Source.—Somadeva, Katha-Sarit-Sagara, trans. Tawney (Calcutta, 1880), i. pp. 272-4. I have slightly toned down the inflated style of the original.
Parallels —Benfey has collected and discussed a number in Orient and Occident, i. 371 seq.; see also Tawney, ad loc. The most remarkable of the parallels is that afforded by the Grimms' "Doctor Allwissend" (No. 98), which extends even to such a minute point as his exclamation, "Ach, ich armer Krebs," whereupon a crab is discovered under a dish. The usual form of discovery of the thieves is for the Dr. Knowall to have so many days given him to discover the thieves, and at the end of the first day he calls out, "There's one of them," meaning the days, just as one of the thieves peeps through at him. Hence the title and the plot of C. Lever's One of Them.
XII. THE CHARMED RING.
Source.—Knowles, Folk-Tales of Kashmir, pp. 20-8.
Parallels.—The incident of the Aiding Animals is frequent in folk-tales: see bibliographical references, sub voce, in my List of Incidents, Trans. Folk-Lore Congress, p. 88; also Knowles, 21, n.; and Temple, Wideawake Stories, pp. 401, 412. The Magic Ring is also "common form" in folk-tales; cf. Köhler ap. Marie de France, Lais, ed. Warncke, p. lxxxiv. And the whole story is to be found very widely spread from India (Wideawake Stories, pp. 196-206) to England (Eng. Fairy Tales, No. xvii, "Jack and his Golden Snuff-box," cf. Notes, ibid.), the most familiar form of it being "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp."
Remarks.—M. Cosquin has pointed out (Contes de Lorraine, p. xi. seq.) that the incident of the rat's-tail-up-nose to recover the ring from the stomach of an ogress, is found among Arabs, Albanians, Bretons, and Russians. It is impossible to imagine that incident—occurring in the same series of incidents—to have been invented more than once, and if that part of the story has been borrowed from India, there is no reason why the whole of it should not have arisen in India, and have been spread to the West. The English variant was derived from an English Gipsy, and suggests the possibility that for this particular story the medium of transmission has been the Gipsies. This contains the incident of the loss of the ring by the faithful animal, which again could not have been independently invented.
XIII. THE TALKATIVE TORTOISE.
Source.—The Kacchapa Jātaka, Fausböll, No. 215; also in his Five Jātakas, pp. 16, 41, tr. Rhys-Davids, pp. viii-x.
Parallels.—It occurs also in the Bidpai literature, in nearly all its multitudinous offshoots. See Benfey, Einleitung, §84; also my Bidpai, E, 4 a; and North's text, pp. 170-5, where it is the taunts of the other birds that cause the catastrophe: "O here is a brave sight, looke, here is a goodly ieast, what bugge haue we here," said some. "See, see, she hangeth by the throte, and therefor she speaketh not," saide others; "and the beast flieth not like a beast;" so she opened her mouth and "pashte hir all to pieces."