The History of Indian Literature c9.98

c9.98

²²¹ In my paper, *Ueber den Zusammenhang indischer Fabeln mit griechischen* (*I. St.*, iii. 327 ff.), as the result of special investigations bearing upon A. Wagener’s Essay on the subject (1853), I arrived at exactly the opposite conclusion; for in nearly every instance where a Greek fable was compared with the corresponding Indian one, the marks of originality appeared to me to belong to the former. In all probability the Buddhists were here the special medium of communication, since it is upon their popular form of literary exposition that the Indian fable and fairy-tale literature is specially based. Otto Keller, it is true, in his tract, *Ueber die Geschichte der griech. Fabel* (1862), maintains, in opposition to my view, the Indian origin of the fables common to India and Greece, and suggests an ancient Assyrian channel of communication. His main argument for their Indian origin is derived from the circumstance that the relation existing in Greek fable between the fox and the lion has no real basis in the nature of the two animals, whereas the jackal does, as a matter of fact, stand to the lion in the relation portrayed in Indian fable. But are jackals, then, only found in India, and not also in countries inhabited by Semitic peoples? And is not the Greek animal-fable precisely a Semitic growth? That the Indians should turn the fox of the Greek fable back again into the jackal necessarily followed from the very nature of the case. The actual state of things, namely, that the jackal prowls about after the lion, had indeed early attracted their attention; see, *e.g.*, Ṛik, x. 28. 4; but there is no evidence at all that in the older period the knowledge was turned to the use to which it is put in the fable, the only characteristics mentioned of the jackal being its howling, its devouring of carrion, and its enmity to the dog. (In Śatap., xii. 5. 2. 5, the jackal is, it is true, associated with the word *vidagdha*, and this is certainly noteworthy; but here the term simply signifies 'burnt' or 'putrid.') Keller's views as to the high antiquity of the Indian authors he cites are unfounded.