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A History of Sanskrit Literature c24.s1: 1. The Fables and Märchen of Greece and India

A History of Sanskrit Literature c24.s1

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English

1. The Fables and Märchen of Greece and India

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THE obvious parallelisms between Indian and Greek fairy tales and fables have never been ignored, and have evoked lively controversies. Wagener¹ held that Greece was the recipient, but both Weber² and Benfey³ came to the conclusion that the Indian fables were borrowed from Greece, and for this view there could be adduced the question of chronology; the Greek fable is clearly in existence in the time of Hesiod, is hinted at in Homer, appears definitely in Archilochos and Simonides, and is developed into an important branch of literature, though the actual date of our collections is less certain. Herodotos, however, knew of Aisopos as a fable-teller, and Babrios (*c.* A.D. 200) and Phaedrus (*c.* A.D. 20), if themselves late, drew from earlier sources. Benfey complicated the position by holding that fairy tales were normally Indian in origin, thus establishing a dualism which was difficult to defend. Keller⁴ contended for the priority of India, and this view has recently been revived and insisted upon.⁵ As a chronological consideration stress has been laid on the monumental evidence in India, especially at Bharhut of the third or second century B.C., for the existence of beast fables, and some would accept the Jātaka stories as already existing in the fourth or fifth centuries B.C., although this is manifestly dubious. Various criteria have been imagined by which to decide priority; Weber preferred the test of simplicity, naturalness, or naïveté, Benfey thought that incompleteness was often a sign of greater age, while Keller laid stress on the doctrine of logical sequence and conformity to the habits of animals as revealed in nature. Thus he developed the argument that the fact of the jackal following the lion to partake of the remains of his kill is true to nature, and easily suggests to the early fabulist the conception of making him minister to the lion as king of beasts, whence, as the minister must according to Indian tradition be a miracle of cunning, the jackal is thus reputed; in Greece where the fox appears in the role of the jackal, his position is unexplained, for he is not in reality a very cunning animal. Unhappily this ignores, apart from the fact that it is fancy, not fact, that creates a world of intelligent beasts, the possibility that the fable had its origin neither in India nor in Greece, but was a product of lands intermediate between these countries. Weber justly contended that, if the relation of lion and jackal came thence to Greece, it would have to be changed to suit Greek conditions, while, if it later reached India from Greece, it would have been necessary there to reinstate the jackal. Or, more naturally, it may be held that the fable reached both west and east from the common source in the early fables connected with the name of Aisopos. We cannot ignore the possibility of Egypt having played a part in the genesis and transmission of fables, and Diels¹ has with special reference to Kallimachos claimed for Lydia a substantial share in the work of diffusion. Hertel,² again, has insisted that the idea of making use of fables to given instruction in politics is essentially Indian, and on the strength of it has claimed for India originality in respect of the best Greek fables; but the assertion is as little capable of proof as the claim that Greece excels in witty and pointed fables which in India have often suffered watering down at the hands of Buddhist and other preachers.

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¹ *Les Apologues de l'Inde et les Apologues de la Grèce* (1854).

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² *IS.* iii. 327–73; *SBA.* 1890, p. 916.

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³ Trans. of *Pañcatantra*, I. x ff.

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⁴ *Jahrbücher f. klass. Phil.*, iv. 309–418.

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⁵ e.g. by Hertel, Cosquin, H. Lüders (*Buddh. Märchen*, p. xiii). Cf. G. d'Alviella, *Ce que l'Inde doit à la Grèce* (1897), pp. 138 ff.

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¹ *Int. Wochenschrift*, iv. 995.

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² ZDMG. lxii. 113.

