Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/27

 The Legends of Krishna. 17

clothes of which they had divested themselves, climbed up with them into a kadamb tree. There he mocked the frightened girls as they came shivering out of the water, nor would he yield a particle of vestment till all had ranged before him in a row, and with clasped and uplifted hands piteously entreated him. Thus the boy taught his votaries that submission to the divine will was a more excellent virtue than even modesty." ^ A most excellent moral drawn from a risque story. Here we have a version of the Swan- maiden cycle of tales which has been so fully discussed by other writers that it is necessary only to refer to it. The tale, I need hardly say, is found in many shapes in Indian folklore. -

But the form of the story as it appears in the Krishna cycle is remarkable because it is associated with the Vastra- harana, the sacred tree, which is said to be so named, " the seizing of the clothes," from this incident. Now this appears to be one of the rag-trees so common in all parts of the world, where sick people hang their clothes or frag- ments of them so as to pass the disease on to the tree-spirit, or to gain strength through communion with the spirit which proves its vitality by reviving with each returning spring. It looks very much as if this may have been the basis of the tale, the clothes hanging on the branches suggesting a further development of the myth in the direction of the Swan-maiden cycle. I am not aware if there are other cases in which the two cycles thus converge. If such be the case it would be interesting as another instance of a not unusual method of the growth of myth.

Passing on from folktales to ritual, we notice, in the first place, that the Krishna cult is very closely associated with

' Growse, loc. cit., 59.

2 North Indian Notes and Queries, iii., 120, 153 segq. ; Tawney, loc. cit., ii., 453 ; Miss Stokes, loc. cit., 89 ; Miss Frere, Old Deccan Days, 167 seqq. In the Mahdbhdrata, Adi Parva, sec. 78 (Ray, i., 240), the Gandharva, Chitraratha, mixes up the clothes of the girls while they are bathing.

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