The next step which, according to Curtius, the Aryan language had to make, in order to emerge from its purely radical phase, was the creation of bases, both verbal and nominal, by the addition of verbal and nominal suffixes to roots, both primary and secondary. Curtius calls this fourth the Period of the Formation of Themes. The suffixes are very numerous, and it is by them that the Aryan languages have been able to make their limited number of roots supply the vast materials of their dictionary. From bhar, to carry, they formed bhar-a, a carrier, but sometimes also a burden. In addition to bhar-ti, carry-he, they formed bhara-ti, meaning possibly carrying-he. The growth of these early themes may have been very luxuriant, and, as Professor Curtius expresses it, chiefly paraschematic. It may have been left to a later age to assign to that large number of possible synonyms more definite meanings. Thus from φέρω, I carry, we have φορά, the act of carrying, used also in the sense of impetus (being carried away), and of provectus, i.e., what is brought in. Φορός means carrying, but also violent, and lucrative; φέρετρον, an instrument of carrying, means a bier; φαρέτρα, a quiver, for carrying arrows. Φορμός comes to mean a basket; φόρτος, a burden; φορός, tribute.
All this is perfectly intelligible, both with regard to nominal and verbal themes. Curtius admits four kinds of verbal themes as the outcome of his Fourth Period. He had assigned to his Third Period the simple verbal themes ἐσ-τί, and the reduplicated themes such as δίδω-σι. To these were added, in the Fourth Period, the following four secondary themes:—
| (1) πλέκ-ε-(τ)-ι | Sanskrit lipa-ti |
| (2) ἀλείφ-ε-(τ)-ι | „ laipa-ti |
| (3) δείκ-νυ-σι | „ lip-nau-ti |
| (4) δάμ-νη-σι | „ lip-nâ-ti. |
He also explains the formation of the subjunctive in analogy with bases such as lipa-ti, as derived from lip-ti.
Some scholars would probably feel inclined to add one or two of the more primitive verbal themes, such as
| limpa-ti | rumpo |
| limpana-ti | λαμβάνε(τ)ι |
but all would probably agree with Curtius in placing the formation of these themes, both verbal and nominal, between the radical and the latest inflectional period. A point, however, on which there would probably be considerable difference of opinion is this, whether it is credible, that at a time when so many nominal themes were formed,—for Curtius ascribes to this Fourth Period the formation of such nominal bases as
| λόγ-ο, intellect, | = lipa-ti |
| λοίπ-ο, left, | = laipa-ti |
| λιγ-νύ, smoke, | = lip-nau-ti |
| δάφ-νη, laurel, | = lip-nâ-ti — |
the simplest nominal compounds, which we now call nominative and accusative, singular and plural, were still unknown; that people could say dhṛsh-nu-más, we dare, but not dhṛsh-ṇú-s, daring-he; that they had an imperative, dhṛshṇuhí, dare, but not a vocative, dhṛshṇo? Curtius strongly holds to that opinion, but with regard to this period too, he does not seem to me to establish it by a regular and complete argument. Some arguments which he refers to occasionally have been answered before. Another, which he brings in incidentally, when discussing the abbreviation of certain suffixes, can hardly be said to carry conviction. After tracing the suffixes ant and tar back to what he supposes to have been their more primitive forms, an-ta and ta-ra, he remarks that the dropping of the final vowel would hardly be conceivable at a time when there existed case-terminations. Still this dropping of the vowel is very common, in late historical times, in Latin, for instance, and other Italian dialects, where it causes frequent confusion and heteroclitism.32 Thus the Augustan innocua was shortened in common pronunciation to innoca, and this dwindles down in Christian inscriptions to innox. In Greek, too, διάκτορος is older than διάκτωρ; φύλακος older than φύλαξ.
Nor can it be admitted that the nominal suffixes have suffered less from phonetic corruption than the terminations of the verb, and that therefore they must belong to a more modern period (pp. 39, 40). In spite of all the changes which the personal terminations are supposed to have undergone, their connection with the personal pronouns has always been apparent, while the tracing back of the nominal suffixes, and, still more, of the case-terminations to their typical elements, forms still one of the greatest difficulties of comparative grammarians.33
Professor Curtius is so much impressed with the later origin of declension that he establishes one more period, the fifth, to which he assigns the growth of all compound verbal forms, compound stems, compound tenses, and compound moods, before he allows the first beginnings of declension, and the formation even of such simple forms as the nominative and accusative. It is difficult, no doubt, to disprove such an opinion by facts or dates, because there are none to be found on either side: but we have a right to expect very strong arguments indeed, before we can admit that at a time when an aorist, like ἔδεικ-σα, Sanskrit a-dik-sha-t was possible, that is to say, at a time when the verb as, which meant originally to breathe, had by constant use been reduced to the meaning of being; at a time when that verb, as a mere auxiliary, was joined to a verbal base in order to impart to it a general historical power; when the persons of the verb were distinguished by pronominal elements, and when the augment, no longer purely demonstrative, had become the symbol of time past, that at such a time people were still unable to distinguish, except by a kind of Chinese law of position, between “the father struck the child,” and “the child struck the father.” Before we can admit this, we want much stronger proofs than any adduced by Curtius. He says, for instance, that compound verbal bases formed with yâ, to go, and afterwards fixed as causatives, would be inconceivable during a period in which accusatives existed. From naś, to perish, we form in Sanskrit nâśa-yâmi, I make perish. This, according to Curtius, would have meant originally, I send to perishing. Therefore nâśa would have been, in the accusative, nâśam, and the causative would have been nâśamyâmi, if the accusative had then been known. But we have in Latin34 pessum dare, venum ire, and no one would say that compounds like calefacio, liquefacio, putrefacio, were impossible after the first Aryan separation, or after that still earlier period to which Curtius assigns the formation of the Aryan case-terminations. Does Professor Curtius hold that compound forms like Gothic nasi-da were formed not only before the Aryan separation, but before the introduction of case-terminations? I hold, on the contrary, that such really old compositions never required, nay never admitted, the accusative. We say in Sanskrit, dyu-gat, going to the sky, dyu-ksha, dwelling in the sky, without any case-terminations at the end of the first part of the compound. We say in Greek, σακέσ-παλος, not σάκοσ-παλος, παιδοφόνος, not παιδαφόνος, ὀρεσ-κῷος, mountain-bred, and also ὀρεσί-τροφος, mountain-fed. We say in Latin, agri-cola, not agrum-cola, fratri-cīda, not fratrem-cīda, rēgĭfugium, not regis-fugium. Are we to suppose that all these words were formed before there was an outward mark of distinction between nominative and accusative in the primitive Aryan language? Such compounds, we know, can be formed at pleasure, and they continued to be formed long after the full development of the Aryan declension, and the same would apply to the compound stems of causal verbs. To say, as Curtius does, that composition was possible only before the development of declension, because when cases had once sprung up, the people would no longer have known the bases of nouns, is far too strong an assertion. In Sanskrit35 the really difficult bases are generally sufficiently visible in the so-called Pada, cases, i.e., before certain terminations beginning with consonants, and there is besides a strong feeling of analogy in language, which would generally, though not always (for compounds are frequently framed by false analogy), guide the framers of new compounds rightly in the selection of the proper nominal base. It seems to me that even with us there is still a kind of instinctive feeling against using nouns, articulated with case-terminations, for purposes of composition, although there are exceptions to that rule in ancient, and many more in modern languages. We can hardly realize to ourselves a Latin pontemfex, or pontisfex, still less ponsfex instead of pontifex, and when the Romans drove away their kings, they did not speak of a regisfugium or a regumfugium, but they took, by habit or by instinct, the base regi, though none of them, if they had been asked, knew what a base was. Composition, we ought not to forget, is after all only another name for combination, and the very essence of combination consists in joining together words which are not yet articulated grammatically. Whenever we form compounds, such as railway, we are still moving in the combinatory stage, and we have the strongest proof that the life of language is not capable of chronological division. There was a period in the growth of the Aryan language when the principle of combination preponderated, when inflection was as yet unknown. But inflection itself was the result of combination, and unless combination had continued long after inflection set in, the very life of language would have become extinct.
