Page:Tales of the Sun.djvu/310

 The Brahman’s Wife and the Mongoose.—We have, in this story, an Indian variety of the well-known Welsh legend of Llewellyn and his dog Gellert. A similiar legend was current in France during the Middle Ages. But our story—mutatis mutandis—is as old as the third century, since it is found in a Buddhist work of that period. It also occurs in two Sanskrit forms of the celebrated Fables of Pilpay, or Bidnaia, namely the “Pancha Tantra” (five chapters), which is said to date as far back as the 5th century, and the “Hitopadesa” (Friendly Counsels); also in the Arabian and other Eastern versions of the same work. It is found in all the texts of the Book of Sindibad—Greek, Syriac, Persian, Hebrew, Old Castilian, Arabic, &c., and in the several European versions, known generally under the title of “The History of the Seven Wise Masters,” the earliest form of which being a Latin prose work entitled “Dolopathos.” There are, of course, differences in the details of the numerous versions both Western and Eastern, but the fundamental outline is the same in all. In my work on the migrations of popular tales, I have reproduced all the known versions of this world-wide story, with the exception of that in the present romance, which is singular in representing the woman as killing herself after she had discovered her fatal mistake, and her husband as slaying his little son and himself. The author of the romance probably added these tragedies, in order to enable the supposed narrator to more forcibly impress the king with the greviousgrievous [sic] consequences of acting in affairs of moment with inconsiderateness and precipitation. In most versions it is the husband who kills the faithful animal. Among the Malays the story of the Snake and the Mongoose is current in this