OF THE AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY EDITED BY JAMES A. MONTGOMERY FRANKLIN EDGERTON VOLUME 39 PUBLISHED FOR THE AMERICAN ORIENTAL SOCIETY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, U. s. a. 1919 ALBRIGHT, W. F.: BUTTENWIESER, M.: Blood Revenge and Burial Rites in Ancient KENT, R. G.: Cattle-Tending and Agriculture in the Avesta LUTZ, H. F.: The Oldest Monumental Evidence of a Dome-Struc- The DD-Emblem of Osiris (illustrated) NIES, J. B.: Origin of MAŠ or BAR and the Development of its OEFELE, F. v.: Ascalobates fascicularis in Old Babylonian Medi- TOLMAN, H. C.: A Possible Restoration from a Middle Persian WATERMAN, L.: The Curse in the 'Paradise Epic' WORRELL, W. H.: An Account of Schools for Living Oriental Lan- 60, 208, 334 62, 127, 334 FOLKLORE W. NORMAN BROWN UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA I. THE RELATION OF MODERN INDIAN FOLK-TALES TO Brief Survey of published Indian Folk-tales1 IN 1868 Miss Frere published her book Old Deccan Days. This was the first collection of stories orally current among the people of India ever presented to the Occident.2 Three years later Mr. Thomas Steele included in the appendix to his metrical rendition of The Kusa Jātakaya fourteen short household tales from Ceylon. That same year Mr. G. H. Damant began to publish folk stories of Bengal in the Indian Antiquary, and continued to do so until 1880. Meanwhile others occasionally reported oral tales in that periodical and in books dealing with the customs and manners, or history, of particular districts of India. The next book offered to the Western public, devoted exclusively to Indian folk stories, was Miss Stokes's Indian Fairy Tales, privately printed in 1879. In 1883 Mr. L. B. Day's Folk-Tales of Bengal appeared; and the next year Captain (now Lieutenant-Colonel) Temple issued the first volume of his three-volume work, Legends of the Panjab. The following year he and Mrs. F. A. Steel sent out Wide-awake Stories, most of the tales in which had previously been published in the Indian Antiquary. This book was epoch-making in the study of Hindu 1In this essay I use the terms 'folk-tale' and 'folk story' as synonymous with 'oral' tale or story, that is, one reported orally from the folk, and contrasted with 'literary' tale or story, that is, one existing in a professed work of literature. This distinction, of course, deals not with the substance of the story but with the sort of fiction, whether oral or literary, in which the story appears. This limitation is perhaps arbitrary on my part, but it is at least convenient and is often matched in practice by others dealing with oral stories. * A few Indian oral tales had been published before this time in books of travel or description, for example in Mr. T. Bacon's Oriental Annual (1840), and Mrs. Postans' Cutch (1838). See my bibliography. 1 JAOS 39 |