Indian Antiquary Vol 22

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 93

MARCH, 1893.)
FOLKLORE IN HINDUSTAN
A. Campbell in his Santal Folk-tales, (Pokliuria, 1891) pp. 111, et seq. There are, however, some important differences :(1) Jhore quarrels with the tiger, because, when he is called in to judge between him and
the lizard, he judges it in favour of the latter. (2) Jhore is shut up in a bag by his mother, which the tiger carries off. (3) The animals in Jhore's story are buffaloes, and be wins their affection by looking after
their calves. (4) In Jhore's story the old buffalo cow lies in wait and gets the calves to tell her who
befriended them. The dhôti incident is absent in thu Santål story. (0) Similarly, the snake incident is wanting, and in the Santal story the Princess simply
finds in the river some of Jhore's hair, which is twelve cubits loug. (0) In the Santal story the Rajá sends a jógi and a crow to seek for Jhore. Finally a paro
quet is sent, who makes friends with Jhore and gets the flute. (7) After losing his first flute Jhore calls the cows with another, and finally the paroquet
has to steal the bundle of flutes, which Jhore has. (8) The baffaloes in the Santal story come to the king's palace, because Jhore's wife wou!! not believe the story about the love of the buffaloes for him, which he was always telling her. So he has a pen made thirty-two miles long and thirty-two miles broad and the buffaloes come at the sound of his flute and fill it. These are the domesticated buffaloes of the Santâls nowadays.
The story is also of interest from its obvious analogies to European folklore. The cowherd's flute is the oriental equivalent of the lyre of Orpheus, or the lute of Arion : and we have the incident of the hero being saved by his lute in No. 126 of Grimm's Tales, "Ferdinand the faithful and Ferdinand the unfaithful." The feeding of snakes is also common property of folklore. In the Gesta Romanorum, chap. 68, we have the snake who says to the knight: “Give me some milk every day, and set it ready for me yourself, and I will make you rich." There are further instances given in Mr. Andrew Lang's edition of Grimm. (Vol. II. pp. 405, et seq.) So with the golden bair, which, howover, is usually that of the heroine : see Grimm's Goosegirl, with his notes (Vol. II. p. 382.) I know there is some European equivalent of the hero (or heroine) being recognised by the golden hair floating down the river, but I cannot lay my hands on the reference just now, as I am away from my library. However, we have the same incident in the "Boy and His Stepmother" in Dr. Campbell's Santâl Collection. Altogether, this story is interesting, and probably other readers of the Indian Antiquary can suggest additional parallels.
Note by the Editor. This tale is, like some of Mr. Crooke's other tales, simply an agglomerate of incidents to be commonly found in Indian folktales generally.1 Instances innumerable of each incident in some form or other could be colled from my notes to Wide-awake Stories and from this Journal. To take these incidents seriatim :
That of the bed and banyan tree is mixed up with very many Indian tales, but for tiger read usually thieves.' A good specimen is to be found in Wide-awake Stories, pp. 77-78.
Grateful animals and their doings are also exceedingly common everywhere in Indian nurseries. A collection of instances from Indian Fairy Tales, Folktales of Bengal, Legends of the Pañjáb and the earlier volumes of this Journal will be found at p. 412 of Wide-arake Stories.
Golden hair belongs, in every other instance I have seen, to the heroine, and instances of the incident of golden hair flraling dow) & stream and leading both to good fortune and to calamity are to be found collected at p. 413 of Wide-awake Stories.
1 I do aot wish by this statement to detract from the value and interest of Mr. Crooke's talos. They, ia fact, strongly support the theory I propounded in Wilo-Swake Stories, and which has since been accepted by the Folklore Society