PREFACE.
In presenting these little stories to the public, it may perhaps be of interest if I describe how I came by them.
During two years spent in Tibet, at Gyantse, Lhasa, and elsewhere, I have made many friends amongst all classes of Tibetans—high and low, rich and poor—and have conversed with all sorts of persons upon all sorts of topics. In the course of my wanderings I learned that there exists amongst this fascinating and little-known people a wealth of folk-lore, hitherto inaccessible to the outside world, and I made efforts to collect as many of their stories as I could.
For certain special reasons this quest proved more difficult than I had anticipated. In the first place, I found that many of the best known stories had been imported bodily from India[1] or China, and possess but little of that local colouring which is one of the chief charms of folk-lore. Secondly, some of the very best and most characteristic stories are unfit for publication in such a book as this.[2] And, thirdly, human nature being much the same all the world over, it was not always
- ↑ Compare, for example, "Tibetan Tales derived from Indian Sources," translated from the Tibetan of the Kah Gyur into German by F. Anton von Schiefner. Done into English from the German by R. W. S. Ralston.
- ↑ But I am preserving such of these as appear to me to possess any scientific interest.
