Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/457

Rh unnatural powers of speech is carried very much further, and they are habitually attributed to everything that is introduced to forward the story or the interests of the actors therein. Indeed, in the legend of Niwal Dai we are expressly told: "It was the virtuous time of the golden age; all things could speak their mind." An expression used again in the legend of Raja Dhol in almost identical but more limited terms: "It was the golden age of virtue, and the cranes spake." An astonishing variety of objects is thus supposed to be gifted with speech. Any kind of plant for instance: trees, mangoes, plums, pîpals, plantains, grass. All sorts of articles in domestic use: a bed's legs, a lamp, a pitcher, a necklace, a conch, a couch, a needle, a pestle and mortar, a garland. Even such a general object in nature as a lake. In one instance a sandal-tree relates its very human adventures merely by way of incident. Anthropomorphism could hardly go further.

It is, however, carried pretty far in an instance that occurs in the fruitful Rasâlu Cycle in two versions. A corpse, restored to life through the prayers of the hero, helps him out of gratitude in such a matter as a gambling match, in one of the instances. In the other, the corpse appears as a number of severed heads, whom the hero adjures not to weep and to help him with their prayers. After all this the story of the well-known parrot of Raja Rasâlu, that "was wise, knowing the Four Vedas," could answer riddles and give wholesome human advise, falls somewhat flat. And the common folk-notion of a fœtus speaking from the womb becomes, as it were, natural. It is the stock miracle related of Guru Gugga, but attributed also to a good many other personages remarkable in subsequent separate life.

It will have been noticed that the notion of the humanised animal slides almost imperceptibly into that of the humanised thing. When once the habit of anthropomorphosis comes into play it appears to matter little whether it be