I have thus tried to explain why I cannot accept the fundamental fact on which the seven-fold division of the history of the Aryan language is founded, viz., that the combinatory process which led to the Aryan system of conjugation would have been impossible, if at the time nominal bases had already been articulated with terminations of case and number. I see no reason why the earliest case-formations, I mean particularly the nominative and accusative in the singular, plural, and dual, should not date from the same time as the earliest formations of conjugation. The same process that leads to the formation of vak-ti, speak-he, would account for the formation of vak-s, speak-there, i.e., speaker. Necessity, which after all is the mother of all inventions, would much sooner have required the clear distinction of singular and plural, of nominative and accusative, than of the three persons, of the verbs. It is far more important to be able to distinguish the subject and the object in such sentences as “the son has killed the father,” or “the father has killed the son,” than to be able to indicate the person and tense of the verb. Of course we may say that in Chinese the two cases are distinguished without any outward signs, and by mere position; but we have no evidence that the law of position was preserved in the Aryan languages, after verbal inflection had once set in. Chinese dispenses with verbal inflection as well as with nominal, and an appeal to it would therefore prove either too much or too little.
At the end of the five periods which we have examined, but still before the Aryan separation, Curtius places the sixth, which he calls the Period of the Formation of Cases, and the seventh, the Period of Adverbs. Why I cannot bring myself to accept the late date here assigned to declension, I have tried to explain before. That adverbs existed before the great branches of Aryan speech became definitely separated has been fully proved by Professor Curtius. I only doubt whether the adverbial period can be separated chronologically from the case period. I should say, on the contrary, that some of the adverbs in Sanskrit and the other Aryan languages exhibit the most primitive and obsolete case-terminations, and that they existed probably long before the system of case-terminations assumed its completeness.
If we look back at the results at which we have arrived in examining the attempt of Professor Curtius to establish seven distinct chronological periods in the history of the Aryan speech, previous to its separation into Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Slavonic, Teutonic, and Celtic, I think we shall find two principles clearly established:—
1. That it is impossible to distinguish more than three successive phases in the growth of the Aryan language. In the first phase or period the only materials were roots, not yet compounded, still less articulated grammatically, a form of language to us almost inconceivable, yet even at present preserved in the literature and conversation of millions of human beings, the Chinese. In that stage of language, “king rule man heap law instrument,” would mean, the king rules men legally.
The second phase is characterized by the combination of roots, by which process one loses its independence and its accent, and is changed from a full and material into an empty or formal element. That phase comprehends the formation of compound roots, of certain nominal and verbal stems, and of the most necessary forms of declension and conjugation. What distinguishes this phase from the inflectional is the consciousness of the speaker, that one part of his word is the stem or the body, and all the rest its environment, a feeling analogous to that which we have when we speak of man-hood, man-ly, man-ful, man-kind, but which fails us when we speak of man and men, or if we speak of wo-man, instead of wif-man. The principle of combination preponderated when inflection was as yet unknown. But inflection itself was the result of combination, and unless it had continued long after inflection set in, the very life of language would have become extinct.
The third phase is the inflectional, when the base and the modificatory elements of words coalesce, lose their independence in the mind of the speaker, and simply produce the impression of modification taking place in the body of words, but without any intelligible reason. This is the feeling which we have throughout nearly the whole of our own language, and it is only by means of scientific reflection that we distinguish between the root, the base, the suffix, and the termination. To attempt more than this three-fold division seems to me impossible.
2. The second principle which I tried to establish was that the growth of language does not lend itself to a chronological division, in the strict sense of the word. Whatever forces are at work in the formation of languages, none of them ceases suddenly to make room for another, but they work on with a certain continuity from beginning to end, only on a larger or smaller scale. Inflection does not put a sudden end to combination, nor combination to juxtaposition. When even in so modern a language as English we can form by mere combination such words as man-like, and reduce them to manly, the power of combination cannot be said to be extinct, although it may no longer be sufficiently strong to produce new cases or new personal terminations. We may admit, in the development of the Aryan language, previous to its division, three successive strata of formation, a juxtapositional, a combinatory, and an inflectional; but we shall have to confess that these strata are not regularly superimposed, but tilted, broken up, and convulsed. They are very prominent each for a time, but even after that time is over, they may be traced at different points, pervading the very latest formations of tertiary speech. The true motive power in the progress of all language is combination, and that power is not extinct even in our own time.
Footnotes to Chapter II:
Stratification of Language and Curtius’ Chronology
1. This Lecture has been translated by M. Louis Havet, and forms the first fasciculus of the Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, publiée sous les auspices du Ministère de l’Instruction Publique. Paris, 1869.
