Page:The Fables of Bidpai (Panchatantra).djvu/56

xlvi Livingstone or Stanley, then took ship in the hold of a slaver across the Atlantic and found a home in the log-cabins of South Carolina. No wonder Brer Babbit was so 'cute, since he is thus shown to be an incarnation of the Buddha himself.

This remarkable instance of the insidious spread of Buddhistic fables is at anyrate sufficient to give us pause before assuming that distance from India proves independence from Indian influences. We can only prove this by examples of beast-fables known to have been in existence before any contact with India can be shown. Besides the instances of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Bible fables, before referred to, we have the case of Greece, which, as the home of Æsop, deserves more particular attention. We find a fable in Hesiod (Op. et Dies, 202), two fables of Archilochus are known, and almost the only poetical thing in Byron's English Bards:

is from a fable contained in a fragment of