To some poets India and Persia are a sort of Ultima Thule to denote the furthest limits of the earth, as for instance, when in the "Rolandslied" Ganelun complains that for the ambition of Roland even Persia is not too far,[47] or, when in the "Willehalm" King Tybalt, whose daughter has been carried off, lets his complaint ring out as far as India.[48]
Examples might be multiplied. But they would all prove the same thing. India and Persia were magic names to conjure with; their languages and literatures were a book with seven seals to mediæval Europe.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Indica, ch. 10.
[2] Var. Hist. xii. 48.
[3] De Homero, Oratio liii., ed. Dindorf, Lips. 1857, vol. ii. p. 165.
[4] Apollonii Vita, iii. 19 et passim.
[5] See Jackson, Zoroaster, p. 8.
[6] See Benfey, Pantschatantra, Vorrede, p. xxiv and note.
[7] See Gaston Paris, La Littérature Française au Moyen Age, Paris, 1888, p. 49 seq. A striking illustration of oral transmission is the origin of the tradition about Prester John, for which see Cathay and the Way thither, ed. Henry Yule, Lond. 1866, Hakluyt Soc. No. 36, 37, vol. i. p. 174 and n. 1.