“There was there present at that time an old gentleman well experienced in the wars, a stern soldier, and who had been in many great hazards, named Echephron, who, hearing this discourse, said: ‘J’ay grand peur que toute ceste entreprise sera semblable à la farce du pot au laict duquel un cordavanier se faisoit riche par resverie, puis le pot cassé, n’eut de quoy disner.’”
This is clearly our story, only the Brahman has, as yet, been changed into a shoemaker only, and the pot of rice or the jar of butter and honey into a pitcher of milk. Now it is perfectly true that if a writer of the fifteenth century changed the Brahman into a shoemaker, La Fontaine might, with the same right, have replaced the Brahman by his milkmaid. Knowing that the story was current, was, in fact, common property in the fifteenth century, nay, even at a much earlier date, we might really be satisfied after having brought the germs of “Perrette” within easy reach of La Fontaine. But, fortunately, we can make at least one step further, a step of about two centuries. This step backwards brings us to the thirteenth century, and there we find our old Indian friend again, and this time really changed into a milkmaid. The book I refer to is written in Latin, and is called, “Dialogus Creaturarum optime moralizatus;” in English, the “Dialogue of Creatures moralized.” It was a book intended to teach the principles of Christian morality by examples taken from ancient fables. It was evidently a most successful book, and was translated into several modern languages. There is an old translation of it in English, first printed by Rastell,[34] and afterwards repeated in 1816. I shall read you from it the fable in which, as far as I can find, the milkmaid appears for the first time on the stage, surrounded already by much of that scenery which, four hundred years later, received its last touches at the hand of La Fontaine.
“Dialogo C. (p. ccxxiii.) For as it is but madnesse to trust to moche in surete, so it is but foly to hope to moche of vanyteys, for vayne be all erthly thinges longynge to men, as sayth Davyd, Psal. xciiii: Wher of it is tolde in fablys that a lady uppon a tyme delyvered to her mayden a galon of mylke to sell at a cite, and by the way, as she sate and restid her by a dyche side, she began to thinke that with the money of the mylke she wold bye an henne, the which shulde bringe forth chekyns, and when they were growyn to hennys she wolde sell them and by piggis, and eschaunge them in to shepe, and the shepe in to oxen, and so whan she was come to richesse she sholde be maried right worshipfully unto some worthy man, and thus she reioycid. And whan she was thus mervelously comfortid and ravisshed inwardly in her secrete solace, thinkynge with howe greate ioye she shuld be ledde towarde the chirche with her husbond on horsebacke, she sayde to her self: ‘Goo we, goo we.’ Sodaynlye she smote the ground with her fote, myndynge to spurre the horse, but her fote slypped, and she fell in the dyche, and there lay all her mylke, and so she was farre from her purpose, and never had that she hopid to have.”[35]
Here we have arrived at the end of our journey. It has been a long journey across fifteen or twenty centuries, and I am afraid our following Perrette from country to country, and from language to language, may have tired some of my hearers. I shall, therefore, not attempt to fill the gap that divides the fable of the thirteenth century from La Fontaine. Suffice it to say, that the milkmaid, having once taken the place of the Brahman, maintained it against all comers. We find her as Dona Truhana, in the famous “Conde Lucanor,” the work of the Infante Don Juan Manuel,[36,][I] who died in 1347, the grandson of St. Ferdinand, the nephew of Alfonso the Wise, though himself not a king, yet more powerful than a king; renowned both by his sword and by his pen, and possibly not ignorant of Arabic, the language of his enemies. We find her again in the “Contes et Nouvelles” of Bonaventure des Periers,[K] published in the sixteenth century, a book which we know that La Fontaine was well acquainted with. We find her after La Fontaine in all the languages of Europe.[37]
| OLD COLLECTION OF INDIANFABLES. | |||||||||||
| A.D. | |||||||||||
| 500–600 | 531–579. Khosru Nushirvan, King of Persia; his physician,Barzûyeh, translates the Indian fables into Pehlevi,s. t. “Qalilag and Damnag” (lost). 570. Translation of the “Qualilag and Damnag,” from Indian intoSyriac, by Bud Periodeutes (Benfey and Socin). | ||||||||||
