A History of Sanskrit LiteratureMacdonell, Arthur Anthony
History
A History of Sanskrit Literature
Macdonell, Arthur Anthony
Sanskrit literature -- History and criticism
It is interesting to note the changes which tales undergo in the
course of such wanderings. In the second edition of his Fables
(1678), La Fontaine acknowledges his indebtedness for a large part
of his work to the Indian sage Pilpay. A well-known story in the
French writer is that of the milkmaid, who, while carrying a pail
of milk on her head to market, and building all kinds of castles in
the air with the future proceeds of the sale of the milk, suddenly
gives a jump of joy at the prospect of her approaching fortune, and
thereby shatters the pail to pieces on the ground. This is only a
transformation of a story still preserved in the Panchatantra. Here
it is a Brahman who, having filled an alms-bowl with the remnants of
some rice-pap he has begged, hangs it up on a nail in the wall above
his bed. He dreams of the money he will procure by selling the rice
when a famine breaks out. Then he will gradually acquire cattle, buy
a fine house, and marry a beautiful girl with a rich dowry. One day
when he calls to his wife to take away his son who is playing about,
and she does not hear, he will rise up to give her a kick. As this
thought passes through his mind, his foot shatters the alms-bowl,
the contents of which are spilt all over him.
Another Panchatantra story recurring in La Fontaine is that of the
too avaricious jackal. Finding the dead bodies of a boar and a hunter,
besides the bow of the latter, he resolves on devouring the bowstring
first. As soon as he begins to gnaw, the bow starts asunder, pierces
his head, and kills him. In La Fontaine the jackal has become a wolf,
and the latter is killed by the arrow shot off as he touches the bow.
Nothing, perhaps, in the history of the migration of Indian tales is
more remarkable than the story of Barlaam and Josaphat. At the court of
Khalif Almansur (753-774), under whom Kalilah and Dimnah was translated
into Arabic, there lived a Christian known as John of Damascus,
who wrote in Greek the story of Barlaam and Josaphat as a manual of
Christian theology. This became one of the most popular books of the
Middle Ages, being translated into many Oriental as well as European
languages. It is enlivened by a number of fables and parables, most of
which have been traced to Indian sources. The very hero of the story,
Prince Josaphat, has an Indian origin, being, in fact, no other than
Buddha. The name has been shown to be a corruption of Bodhisattva,
a well-known designation of the Indian reformer. Josaphat rose to the
rank of a saint both in the Greek and the Roman Church, his day in the
former being August 26, in the latter November 27. That the founder of
an atheistic Oriental religion should have developed into a Christian
saint is one of the most astounding facts in religious history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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