Notes and References
The story literature of India is in a large measure the outcome of the moral revolution of the peninsula connected with the name of Gautama Buddha. As the influence of his life and doctrines grew, a tendency arose to connect all the popular stories of India round the great teacher. This could be easily effected owing to the wide spread of the belief in metempsychosis. All that was told of the sages of the past could be interpreted of the Buddha by representing them as pre-incarnations of him. Even with Fables, or beast-tales, this could be done, for the Hindoos were Darwinists long before Darwin, and regarded beasts as cousins of men and stages of development in the progress of the soul through the ages. Thus, by identifying the Buddha with the heroes of all folk-tales and the chief characters in the beast-drolls, the Buddhists were enabled to incorporate the whole of the story-store of Hindostan in their sacred books, and enlist on their side the tale-telling instincts of men.
In making Buddha the centre figure of the popular literature of India, his followers also invented the Frame as a method of literary art. The idea of connecting a number of disconnected stories familiar to us from The Arabian Nights, Boccaccio's Decamerone, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, or even Pickwick, is directly traceable to the plan of making Buddha the central figure of India folk-literature. Curiously enough, the earliest instance of this in Buddhist literature was intended to be a Decameron, ten tales of Buddha's previous births, told of each of the ten Perfections. Asvagosha, the earlier Boccaccio, died when he had completed thirty-four of the Birth-Tales. But other collections were made, and at last a corpus of the Jatakas, or Birth-Tales of the Buddha, was carried over to Ceylon, possibly as early as the first introduction of Buddhism, 241 b.c. There they have remained till the present day, and have at last been made accessible in a complete edition in the original Pali by Prof. Fausböll.
These Jatakas, as we now have them, are enshrined in a commentary on the gathas, or moral verses, written in Ceylon by one of Buddhaghosa's school in the fifth century a.d. They invariably begin with a "Story of the Present," an incident in Buddha's life which calls up to him a "Story of the Past," a folk-tale in which he had played a part during one of his former incarnations. Thus the fable of the Lion and the Crane, which opens the present collection, is introduced by a "Story of the Present" in the following words:—
"A service have we done thee" [the opening words of the gatha or moral verse]. "This the Master told while living at Jetavana concerning Devadatta's treachery. Not only now, O Bhickkus, but in a former existence was Devadatta ungrateful. And having said this he told a tale." Then follows the tale as given above (pp. 1, 2), and the commentary concludes: "The Master, having given the lesson, summed up the Jataka thus: 'At that time, the Lion was Devadatta, and the Crane was I myself.'" Similarly, with each story of the past the Buddha identifies himself, or is mentioned as identical with, the virtuous hero of the folk-tale. These Jatakas are 550 in number, and have been reckoned to include some 2000 tales. Some of these had been translated by Mr. Rhys-Davids (Buddhist Birth Stories, I., Trübner's Oriental Library, 1880), Prof. Fausböll (Five Jatakas, Copenhagen), and Dr. R. Morris (Folk-Lore Journal, vols. ii.-v.). A few exist sculptured on the earliest Buddhist Stupas. Thus several of the circular figure designs on the reliefs from Amaravati, now on the grand staircase of the British Museum, represent Jatakas, or previous births of the Buddha.
Some of the Jatakas bear a remarkable resemblance to some of the most familiar Fables of Æsop. So close is the resemblance, indeed, that it is impossible not to surmise an historical relation between the two. What this relation is I have discussed at considerable length in the "History of the Æsopic Fable," which forms the introductory volume to my edition of Caxton's Esope (London, D. Nutt, "Bibliothèque de Carabas," 1889). In this place I can only roughly summarise my results. I conjecture that a collection of fables existed in India before Buddha and independently of the Jatakas, and connected with the name of Kasyapa, who was afterwards made by the Buddhists into the latest of the twenty-seven pre-incarnations of the Buddha. This collection of the Fables of Kasyapa was brought to Europe with a deputation from the Cingalese King Chandra Muka Siwa (obiit 52 a.d.) to the Emperor Claudius about 50 a.d., and was done into Greek as the Λὁγοι Λυβικοἱ of "Kybises." These were utilised by Babrius (from whom the Greek Æsop is derived) and Avian, and so came into the European Æsop. I have discussed all those that are to be found in the Jatakas in the "History" before mentioned, i. pp. 54-72 (see Notes i. xv. xx.). In these Notes henceforth I refer to this "History" as my Æsop.
There were probably other Buddhist collections of a similar nature to the Jatakas with a framework. When the Hindu reaction against Buddhism came, the Brahmins adapted these, with the omission of Buddha as the central figure. There is scarcely any doubt that the so-called Fables of Bidpai were thus derived from Buddhistic sources. In its Indian form this is now extant as a Panchatantra or Pentateuch, five books of tales connected by a Frame. This collection is of special interest to us in the present connection, as it has come to Europe in various forms and shapes. I have edited Sir Thomas North's English version of an Italian adaptation of a Spanish translation of a Latin version of a Hebrew translation of an Arabic adaptation of the Pehlevi version of the Indian original (Fables of Bidpai, London, D. Nutt, "Bibliothèque de Carabas," 1888). In this I give a genealogical table of the various versions, from which I calculate that the tales have been translated into thirty-eight languages in 112 different versions, twenty different ones in English alone. Their influence on European folk-tales has been very great: it is probable that nearly one-tenth of these can be traced to the Bidpai literature. (See Notes v. ix. x. xiii. xv.)
Other collections of a similar character, arranged in a frame, and derived ultimately from Buddhistic sources, also reached Europe and formed popular reading in the Middle Ages. Among these may be mentioned The Tales of Sindibad, known to Europe as The Seven Sages of Rome: from this we get the Gellert story (cf. Celtic Fairy Tales), though it also occurs in the Bidpai. Another popular collection was that associated with the life of St. Buddha, who has been canonised as St. Josaphat: Barlaam and Josaphat tells of his conversion and much else besides, including the tale of the Three Caskets, used by Shakespeare in the Merchant of Venice.
Some of the Indian tales reached Europe at the time of the Crusades, either orally or in collections no longer extant. The earliest selection of these was the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alphonsi, a Spanish Jew converted about 1106: his tales were to be used as seasoning for sermons, and strong seasoning they must have proved. Another Spanish collection of considerably later date was entitled El Conde Lucanor (Eng. trans. by W. York): this contains the fable of The Man, his Son, and their Ass, which they ride or carry as the popular voice decides. But the most famous collection of this kind 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.