2. See Benfey, Ueber die Aufgabe des Kratylos, Göttingen, 1868.
3. Theokritos, xvii. 9.
4. In my essay On the Relation of Bengali to the Aryan and Aboriginal Languages of India, published in 1848, I tried to explain these plural suffixes, such as dig, gaṇa, jâti, varga, dala. I had translated the last word by band, supposing from Wilson’s Dictionary, and from the Śabda-kalpa-druma that dala could be used in the sense of band or multitude. I doubt, however, whether dala is ever used in Sanskrit in that sense, and I feel certain that it was not used in that sense with sufficient frequency to account for its adoption in Bengali. Dr. Friedrich Müller, in his useful abstracts of some of the grammars discovered by the Novara in her journey round the earth (1857–59), has likewise referred dal to the Sanskrit dala, but he renders what I had in English rendered by band, by the German word Band. This can only be an accident. I meant band in the sense of a band of robbers, which in German would be Bande. He seems to have misunderstood me, and to have taken band for the German Band, which means a ribbon. Might dala in Bengali be the Dravidian taḷa or daḷa, a host, a crowd, which Dr. Caldwell (p. 197) mentions as a possible etymon of the pluralizing suffix in the Dravidian languages? Bengali certainly took the idea of forming its plurals by composition with words expressive of plurality from its Dravidian neighbor, and it is not impossible that in some cases it might have transferred the very word daḷa, crowd. This daḷa and taḷa appears in Tamil as kala and gala, and as Sanskrit k may in Sinhalese be represented by v (loka = lova), I thought that the plural termination used in Sinhalese after inanimate nouns might possibly be a corruption of the Tamil kala. Mr. Childers, however, in his able “Essay on the formation of the Plural of Neuter Nouns in Sinhalese” (J. R. A. S., 1874, p. 40), thinks that the Sinhalese vala is a corruption of the Sanskrit vana, forest, an opinion which seems likewise to be held by Mr. D’Alwis (l.c. p. 48). As a case in point, in support of mv own opinion, Mr. Childers mentioned to me the Sinhalese malvaru, Sanskrit mâlâ-kâra, a wreath-maker, a gardener. In Persian both ân and hâ are remnants of decayed plural terminations, not collective words added to the base.
5. Stanislas Julien, Exercises Pratiques, p. 14.
6. Endlicher, Chinesische Grammatik, § 122. Wade, Progressive Course on the Parts of Speech, p. 102. A different division of words adopted by Chinese grammarians is that into dead and live words, ssè-tsé and sing-tsé, the former comprising nouns, the latter verbs. The same classes are sometimes called tsing-tsé and ho-tsé, unmoved and moved words. This shows how purposeless it would be to try to find out whether language began with noun or verb. In the earliest phase of speech the same word was both noun and verb, according to the use that was made of it, and it is so still to a great extent in Chinese. See Endlicher, Chinesische Grammatik, § 219.
7. Agglutinative seems an unnecessarily uncouth word, and as implying a something which glues two words together, a kind of Bindevocal, it is objectionable as a technical term. Combinatory is technically more correct, and less strange than agglutinative.
8. Professor Pott, in his article entitled “Max Müller und die Kennzeichen der Sprachverwandtschaft,” published in 1855, in the Journal of the German Oriental Society, vol. ix. p. 412, says, in confutation of Bunsen’s view of a real historical progress of language from the lowest to the highest stage: “So cautious an inquirer as W. von Humboldt declines expressly, in the last chapter of his work on the Diversity of the Structure of Human Language (p. 414), any conclusions as to a real historical progress from one stage of language to another, or at least does not commit himself to any definite opinion. This is surely something very different from that gradual progress, and it would be a question whether, by admitting such an historical progress from stage to stage, we should not commit an absurdity hardly less palpable than by trying to raise infusoria into horses or still further into men. [What was an absurdity in 1855 does not seem to be so in 1875.] Mr. Bunsen, it is true, does not hesitate to call the monosyllabic idiom of the Chinese an inorganic formation. But how can we get from an inorganic to an organic language? In nature such a thing would be impossible. No stone becomes a plant, no plant a tree, by however wonderful a metamorphosis, except, in a different sense, by the process of nutrition, i.e., by regeneration. The former question, which Mr. Bunsen answers in the affirmative, is disposed of by him with the short dictum: ‘The question whether a language can be supposed to begin with inflections, appears to us simply an absurdity;’ but unfortunately he does not condescend, by a clear illustration, to make that absurdity palpable. Why, in inflectional languages, should the grammatical form always have added itself to the matter subsequently and ab extra? Why should it not partially from the beginning have been created with it and in it, as having a meaning with something else, but not having antecedently a meaning of its own?”
9. Cf. D. G. Brinton, The Myths of the New World, p. 6, note.
10. Julien, Exercises Pratiques, p. 120. Endlicher, Chineseische Grammatik, § 161. See, also, Nöldeke, Orient und Occident, vol. i. p. 759. Grammar of the Bornu Language (London, 1853), p. 55: “In the Treaty the genitive is supplied by the relative pronoun agu, singularly corroborative of the Rev. R. Garnett’s theory of the genitive case.”
11. “Time changes the meaning of words as it does their sound. Thus, many old words are retained in compounds, but have lost their original signification. E.g., ’k·eu, mouth, has been replaced in colloquial usage by ’tsui, but it is still employed extensively in compound terms and in derived senses. Thus, k·wai‘ ’k·eu a rapid talker, .men ’k·eu, door, ,kwan ’k·eu, custom house. So also muh, the original word for eye, has given place to ’yen, tsing, or ’yen alone. It is, however, employed with other words in derived senses. E.g., muh hia·, at present; muh luh, table of contents.
“The primitive word for head, ’sheu, has been replaced by .t‘eu, but is retained with various words in combination. E.g., tseh ’sheu, robber chief.”
Edkins, Grammar of the Chinese Colloquial Language, 2d edition, 1864, p. 100.
12. Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, ii. 339.
13. Cf. the German Liebhart, mignon, in Anshelm, 1, 335. Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, iii. 707. I feel more doubtful now as to sweetard. Dr. Morris mentions it in his Historical Outlines of English Grammar, p. 219; but Koch, when discussing the same derivations in his English Grammar, does not give the word. Mr. Skeat writes to me: “The form really used in Middle English is sweeting. Three examples are given in Stratmann. One of the best is in my edition of William of Palerne, where, however, it occurs not once only (as given by Stratmann), but four times, viz.: in lines 916, 1537, 2799, 3088. The lines are:—
916 ‘Nai, sertes, sweting, he seide· that schal I neuer.’
1537 ‘& seide aswithe· sweting, welcome!’
2799 ‘Sertes, sweting, thæt is soth. seide william thanne.’
3088 ‘treuli, sweting, that is soth· seide william thane.’
The date of this poem is about A.D. 1360. Shakespeare has both forms, viz.: sweeting and sweet-heart. Chaucer has swete herte, just as we should use sweet-heart.”
14. Diez, Grammatik, ii. 358. Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, i. p. 340, 706.
15. See Sanskrit Grammar, § 497. I doubt whether in Greek ἀγγελλω is a denominative verb and stands for ἀγγελ(ο)ϳω (Curtius, Chronologie, p. 58). I should prefer to explain it as ἀνα-γαρ-ίω, to proclaim, as a verb of the fourth class.
