was that known as Gesta Romanorum, much of which was certainly derived from Oriental and ultimately Indian sources, and so might more appropriately be termed Gesta Indorum.
All these collections, which reached Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, became very popular, and were used by monks and friars to enliven their sermons as Exempla. Prof. Crane has given a full account of this very curious phenomenon in his erudite edition of the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry (Folk Lore Society, 1890). The Indian stories were also used by the Italian Novellieri, much of Boccaccio and his school being derived from this source. As these again gave material for the Elizabethan Drama, chiefly in W. Painter's Palace of Pleasure, a collection of translated Novelle which I have edited (Lond., 3 vols. 1890), it is not surprising that we can at times trace portions of Shakespeare back to India. It should also be mentioned that one-half of La Fontaine's Fables (Bks. vii.-xii.) are derived from Indian sources. (See Note on No. v.)
In India itself the collection of stories in frames went on and still goes on. Besides those already mentioned there are the stories of Vikram and the Vampire (Vetala), translated among others by the late Sir Richard Burton, and the seventy stories of a parrot (Suka Saptati). The whole of this literature was summed up by Somadeva, c. 1200 A.D. in a huge compilation entitled Katha Sarit Sagara ("Ocean of the Stream of Stories"). Of this world, written in very florid style, Mr. Tawney has produced a translation in two volumes in the Bibliotheca Indica. Unfortunately, there is a Divorce Court atmosphere about the whole book, and my selections from it have been accordingly restricted. (Notes, No. xi.)
So much for a short sketch of Indian folk-tales so far as they have been reduced to writing in the native literature.[1] The Jatakas are probably the oldest collection of such tales in literature, and the greater part of the rest are demonstrably more than a thousand years old. It is certain that much (perhaps one~fifth) of the popular literature of modern Europe is derived from those portions of this large bulk which came west with the Crusades through the medium of Arabs and Jews. In his elaborate Einleitung to the Pantschatantra, the Indian version of the Fables of Bidpai, Prof Benfey contended with enormous erudition that the majority of folk-tale incidents were to be found in the Bidpai literature. His introduction consisted of over 200 mono-
- ↑ An admirable and full account of this literature was given by M. A. Barth in Melusine, t. iv. No. 12, and t. v. No. 1. See also Table i of Prof Rhys-Davids' Birth Stories.
