source, parallels may be found equally conducive to edification.

In No. 10, also, we are taken away from the region of folk-tales, but this time into that of such literary fictions as form a part of the “Thousand and One Nights.” It, also, is not of a very edifying nature; but it is valuable as showing what utter nonsense many of the corrupted Buddhistic legends contain, and illustrating the custom prevalent among literary Buddhists (one in which they were perhaps surpassed by the Christian compilers of such works as the “Gesta Romanorum”) of appending an unexceptionable moral to a tale of an unsavoury nature. The rapidity with which the narrator, at the close of the story of Utpalavarṇā, passes from the record of her dissoluteness to the account of her conversion is somewhat startling. The same remark applies also to the close of the history of Kṛiśā Gautamī (No. 11). That narrative is as little edifying, for the most part, as the legend which precedes it. One of the tricks resorted to in it, the lengthening at will, by means of some magical substance, of the nose of an obnoxious individual, frequently figures in popular tales. In one of the stories from Central Asia (Jülg, “Mongolische Märchen,” No. 14), the fairies elongate an intruder’s nose to such an extent that they are able to tie seven knots in it. But they perform that operation by sheer force. In European folk-tales the abnormal growth of the nose, or the sudden appearance of horns or the like, is generally caused by the magical properties of some fruit or other apparently harmless substance (Grimm, No. 122, iii., 204, Hahn, No. 44). In the present case, the means employed for the lengthening of the nose is a piece of wood, and a piece of another kind of wood reverses the operation. In the folk-tales the magical substance which produces the wished-for result is generally discovered by accident. In the Tibetan legend its discovery is due to its employer’s observation of a raven, which lengthened its beak by rubbing it on a piece of wood when it wanted to get at a corpse otherwise out of its reach, and afterwards reduced it to its normal proportions when it had finished its meal. The magic lute which plays so important a part in the story of Suśroṇī (No. 12) is of course closely related to all the musical instruments of magic power which both literature and folk-lore have rendered familiar, from the harp or lyre of Orpheus or Amphion to the pipe of the Piper of Hameln, the dance-inspiring fiddle of the German tales of “Roland” and “The Jew in Thorns” (Grimm, Nos. 56 and 110), the magic flute which an angel gives to the strong fool of the modern Greek story of Bakala (Hahn, No. 34), and a number of similar instruments capable of making trees and rocks reel and men and women wildly skip. In these dance-compelling instruments many mythologists recognise symbols of the wind. [50] One of the most interesting of the European folk-tales in which such instruments occur is the Esthonian story of “Pikne’s Bagpipes,” of which a full account is given by A. de Gubernatis in his “Zoological Mythology” (i. 159–161), taken from Dr. Löwe’s excellent translation of Kreutzwald’s collection (“Ehstnische Märchen,” No. 9). In it the thunder-god is robbed of his bagpipes (toru-pil, “Röhreninstrument”) by the devil, who hides it away in hell, keeping it in an iron chamber guarded by seven locks. The consequence is that the clouds no longer yield a drop of rain. The thunder-god, under the form of a boy, obtains access to hell, and persuades the devil to let him play on the magic bagpipes. Thereupon “the walls of hell quaked, and the devil and his associates fainted away and fell to the ground as though dead.” Returning home, the thunder-god “blew into his thunder-instrument till the rain-gates opened and gave the earth to drink.” The termination of the history of Suśroṇī is closely akin to that with which all complete variants of the “Puss in Boots” story should end. They ought always to conclude with the ingratitude of the hero or heroine of the tale to the cat or fox or other animal which has made itself useful. The Marquis de Carabas ought to have proved ungrateful to the Booted Cat, just as Suśroṇī neglected to give her benefactor, the jackal, the daily meat which she had promised it. The asseverations of the king’s wives in this story, and those of the hero and heroine of No. 18, may be compared with the similar affirmations of the heroine of the 26th of M. Legrand’s “Contes Populaires Grecs.” In it a king suffers from a strange malady, three branches having grown over his heart. His disguised sister tells him her story, and adds, “If I tell the truth, O my king, may one of the branches break which is over your heart!” By three such asseverations she breaks all three branches.