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Nor in any account can we omit to recognize the fact that in Märchen at least we may have old myths and that something must be allowed, as Grimm demanded, for the old common possession of the Indo-European people. In the tales of Herakles, Thorr, and Indra we have certainly some of this old mythology. More speculative is Kern's³ ingenious comparison of the ape king, who in a Jātaka makes himself a bridge for his following over the Ganges, and a similar exploit of the Irish king Bran, with which he suggests that the function of the Roman pontifex may be connected. We have accordingly a great field of possibilities; borrowing of India from Greece, of Greece from India, of both from a common source in Egypt or Asia Minor and Syria; common inheritance from Indo-European times, or from even further back if it is deemed worth while seeking to penetrate further into the past; and independent development due to the similar constitution of the human mind. In the face of these possibilities it will be found increasingly difficult to reach any clear decision in any particular case, while any general conclusion is absolutely out of the question. It must further be remembered that there must be admitted movements to and fro; a good story may be invented in Greece, pass to India, and return to Greece; Pausanias¹ already tells us before 180 A.D. of the snake who protected a child but was taken for its murderer and killed; it is difficult not to see in this the origin of the touching tale of the Brahmin who slays the ichneumon which had killed the snake attacking its master’s child, a legend which is famous in the form of Llewelyn and Gelert, a dog replacing the mongoose, and which can be traced widely over Europe.

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³ *Gurupūjākaumudī*, pp. 93 f.

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¹ x. 33. 9. Cf. Bloomfield, JAOS. xxxvi. 63 ff.

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In many cases chronology is decisive against Indian influence on Greece being plausible. Thus a Corinthian vase² shows us the existence of the fable of the fox and the raven in the sixth century B.C., while in India we have the story of the fox and the crow only in the Jātaka and, therefore, of uncertain date. A painting by Polygnotos in the Lesche at Delphi of Oknos and his ass affords better evidence than the Jātaka tale of the ropemaker and the female jackal who undoes his work unperceived, both accusations of man’s industry and woman’s waste.³ Demokritos knew the story of the eagle who dropped the tortoise, which in India appears as the swans who let the same animal fall. The goat which swallowed a razor was the subject of a Greek proverb,⁴ and occurs in a Jātaka. The mice which eat iron in the *Pañcatantra* and a Jātaka are known already to Seneca and Herondas. The fable related of Daidalos in Sophokles’ *Kami-* *kioi*¹ is far better attested for Greece than for India in a late *Jātaka*. The claim that the account in Herodotos and Sophokles alike of a sister’s preference for a brother’s life to that of a husband, since she cannot have another brother, need certainly not be traced to a *Jātaka*, and the attempt to derive the delightful story of how Hippokleides lost his marriage by reason of his dance from the similar tale of the peacock in the *Jātaka* is curiously absurd. In these cases we have to do with ideas which would naturally enough develop themselves in men’s minds independently. Nor does there seem any conclusive ground for holding that the tale of the ass in the lion’s skin is older in either country. In the version in Greece the ass itself assumes a lion’s skin and is betrayed by the wind blowing it away; the Indian versions are more prosaic; the ass is given a skin by its owner to allow it to steal corn, and betrays itself by its cry.

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² *Philologus*, lxxiv. 470. On classical fables, cf. Hausrath, Pauly-Wissowa, *Realencycl.*, vi. 1724 ff.; *Achiqar und Äsop* (1918); G. Thiele, *Neue Jahrbücher f. d. klass. Altertum*, xxi. 377 ff.

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³ Pausanias, x. 29.

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⁴ ZDMG. xlvii. 89 ff.; lxvi. 338.

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¹ Zachariae, *Kl. Schriften*, pp. 108 ff.

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The same doubt as to priority constantly occurs;² the story of the jackal which revealed its nature by its cry has a parallel in Phaedrus; so has the story of the ungrateful snake which bit its rescuer; the panther treats the goat as does the wolf the lamb in Phaedrus; the gods of Phaedrus who wish to drink up the stream have their parallel in the crows which would drain dry the sea; the motif of the bald-headed man and the fly, used with comic effect in Phaedrus, is turned to tragedy in the *Jātaka*; we find in Phaedrus the old tale of the eagle and the tortoise, and in India the swans in place of the eagle. The fable of the fox which compels the eagle to restore its young, which Archilochos knew, has been paralleled with a tale in the *Pañcatantra* of a crow and a snake, but the discrepancies are too great; nor is the parallel of the wolf, which a crane helps, in Phaedrus to the tale of the lion and the woodpecker sufficiently close to prove priority on either side.