| 700–800 | 754–775. Khalif Almansur. Abdallah ibn Almokaffa (d. 760)translates the Pehlevi into Arabic (ed. de Sacy, 1816). | ||||||||||
| 900–1000 | |||||||||||
| 1000–1100 | 1080. Into Greek, by SimeonSeth, s. t. “Ichnelates et Stephanites,” ed. Starkius,1697. | ||||||||||
| 1100–1200 | 1118–53. IntoPersian, by Abul Maali Nasr Allah (prose). | ||||||||||
| 1200–1300 | Into Latin by Baldo, s. t.Alter Æsopus (ed. du Méril). | 1289. Into Spanish, by order ofthe Infante Don Alfonso, s. t. “Calila é Dymna” (ed. deGayangos) | 1250. Into Hebrew, by Rabbi Joel. | ||||||||
| 1263–78. Into Latin,by Johannes of Capua, s. t. “Directorium humanæ vitæ” (print.1480). | |||||||||||
| 1300–1400 | 1313. Into Latin, by Raimond deBeziers, s. t. “Calila et Dimna.” | ||||||||||
| Into German under Eberhard,Duke of Würtemberg (d. 1325), printed before 1483. | |||||||||||
| 1400–1500 | 1494. Modernized in Persian, by Husain benAli, el Vaez, s. t. “Anvari Suhaili.” | 1493. Into Spanish, s. t. “Exemplariocontra los Engaños.” | |||||||||
| 1500–1600 | 1590. New, by Abulfazl, for Akbar,“Ayari Danish.” | 1540. Into Turkish, by AliTchelebi, s. t. “Homayun Nameh.” | 1548. Into Italian, by Ange Firenzuola,s. t. “Discorsi degli Animali.” | ||||||||
| Translated intoHindustani, s. t.“Khirud Ufroz,” the Illuminatorof the Understanding. | 1552. Into Italian, by Doni,s. t. “La Filosofia Morale.” | 1556. Into French, by Gabr.Cottier, s. t. “Le Plaisant Discours des Animaux.” | 1583. IntoItalian, by G. Nuti, s. t. “Del Governo de’ Regni.” | ||||||||
| 1570. IntoEnglish, by North. | 1579. Into French, by Pierre deLa Rivey, s. t. “Deux Livres de Filosofie Fabuleuse.” | ||||||||||
| 1600–1700 | 1644. Into French, by David Sahid d’Ispahan(Gaulmin), s. t. “Livre des Lumières, ou la Conduite des Rois,composé par le sage Pilpay, Indien” (4 cap. only). | —IntoSpanish, by Brattuti, “Espejo politico,” 1654. | 1666. Into Latin, by Petrus Possinus. | ||||||||
| 1700–1800 | 1724. Into French, by Galland, s. t. “LesContes et Fables Indiennes de Bibpaï et de Lokman” (4 cap. only); finished in1778 by Cardonne. | ||||||||||
You see now before your eyes the bridge on which our fables came to us from East to West. The same bridge which brought us Perrette brought us hundreds of fables, all originally sprung up in India, many of them carefully collected by Buddhist priests, and preserved in their sacred canon, afterwards handed on to the Brahminic writers of a later age, carried by Barzûyeh from India to the court of Persia, then to the courts of the Khalifs at Bagdad and Cordova, and of the emperors at Constantinople. Some of them, no doubt, perished on their journey, others were mixed up together, others were changed till we should hardly know them again. Still, if you once know the eventful journey of Perrette, you know the journey of all the other fables that belong to this Indian cycle. Few of them have gone through so many changes, few of them have found so many friends, whether in the courts of kings or in the huts of beggars. Few of them have been to places where Perrette has not also been. This is why I selected her and her passage through the world as the best illustration of a subject which otherwise would require a whole course of lectures to do it justice.
But though our fable represents one large class or cluster of fables, it does not represent all. There were several collections, besides the Pancatantra, which found their way from India to Europe. The most important among them is the “Book of the Seven Wise Masters, or the Book of Sindbad,” the history of which has lately been written, with great learning and ingenuity, by Signor Comparetti.[38]
These large collections of fables and stories mark what may be called the high roads on which the literary products of the East were carried to the West. But there are, beside these high roads, some smaller, less trodden paths on which single fables, sometimes mere proverbs, similes, or metaphors, have come to us from India, from Persepolis, from Damascus and Bagdad. I have already alluded to the powerful influence which Arabic literature exercised on Western Europe through Spain. Again, a most active interchange of Eastern and Western ideas took place at a later time during the progress of the Crusades. Even the inroads of Mongolian tribes into Russia and the East of Europe kept up a literary bartering between Oriental and Occidental nations.