Page:Researches respecting the Book of Sindibad and Portuguese Folk-Tales.djvu/155

 RESEARCHES

RESPECTING THE

BOOK OF SINDIBAD.

INTRODUCTION.

family of popular books which has for its common basis the tale of the Seven Sages divides itself into two principal groups, the Eastern and the Western. To the first belong all the texts in Eastern languages, and also some in European languages; the latter, however, springing from Oriental texts, which they represent as more or less free translations. To the other belong the Dolopathos, the Historia Septem Sapientum, the Erasto, and other numerous texts of the various European literatures of the Middle Ages, all resembling one or other of those already cited. These two groups represent two profoundly different phases in the history of that ancient Indian book from which the one and the other proceed. In the midst of their many divergences, the Oriental texts have so many common elements, that, comparing them one with the other, there may be recognized in them collectively the form and sometimes the words of a book which is the common basis of all. So soon, however, as the Western texts are placed side by side with the former, a distinction is at once seen, and all those more special