Indian Fairy Tales

Indian Fairy Tales

Project Gutenberg's Indian Fairy Tales, by Collected by Joseph Jacobs
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: Indian Fairy Tales
Author: Collected by Joseph Jacobs
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7128] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 13,
2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDIAN
FAIRY TALES ***

Produced by Delphine Lettau, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.

INDIAN FAIRY TALES
Selected and edited by JOSEPH JACOBS
Illustrated by JOHN D. BATTEN
TO MY DEAR LITTLE PHIL

PREFACE
From the extreme West of the Indo-European world, we go this year to
the extreme East. From the soft rain and green turf of Gaeldom, we
seek the garish sun and arid soil of the Hindoo. In the Land of Ire, the
belief in fairies, gnomes, ogres and monsters is all but dead; in the
Land of Ind it still flourishes in all the vigour of animism.
Soils and national characters differ; but fairy tales are the same in plot
and incidents, if not in treatment. The majority of the tales in this
volume have been known in the West in some form or other, and the
problem arises how to account for their simultaneous existence in
farthest West and East. Some--as Benfey in Germany, M. Cosquin in
France, and Mr. Clouston in England--have declared that India is the
Home of the Fairy Tale, and that all European fairy tales have been
brought from thence by Crusaders, by Mongol missionaries, by Gipsies,
by Jews, by traders, by travellers. The question is still before the courts,
and one can only deal with it as an advocate. So far as my instructions
go, I should be prepared, within certain limits, to hold a brief for India.
So far as the children of Europe have their fairy stories in common,
these--and they form more than a third of the whole --are derived from
India. In particular, the majority of the Drolls or comic tales and jingles

can be traced, without much difficulty, back to the Indian peninsula.
Certainly there is abundant evidence of the early transmission by
literary means of a considerable number of drolls and folk-tales from
India about the time of the Crusaders. The collections known in Europe
by the titles of _The Fables of Bidpai, The Seven Wise Masters, Gesia
Romanorum_, and Barlaam and Josaphat, were extremely popular
during the Middle Ages, and their contents passed on the one hand into
the Exempla of the monkish preachers, and on the other into the
Novelle of Italy, thence, after many days, to contribute their quota to
the Elizabethan Drama. Perhaps nearly one-tenth of the main incidents
of European folktales can be traced to this source.
There are even indications of an earlier literary contact between Europe
and India, in the case of one branch of the folk-tale, the Fable or Beast
Droll. In a somewhat elaborate discussion [Footnote: "History of the
Aesopic Fable," the introductory volume to my edition of Caxton's
Fables of Esope (London, Nutt, 1889).] I have come to the conclusion
that a goodly number of the fables that pass under the name of the
Samian slave, Aesop, were derived from India, probably from the same
source whence the same tales were utilised in the Jatakas, or
Birth-stories of Buddha. These Jatakas contain a large quantity of
genuine early Indian folk-tales, and form the earliest collection of
folk-tales in the world, a sort of Indian Grimm, collected more than two
thousand years before the good German brothers went on their quest
among the folk with such delightful results. For this reason I have
included a considerable number of them in this volume; and shall be
surprised if tales that have roused the laughter and wonder of pious
Buddhists for the last two thousand years, cannot produce the same
effect on English children. The Jatakas have been