come to the knowledge of European scholars and merchants long before that date. In the middle of the 13th century a translation was made into Hebrew, and shortly after, this version was translated into Latin. About the same time a translation was made from the Arabic into Spanish and again into Latin.

The action of the Kalila and Dimna' tales is not confined exclusively to animals, but it is in almost every case closely connected with animals. But whereas in Esop the animals act in conformity with their natural habits, in the Indian setting they act and speak like men, without any regard to their being animals save for the circumstance that certain animals are always associated with certain characteristics and qualities, such as the lion with majesty, the jackal with cunning, the camel with stupidity, and so forth. There can be no doubt, I think, that the original purpose in inventing and recording such animal tales was to convey to those in authority salutary advice and timely warning. Thus, a minister who desired to bring to the notice of the King the turpitude of some other minister, would relate an animal story, which while purely anonymous, would bring home to the King the circumstances which the minister was attempting to describe without being libellous. Oriental histories are full of anecdotes in which it is related how Kings and Governors took lessons from occurrences that met their eye during their travels abroad. A collection of fables would no doubt serve the purpose of a vademecum to rulers, which would put them on their guard against the disloyal and teach them how to deal with miscreants. It naturally follows from these conclusions that the fables, contrary to our generally accepted notions on the subject, neither set out to be, nor actually are, as a rule, moral. The point of most of these stories is the exercise of ruse and stratagem, and there is little enough of ethical justice in them.

As to the original source of these fables it is certain that we cannot point to one particular country and say that here was their birth. As Sir Richard Temple has pointed out in his foreword to the first volume, their possible origins are certainly most diverse, and he enumerates among others, firstly, the Aryan with analogies among Asiatic and European Aryan peoples;

secondly, Semitic; thirdly, Asiatic with analogies among Mongolian peoples; fourthly, Non-Aryan Indian. Thus

he says:

'Suppose a custom or tale is non-aryan Indian by origin, by Somadeva's date it had had plenty of time to be assimilated and take an Aryan form. Suppose it to date back before the Aryan irruption into India, its existence in principle now, or at some ancient date, in Western Asia or Europe would not prove that it arose either in India or in Eastern or in Western Asia.... Recent works show so much and so ancient communication all the world over, as to make one very careful of asserting origins.'

Although her literature is the richest treasure-house of story in the world, India cannot claim to be the Mother of Stories. A common folk-lore has been found to extend over a vast tract of country, comprising IndoChina, Malaya, and the Bengal valley of the Ganges, to which the name Austro-Asian has been given in contradistinction to the term 'Aryan.' The study of the popular tales of Austro-Asia has revealed the existence of hundreds of stories which, while bearing the most striking resemblance to stories we know from Indian and Arabic sources, are obviously not borrowed from India, but have characteristic settings of their own. Many of these stories, in their familiar Indian settings, are found to have been Aryanised, just as Indian stories have been changed in their turn to suit popular taste in their passage through Arabic and Persian literature. If we consider the probabilities of similar stories having a separate origin, it is evident that where these deal with the actual behaviour of animals, as animals, we may expect to find similar anecdotes springing up independently all the world over. But when we have to do with human beings or with animals who act and speak as human beings, it is not so easy to presume the long arm of coincidence.

If the Indo-Aryans did not invent stories, they were at any rate the greatest of story-tellers. The famous Mahabharata and Ramayana of the Hindus bear ample witness to this. The preachers of Buddhism in their anxiety to open the way of salvation to all classes, saw at the outset the value of tales for the purposes of propaganda; and eagerly seized on those current in India

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as a means of conveying moral instruction or of winning Th popularity for the Buddha and his associates. And so valuable were these stories found to be that they eventually took their place in the sacred Canon. These stories were then divided into two classes: the Játakas, in which the Buddha played a principal rôle; and the Avadánas, in which the hero is some one else in the Buddha's entourage. The Pali Canon contains a collection of five hundred Játakas. The Buddhist literature in Sanskrit which has survived, contains only a small collection of Játakas but is very rich in Avadánas. Fortunately, the Sanskrit works which have perished (partly owing to the gradual re-merging of Buddhism into Hinduism, and partly owing to the advent of the conquering Moslems in Northern India), were translated into Chinese between the third and fifth centuries and have been preserved almost in their entirety. These Pali and Chinese works form the oldest and most important collection of folk-lore extant.