16. Lex Repetund. “ceivis romanus ex hac lege fiet, nepotesque — ceiveis romanei justei sunto.” Cf. Egger, Lat, Serm. Vetust. Reliq., p. 245. Meunier, in Mémoires de la Societé de Linguistique de Paris, vol. i. p. 34.
17. Still used as long by Plautus; of. Neue, Formenlehre, ii. p. 340.
18. In old Latin the termination of the first person singular was em. Thus Quintilian, i. 7, 23, says: “Quid? non Cato Censorius dicam et faciam, dicem et faciem scripsit, eundemque in ceteris, quæ similiter cadunt, modum tenuit? quod et ex veteribus ejus libris manifestum est, et a Messala in libro de s. littera positum.” Neue, Formenlehre, ii. p. 348. The introduction of feram, originally a subjunctive, to express the future in the first person, reminds us of the distinction in English between I shall and thou wilt, though the analogy fails in the first person plural. In Homer the use of the subjunctive for the future is well known. See Curtius, Chronologie, p. 50.
19. Historically the i in tuleritis should be long in the subjunctive of the perfect, short in the future.
20. Bleek, On the Concord, p. lxvi.
21. In δώ-σω, for δωσίω, the i or y is lost in Greek as usual. In other verbs s and y are both lost. Hence τενεσίω becomes τενέσω, and τενῶ the so-called Attic future. Bopp, Vergleich-Grammatik, first ed., p. 903. In Latin we have traces of a similar future in forms like fac-so, cap-so, etc. See Neue, Formenlehre, ii. p. 421. The Epic dialect sometimes doubles the σ when the vowel is short, αἰδέσσομαι. But this can hardly be considered a relic of the original σι, because the same reduplication takes places sometimes in the Aorist, ἐγέλασσα.
22. See Bopp, Vergleichende Grammatik, §§ 897, 898. These verbal adjectives should be carefully distinguished from nominal adjectives, such as Sanskrit div-yá-s, divinus, originally div-i-a-s, i.e., divi-bhavas, being in heaven; ὀίκεῖος, domesticus, originally οἴκει-ο-ς, being in the house. These are adjectives formed, it would seem, from old locatives, just as in Bask we can form from etche, house, etche-tic, of the house, and etche-tic-acoa, he who is of the house; or from seme, son, semea-ren, of the son, and semea-ren-a, he who is of the son. See W. J. van Eys, Essai de Grammaire de la Langue Basque, 1867, p. 16.
23. Bopp, Vergleichende Grammatik, §§ 888–898.
24. Bacon, Novum Organum, i. 55.
25. Until a rational account of these changes, comprehended under the name of Lautverschiebung, is given, we must continue to look upon them, not as the result of phonetic decay, but of dialectic growth. I am glad to find that this is more and more admitted by those who think for themselves, instead of simply repeating the opinions of others. Grimm’s Law stands no longer alone, as peculiar to the Teutonic languages, but analogous changes have been pointed out in the South-African, the Chinese, the Polynesian dialects, showing that these changes are everywhere collateral, not successive. I agree with Professor Curtius and other scholars that the impulse to what we call Lautverschiebung was given by the third modification in each series of consonants, by the gh, dh, bh in Sanskrit, the χ, θ, φ, in Greek. I differ from him in considering the changes of Lautverschiebung as the result of dialectic variety, while he sees their motive power in phonetic corruption. But whether we take the one view or the other, I do not see that Dr. Scherer has removed any of our difficulties. See Curtius, Grundzüge, 4th ed., p. 426, note. Dr. Scherer, in his thoughtful work, Zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, has very nearly, though not quite, apprehended the meaning of my explanation as to the effects of dialectic change contrasted with those of phonetic decay. If it is allowable to use a more homely illustration, one might say with perfect truth, that each dialect chooses its own phonetic garment, as people choose the coats and trousers which best fit them. The simile, like all similes, is imperfect, yet it is far more exact than if we compare the ravages of phonetic decay, as is frequently done, to the wear and tear of these phonetic suits.
26. Edkins, Grammar, p. 84.
27. Having stated this on the authority of Mr. Edkins, one of our best living Chinese scholars, it is but fair that I should give the opinion of another Chinese scholar, the late Stanislas Julien, whose competence to give an opinion on this subject Mr. Edkins would probably be the first to acknowledge. All that we really want is the truth, not a momentary triumph of our own opinions. M. Julien wrote to me in July, 1868:—
“Je ne suis pas du tout de l’avis d’Edkins qui dit qu’un grand nombre de mots mongols sont chinois; c’est faux, archifaux.
Sain est mandchou et veut dire bon, en chinois chen.
begen, low: en chinois hia.
itchi, droit; en chinois yeou.
sologaï, left, gauche; en chinois tso.
c’hihe, straight; en chinois tchi (rectus).
gadan, outside; en chinois waï.
logon, green; en chinois tsing.
c’hohon, few; en chinois chao.
hungun, light (not heavy); en chinois king.
“Je voudrais bien savoir comment M. Edkins prouve que les mots qu’il cite sont chinois.
“Foucaux a échoué également en voulant prouver, autrefois, que 200 mots thibétains qu’il avait choisis ressemblaïent aux mots chinois correspondants.”
M. Stanislas Julien wrote again to me on the 21st of July:—
“J’ai peur que vous ne soyez fâché du jugemont sevère que j’ai porté sur les identifications faites par Edkins du mongol avec le chinois. J’ai d’abord pris dans votre savant article les mots mongols qu’il cite et je vous ai montré qu’ils ne ressemblent pas le moins du monde au chinois.
“Je vais vous en citer d’autres tirés du Dictionnaire de Khienlung chinois mandchou-mongol.
| Mongol | Chinois |
| tegri, ciel | thien. |
| naran, soleil | ji. |
naram barimoni, |
ji-chi. |
| saran, lune | youeï. |
| oudoun, étoile | sing. |
| egoulé, nuages, | yun. |
| ayounga, le tonnerre | louï. |
| tchagilgan, éclair | tien. |
| borogan, la pluie | yu. |
| sigouderi, la rosée | lou. |
| kirago, la gelée | choang. |
| lapsa, la neige | sioue. |
| salgin, le vent | fong. |
| ousoun, l’eau | chouï. |
| gal, le feu | ho. |
| siroi, la terre | thou. |
| aisin, l’or | altan. |
“Je vous donnerai, si vous le désirez, 1000 mots mongols avec leurs synonymes chinois, et je défie M. Edkins de trouver dans les 1000 mots mongols un seul qui ressemble au mot chinois synonyme.
