A History of Sanskrit Literature c24.s1.25

c24.s1.25

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.