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² Günter, *Buddha*, pp. 52 ff.

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Much that has been adduced definitely³ in favour of Greek priority is extremely dubious. The Trojan horse, however, is much older than the capture by an elephant of wood filled with soldiers of Udayana, but the *motif* is traced also in Egypt,⁴ and cannot be deemed too recondite to be original in India. The love of Phaidra for Hippolytos is striking, but the *motif* is found in the Jātaka¹ and belongs to human nature. The device of consoling the living for the dead by striking means is ascribed to Demokritos, is found in Lukianos, in Julian's letters, and in pseudo-Kallisthenes, but it also is attested by the Chinese version of the Tripiṭaka, which bids the mourner bring fire from a house where none has died. Androclus' grateful lion has an Indian parallel in the grateful elephant; Milo's death reminds us of the foolish ape in the *Pañcatantra*; India knows of paintings which deceive by likeness to life, as Parrhasios deceived even Zeuxis by his painted curtain. The tale of how an adulteress clears herself by a cunningly devised oath is early enough in India to have been deemed the source of Isolde's falsehood,² but we have the same idea in the oath of Ovid's Mestra.³ The effort to find in the tract *Physiologos* the proof of Indian influence on the western legend of the unicorn or the source of Caesar's tale of the elks of the Black Forest, which cannot rise if once they fall to the ground, is clearly a failure. From India may be borrowed the tale of the Charadrios, a bird which bears jaundice to the sun, but, as this idea is extremely early in India, it may be an ancient Indo-European belief.

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³ e.g. Polykrates’ ring and the ring in the *Çakuntalā*; Surendranath Majumdar Sastri, *JBORS.* 1921, pp. 96 ff.; *Jāt.* 288.

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⁴ v. d. Leyen, *Archiv f. d. Stud. d. neueren Sprachen*, cxv. 6.

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¹ Bloomfield, tapa. liv. 145 ff.

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² J. J. Meyer, *Isoldes Gottesurteil*, pp. 218 ff.

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³ Rohde, *Griech. Roman*, p. 515.

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In some cases more certainty of borrowing exists. The complex legend of Rhampsinitos in Herodotos, which he learned in Egypt, appears before a. d. 300 in India and can hardly be other than a borrowing there.⁴ But instances of this sort are rare and the issue of priority between India and Greece normally remains open. Little can be gained from general considerations such as the fact of belief in transmigration in India, the fondness of the Indian mind for romance, or the number of idle wanderers, religious men of various kinds, who went about India and perhaps beyond, telling and hearing tales. There seems to be no necessary connexion between beast fables and the belief in transmigration, for such fables exist among many peoples and represent a period when beast and human lives were not regarded as so distinct as they are in modern times; love of tales is recorded of others as of the people of Miletos, and wanderers of all kinds were evidently as common in the ancient as in the modern world. What presents much greater certainty is the actual translation of important Indian books and the transmission thus of much of fable and fairy tale to western lands, but that cannot be proved for an early date. It is difficult to believe we must¹ go to India for the idea of the gratitude of animals when we know that Agatharchos, a contemporary of Alexander the Great, told the tale of the dolphin, which rewarded kindness by saving during a shipwreck the life of the youth who bought him from some fishermen. On the other hand, it is not necessary to find in the Aīsopian fable of the fox which ate the heart of the deer killed by the sick lion and then denied that the beast had had a heart, the prototype of the jackal who ate the heart and ears of the ass and declared it never had them or it would not have been killed.

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⁴ Frazer, *Pausanias*, v. 176 ff.; G. Paris, RHR. lv. 151 ff., 267 ff.; Huber, BEFEO. iv. 701 f.; Niebuhr, OLZ. 1914, p. 106.

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¹ Cosquin, *Études folkloriques*, p. 21.

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