“Comme j’ai fait assez de thibétain, je puis vous fournir aussi une multitude de mots thibétains avec leurs correspondants en chinois, et je défierai également M. Edkins de trouver un seul mot thibétain dans mille qui ressemble au mot chinois qui a le même sens.”
My old friend, M. Stanislas Julien, wrote to me once more on this subject, the 6th of August, 1868:—
“Depuis une quinzaine d’anneés, j’ai l’avantage d’entretenir les meilleures relations avec M. Edkins. J’ai lu, anciennement dans un journal que publie M. Léon de Rosny (actuellement professeur titulaire de la langue Japanaise) le travail où M. Edkins a tâché de rapprocher et d’identifier, par les sons, des mots mongols et chinois ayant la même signification. Son systême m’a paru mal fondé. Quelques mots chinois peuvent être entrés dans la langue mongole par suite du contact des deux peuples, comme cela est arrivé pour le mandchou, dont beaucoup de mots sont entrés dans la langue mongole en en prenant les terminaisons; mais il ne faudrait pas se servir de ces exemples pour montrer l’identité ou les ressemblances des deux langues.
“Quand les mandchous ont voulu traduire les livres chinois, ils ont rencontré un grand nombre de mots dont les synonymes n’existaient pas dans leur langue. Ils se sont alors emparé des mots chinois en leur donnant des terminaisons mandchoues, mais cette quasi-ressemblance de certains mots mandchous ne prouve point le moins du monde l’identité des deux langues. Par exemple, un préfet se dit en chinois tchi-fou, et un sous-préfet tchi-hien; les mandchous qui ne possédaient point ces fonctionaires se sont contentés de transcire les sons chinois dchhifou, dchhikhiyan.
“Le tafetas se dit en chinois tcheou-tse; les mandchous, n’ayant point de mots pour dire tafetas, ont transcrit les sons chinois par tchousé. Le bambou se dit tchou-tze; ils ont écrit l’arbre (moo) tchousé. Un titre de noblesse écrit sur du papier doré s’appelle tsĕ; les mandchous écrivent tche. Je pourrais vous citer un nombre considérable de mots du même genre, qui ne prouvent pas du tout l’identité du mandchou et du chinois.
“L’ambre s’appelle hou-pe; les mandchous écrivent khôba. La barbe s’appelle hou-tse, ils écrivent khôsé.
“Voici de quelle manière les mandchous ont fait certains verbes. Une balance s’appelle en chinois thien ping, ils écrivent p’ing-sé; puis pour dire peser avec une balance, ils ont fait le verbe p’ingselembi; lembi est une terminaison commune à beaucoup de verbes.
“Pour dire faire peser, ordonner de peser avec une balance, ils écrivent p’ingseleboumbi; boumbi est la forme factive ou causative; cette terminaison sert aussi pour le passif; de sorte que ce verbe peut signifier aussi être pesé avec une balance.
“Je pourrais citer aussi des mots mandchous auxquels on a donné la terminaison mongole, et vice versâ.”
These remarks, made by one who, during his lifetime, was recognised by friend and foe as the first Chinese scholar in Europe, ought to have their proper weight. They ought certainly to make us cautious before persuading ourselves that the connection between the northern and southern branches of the Turanian languages has been found in Chinese. On the other hand I am quite aware that all that M. Stanislas Julien says against Mr. Edkins may be true, and that nevertheless Chinese may have been the central language from which Mongolian in the north and Tibetan in the south branched off. A language, such as Chinese, with a small number of sounds and an immense number of meanings, can easily give birth to dialects which, in their later development, might branch off in totally different directions. Even with languages so closely connected as Sanskrit and Latin, it would be easy to make out a list of a thousand words in Latin which could not be matched in Sanskrit. The question, therefore, is not decided. What is wanted are researches carried on by competent scholars, in an unprejudiced and at the same time thoroughly scientific spirit.
28. If Mr. Chalmers’ comparison of the Chinese and Bohemian names for daughter is so unpardonable, what shall we say of Bopp’s comparison of the Bengali and Sanskrit names for sister? Sister in Bengali is bohinî, the Hindi bahin and bhân, the Prakrit bahiṇî, the Sanskrit bhaginî. Bopp, in the most elaborate way, derives bohinî from the Sanskrit svasṛ, sister. Bopp, Vergleichende Grammatik, Vorrede zur vierten Abtheilung, p. x.
29. Curtius, Verbum, p. 72.
30. Pott, E. F., 1871, p. 21.
31. Dr. Callaway, in his Remarks on the Zulu Language (1870), p. 2, says: “The Zulu Language contains upwards of 20,000 words in bonâ fide use among the people. Those curious appellations for different colored cattle, or for different maize cobs, to express certain minute peculiarities of color or arrangement of color, which it is difficult for us to grasp, are not synonymous, but instances in which a new noun or name is used instead of adding adjectives to one name to express the various conditions of an object. Neither are these various verbs used to express varieties of the same action, synonyms, such as ukupata, to carry in the hand, ukwetshata, to carry on the shoulder, ukubeleta, to carry on the back.”
32. Bruppacher, Lantlere der Oskischen Sprache, p. 48. Büchler, Grundriss der Lateinischen Declination, p. 1.
33. “Die Entstehung der Casus ist noch das allerdunkelste im weiten Bereich des indogermanischen Formensystems.” Curtius, Chronologie, p. 71.
34. Corssen, ii. 888.
35. Cf. Clemm, Die neusten Forschungen auf dem Gebiet der Griechischen Composita, p. 9.
III.
ON THE MIGRATION OF FABLES.
A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION,
ON FRIDAY, JUNE 3, 1870.
“Count not your chickens before they be hatched,” is a well-known proverb in English, and most people, if asked what was its origin, would probably appeal to La Fontaine’s delightful fable, La Laitière et le Pot au Lait.1 We all know Perrette, lightly stepping along from her village to the town, carrying the milk-pail on her head, and in her day-dreams selling her milk for a good sum, then buying a hundred eggs, then selling the chickens, then buying a pig, fattening it, selling it again, and buying a cow with a calf. The calf frolics about, and kicks up his legs—so does Perrette, and, alas! the pail falls down, the milk is spilt, her riches gone, and she only hopes when she comes home that she may escape a flogging from her husband.
Did La Fontaine invent this fable? or did he merely follow the example of Sokrates, who, as we know from the Phædon,2 occupied himself in prison, during the last days of his life, with turning into verse some of the fables, or, as he calls them, the myths of Æsop.
La Fontaine published the first six books of his fables in 1668,3 and it is well known that the subjects of most of these early fables were taken from Æsop, Phædrus, Horace, and other classical fabulists, if we may adopt this word “fabuliste,” which La Fontaine was the first to introduce into French.
