Volume II Part 29 (1/2)

The solutions offered on the hypothesis that the marchen are exclusively Aryan, and that they are the _detritus_ or youngest and latest forms of myths, while these myths are concerned with the elemental phenomena of Nature, and arose out of the decay of language, have been so frequently criticised that they need not long detain us.* The most recent review of the system is by M. Cosquin.** In place of repeating objections which have been frequently urged by the present writer, an abstract of M.

Cosquin's reasons for differing from the ”Aryan” theory of Von Hahn may be given. Voh Hahn was the collector and editor of stories from the modern Greek,*** and his work is scholarly and accomplished. He drew up comparative tables showing the correspondence between Greek and German _marchen_ on the one side, and Greek and Teutonic epics and higher legends or sagas on the other. He also attempted to cla.s.sify the stories in a certain number of recurring _formula_ or plots. Lin Von Hahn's opinion, the stories were originally the myths of the undivided Aryan people in its central Asian home. As the different branches scattered and separated, they carried with them their common store of myths, which were gradually worn down into the _detritus_ of popular stories, ”the youngest form of the myth”. The same theory appeared (in 1859) in Mr.

Max Muller's _Chips from a German Workshop_**** The undivided Aryan people possessed, in its mythological and proverbial phraseology, the seeds or germs, more or less developed, which would nourish, under any sky, into very similar plants--that is, the popular stories.

* See our Introduction to Mrs. Hunt's translation of Grimm's Household Tales.

** Contes Populaire de Lorraine, Paris, 1886, pp. i., xv.

*** Grieschische und Albanesische Marchen, 1864.

**** Vol. ii. p. 226.

Against these ideas M. Cosquin argues that if the Aryan people before its division preserved the myths only in their _earliest germinal form_, it is incredible that, when the separated branches had lost touch of each other, the final shape of their myths, the _marchen_, should have so closely resembled each other as they do. The Aryan theory (as it may be called for the sake of brevity) rejects, as a rule, the idea that tales can, as a rule, have been _borrowed_, even by one Aryan people from another.* ”Nursery tales are generally the last things to be borrowed by one nation from another.”** Then, says M. Cosquin, as the undivided Aryan people had only the myths in their least developed state, and as the existing peasantry have only the _detritus_ of these myths--the _marchen_--and as you say borrowing is out of the question, how do you account for a coincidence like _this_? In the Punjaub, among the Bretons, the Albanians, the modern Greeks and the Russians we find a _conte_ in which a young man gets possession of a magical ring. This ring is stolen from him, and recovered by the aid of certain grateful beasts, whom the young man has benefited. His foe keeps the ring in his mouth, but the grateful mouse, insinuating his tail into the nose of the thief, makes him sneeze, and out comes the magical ring!

* c.o.x, Mythol. of Aryan Nations, i. 109.

** Max Muller, Chips, ii. 216.

Common sense insists, says M. Cosquin, that this detail was invented once for all. It must have first occurred, not in a myth, but in a _conte_ or _marchen_, from which all the others alike proceed.

Therefore, if you wish the idea of the mouse and the ring and the sneeze to be a part of the store of the undivided Aryans, you must admit that they had _contes, marchen_, popular stories, what you call the _detritus_ of myths, as well as myths themselves, before they left their cradle in Central Asia. ”Nos ancetres, les peres des nations europeennes, auraient, de cette facon, emporte dans leurs fourgons la collection complete de contes Ibleus actuels.” In short, if there was no borrowing, myths have been reduced (on the Aryan theory) to the condition of _detritus_, to the diamond dust of mar-chen, before the Aryan people divided. But this is contrary to the hypothesis.

M. Cosquin does not pause here. The _marchen_--mouse, ring, sneeze and all--is found among _non-Aryan_ tribes, ”the inhabitants of Mardin in Mesopotamia and the Kariaines of Birmanie”.* Well, if there was no borrowing, how did the non-Aryan peoples get the story?

* Cosquin, i, xi., xii., with his authorities in note 1.

M. Cosquin concludes that the theory he attacks is untenable, and determines that, ”after having been invented in this place or that, which we must discover” [if we can], ”the popular tales of the various European nations (to mention these alone) have spread all over the world from people to people by way of borrowing”. In arriving at this opinion, M. Cosquin admits, as is fair, that the Grimms, not having our knowledge of non-Aryan _marchen_ (Mongol, Syrian, Arab, Kabyle, Swahili, Annamite--he might have added very many more), could not foresee all the objections to the theory of a store common to Aryans alone.

Were we constructing an elaborate treatise on _marchen_, it would be well in this place to discuss the Aryan theory at greater length. That theory turns on the belief that popular stories are the _detritus_ of Aryan myths. It would be necessary then to discuss the philological hypothesis of the origin and nature of these original Aryan myths themselves; but to do so would lead us far from the study of mere popular tales.*

Leaving the Aryan theory, we turn to that supported by M. Cosquin himself--the theory, as he says, of Benfey.**

Inspired by Benfey, M. Cosquin says: ”The method must be to take each type of story successively, and to follow it, if we can, from age to age, from people to; people, and see where this voyage of discovery will lead us. Now, travelling thus from point to point, often by different routes, we always arrive at the same centre, namely, at India, _not the India of fabulous times_, but the India of actual history.”

The theory of M. Cosquin is, then, that the popular stories of the world, or rather the vast majority of them, were _invented_ in India, and that they were carried from India, during the historical period, by various routes, till they were scattered over all the races among whom they are found.

This is a venturesome theory, and is admitted, apparently, to have its exceptions. For example, we possess ancient Egyptian popular tales corresponding to those of the rest of the world, but older by far than historical India, from which, according to M. Cosquin, the stories set forth on their travels.***

* It has already been attempted in our Custom and Myth; Introduction to Mrs. Hunt's Grimm; La Mythologie, and elsewhere.

** For M. Benfey's notions, see Bulletin de I' Academie de Saint Petersburg, September 4-16, 1859, and Pantschatantra, Leipzig, 1859.

*** See M. Maspero's collection, _Contes Populaires de l'Egypte Ancienne_, Paris, 1882.

One of these Egyptian tales, The Two Brothers, was actually written down on the existing ma.n.u.script in the time of Rameses II., some 1400 years before our era, and many centuries before India had any known history.

No man can tell, moreover, how long it had existed before it was copied out by the scribe Ennana. Now this tale, according to M. Cosquin himself, has points in common with _marchen_ from Hesse, Hungary, Russia, modern Greece, France, Norway, Lithuania, Hungary, Servia, Annam, modern India, and, we may add, with Samoyed _marchen_, with Hottentot _marchen_, and with _marchen_ from an ”aboriginal” people of India, the Santals.

We ask no more than this one _marchen_ of ancient Egypt to upset the whole theory that India was the original home of the contes, and that from historic India they have been carried by oral transmission, and in literary vehicles, all over the world. First let us tell the story briefly, and then examine its incidents each separately, and set forth the consequences of that examination.

According to the story of _The Two Brothers_--

Once upon a time there were two brothers; Anapou was the elder, the younger was called Bitiou. Anapou was married, and Bitiou lived with him as his servant. When he drove the cattle to feed, he heard what they said to each other, and drove them where they told him the pasture was best. One day his brother's wife saw him carrying a very heavy burden of grain, and she fell in love with his force, and said, ”Come and lie with me, and I will make thee goodly raiment”.