the tasks. This is indeed a close parallelism sufficient to raise the general question of relation between the Indian and the European folk-tale. But the earlier existence of the tale in Apuleius and Basile would give the preference to European influence on India rather than vice versa.
I should add that I have followed Apuleius in giving a symbolic name to the heroine of the tale, in order to suggest its relation to the classical folk-tale of Cupid and Psyche, but not of course to indicate that it is in any sense mythological. The Descent-to-hell incident, which is found both in the classical and in the modern European forms and therefore in my reconstruction is only, after all, the application of a common form to the notion of difficult Tasks, which is of the essence of the story
XVIII. THE MASTER-MAID
This is one of the oldest and widest spread tales of the world, and the resultant formula was, therefore, more than usually difficult to reconstruct. The essence of the tale consists in the Menial Hero—Three Tasks—Master-Maid Help—Obstacles to Pursuit—Oblivion Kiss—False Bride—Sale of Bed—Happy Marriage. In essentials this is the story of Jason and Medea, where we have the Tasks, the Pursuit, and the False Bride, though the dramatic genius of the Greeks has given a tragic ending to the tale. Lang, in his Custom and Myth, pp. 87-102, has pointed out parallels, not alone in modern folk-tales, like Grimm 92, Campbell 2, Dasent 11, and Basile 11, but even in Madagascar (Folk-Lore Journal, Aug., 1883), and Samoa (Turner 102) while the Flight and Obstacles are found in Japan and Zululand. Even in America there is the Algonquin form of the Tasks (School-craft, Algic Researches ii., 94-104), and the Flight is given in an interesting article in the Century Magazine, 1884. According to Lang's general
