Santal Parganas, 140 miles N.W. of Calcutta (Sir W. W. Hunter, The Indian Empire, 57—60).
Parallels.—Another version occurs in Campbell, p. 106 seq., which shows that the story is popular among the Santals. It is obvious, however, that neither version contains the real finish of the story, which must have contained the denunciation of the magic fiddle of the murderous sisters. This would bring it under the formula of The Singing Bone, which M. Monseur has recently been studying with a remarkable collection of European variants in the Bulletin of the Wallon Folk-Lore Society of Liège (cf. Eng. Fairy Tales, No. ix.). There is a singing bone in Steel-Temple's Wideawake Stories, pp. 127 seq. ("Little Anklebone").
Remarks.—Here we have another theme of the common store of European folk-tales found in India. Unfortunately, the form in which it occurs is mutilated, and we cannot draw any definite conclusion from it.
Source.—The Baka-Jātaka, Fausböll, No. 38, tr. Rhys-Davids, pp. 315—21. The Buddha this time is the Genius of the Tree.
Parallels.—This Jātaka got into the Bidpai literature, and occurs in
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all its multitudinous offshoots (see Benfey, Einleitung § 60) among others in the earliest English translation by North (my edition, pp. 118-22), where the crane becomes "a great Paragone of India (of those that liue a hundredth yeares and neuer mue their feathers)." The crab,