In 1678 a second edition of these six books was published, enriched by five books of new fables, and in 1694 a new edition appeared, containing one additional book, thus completing the collection of his charming poems.
The fable of Perrette stands in the seventh book, and was published, therefore, for the first time in the edition of 1678. In the preface to that edition La Fontaine says: “It is not necessary that I should say whence I have taken the subjects of these new fables. I shall only say, from a sense of gratitude, that I owe the largest portion of them to Pilpay the Indian sage.”
If, then, La Fontaine tells us himself that he borrowed the subjects of most of his new fables from Pilpay, the Indian sage, we have clearly a right to look to India in order to see whether, in the ancient literature of that country, any traces can be discovered of Perrette with the milk-pail.
Sanskrit literature is very rich in fables and stories; no other literature can vie with it in that respect; nay, it is extremely likely that fables, in particular animal fables, had their principal source in India. In the sacred literature of the Buddhists, fables held a most prominent place. The Buddhist preachers, addressing themselves chiefly to the people, to the untaught, the uncared for, the outcast, spoke to them, as we still speak to children, in fables, in proverbs and parables. Many of these fables and parables must have existed before the rise of the Buddhist religion; others, no doubt, were added on the spur of the moment, just as Sokrates would invent a myth or fable whenever that form of argument seemed to him most likely to impress and convince his hearers. But Buddhism gave a new and permanent sanction to this whole branch of moral mythology, and in the sacred canon, as it was settled in the third century before Christ, many a fable received, and holds to the present day, its recognized place. After the fall of Buddhism in India, and even during its decline, the Brahmans claimed the inheritance of their enemies, and used their popular fables for educational purposes. The best known of these collections of fables in Sanskrit is the Pañcatantra, literally the Pentateuch, or Pentamerone. From it and from other sources another collection was made, well known to all Sanskrit scholars by the name of Hitopadesa, i.e., Salutary Advice. Both these books have been published in England and Germany, and there are translations of them in English, German, French, and other languages.4
The first question which we have to answer refers to the date of these collections, and dates in the history of Sanskrit literature are always difficult points. Fortunately, as we shall see, we can in this case fix the date of the Pañcatantra at least, by means of a translation into ancient Persian, which was made about 550 years after Christ, though even then we can only prove that a collection somewhat like the Pañkatantra must have existed at that time; but we cannot refer the book, in exactly that form in which we now possess it, to that distant period.
If we look for La Fontaine’s fable in the Sanskrit stories of the Pañcatantra, we do not find, indeed, the milkmaid counting her chickens before they are hatched, but we meet with the following story:—
“There lived in a certain place a Brâhman, whose name was Svabhâvakṛpaṇa, which means ‘a born miser.’ He had collected a quantity of rice by begging (this reminds us somewhat of the Buddhist mendicants), and after having dined off it, he filled a pot with what was left over. He hung the pot on a peg on the wall, placed his couch beneath, and looking intently at it all the night, he thought, ‘Ah, that pot is indeed brimful of rice. Now, if there should be a famine, I should certainly make a hundred rupees by it. With this I shall buy a couple of goats. They will have young ones every six months, and thus I shall have a whole herd of goats. Then, with the goats, I shall buy cows. As soon as they have calved, I shall sell the calves. Then, with the cows, I shall buy buffaloes; with the buffaloes, mares. When the mares have foaled, I shall have plenty of horses; and when I sell them, plenty of gold. With that gold I shall get a house with four wings. And then a Brâhman will come to my house, and will give me his beautiful daughter, with a large dowry. She will have a son, and I shall call him Somaśarman. When he is old enough to be danced on his father’s knee, I shall sit with a book at the back of the stable, and while I am reading the boy will see me, jump from his mother’s lap, and run towards me to be danced on my knee. He will come too near the horse’s hoof, and, full of anger, I shall call to my wife, “Take the baby; take him!” But she, distracted by some domestic work does not hear me. Then I get up, and give her such a kick with my foot.’ While he thought this, he gave a kick with his foot, and broke the pot. All the rice fell over him, and made him quite white. Therefore, I say, ‘He who makes foolish plans for the future will be white all over, like the father of Somaśarman.’”5
I shall at once proceed to read you the same story, though slightly modified, from the Hitopadeśa.6 The Hitopadeśa professes to be taken from the Pañcatantra and some other books; and in this case it would seem as if some other authority had been followed. You will see, at all events, how much freedom there was in telling the old story of the man who built castles in the air.
“In the town of Devîkoṭṭa there lived a Brâhman of the name of Devaśarman. At the feast of the great equinox he received a plate full of rice. He took it, went into a potter’s shop, which was full of crockery, and, overcome by the heat, he lay down in a corner and began to doze. In order to protect his plate of rice, he kept a stick in his hand, and began to think, ‘Now, if I sell this plate of rice, I shall receive ten cowries (kapardaka). I shall then, on the spot, buy pots and plates, and after having increased my capital again and again, I shall buy and sell betel nuts and dresses till I become enormously rich. Then I shall marry four wives, and the youngest and prettiest of the four I shall make a great pet of. Then the other wives will be so angry, and begin to quarrel. But I shall be in a great rage, and take a stick, and give them a good flogging.’ . . . . While he said this, he flung his stick away; the plate of rice was smashed to pieces, and many of the pots in the shop were broken. The potter, hearing the noise, ran into the shop, and when he saw his pots broken, he gave the Brâhman a good scolding, and drove him out of his shop. Therefore I say, ‘He who rejoices over plans for the future will come to grief, like the Brâhman who broke the pots.’”
In spite of the change of a Brahman into a milkmaid, no one, I suppose, will doubt that we have here in the stories of the Pañcatantra and Hitopadeśa the first germs of La Fontaine’s fable.7,A But how did that fable travel all the way from India to France? How did it doff its Sanskrit garment and don the light dress of modern French? How was the stupid Brahman born again as the brisk milkmaid, “cotillon simple et souliers plats?”
It seems a startling case of longevity that while languages have changed, while works of art have perished, while empires have risen and vanished again, this simple children’s story should have lived on, and maintained its place of honor and its undisputed sway in every school-room of the East and every nursery of the West. And yet it is a case of longevity so well attested that even the most skeptical would hardly venture to question it. We have the passport of these stories viséed at every place through which they have passed, and, as far as I can judge, parfaitement en règle. The story of the migration of these Indian fables from East to West is indeed wonderful; more wonderful and more instructive than many of these fables themselves. Will it be believed that we, in this Christian country and in the nineteenth century, teach our children the first, the most important lessons of worldly wisdom, nay, of a more than worldly wisdom, from books borrowed from Buddhists and Brahmans, from heretics and idolaters, and that wise words, spoken a thousand, nay, two thousand years ago, in a lonely village of India, like precious seed scattered broadcast all over the world, still bear fruit a hundred and a thousand-fold in that soil which is the most precious before God and man, the soul of a child? No lawgiver, no philosopher, has made his influence felt so widely, so deeply, and so permanently as the author of these children’s fables. But who was he? We do not know. His name, like the name of many a benefactor of the human race, is forgotten. We only know he was an Indian—a nigger, as some people would call him—and that he lived at least two thousand years ago.