Now, in the West the semi-fabulous Esop is wont to get the credit for all the best fables, and the so-called Æsop's Fables' certainly reached Europe early enough to be known to Aristotle, who quotes the story of the Fox and the Hedgehog. This, as will be remembered from La Fontaine's version ('Un Herisson du voisinage, dans mes vers nouveau personnage '), tells how a fox was attacked by a swarm of flies, and how he refused the offer of the hedgehog to remove them, saying that he preferred the flies who had drunk their fill of his blood to the risk of their being replaced by a new and thirsty swarm. By whatever route and by whatever medium, certain Indian fables reached Europe before Alexander's invasion, the trade route which certainly existed 1000 B.C. must have served for the exchange of something beyond mere merchandise. After Alexander's time a certain number of tales found in the Buddhist Canon became current in Greece and are preserved in the poetical versions of Babrios and Phædrus.

In 1678, La Fontaine published a second collection of Fables. In his preface to these he says: 'It is not necessary that I should say whence I have taken the subjects of these new Fables, I shall only say by way of gratitude that I owe the largest portion of them to

Bidpay, the Indian sage.' The Fables of Bidpay, as we have seen, did not reach Europe till after they had been popularised through the Arabic Kalila and Dimna' and its translations, and in the interval between the arrival of the classical Fables and the dissemination of the translations from the Arabic, there is no trace of any migration of Indian fables into Europe. It is, therefore, quite possible that the earliest stories to reach the West were Buddhist in setting, while the later were Hindu. Apart from these several migrations we must also allow for an outward and inner circle of transport, and must be on our guard against picturing all fables as travelling from East to West by a great North-Westerly route.

As an example of the earlier migration let us take the familiar fable of the Ass in the Lion's Skin. This story has been many times changed in regard to detail, and had sadly deteriorated by the time it reached Europe. The earliest known version is the Buddhist, where it runs as follows: A hawker was wont to go from place to place selling his wares, which were carried by his ass. On arrival at each new place he used to remove the pack from the ass's back, and covering him with a lion's skin, turn him loose to graze in the fields. The watchmen in the fields never dared go near him, taking him for a lion. One day, however, a watchman went home and told what he had seen, whereupon the villagers came out with weapons, beating drums and shouting. The terrified ass brayed, and the villagers, realising the truth, caught him and beat him till his bones broke. In the 'Ocean of Story' we read that a certain washerman had a donkey, and in order to make him fat he used to cover him with a panther's skin, and let him loose to feed in the neighbours' corn. One day a cultivator, taking the ass for a panther, covered himself with a rug and making himself humpbacked, began to crawl away. The ass took him for another ass, and being primed with corn, brayed to him. Thereupon the cultivator shot him with an arrow. In Æsop the ass is responsible for the disguise, and it will be remembered that La Fontaine allows one of the ass's ears to protrude and thus to reveal his identity. The character of the tale is, therefore, changed in one important detail, namely, that no reason is given for the attempt of the ass to pass as a lion.

As an example of the later migration we may take a story as told by Somadeva himself-a story which illus' trates the impossibilities' motif, on which Mr Penzer am has an interesting note.

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'Once upon a time there was a merchant's son, who had rer spent all his father's wealth, and had only an iron balance left to him. Now the balance was made of one thousand palas of iron; and depositing it in the care of a certain merchant, he went to another land. And when, on his return, he came to that merchant to demand back his balance, the merchant said to him: "It has been eaten by mice." He repeated : "It is quite true; the iron of which it was composed was particularly sweet, and so the mice ate it." This he said with an outward show of sorrow, laughing in his heart.

'Then the merchant's son asked him to give him some food, and he, being in a good temper, consented to give him some. Then the merchant's son went to bathe, taking with him the son of that merchant, who was a mere child, and whom he persuaded to come with him by giving him a dish of amalakas. And, after he had bathed, the wise merchant's son deposited that boy in the house of a friend, and returned alone to that merchant. And the merchant said to him: "Where is that son of mine?" He replied: "A kite swooped down from the air and carried him off." The merchant in a rage said: "You have concealed my son." And so he took him to the King's judgment-hall; and there the merchant's son made the same statement. The officers of the court said: 66 That is impossible; how could a kite carry off a boy?" But the merchant's son answered: "In a country where a large iron balance was eaten by mice, a kite might carry off an elephant, much more a boy." When the officers heard that, they asked about it, out of curiosity, and so made the merchant restore the balance to the owner, and he, for his part, restored the merchant's child.'

In order to show how little this story has been changed in the course of its journey from Kashmir to Paris, I add a translation of La Fontaine's version.

'A Persian merchant, trading oversea,

Left in his neighbour's custody

A hundredweight of iron. Coming back,

66

"My iron, please," said he.

"Alack!

'Tis gone," replied the friend; "I grieve to say

A rat got in, and gnawed it all away.