The story (No. 13) of the actor who dramatises the life of Buddha, and is punished for his audacity in making fun of the Six Bhikshus, soars high above the region of folk-lore. And there is but little in European popular fiction which can be likened to the legend of “The Dumb Cripple” (No. 14), who pretended to be unable to speak or walk, in order that he might not be made a king, reflecting that, “if he were to be invested with sovereign power, this would not be a good thing, seeing that in consequence of a sixty years’ reign which he had accomplished in a previous state of existence, he had been born again in hell, and that he now ran the risk of going to hell a second time.” The same remark holds good of the not very edifying history of Ṛshyaśringa or Gazelle Horn (No. 15), the ascetic who, out of spite, prevents rain from falling until his asceticism and his magic power collapse together.

The story of Viśvaṇtara (No. 16), the princely Bodisat, who not only gives away all his property and retires into the forest of penance, but even surrenders his two children to a cruel slave-owner, and finally hands over his wife to a stranger who demands her, has been already told by Mr. Spence Hardy in his “Manual of Buddhism” (pp. 116–124), under the title of “The Wessantara Játaka;” but as it is one of the most touching of the class of legends to which it belongs, having in it more of human interest than such narratives generally contain, and as the Tibetan variant is the more poetic and pathetic of the two renderings of the tale, Professor Schiefner has done good service by translating it. Such acts of renunciation as the princely Bodisat accomplished do not commend themselves to the Western mind. An Oriental story-teller can describe a self-sacrificing monarch as cutting slices of flesh off his own arms and plunging them into the fire in honour of a deity, and yet not be afraid of exciting anything but a religious thrill among his audience. To European minds such a deed would probably appear grotesque. And so the Eastern tales in praise of self-sacrifice do not seem to have impressed the lay mind of Europe. On ecclesiastical literature they probably exerted considerable influence. But folk-tales do not often deal with such heroic operations as were performed by Prince Viśvaṇtara in cutting himself loose from all worldly ties in order that nothing might prevent him from becoming the consummate Buddha. The sorrows of Madrī, the princely ascetic’s wife, who is reduced by her husband’s passion for giving everything away first to exile and poverty, then to bitter grief on account of the loss of her dearly loved little children, and finally to slavery, but who submits to all her husband’s commands, may be compared with those of the patient Grisildes whose praises Chaucer has sung in “The Clerke’s Tale.” The Clerk states in his prologue that the story was one which he “lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk,” whose name was “Fraunces Petrark, the laureat poete;” Petrarch having freely translated it in the year 1373 from Boccaccio’s “Decamerone.” This story, however, appears to have been current in Italy for some time before. In folk-tales the similar sorrows of a wife who is condemned to a series of humiliations by a harsh husband are often described; but the husband’s conduct is generally accounted for by the fact that his wife had at first rejected him with contumely, and he had made up his mind to retaliate. Patient Grissel’s husband had absolutely no excuse to plead for his cruelty, nor can much be said in extenuation of that of such a husband as the German “King Thrushbeard” (Grimm, No. 52), the Norwegian “Hacon Grizzlebeard” (“Tales from the Norse,” No. 6), or the Italian “King of Fairland,” the husband of the proud Cintiella (Basile’s “Pentamerone,” No. 40). The Russian variant of “Patient Grissel’s Story” (Afanasief, v. No. 29) seems worthy of mention, as not being likely to be familiar to Western Europe. A king marries a peasant’s daughter on condition that she shall never find fault with anything he says or does. She makes him an excellent wife, and never opposes his will, even when he takes her children from her, pretending that they are to be put to death, in order that his neighbours might not laugh at them as being sprung from a peasant mother; or when he sends her back to her father’s hut, and then recalls her from it as a servant, and orders her to get ready the room intended for his new bride. But the Russian story, as it stands alone (with the exception of the opening), is probably an echo from abroad. [51]

