Page:The Fables of Bidpai (Panchatantra).djvu/52

xlii But it may be pointed out what an unconscionably long memory the originators of beast-fables must have had if it could bridge over the long lapse of years required to turn the Darwinian Homo into Man the Speaker. And as all men ex hypothesi would have the same reminiscence of their original identity with the beasts, it seems rather inconsistent in Sir R. Burton to stand out, as I understand he does, for an exclusively African origin of beast-fables.

But we need not depend on imaginative hypotheses of pre-historic psychogony in opposing the contention for any single centre of dispersion for beast-fables. Their exclusively Indian origin at any rate, with which we are more particularly concerned, is at once disproved by traces which we can find of them in Egypt, Assyria, and Judæa (Jotham's fable, Judges ix.), before any connection with India can be established. In deed on the strength of Jotham's fable and the many fables given or mentioned in the Talmud, Dr. Landsberger some years ago argued that Judæa was the original home of the Fable