Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/74

 lxviii snatches up bits of its old beliefs, and fears, and griefs, and glory, and pieces them together with something that happened yesterday, and then holds up the distorted reflection in all its inconsequence, just as it has passed before that magic glass, as though it were genuine history, and matter for pure belief. And here it may be as well to say, that besides that old classical foe of vernacular tradition, there is another hardly less dangerous, which returns to the charge of copying, but changes what lawyers call the venue of the trial from classical to Eastern lands. According to this theory, which came up when its classical predecessor was no longer tenable, the traditions and tales of Western Europe came from the East, but they were still all copies. They were supposed to have proceeded entirely from two sources: one the Directorium Humancæ Vitæ of John of Capua, translated between 1262-78 from a Hebrew version, which again came from an Arabic version of the eighth century, which came from a Pehlvi version made by one Barzouyeh, at the command of Chosrou Noushirvan, King of Persia, in the sixth century, which again came from the Pantcha-Tantra, a Sanscrit original of unknown antiquity. This is that famous book of Calila and Dimna, as the Persian version is called, attributed to Bidpai, and which was thus run to earth in. India. The second source of Western tradition was held to be that still more famous collection of stories commonly known by the name of the "Story of the Seven Sages," but which, under many names—Kaiser Octavianus, Diocletianus, Dolopathos, Erastus, etc.—plays a most important part in medieval romance. This, too, by a similar process, has been traced to India, appearing first in