Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/451

 The Folklore in the Legends of the Punjab. 41 1

tales, we also find another indication of the fundamental identity of the hero, the saint or supernatural mortal, and the god or supernatural immortal in the popular mind. The power is possessed by all alike, and by none to a specially great or striking degree peculiar to himself. It is equally possessed by inanimate objects. In the Legends there are indications that the forms it especially assumes are due to two causes : the perceptible effect that disguises have in altering the apparent nature of human beings, and the changes of skin and plumage that snakes and birds undergo ; and the old-world belief in metempsychosis or transmigra- tion of souls, by which the Indian and Far Eastern peoples have for so very long been thoroughly permeated.

Disguises for the sake of enabling the hero or heroine to carry out their respective objects are very numerous ; but the essential poverty of peasant ideas, despite their apparent diversity, comes out in the fact, that the disguises are apt to run in grooves and become stereotyped. As a rule they are such as might be expected; but there is a notable instance of metamorphosis by a humanised serpent merely for the sake of disguise ; and it may also be said that many of the objects for which disguise is used are identical with those for which metamorphosis is made to take place. Disguise may be said to be, indeed, merely metamorphosis with the marvellous left out. Changes of skin or clothing, or of things pertinent to human and animal heroes, are so directly connected with metamorphosis, and so constantly in Indian folktales, as to give rise to a temporary form of it, of which many instances will almost without effort occur to those well acquainted with the tales.

The allusions to the doctrine of metempsychosis in the Legends are of course ubiquitous, but without much varia- tion ; and they habitually refer to the variety of lives the heroes and heroines have already passed through in diverse forms. In fact, the sole difference between the folk notions of metamorphosis and metempsychosis lies in the fact of the