In the Nidānakathā or “The Three Epochs” (translated in Mr. Rhys Davids’s “Buddhist Birth-Stories,” p. 33), there is an account of the great generosity of Mangala Buddha. “The story is, that when he was performing the duties of a Bodhisatta, being in an existence corresponding to the Vessentara existence, [52] he dwelt with his wife and children on a mountain.” One day a demon named “Sharp-fang,” hearing of his readiness to bestow gifts, “approached him in the guise of a Brahmin, and asked the Bodhisatta for his two children. The Bodhisatta, exclaiming, “I give my children to the Brahmin,” cheerfully and joyfully gave up both the children, thereby causing the ocean-girt earth to quake. The demon, standing by the bench at the end of the cloistered walk, while the Bodhisatta looked on, devoured the children like a bunch of roots. Not a particle of sorrow arose in the Bodhisatta as he looked on the demon, and saw his mouth as soon as he opened it disgorging streams of blood like flames of fire; nay, a great joy and satisfaction welled within him as he thought, ‘My gift was well given,’ and he put up the prayer, ‘By the merit of this deed may rays of light one day issue from me in this very way.’ In consequence of this prayer of his it was that the rays emitted from his body when he became Buddha filled so vast a sphere.” Another strange Indian story about self-sacrifice is that of the Dānava or Titan Namuchi, [53] who “did not refuse to give anything to anybody that asked, even if he were his enemy.” Having practised asceticism for ten thousand years “as a drinker of smoke,” he was allowed by Brahmā to become, like Balder, proof against all the ordinary forces of nature. After that he frequently made war against Indra, and often overcame him. When the gods and the Asuras churned the ocean of milk with the mountain Mandara, Namuchi received, as his share in the products of the churning, a horse which had the power of restoring to life, by a sniff, any Asura whom the gods had killed. This gave him great power. At length Indra went to Namuchi and asked for that horse as a gift. Namuchi gave it, and Indra, “as he could not be slain by any other weapon, killed him with foam of the Ganges, in which he had placed a thunderbolt.” However, he was born again as “an Asura composed all of jewels,” and he conquered Indra a hundred times. “Then the gods took counsel together, and came to him, and said to him, ‘By all means give us your body for a human sacrifice.’ When he heard that, he gave them his own body, although they were his enemies: noble men do not turn their backs on a suppliant, but bestow on him even their lives.”

The story of a charitable monarch, whose uprightness and generosity are put to a severe test by a deity, occurs as a folk-tale in Miss Maive Stokes’s “Indian Fairy Tales” (No. 13). It properly belongs to literature, in which it has assumed various forms, one of which has been made known to English readers by the late Sir Mutu Coomāra Swāmy in his “Arichandra, or the Martyr of Truth; a Drama translated from the Tamil.” The story as told by an Indian ayah takes this form. There was a king named Harchand, who “used to pray a great deal to God, and God was very fond of him,” but thought fit to test his goodness. So one day, when he had promised an ascetic “two pounds and a half of gold,” all his wealth was turned into charcoal. In order to keep his word, Harchand was obliged to sell his wife and child for a pound and a half of gold, and then he sold himself for the other pound. Having become the property of “a Dom, that is, a man of a very low caste, who kept a tank into which it was his business to throw the bodies of those who died,” he was charged with the care of the tank, and ordered to take a rupee in payment for each adult corpse, eight annas for a dead child, or a piece of cloth, in case the bearers of the body had no money. One day his wife arrived, bearing the corpse of his son, who had died. She had no money, but she said to herself, “I know that man is my husband, so he will not take any money for throwing his child into the water.” But he was so honest, in the interests of his master, that he insisted upon a fee, which had to be paid at the expense of his wife’s single covering. Eventually all went well, the dead boy was restored to life, and when the reunited royal family returned home, “the garden was in splendid beauty; the charcoal was turned back into gold, and silver, and jewels; the servants were in waiting as usual, and they went into the palace and lived happily for evermore.”

The principal theme of “The Fulfilled Prophecy” (No. 17) is one that often occurs in popular tales, many of which are devoted to proving how impossible it is for a man, whatever crimes he may commit, to escape from his destiny. The “Two Brothers” (No. 18) is one of the great cycle of moral tales in which goodness is contrasted with badness, to the temporary advantage but eventual discomfiture of the latter. The blinding of the good brother by the bad is an incident suggestive of the opening of the well-known folk-tales of “True and Untrue” (“Tales from the Norse,” No. 1), the “Two Wanderers” (Grimm, No. 107), and a great number of similar stories, to many of which references are given in vol. iii. p. 189, of Grimm’s collection.