No doubt, when we first hear of the Indian origin of these fables, and of their migration from India to Europe, we wonder whether it can be so; but the fact is, that the story of this Indo-European migration is not, like the migration of the Indo-European languages, myths, and legends, a matter of theory, but of history, and that it was never quite forgotten either in the East or in the West. Each translator, as he handed on his treasure, seems to have been anxious to show how he came by it.
Several writers who have treated of the origin and spreading of Indo-European stories and fables, have mixed up two or three questions which ought to be treated each on its own merits.
The first question is whether the Aryans, when they broke up their pro-ethnic community, carried away with them, not only their common grammar and dictionary, but likewise some myths and legends which we find that Indians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Germans, Slaves, when they emerge into the light of history, share in common? That certain deities occur in India, Greece, and Germany, having the same names and the same character, is a fact that can no longer be denied. That certain heroes, too, known to Indians, Greeks, and Romans, point to one and the same origin, both by their name and by their history, is a fact by this time admitted by all whose admission is of real value. As heroes are in most cases gods in disguise, there is nothing very startling in the fact that nations, who had worshipped the same gods, should also have preserved some common legends of demi-gods or heroes, nay, even in a later phase of thought, of fairies and ghosts. The case, however, becomes much more problematical when we ask, whether stories also, fables told with a decided moral purpose, formed part of that earliest Aryan inheritance? This is still doubted by many who have no doubts whatever as to common Aryan myths and legends, and even those who, like myself, have tried to establish by tentative arguments the existence of common Aryan fables, dating from before the Aryan separation, have done so only by showing a possible connection between ancient popular saws and mythological ideas, capable of a moral application. To any one, for instance, who knows how in the poetical mythology of the Aryan tribes, the golden splendor of the rising sun leads to conceptions of the wealth of the Dawn in gold and jewels and her readiness to shower them upon her worshippers, the modern German proverb, Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde, seems to have a kind of mythological ring, and the stories of benign fairies, changing everything into gold, sound likewise like an echo from the long-forgotten forest of our common Aryan home. If we know how the trick of dragging stolen cattle backwards into their place of hiding, so that their footprints might not lead to the discovery of the thief, appears again and again in the mythology of different Aryan nations, then the pointing of the same trick as a kind of proverb, intended to convey a moral lesson, and illustrated by fables of the same or a very similar character in India and Greece, makes one feel inclined to suspect that here too the roots of these fables may reach to a pro-ethnic period. Vestigia nulla retrorsum is clearly an ancient proverb, dating from a nomadic period, and when we see how Plato (“Alcibiades,” i. 123) was perfectly familiar with the Æsopian myth or fable,—κατὰ τὸν Αἰσώπου μῦθον, he says—of the fox declining to enter the lion’s cave, because all footsteps went into it and none came out, and how the Sanskrit Pañcatantra (III. 14) tells of a jackal hesitating to enter his own cave, because he sees the footsteps of a lion going in, but not coming out, we feel strongly inclined to admit a common origin for both fables. Here, however, the idea that the Greeks, like La Fontaine, had borrowed their fable from the Pañcatantra would be simply absurd, and it would be much more rational, if the process must be one of borrowing, to admit, as Benfey (“Pantschatantra,” i. 381) does, that the Hindus, after Alexander’s discovery of India, borrowed this story from the Greeks. But if we consider that each of the two fables has its own peculiar tendency, the one deriving its lesson from the absence of backward footprints of the victims, the other from the absence of backward footprints of the lion himself, the admission of a common Aryan proverb such as “vestigia nulla retrorsum” would far better explain the facts such as we find them. I am not ignorant of the difficulties of this explanation, and I would myself point to the fact that among the Hottentots, too, Dr. Bleek has found a fable of the jackal declining to visit the sick lion, “because the traces of the animals who went to see him did not turn back.”8 Without, however, pronouncing any decided opinion on this vexed question, what I wish to place clearly before you is this, that the spreading of Aryan myths, legends, and fables, dating from a pro-ethnic period, has nothing whatever to do with the spreading of fables taking place in strictly historical times from India to Arabia, to Greece and the rest of Europe, not by means of oral tradition, but through more or less faithful translations of literary works. Those who like may doubt whether Zeus was Dyaus, whether Daphne was Ahanâ, whether La Belle au Bois was the mother of two children, called L’Aurore and Le Jour,9 but the fact that a collection of fables was, in the sixth century of our era, brought from India to Persia, and by means of various translations naturalized among Persians, Arabs, Greeks, Jews, and all the rest, admits of no doubt or cavil. Several thousand years have passed between those two migrations, and to mix them up together, to suppose that Comparative Mythology has anything to do with the migration of such fables as that of Perrette, would be an anachronism of a portentous character.
There is a third question, viz., whether besides the two channels just mentioned, there were others through which Eastern fables could have reached Europe, or Æsopian and other European fables have been transferred to the East. There are such channels, no doubt. Persian and Arab stories, of Indian origin, were through the crusaders brought back to Constantinople, Italy, and France; Buddhist fables were through Mongolian10 conquerors (13th century) carried to Russia and the eastern parts of Europe. Greek stories may have reached Persia and India at the time of Alexander’s conquests and during the reigns of the Diadochi, and even Christian legends may have found their way to the East through missionaries, travellers, or slaves.
Lastly, there comes the question, how far our common human nature is sufficient to account for coincidences in beliefs, customs, proverbs, and fables, which, at first sight, seem to require an historical explanation. I shall mention but one instance. Professor Wilson (“Essays on Sanskrit Literature,” i. p. 201) pointed out that the story of the Trojan horse occurs in a Hindu tale, only that instead of the horse we have an elephant. But he rightly remarked that the coincidence was accidental. In the one case, after a siege of nine years, the principal heroes of the Greek army are concealed in a wooden horse, dragged into Troy by a stratagem, and the story ends by their falling upon the Trojans and conquering the city of Priam. In the other story a king bent on securing a son-in-law, had an elephant constructed by able artists, and filled with armed men. The elephant was placed in a forest, and when the young prince came to hunt, the armed men sprang out, overpowered the prince and brought him to the king, whose daughter he was to marry. However striking the similarity may seem to one unaccustomed to deal with ancient legends, I doubt whether any comparative mythologist has postulated a common Aryan origin for these two stories. They feel that, as far as the mere construction of a wooden animal is concerned, all that was necessary to explain the origin of the idea in one place was present also in the other, and that while the Trojan horse forms an essential part of a mythological cycle, there is nothing truly mythological or legendary in the Indian story. The idea of a hunter disguising himself in the skin of an animal, or even of one animal assuming the disguise of another,11 are familiar in every part of the world, and if that is so, then the step from hiding under the skin of a large animal to that of hiding in a wooden animal is not very great.
