* Cosquin, i, xi., xii., with his authorities in note 1.
M. Cosquin concludes that the theory he attacks is untenable, and determines that, "after having been invented in this place or that, which we must discover" [if we can], "the popular tales of the various European nations (to mention these alone) have spread all over the world from people to people by way of borrowing". In arriving at this opinion, M. Cosquin admits, as is fair, that the Grimms, not having our knowledge of non-Aryan märchen (Mongol, Syrian, Arab, Kabyle, Swahili, Annamite—he might have added very many more), could not foresee all the objections to the theory of a store common to Aryans alone.
Were we constructing an elaborate treatise on märchen, it would be well in this place to discuss the Aryan theory at greater length. That theory turns on the belief that popular stories are the detritus of Aryan myths. It would be necessary then to discuss the philological hypothesis of the origin and nature of these original Aryan myths themselves; but to do so would lead us far from the study of mere popular tales.*
Leaving the Aryan theory, we turn to that supported by M. Cosquin himself—the theory, as he says, of Benfey.**
Inspired by Benfey, M. Cosquin says: "The method must be to take each type of story successively, and to follow it, if we can, from age to age, from people to; people, and see where this voyage of discovery will lead us. Now, travelling thus from point to point, often by different routes, we always arrive at the same centre, namely, at India, not the India of fabulous times, but the India of actual history."
The theory of M. Cosquin is, then, that the popular stories of the world, or rather the vast majority of them, were invented in India, and that they were carried from India, during the historical period, by various routes, till they were scattered over all the races among whom they are found.
This is a venturesome theory, and is admitted, apparently, to have its exceptions. For example, we possess ancient Egyptian popular tales corresponding to those of the rest of the world, but older by far than historical India, from which, according to M. Cosquin, the stories set forth on their travels.***
* It has already been attempted in our Custom and Myth;
Introduction to Mrs. Hunt's Grimm; La Mythologie, and
elsewhere.
** For M. Benfey's notions, see Bulletin de I' Academie de
Saint Petersburg, September 4-16, 1859, and Pantschatantra,
Leipzig, 1859.
*** See M. Maspero's collection, Contes Populaires de
l'Egypte Ancienne, Paris, 1882.
One of these Egyptian tales, The Two Brothers, was actually written down on the existing manuscript in the time of Rameses II., some 1400 years before our era, and many centuries before India had any known history. No man can tell, moreover, how long it had existed before it was copied out by the scribe Ennana. Now this tale, according to M. Cosquin himself, has points in common with märchen from Hesse, Hungary, Russia, modern Greece, France, Norway, Lithuania, Hungary, Servia, Annam, modern India, and, we may add, with Samoyed märchen, with Hottentot marchen, and with märchen from an "aboriginal" people of India, the Santals.
We ask no more than this one märchen of ancient Egypt to upset the whole theory that India was the original home of the contes, and that from historic India they have been carried by oral transmission, and in literary vehicles, all over the world. First let us tell the story briefly, and then examine its incidents each separately, and set forth the consequences of that examination.