Every one of these questions, as I said before, must be treated on its own merits, and while the traces of the first migration of Aryan fables can be rediscovered only by the most minute and complex inductive processes, the documents of the latter are to be found in the library of every intelligent collector of books. Thus, to return to Perrette and the fables of Pilpay, Huet, the learned bishop of Avranches, the friend of La Fontaine, had only to examine the prefaces of the principal translations of the Indian fables in order to track their wanderings, as he did in his famous “Traite de l’Origine des Romans,” published at Paris in 1670, two years after the appearance of the first collection of La Fontaine’s fables. Since his time the evidence has become more plentiful, and the whole subject has been more fully and more profoundly treated by Sylvestre de Sacy,12 Loiseleur Deslongchamps,13 and Professor Benfey.14 But though we have a more accurate knowledge of the stations by which the Eastern fables reached their last home in the West, Bishop Huet knew as well as we do that they came originally from India through Persia by way of Bagdad and Constantinople.
In order to gain a commanding view of the countries traversed by these fables, let us take our position at Bagdad in the middle of the eighth century, and watch from that central point the movements of our literary caravan in its progress from the far East to the far West. In the middle of the eighth century, during the reign of the great Khalif Almansur, Abdallah ibn Almokaffa wrote his famous collection of fables, the “Kalila and Dimnah,” which we still possess. The Arabic text of these fables has been published by Sylvestre de Sacy, and there is an English translation of it by Mr. Knatchbull, formerly Professor of Arabic at Oxford. Abdallah ibn Almokaffa was a Persian by birth, who after the fall of the Omeyyades became a convert to Mohammedanism, and rose to high office at the court of the Khalifs. Being in possession of important secrets of state, he became dangerous in the eyes of the Khalif Almansur, and was foully murdered.15 In the preface, Abdallah ibn Almokaffa tells us that he translated these fables from Pehlevi, the ancient language of Persia; and that they had been translated into Pehlevi (about two hundred years before his time) by Barzûyeh, the physician of Khosru Nushirvan, the King of Persia, the contemporary of the Emperor Justinian. The King of Persia had heard that there existed in India a book full of wisdom, and he had commanded his Vezier, Buzurjmihr, to find a man acquainted with the languages both of Persia and India. The man chosen was Barzûyeh. He travelled to India, got possession of the book, translated it into Persian, and brought it back to the court of Khosru. Declining all rewards beyond a dress of honor, he only stipulated that an account of his own life and opinions should be added to the book. This account, probably written by himself, is extremely curious. It is a kind of Religio Medici of the sixth century, and shows us a soul dissatisfied with traditions and formularies, striving after truth, and finding rest only where many other seekers after truth have found rest before and after him, in a life devoted to alleviating the sufferings of mankind.
There is another account of the journey of this Persian physician to India. It has the sanction of Firdúsi, in the great Persian epic, the Shah Nâmeh, and it is considered by some16 as more original than the one just quoted. According to it, the Persian physician read in a book that there existed in India trees or herbs supplying a medicine with which the dead could be restored to life. At the command of the king he went to India in search of those trees and herbs; but, after spending a year in vain researches, he consulted some wise people on the subject. They told him that the medicine of which he had read as having the power of restoring men to life had to be understood in a higher and more spiritual sense, and that what was really meant by it were ancient books of wisdom preserved in India, which imparted life to those who were dead in their folly and sins.17 Thereupon the physician translated these books, and one of them was the collection of fables, the “Kalila and Dimnah.”
It is possible that both these stories were later inventions; the preface also by Ali, the son of Alshah Farési, in which the names of Bidpai and King Dabshelim are mentioned for the first time, is of later date. But the fact remains that Abdallah ibn Almokaffa, the author of the oldest Arabic collection of our fables, translated them from Pehlevi, the language of Persia at the time of Khosru Nushirvan, and that the Pehlevi text which he translated was believed to be a translation of a book brought from India in the middle of the sixth century. That Indian book could not have been the Pañcatantra, as we now possess it, but must have been a much larger collection of fables, for the Arabic translation, the “Kalilah and Dimnah,” contains eighteen chapters instead of the five of the Pañcatantra, and it is only in the fifth, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth chapters that we find the same stories which form the five books of the Pañkatantra in the textus ornatior. Even in these chapters the Arabic translator omits stories which we find in the Sanskrit text, and adds others which are not to be found there.
In this Arabic translation the story of the Brahman and the pot of rice runs as follows:—
“A religious man was in the habit of receiving every day from the house of a merchant a certain quantity of butter (oil) and honey, of which, having eaten as much as he wanted, he put the rest into a jar, which he hung on a nail in a corner of the room, hoping that the jar would in time be filled. Now, as he was leaning back one day on his couch, with a stick in his hand, and the jar suspended over his head, he thought of the high price of butter and honey, and said to himself, ‘I will sell what is in the jar, and buy with the money which I obtain for it ten goats, which, producing each of them a young one every five months, in addition to the produce of the kids as soon as they begin to bear, it will not be long before there is a large flock.’ He continued to make his calculations, and found that he should at this rate, in the course of two years, have more than four hundred goats. ‘At the expiration of this term I will buy,’ said he, ‘a hundred black cattle, in the proportion of a bull or a cow for every four goats. I will then purchase land, and hire workmen to plough it with the beasts, and put it into tillage, so that before five years are over I shall, no doubt, have realized a great fortune by the sale of the milk which the cows will give, and of the produce of my land. My next business will be to build a magnificent house, and engage a number of servants, both male and female; and, when my establishment is completed, I will marry the handsomest woman I can find, who, in due time becoming a mother, will present me with an heir to my possessions, who, as he advances in age, shall receive the best masters that can be procured; and, if the progress which he makes in learning is equal to my reasonable expectations, I shall be amply repaid for the pains and expense which I have bestowed upon him; but if, on the other hand, he disappoints my hopes, the rod which I have here shall be the instrument with which I will make him feel the displeasure of a justly-offended parent.’ At these words he suddenly raised the hand which held the stick towards the jar, and broke it, and the contents ran down upon his head and face.”18 . . . .